Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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 2.4 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower
    Piscatella and editor Matthew Sultan have shaped the kind of exciting you-are-there narrative that captures the feeling of underdog “naive” idealism transforming into a game-changing popular movement.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fletch
    What propels this contempo LA yarn about a dissembling newspaper columnist on the trail of a nefarious con man (Tim Matheson) is the obvious and successful byplay between Chevy Chase’s sly, glib persona and the satiric brushstrokes of director Michael Ritchie. Their teamwork turns an otherwise hair-pinned, anecdotal plot into a breezy, peppy frolic and a tour de force for Chase.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Major League
    Major League lacks the subtlety of Bull Durham or the drama of Eight Men Out, but for sheer crowd-pleasing fun it belts one high into the left-field bleachers...Though the plot turns are mostly predictable, they are executed with wit and style.
  4. Forbidden Games: The Justin Fashanu Story
    The short, mercurial, sometimes self-defeating life of professional soccer player Justin Fashanu is so packed with drama that “Forbidden Games,” Adam Darke and Jon Carey’s documentary about him, often feels like a narrative feature — one that engrosses even as its complex central figure defies full understanding.
  5. Becoming Who I Was
    The endearing, guileless personalities of the two principals constitute much of the film’s appeal.
  6. Icaros: A Vision
    This trippy work maps the intersections of West and East, body and spirit, faith and terror with beguiling grace.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
    Solid family fare with plenty of yocks...For the most part, helmer Jeremiah Chechik makes an adept debut, injecting plenty of energy and spirit.
  8. Birdboy: The Forgotten Children
    Though at first glance this ironically-sweet-and-very-sour mix might seem unappetizing, even repellent, it soon becomes fascinating in its oddball complexity.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Knights of the Round Table
    The carefully developed script plus knowing direction by Richard Thorpe give the legendary tale credibility. It’s storybook stuff – and must be accepted as such – but the astute staging results in a walloping package of entertainment for all except, perhaps, the blase.
  10. Legion of Brothers
    Its up-close portrait of heroic dedication in extreme situations has the dramatic immediacy and air of privileged access to impress both hawks and doves.
  11. Double Lover
    Sure, it’s kinky, but Ozon is having fun with it, to the extent that the entire film rewards that fetish all moviegoers have in common — voyeurism — offering up a kind of equal-opportunity objectification.
  12. The Florida Project
    As a filmmaker, Baker is a graceful neorealist voyeur who thrives on improvisation, and his storytelling, in The Florida Project, is mostly just a series of anecdotes. But that turns out to be enough.
  13. 24 Frames
    It’s an elegantly oblique movie, even for Kiarostami, whose art thrums with quiet ethereal metaphor.
  14. Apostle
    Tantalizingly rich in atmosphere and altogether unhurried in revealing its secrets, the evocatively shot, ultra-widescreen Apostle will eventually veer into dark, mercilessly supernatural territory.
  15. Filmworker
    Filmworker is a brisk, compelling movie that’s pure candy for Kubrick buffs, yet there are oddities about it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lover for a Day
    The film benefits from the collective contributions of four screenwriters...whose collective insights result in a beautiful complexity.
  17. Claire's Camera
    Characters often most reveal themselves when they’re saying nothing of any particular consequence in Hong’s short, loose script.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Airplane!
    Airplane! is what they used to call a laff-riot. Made by team which turned out Kentucky Fried Movie, this spoof of disaster features beats any other film for sheer number of comic gags.
  19. The Villainess
    Channeling “La femme Nikita,” “Kill Bill,” Nikkatsu’s ’70s female exploitation films and a gazillion Hong Kong martial arts heroines, The Villainess nonetheless succeeds in being one-of-a-kind for its delirious action choreography and overall narrative dementia.
