Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Foreign Correspondent
    Story is essentially the old cops-and-robbers. But it has been set in a background of international political intrigue of the largest order.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    They Drive by Night
    Fast moving and actionful melodrama of long-haul trucking biz, They Drive clicks with plenty of entertainment content.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pride and Prejudice
    The film is something less than satisfactory entertainment, despite lavish settings, costumes, and an acting ensemble of unique talent.
    • Variety
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waterloo Bridge
    Elaborating on the basic premise of Robert Sherwood's play, and doing a slick job of cleansing to conform to present regulations of the Hays code, this is a persuasive and compelling romantic tragedy.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Favorite Wife
    Irene Dunne and Cary Grant pick up the thread of marital comedy at about the point where they left off in The Awful Truth. With these two stars working again with Leo McCarey, a surefire laughing film is guaranteed.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rebecca
    Picture is noteworthy in its literal translation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel to the screen, presenting all of the sombreness and dramatic tragedy of the book in its unfolding. More important, it commands attention in establishing Joan Fontaine as a potential screen personality of upper brackets.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Road to Singapore
    Initial teaming of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in Road to Singapore provides foundation for continuous round of good substantial comedy of rapid-fire order, swinging along at a zippy pace.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Grapes of Wrath
    It is an absorbing, tense melodrama, starkly realistic, and loaded with social and political fireworks.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pinocchio
    Pinocchio is a substantial piece of entertainment for young and old. Both animation and photography are vastly improved over Walt Disney's first cartoon feature, Snow White. Animation is so smooth that cartoon figures carry impression of real persons and settings rather than drawings.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Remember the Night
    Picture is highlighted in numerous instances by some deft telling in the script and fine piloting by director Mitchell Leisen to lift the yarn from commonplace and trite category. Stanwyck turns in a fine performance. MacMurray is impressive as the serious-minded prosecutor, but loosens up for the comedy stretches.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    His Girl Friday
    Casting is excellent, with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the top roles.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Gone with the Wind
    One of the truly great films, destined for record-breaking box office business everywhere. The lavishness of its production, the consummate care and skill which went into its making, the assemblage of its fine cast and expert technical staff combine in presenting a theatrical attraction completely justifying the princely investment of $3,900,000.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Shop Around the Corner
    Although picture carries the indelible stamp of Ernst Lubitsch at his best in generating humor and human interest from what might appear to be unimportant situations, it carries further to impress via the outstanding characterizations by Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart in the starring spots.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Of Mice and Men
    Under skillful directorial guidance of Lewis Milestone, the picture retains all of the forceful and poignant drama of John Steinbeck's original play and novel, in presenting the strange palship and eventual tragedy of the two California ranch itinerants.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man Returns
    Story and script are workmanlike efforts, with Joe May’s direction holding a steady and suspenseful pace with few dull moments.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again is anything but a super-western. It's just plain, good entertainment [from an original story by Felix Jackson suggested by Max Brand's novel], primed with action and laughs and human sentiment.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Roaring Twenties
    Because of James Cagney and the story’s circumstances, The Roaring Twenties is reminiscent of Public Enemy. Story and dialog are good. Raoul Walsh turns in a fine directorial job; the performances are uniformly excellent.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
    There’s tremendous dramatic impact threaded throughout the picture, interwoven with those deft human episodes which have become familiar with Capra’s direction in previous pictures. He keys the motivation of his basic premise without wasting time, and then carries it through vigorously.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jamaica Inn
    Superb direction, excellent casting, expressive playing and fine production offset an uneven screenplay to make Jamaica Inn a gripping version of the Daphne du Maurier novel.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Wizard of Oz
    It’s a mixture of childish fantasy and adult satire and humor of a kind that never seems to grow old.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beau Geste
    Beau Geste has been produced with vigorous realism and spectacular sweep. Director William Wellman has focused attention on the melodramatic and vividly gruesome aspects of the story, and skimmed lightly over the episodes and motivation which highlighted Percival Christopher Wren's original novel.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Mr. Lincoln
    With judicious eye to authenticity and dignity the major shortcoming of this Lincoln film is at the altar of faithfulness, hampered by the rather lethargic production and direction.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Only Angels Have Wings
    In Only Angels Have Wings, Howard Hawks had a story to tell and he has done it inspiringly well.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Affair
    Dunne is excellent in a role that requires both comedy and dramatic ability. Boyer is particularly effective as the modern Casanova.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wuthering Heights
    Dramatic episodes are vividly etched, without benefit of lightness. It’s heavy fare throughout.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
    Top-flight cinematic entertainment.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight
    Story [from one by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz] is light, but with a good share of humorous moments, many of them of the screwball variety. It's a slender thread, however, on which to tie series of incidents in adventures of a stranded showgirl in Paris.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stagecoach
