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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    • 37 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Chauffeur
    David Beaird avowedly set out to imitate the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s and has succeeded admirably, thanks to adorably spunky Deborah Foreman and her stuffy foil, Sam J. Jones. They make quite a pair.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mona Lisa
    A pic that skillfully combines comedy and thriller, romance and sleaze
  3. The Dog Doc
    This documentary is not an infomercial for the Smith Ridge Veterinarian Center, but rather a wildly compassionate call to arms for a profession in need of advancement.
  4. The Surrogate
    That writer-director Jeremy Hersh’s debut feature is a screen original surprises, not because it’s “stagy” (though he has written plays), but because its engagingly argumentative virtues aren’t typical for movies anymore, if they ever were.
  5. The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs
    [A] penetrating study of toxic patriarchy and female identity.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Santini
    Robert Duvall gives an excellent portrayal of a semi-psychotic, softened with a warmer side. But Duvall has to fight for every inch of footage against the overwhelming performances by several others in the cast - and that's the strength of The Great Santini.
  7. Atlantis
    As cinematographer and editor in addition to writer, director and producer, Vasyanovych is very much in charge of a vision whose aesthetics are rigidly controlled. The ironically titled “Atlantis” may well alienate some viewers with its austerity, but those willing to tough it out will feel rewarded.
  8. Selah and The Spades
    Writer-director Tayarisha Poe’s cold and stylish debut, commands attention. More specifically, Simone’s Selah seizes it.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brighton Beach Memoirs
    Performances are skilled all the way through.
    • 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
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boy Who Could Fly
    Under Nick Castle’s careful direction, scenes never become maudlin, which is remarkable considering the potential of the subject matter. Deakins and Underwood handle their difficult roles with amazing grace.
  14. Winter Flies
    While Winter Flies might not tell us anything new, it relates its old story with a vivid specificity and a beguiling sense of mischief that makes it feel fresh.
  15. All Day and a Night
    All Day and a Night is made with empathy and skill, but it’s as clear-eyed and remorseless as a news report.
  16. Mayor
    It’s an acutely observed you-are-there procedural about a modern metropolis that dares to exist, even thrive amid the enduring repercussions of 1967’s Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the region.
  17. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
    It’s at once cheesy and charming, synthetic and spectacular, cozily derivative and rambunctiously inventive, a processed piece of junk-culture joy that, by the end, may bring a tear to your eye.
  18. My Darling Vivian
    Deftly illustrating the testimonies with a treasure trove of material — photos, home movies, personal correspondence — provided by the daughters, the filmmakers have fashioned a narrative that begins as a sweet fairly-tale romance, then gradually turns sour.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For Whom the Bell Tolls
    For Whom the Bell Tolls is one of the important pictures of all time although almost three hours of running time can overdo a good thing.
    • 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.
  21. Graves Without a Name
    Sudden surges of emotion seem to guide its shuffling of symbols, techniques and points of view.
  22. Father Soldier Son
    Finely cut gem of a documentary.
  23. Athlete A
    Athlete A is a testament to their perseverance, and to the courage of all those who stood up in court to face the man who had violated their humanity. But it’s also a testament to the obsession that gave cover to their abuse — to a culture that wanted winners at any cost.
  24. Crystal Swan
    No community is as straightforward as it seems in Zhuk and Landauer’s irony-rich, tone-switching script: What begins as a kookily comic quest is complicated by the emergence of human tragedy, prejudice and sexual threat.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wise Blood
    John Huston, with uncluttered direction and expert handling of actors, has fashioned a disturbing tale of the fringe side of overzealous religious preachers in the deep South.
  26. The Outpost
    Such a film may suffer from home viewing, and yet, The Outpost represents the most exhilarating new movie audiences have been offered since the shutdown began.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Under the Volcano
    Although this voyage into self-destruction won’t be to the taste of many, there will be few unmoved by Finney’s towering performance as the tragic Britisher, his values irretrievably broken down, drowning himself in alcohol and practically inviting his own death.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The War Room
    If The War Room were a fictional feature, it would be a sure-fire star-making vehicle for James Carville. President Clinton’s crafty, straight-talking campaign manager dominates this absorbing but basically unrevelatory behind-the-scenes look at the former Arkansas governor’s long push for the presidency.