  20. Don't Tell
    With West’s magnetic performance and Garrett’s sensitive direction leading the way, the film achieves its crucial goal of turning uncomfortable subject matter into emotionally rewarding viewing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Young Frankenstein
    Young Frankenstein emerges as a reverently satirical salute to the 1930s horror film genre.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coal Miner's Daughter
    A thoughtful, endearing film charting the life of singer Loretta Lynn from the depths of poverty in rural Kentucky to her eventual rise to the title of 'queen of country music'. Thanks in large part to superb performances by Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones, film [based on Lynn's autobiography, with George Vescey] mostly avoids the sudsy atmosphere common to many showbiz tales.
  23. Cool Runnings
    Director Jon Turteltaub has a fresh, uncluttered approach to the story that allows its natural warmth and humor to dominate. The classic underdog script provides a positive minority perspective without the usual downside, self-conscious righteousness.
  24. A Man of Integrity
    A Man of Integrity is a tense, enraging drama about corruption and injustice, set in a small village.
  25. Makala
    French helmer-lenser Emmanuel Gras’ camera embraces the subject’s every move with such rapt intimacy and cinematic poetry it’s easy to forget this is not a fictional drama.
  26. Unrest
    Though the “Patient, film thyself” concept is starting to risk overexposure...Unrest is a high-grade example of the form that’s consistently involving, with content diverse enough to avoid the tunnel-visioned pitfalls of diarist cinema.
  27. Dolores
    Dolores crams a great deal of information, themes, and diverse archival materials into a sharp, cogent whole.
  28. Sami Blood
    This handsome debut feature from Swedish-Sami writer-director Amanda Kernell robustly blends adolescent fears that resonate across borders and generations with a fascinatingly specific, rarely depicted cultural context: Sweden’s colonial oppression of the indigenous Sami folk.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Top Gun
    Set in the world of naval fighter pilots, pic has strong visuals and pretty young people in stylish clothes and a non-stop soundtrack.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Octopussy
    Film’s high points are the spectaccular aerial stuntwork marking both the pre-credits teaser and extremely dangerous-looking climax.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Moonraker
    The visual effects, stuntwork and other technical contributions all work together expertly to make the most preposterous notions believable. And Roger Moore, though still compared to Sean Connery, clearly has adapted the James Bond character to himself and serves well as the wise-cracking, incredibly daring and irresistible hero.
  32. Tag
    Tag leaves audiences energized and, dare I say, inspired, having delivered all that outrageousness...in service of what ultimately amounts to a sincere celebration of lasting human connections.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Moscow on the Hudson
    Directed by Paul Mazursky with his usual unusual touches, Moscow would be in a lot of trouble without a superbly sensitive portrayal by Robin Williams of a gentle Russian circus musician who makes a sudden decision to defect while visiting the US.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Creepshow
    George Romero, collaborating with writer Stephen King, again proves his adeptness at combining thrills with tongue-in-cheek humor.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carrie
    Carrie is a modest but effective shock-suspense drama about a pubescent girl, her evangelical mother and cruel schoolmates. Stephen King's novel, adapted by Lawrence D. Cohen, combines in unusual fashion a lot of offbeat story angles.
    • Variety
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stand by Me
    Scripters have written inspired dialog for this quartet of plucky boys at that hard-to-capture age when they’re still young enough to get scared and yet old enough to want to sneak smokes and cuss.
  37. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press
    What the film offers is evidence of a pattern, the shadows of a disturbing trend that add up to a warning: If we, as a society, don’t push back against the chipping away of the freedom of information, it’s only going to get worse, until it eats us alive.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Misery
    Casting of Caan is effective, as his snide remarks and grumpy attittude are backed up by a physical dimension that makes believable his inevitable fighting back. Bates had a field day with her role, creating a quirky, memorable object of hate.