    Sweeping and powerful drama of the American frontier, Stagecoach displays potentialities that can easily drive it through as one of the surprise big grossers of the year. Without strong marquee names, picture nevertheless presents wide range of exploitation to attract, and will carry far through word-of-mouth after it gets rolling.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intermezzo: A Love Story
    Bergman is beautiful, talented and convincing, providing an arresting performance and a warm personality that introduces a new stellar asset to Hollywood. She has charm, sincerity and an infectious vivaciousness. Picture unwinds at a leisurely pace, without theatrics of too great intensity in the romantic passages.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Lady Vanishes
    The story [from The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White] is sometimes eerie and eventually melodramatic, but it’s all so well done as to make for intense interest.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jezebel
    William Wyler’s direction draws an engrossing cross-section of old southern manners and hospitality. It’s undoubtedly faithful to a degree, and not without its charm. At times it’s even completely captivating.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bringing Up Baby
    Bringing Up Baby is constructed for maximum of laughs, with Ruggles and Catlett adding to the starring team’s zany antics. There is little rhyme or reason to most of the action, but it’s all highly palatable.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
    There has never been anything in the theatre quite like Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, seven reels of animated cartoon in Technicolor, unfolding an absorbingly interesting and, at times, thrilling entertainment. So perfect is the illusion, so tender the romance and fantasy, so emotional are certain portions when the acting of the characters strikes a depth comparable to the sincerity of human players, that the film approaches real greatness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nothing Sacred
    Hecht handles the material breezily and pungently, poking fun in typical manner of half-scorn at the newspaper publisher, his reporter, doctors, the newspaper business, phonies, suckers, and whatnot.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Captains Courageous
    The Kipling yarn, built around a wealthy, motherless brat who accidentaly lands with a cod-fishing fleet, and undergoes regeneration during an enforced three months’ piscatorial quest, has been given splendid production, performance, photography and dramatic composition.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kid Galahad
    The treatment is sophisticated and production deluxe. Also more than the usual amount of romance for a slugfest
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Star Is Born
    Although not the first film which has attempted to capitalize the international reputation of Hollywood, it is unquestionably the most effective one yet made. The highly commendable results are achieved with a minimum of satiric hokum and a maximum of honest story telling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Marked Woman
    Marked Woman has no romance to sell. This is a hard-hitting yarn of five girls working for a vice king.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sabotage
    Competent and experienced hand of the director is apparent throughout this production, which is a smart one and executed in a business-like manner from start to finish.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    After the Thin Man
    It has the same stars, William Powell and Myrna Loy; the same style of breezy direction by W.S. Van Dyke; almost as many sparkling lines of dialog and amusing situations; but it hasn't, and probably couldn't have, the same freshness and originality of its predecessor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Man Godfrey
    William Powell and Carole Lombard are pleasantly teamed in this splendidly produced comedy. Story is balmy, but not too much so, and lends itself to the sophisticated screen treatment of Eric Hatch's novel.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Swing Time
    Swing Time is another winner for the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers combo. It's smart, modern, and impressive in every respect, from its boy-loses-girl background to its tunefulness, dancipation, production quality and general high standards.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Green Pastures
    A simple, enchanting, audience-captivating all-[black] cinematic fable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Secret Agent
    Secret Agent dallies much on the way but rates as good spy entertainment, suave story telling, and, in one particular case, brilliant characterization.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Show Boat
    Show Boat, Universal’s second talkerized version, is a smash filmusical. Basic tender romance [from Edna Ferber’s novel] between Magnolia (Irene Dunne) and Gaylord Ravenal (Allan Jones), romantic wastrel of the Mississippi river banks, has been most effectively projected by this reproduction of the classic [1927] Edna Ferber-Oscar Hammerstein II-Jerome Kern operetta.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Great Ziegfeld
    William Powell’s Zieggy is excellent. Preserving the sympathies, he endows the impersonation with all the qualities of a great entrepreneur and sentimentalist without sacrificing the shades and moods called for.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Desire
    The direction is subtle and inspired, with many smart little Lubitschian touches adding to the general appeal of the yarn [by Hans Szekely and R.A. Stemmle] and its plot.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Story of Louis Pasteur
    It couldn't have been an easy film to make, and the fact that it holds as much general interest as it does speaks volumes. But the producers couldn't avoid some dull stretches of scientific discourse.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Captain Blood
    Captain Blood, from the Rafael Sabatini novel, is a big picture. It's a spectacle which will establish both Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Director Michael Curtiz hasn't spared the horses. It's a lavish, swashbuckling saga of the Spanish main.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Metro achieves in A Tale of Two Cities a screen classic.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mutiny on the Bounty
    Mutiny takes its time, and plenty of it, without being guilty of a single dull moment.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Top Hat
    This one can't miss and the reasons are three - Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin's 11 songs and sufficient comedy between numbers to hold the film together.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The 39 Steps