  29. Man Bites Dog
    An offbeat, darkly hilarious portrait.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Brilliant Career
    This Australian film is a charming look [from the book by Miles Franklin] at 19th-century rural days in general and the stirrings of self-realization and feminine liberation in the persona of a headstrong young girl who wants to go her own way.
  31. Wake Up: Stories from the Frontlines of Suicide Prevention
    This stirring documentary gives a comprehensive look at suicide through the lens of four at-risk segments of the population.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get on the Bus
    A vital regeneration of a filmmaker's talent as well as a bracing and often very funny dramatization of urgent sociopolitical themes, Get on the Bus represents Spike Lee's most satisfying work since Do the Right Thing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mikey and Nicky
    The interplay between the stars is excellent, Cassavetes slowly but steadily digging his own grave as he reveals his shallowness in dealings with Falk, girl friend Carol Grace (a beautiful performance) and estranged wife Joyce Van Patten (a brief but excellent characterization).
  34. The Audition
    Weisse’s gripping, cool-blooded drama upends all manner of inspirational-educator clichés.
  35. Finch
    Despite the bleak backdrop, Finch manages to stay true to the fuzzy ring of its basic idea, delivering a family-friendly movie that is big-hearted, comfortingly traditional and bolstered by a genuine love of dogs.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An Angel at My Table
    A potentially painful and harrowing film is imbued with gentle humor and great compassion, which makes every character come vividly alive. Campion constructs the film in a series of short, sometimes elliptical scenes.
  37. The Broken Hearts Gallery
    The Broken Hearts Gallery pushes all the rom-com buttons but does it knowingly, with a spirit that embraces killer cynicism and then comes out the other side.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brief Encounter
    Based on his playlet, Still Life from Tonight at 8.30, Brief Encounter does more for Noel Coward's reputation as a skilled film producer than In Which We Serve. His use of express trains thundering through a village station coupled with frantic, last-minute dashes for local trains is only one of the clever touches masking the inherent static quality of the drama.
  39. Disclosure
    Essential, thoroughly engaging documentary.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Honeymoon Killers
    Made on a very low budget by a writer-director Leonard Kastle, The Honeymoon Killers, based on the Lonely Hearts murder case of the late 1940s, is made with care, authenticity and attention to detail.
  41. Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things
    Woodhead’s movie is at its best in how neatly it delineates the different musical phases of Fitzgerald’s career.
    • 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.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rio Bravo
    Producer-director Howard Hawks makes handsome use of force in logically unravelling his hard-hitting narrative, creating suspense at times and occasionally inserting lighter moments to give variety.
  44. Bungalow (2002)
    Not much happens in Bungalow, a deceptively low-key drama from Germany. But a series of mysterious offscreen explosions and general air of ennui express anxiety of the country’s post-unification youth.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Is King
    Black Is King excels as a celebration of Blackness in its many forms: Black women, Black men, Black children, Black motherhood, Black fatherhood, Black pasts, Black presents, and Black futures.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bishop's Wife
    Henry Koster's sympathetic direction deftly gets over the warm humor supplied by the script, taken from Robert Nathan's novel of the same title.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mildred Pierce
    At first reading James M. Cain's novel of the same title might not suggest screenable material, but the cleanup job has resulted in a class feature, showmanly produced by Jerry Wald and tellingly directed by Michael Curtiz.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adam's Rib
    Adam's Rib is a bright comedy success, belting over a succession of sophisticated laughs. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin have fashioned their amusing screenplay around the age-old battle of the sexes.
  49. Spider-Man: No Way Home
    Returning director Jon Watts — whose bright, slightly dorky touch lends a kind of continuity to this latest trilogy — wrangles this unwieldy premise into a consistently entertaining superhero entry, tying up two decades’ of loose ends in the process.
  50. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
    Snake Eyes, as directed by Robert Schwentke (“The Divergent Series: Insurgent”), has style and verve, with a diabolical family plot that creates a reasonable quota of actual drama. The movie is also a synthetic but infectiously skillful big-studio hodgepodge of ninja films, wuxia films, yakuza films, and international revenge films.
  51. The Go-Go's
    In the fresh bopping beauty of their punk romantic sound, they kicked open a door of perception. They said to a generation: We got the beat, and you can too.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They Live by Night
    Nicholas Ray adapted the novel and directed, demonstrating a complete understanding of the characters. It’s a firstrate job of moody storytelling.