    • Variety
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eight Men Out
    Perhaps the saddest chapter in the annals of professional American sports is recounted in absorbing fashion in Eight Men Out.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In the Mouth of Madness
    While the pic doesn't really have meaty characters, the presence of Neill, Carmen, Heston and Prochnow lends an air of credibility that heightens the proceedings. The film is also blessed with an arsenal of special effects that work with tinker-toy precision.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Peggy Sue Got Married
    What makes this treatment unique is that the jokes aren’t so much derivative of pop culture, but are instead found in the learned wisdom of a middle-aged woman reacting to her own teenage dilemmas.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dr. No
    First screen adventure of Ian Fleming's hardhitting, fearless, imperturbable, girl-loving Secret Service Agent 007, James Bond, is an entertaining piece of tongue-in-cheek action hokum. Sean Connery excellently puts over a cool, fearless, on-the-ball, fictional Secret Service guy. Terence Young directs with a pace which only occasionally lags.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    From Russia with Love
    From Russia with Love is a preposterous, skillful slab of hardhitting, sexy hokum. After a slowish start, it is directed by Terence Young at zingy pace.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Altered States
    Direction by Ken Russell has energy to spare, with appropriate match-up of his baroque visual style to special effects intensive material.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Calm
    Though not always entirely credible, Dead Calm is a nail-biting suspense pic handsomely produced and inventively directed.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Way Out
    Costner is extremely low key while Hackman glides through his role and Patton dominates his scenes overplaying his villainous hand. Young is extremely alluring as the heroine.
  47. Bill Nye: Science Guy
    Bill Nye: Science Guy is an efficiently thought-provoking study of what it means to be a rational and analytical advocate for science in an age when deniers of evolution and climate-change often seem to have higher profiles, deeper pockets and louder voices. But it’s even more interesting as the story of a beloved celebrity who wants to reinvent himself, to be taken more seriously.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    La Bamba
    La Bamba is engrossing throughout and boasts numerous fine performances.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Prince of Tides
    Bringing her usual strengths of character to her role as Nolte’s psychiatrist/lover, Barbra Streisand marks every frame with the intensity and care of a filmmaker committed to heartfelt, unashamed emotional involvement with her characters.
  50. Addams Family Values
    It’s the kind of wickedly delicious comedy one can savor without adding the proviso of guilty pleasure.
  51. Robin Hood: Men in Tights
    Robin Hood: Men in Tights marks a return to the wild, anarchic scatological comedies that made Mel Brooks a marquee name around the world. It is a film for his diehard fans and for a new generation who only know Mad Mel from legend.
  52. Back to Burgundy
    Though not a documentary, this gorgeous French family saga benefits enormously from Klapisch’s natural curiosity, informed by research (he participated in a harvest in order to observe its nuances) and elevated by his insistence that they film over the course of a full year, so as to capture the impact of the seasons on both viticulture and its human stewards.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Footloose
    By writing both the screenplay and contributing lyrics to nine of the film’s songs, Dean Pitchford has come up with an integrated story line that works.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thunderball
    Terence Young takes advantage of every situation in his direction to maintain action at fever-pitch.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Never Say Never Again
    What clicks best in the film is the casting. Klaus Maria Brandauer makes one of the best Bond opponents since very early in the series.
  56. Santoalla
    While Santoalla is a small story, its poignancy resonates, like an echo finding its way through the peaks and valleys of this windswept, eternal landscape.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I.Q.
    A paean to movies past, I.Q. recalls the style and attitude of a bygone era while retaining a contemporary spirit and polish. The material provides Robbins with the kind of likable, charismatic role that gained him early recognition.
  58. The Rehearsal
    The Rehearsal is engrossing, but it’s not a major vision.
  59. Check It
    Despite occasional narrative gaps, Check It is consistently compelling, with a brisk pace and vivid personalities making up for the occasional unanswered question.
  60. Love After Love
    Bolstered by superb lead turns from Chris O’Dowd and Andie MacDowell, as well as a formal structure that enhances the roiling emotions propelling its characters into a downward spiral, Love After Love is an assured debut feature that announces its writer-director as a formidable new American indie voice
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hombre
    Hombre develops the theme that socially and morally disparate types are often thrown into uneasy, explosive alliance due to emergencies. Paul Newman is excellent as the scorned (but only supposed) Apache. Fredric March, essaying an Indian agent who has embezzled food appropriations for his charges, also scores in a strong, unsympathetic – but eventually pathetic – role. Richard Boone is very powerful, yet admirably restrained as the heavy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Gods Must Be Crazy
    Film’s main virtues are its striking, widescreen visuals of unusual locations, and the sheer educational value of its narration.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arthur
    Arthur is a sparkling entertainment that attempts, with a large measure of success, to resurrect the amusingly artificial conventions of 1930's screwball romantic comedies.