    Yes, they can make pictures in England. This one proves it. International spy stories are most always good, and this is one of the best. [19 Jun 1935, p.21]
    • Variety
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Raven
    A good horror flicker. Just vaguely 'suggested' by the Edgar Allen Poe classic, the adaptation wanders not a little, but the basic romance is wisely kept to the fore, and Bela Lugosi, as the psycopathic medico to whom Irene Ware is indebted for her life contributes the shocker aspects forcibly.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Informer
    The Informer is forcefully and intelligently written, directed and acted.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bride of Frankenstein
    Karloff manages to invest the character with some subtleties of emotion that are surprisingly real and touching.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Man Who Knew Too Much
    An unusually fine dramatic story handled excellently from a production standpoint. Built along gangster lines, but from an international crook standpoint, with a lot of melodramatic suspense added.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strauss' Great Waltz
    The Great Waltz is a field day for music lovers plus elegant entertainment. Producers were nearly two years on this film, but the extra effort shows in the nicety with which its many component parts fit together. It is Luise Rainer who makes the film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Roberta
    Roberta is musical picture-making at its best - fast, smart, good looking and tuneful.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    David Copperfield
    It was almost an adventure to try to bring to the screen the expansively optimistic Micawber, but he lives again in W.C. Fields, who only once yields to his penchant for horseplay.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Imitation of Life
    John M. Stahl directs this kind of thing very well. He keeps the Fannie Hurst ‘success story’ brand of snobbishness under control and the film flows with mounting interest, if at moments a trifle slowly.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Gay Divorcee
    All through the picture there's charm, romance, gaiety and eclat.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Miss Marker
    This picture is a good response to that element that claims there is nothing good in pictures. Clean, funny, with thrills and heart appeal all nicely blended. [22 May 1934, p.15]
    • Variety
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thin Man
    The Thin Man was an entertaining novel, and now it's an entertaining picture.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Death Takes a Holiday
    It is the kind of story and picture that beckons the thinker, and for this reason is likely to have greater appeal among the intelligentsia. [27 Feb 1934, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It Happened One Night
    One of those stories that without a particularly strong plot manages to come through in a big way, due to the acting, dialog, situations and direction. In other words, the story has that intangible quality of charm which arises from a smooth blending of the various ingredients. Difficult to analyze, impossible to designedly reproduce. Just a happy accident.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flying Down to Rio
    This picture makes its bid via numbers staged by Dave Gould to Vincent Youman melodies. But Rio’s story [from a play by Anne Caldwell, based on an original story by Louis Brock] lets it down. It’s slow and lacks laughs to the point where average business seems its groove.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Son of Kong
    This is the sequel to and wash-up of the King Kong theme, consisting of salvaged remnants from the original production and rating as fair entertainment.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alice in Wonderland
    On the screen it is vividly realized in all its fantastic angles. The humor is genuine and the treatment satisfying on its literary side. But an hour and a quarter of it is overpoweringly sedative. [26 Dec 1933, p.10]
    • Variety
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Women
    Intelligent, grown up rendition of the Louisa Alcott classic.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Duck Soup
    In place of the constant punning and dame chasing, Duck Soup has the Marxes madcapping through such bits as the old Schwartz Bros. mirror routine, so well done in the hands of Groucho, Harpo and Chico that it gathers a new and hilarious comedy momentum all over again.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man
    The strangest character yet created by the screen [from the novel by H.G. Wells] roams through The Invisible Man.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Blood of a Poet
    On the face of it, this film represents six reels of scraped together footage from off the cutting room floor. A more vague or hopeless mess could not have resulted.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Footlight Parade
    Footlight Parade is not as good as 42nd Street and Gold Diggers but the three socko numbers here eclipse some of the preceding Busby Berkeley staging for spectacle.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bombshell
    Here's a crackling comedy built out of the low down on Hollywood, elaborately dressed up with a lot of inside stuff, written with fine jaunty insouciance and acted with luscious abandon by a tip top cast. [24 Oct 1933, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cavalcade
    Cavalcade is about as well made as that subject could have been made for the screen. At first thought it would seem too foreign a matter for American consumption, but it’s the first big historical epic on England that means something over here. It’s so powerful and embracing that the matter of nationality and background is lost, or forgotten.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    King Kong
    Highly imaginative and super-goofy yarn.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    42nd Street
    Everything about the production rings true. It's as authentic to the initiate as the novitiate.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Man of Her Own
    It is largely the good cast, direction and some of the comedy arising mostly out of the wisecracks that makes No Man of Her Own acceptable film fare.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Three on a Match
    It amounts to a picture which has tried but failed to photographically decipher four characters. [01 Nov 1932, p.12]
    • Variety
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Dust
    Familiar plot stuff, but done so expertly it almost overcomes the basic script shortcomings and the familiar hot-love-in-the-isolated-tropics theme [from the play by Wilson Collison].