    • Variety
  64. The Nile Hilton Incident
    Like the finest noir, what springs forth from Saleh’s film is the dreary belief that the bad sleep well while the rest are left to suffer in the streets.
  65. Women Who Kill
    A shaggy, banter-driven quasi-thriller in the mode of “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (or the “Thin Man” movies, for that matter), Women Who Kill offers a drolly amusing, lightly macabre variation on the standard lesbian romantic comedy.
  66. Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk
    Corbett Redford’s film channels and sustains the energy of restless youth while communicating the distinctive qualities of a community that carried collectivist 1960s ideals into a new generation, even as it rejected any vestige of their hippie parents’ music.
  67. I Dream in Another Language
    Contreras’ film uniquely honors the memories and experience embodied in our elders — which it is our responsibility to preserve, and their prerogative to take to their graves, if they so desire.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Breaking Away
    Though its plot wins no points for originality, Breaking Away is a thoroughly delightful light comedy, lifted by fine performances from Dennis Christopher and Paul Dooley. The story is nothing more than a triumph for the underdog through sports, this time cycle racing.
  69. Loving Vincent
    Loving Vincent may exist as a showcase for its technique, but it’s the sensitivity the film shows toward its subject that ultimately distinguishes this particular oeuvre from the countless bad copies that already litter the world’s flea markets.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    9 to 5
    Anyone who has ever worked in an office will be able to identify with the antics in Nine to Five. Although it can probably be argued that Patricia Resnick and director Colin Higgins' script [from a story by Resnick] at times borders on the inane, the bottom line is that this picture is a lot of fun.
    • Variety
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love and Death
    Love and Death is another mile-a-minute visual-verbal whirl by the two comedy talents, this time through Czarist Russia in the days of the Napoleonic Wars.
    • Variety
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Top Secret!
    The attempted target this time is a combination of the traditional spy film and Elvis Presley musical romps, which in and of itself is funny to start with. And Val Kilmer proves a perfect blend of staunch hero and hothouse heartthrob.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Dry White Season
    A wrenching picture about South Africa that makes no expedient compromises with feel-good entertainment values, A Dry White Season displays riveting performances and visceral style.
    • Variety
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Karate Kid
    John G. Avildsen is back in the Rocky ring with The Karate Kid. More precisely, it is a Rocky for kids. Morita is simply terrific, bringing the appropriate authority and wisdom to the part.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Blue Lagoon
    Producer-director Randal Kleiser takes the pair through puberty and into parenthood with a charming candor that stresses natural, instinctive sexual development without leering at it. Their romance is enhanced by Nestor Almendros’ exquisite photography (and Basil Poledouris’ score), as is the stunning beauty of the Fiji island where it was filmed.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fame
    Alan Parker has come up with an exposure for some of the most talented youngsters seen on screen in years. There isn't a bad performance in the lot. The great strength of the film is in the school scenes -- when it wanders away from the scholastic side as it does with increasing frequency as the overlong feature moves along, it loses dramatic intensity and slows the pace.
    • Variety
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Bodyguard
    In his directorial debut, Tony Bill assembles a truly remarkable cast of youngsters with little or no previous acting experience. Chris Makepeace is superb as the slightly built kid coming anew to a Chicago high school dominated by extortionist gang leader Matt Dillon, also terrific in his part.
    • Variety
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dressed to Kill
    Brian De Palma goes right for the audience jugular in Dressed to Kill, a stylish exercise in ersatz-Hitchcock suspense-terror. Despite some major structural weaknesses, the cannily manipulated combination of mystery, gore and kinky sex adds up to a slick commercial package.
  79. After Love
    In a remarkable performance that at times suggests a desperate animal with nothing to lose, Kahn conveys the fact that Boris’ attachment to Marie hasn’t yet run its course.