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grand Hotel
    The drama unfolds with a speed that never loses its grip, even for the extreme length of nearly two hours, and there is a captivating pattern of unexpected comedy that runs through it all, always fresh and always pat.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Horse Feathers
    The madcap Marxes, in one of their maddest screen frolics. The premise of Groucho Marx as the college prexy and his three aides and abettors putting Huxley College on the grid-iron map promises much and delivers more.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Number 17
    Like the play, the story is vague and, despite its intended eerieness, unconvincing. [02 Aug 1932, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scarface
    Scarface contains more cruelty than any of its gangster picture predecessors, but there's a squarer for every killing. The blows are always softened by judicial preachments and sad endings for the sinners.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freaks
    Freaks is sumptuously produced, admirably directed, and no cost was spared. But Metro failed to realize that even with a different sort of offering the story still is important. Here it is not sufficiently strong to get and hold the interest, partly because interest cannot easily be gained for a too fantastic romance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shanghai Express
    Josef von Sternberg, the director, has made this effort interesting through a definite command of the lens. As to plot structure and dialog, Shanghai Express runs much too close to old meller and serial themes to command real attention. The finished product is an example of what can be done with a personality and photogenic face such as Marlene Dietrich possesses to circumvent a trashy story.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    The picture is infinitely better art – indeed, in many passages it is an astonishing fine bit of interpreting a classic, but as popular fare it loses in vital reaction.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mata Hari
    Though Garbo is sexy and hot in a less subtle way this time, and though the plot goes about as far as it can in situation warmth, the story presents nothing sensational.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Safe in Hell
    A sad and unsatisfactory finish is obviously an attempt to lend credence to an impossible yarn. It doesn't help, for as long as the story is thoroughly unbelievable up to the finish, no ending could change that impression. [22 Dec 1931, p.15]
    • Variety
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Frankenstein
    Looks like a Dracula plus, touching a new peak in horror plays and handled in production with supreme craftsmanship.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    The usual Marx madhouse and plenty of laughs sprouting from a plot structure resembling one of those California bungalows which spring up over night.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Skin Game
    With Alfred Hitchcock its director, more was expected. The story appears to be run through in a straight style as though closely following John Galsworthy's London stage hit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Public Enemy
    There's no lace on this picture. It's raw and brutal. It's low-brow material given such workmanship as to make it high-brow.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Front Page
    A very entertaining picture for anyone anywhere. [25 Mar 1931, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 99 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    City Lights
    It’s not Chaplin’s best picture, because the comedian has sacrificed speed to pathos, and plenty of it. This is principally the reason for the picture running some 1,500 or more feet beyond any previous film released by him. But the British comic is still the consummate pantomimist, unquestionably one of the greatest the stage or screen has ever known. Certain sequences in “City Lights” are hilarious.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dracula
    On the screen it comes out as a sublimated ghost story related with all surface seriousness and above all with a remarkably effective background of creepy atmosphere.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cimarron
    An elegant example of super film making and a big money picture. This is a spectacular western away from all others. It holds action, sentiment, sympathy, thrills and comedy - and 100% clean. Radio Pictures has a corker in Cimarron.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Blue Angel
    A standout picture.
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