  80. Sidemen: Long Road to Glory
    "Sidemen” is an exceptionally entertaining and captivating tribute to the men and their music — and that there’s more than enough of said music here to please blues aficionados and recruit converts.
  81. Free in Deed
    Superb, skin-prickling performances by the three principals contribute invaluably to the pic’s stern believability, with Findley utterly wrenching as a dedicated mother pushed to frank irrationality by others’ neglicence.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sea of Love
    Sea of Love is a suspenseful film noir boasting a superlative performance by Al Pacino as a burned-out Gotham cop. Handsome production benefits from a witty screenplay limning the bittersweet tale of a 20-year veteran NYC cop assigned to a case tracking down the serial killer of men who've made dates through the personal columns.
    • Variety
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cocoon
    A fountain of youth fable [from a novel by David Saperstein] which imaginatively melds galaxy fantasy with the lives of aging mortals in a Florida retirement home, Cocoon weaves a mesmerizing tale.
  84. Strong Island
    It’s a moving film, but it leaves a hole in one’s outrage.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Omen
    Suspenser starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as the unwitting parents of the Antichrist. Richard Donner's direction is taut. Players all are strong.
    • Variety
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jaws 2
    Despite a notable but effective change in story emphasis, Jaws 2 is a worthy successor in horror, suspense and terror to its 1975 smash progenitor.
  87. Served Like a Girl
    Brassily shot, and assembled with no shortage of energy and humor, Served Like a Girl provides a close, emotionally vivid look at the often ignored female experience of the military.
  88. Gaga: Five Foot Two
    I found the film intensely revealing of Gaga’s life and personality, especially when she’s getting treatments to deal with the pain that’s dogged her for three years, ever since she suffered a broken hip (misdiagnosed at the time) on tour.
  89. Walking Out
    Its unabashedly folky, less-is-more approach proves quietly moving.
  90. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
    For a long time now, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” has been two movies, and the hypnotic film-geek documentary 78/52 is an ingenious and irreverent master class in both of them.
  91. Dealt
    The final scenes of Dealt are all the more affecting for illustrating Turner’s newfound willingness to accept things he once deemed unacceptable without significantly compromising his personal code of honor.
  92. Brawl in Cell Block 99
    It’s the rare movie that truly evokes the grindhouse ’70s, because it means everything it’s doing. It’s exploitation made with vicious sincerity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cry Freedom
    Cry Freedom personifies the struggle of South Africa's black population against apartheid in the evolving friendship of martyred black activist Stephen Biko and liberal white newspaper editor Donald Woods. It derives its impact less from epic scope than from the wrenching immediacy of its subject matter and the moral heroism of its appealingly played, idealistic protagonists.
    • Variety
  94. Night and the City
    Lively performances, pungent New York City atmosphere and an abundance of dramatic incident keep this story of an irrepressible lowlife hustler ripping along.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WarGames
    Although the script has more than its share of short circuits, director John Badham solders the pieces into a terrifically exciting story charged by an irresistible idea: an extra-smart kid can get the world into a whole lot of trouble that it also takes the same extra-smart kid to rescue it from.
  96. EX LIBRIS: The New York Public Library
    This is an enriching way to spend three-plus hours.
  97. Hercules
    Directors John Musker and Ron Clements, who’ve collaborated on Mermaid and Aladdin, here combine smooth, state-of-the-art animation with a funky razzledazzle. They bring Hercules the vitality and insouciance that make Disney an undisputed champ in the arena.
  98. Motherland
    There’s an ease of intimacy to Diaz’s observations that suggests her crew was embedded for some time in the ward. The camerawork is crisp and bright, the editorial assembly likewise effortlessly engaging, capturing a sense of lives revealed in the everyday workings of the hospital.
  99. The Light of the Moon
    [ Jessica M. Thompson’s ] simply-structured film is harrowingly effective in its streamlined, low-frills way: sensitive without ever being sanctimonious, brutally frank without ever lapsing into exploitation.
  100. Indivisible
    Despite their lack of experience, the Fontana sisters do a lovely job of sketching an intimate yet at times claustrophobic bond.
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