  54. Shine Your Eyes
    If the setup intrigues slightly more than the payoff, this is still a work of original, crystalline beauty, bursting with restless, refracted ideas.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    South Central
    As a cautionary tale about the nihilistic life of street gangs, South Central speaks eloquently to black kids desperately in need of straight talk. A profoundly moving story of a father's attempt to save his son from his own mistakes, Steve Anderson's film has performances by Glenn Plummer and young Christian Coleman that will touch any viewer.
  56. Howard
    At 94 minutes, Howard is not and does not try to be a plumbing search through the generation of talent lost to HIV and AIDS; what it is trying to do, appealingly narrowly, is illuminate one life and the work done therein.
  57. Alone
    Accomplished in all its tech and design departments, Alone is easily the best of several recent hunted-woman-in-the-wilderness films, including fellow indies “Ravage” and “Range Runners” as well as the flashier French “Revenge.” It doesn’t necessarily need the structural gimmickry of onscreen “chapter” titles (“The Road,” “The Rain,” etc.), but that’s a minor quibble.
  58. I Care a Lot
    A sleekly unnerving thriller.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Imitation of Life
    Lana Turner is outstanding in the pivotal role played in Universal’s 1934 version by Claudette Colbert.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Thrill of It All
    Ultimately it is in the design and engineering of cumulative sight gag situations that Thrill of It All excels.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hold Back the Dawn
    While Hold Back the Dawn is basically another European refugee yarn, scenarists Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder exercised some ingenuity and imagination and Ketty Frings' original emerges as fine celluloidia.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Clara's Heart
    Buoyed by a beautifully measured star turn by Whoopi Goldberg and a smashing screen debut for young Neil Patrick Harris, Clara's Dream is a powerful, unabashedly sentimental drama.
    • 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
  66. Jack Frost
    Jack Frost is a slickly packaged and engagingly sentimental fantasy-comedy that stands out as one of the season's most pleasant surprises. Pic offers a shrewdly balanced mix of humor, high concept and heart tugging, along with some amusingly impressive special effects.
  67. Hopper/Welles
    Given its gnarly small focus, Hopper/Welles is surprisingly entertaining to sit through.
  68. The Eight Hundred
    Guan’s direction may be less radical or propulsive than Nolan’s, but it too plunges audiences into both the intimacy and magnitude of brutal war spectacle while immersing them in a stunningly mounted period canvas.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Major and the Minor
    A sparkling and effervescing piece of farce-comedy.
  70. Totally Under Control
    Subsequent docs will surely tell a different story, after survivors have risen up and confronted the individual they deem responsible — and Gibney et al. want this film to be instrumental in that solution.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Written on the Wind
    Tiptop scripting from the Robert Wilder novel, dramatically deft direction by Douglas Sirk and sock performances by the cast give the story development a follow-through.
  72. City Hall
    The result is both sober and inspiring: an urban progress report taking into account a plethora of government services, scutinized by Wiseman’s patient but unblinking eye.
  73. Children of Heaven
    Much humor and suspense is wrung from incidents that would be minuscule from anything but a child’s p.o.v., many repeated until they become ingenious running gags.
  74. Wife of a Spy
    The film is a relatively unfamiliar fit for its prolific helmer, given its sharply evoked period milieu and restrained, classical storytelling. He wears it well: After a slowish start, Wife of a Spy unmasks itself as one of his most purely enjoyable, internationally accessible entertainments.
  75. And Tomorrow the Entire World
    The filmmaking is muscular and immersive, with athletic camerawork and ringing sound design keeping us in the stressed headspace of its young protagonist throughout.
  76. The Duke
    The Duke is a romp first and foremost: Michell’s merry direction makes sure of that. But its stars put a small, dignified lump in its throat.
  77. Mandibles
    Mandibles is as brazenly and riotously stupid as it sounds, but with a chill, dopey sweetness that makes it stick.
  78. Shiva Baby
    Having grown up in a tight-knit Jewish community herself, Seligman tightly orchestrates it all with loving cultural specificity and nuance, working her satirical muscles to a thrilling extent.
    • 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.
    • 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.
  81. H is for Happiness
    Provides feel-good entertainment for the entire family without pandering — and definitely without sacrificing style or substance.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beau Geste
    Third time out for one of the most memorable silent films still packs hardy entertainment. The production is an expertly-made translation of Percival Christopher Wren's novel of the French Foreign Legion in a lonely Sahara outpost, distinguished by good acting, fine photographic values and fast direction. Guy Stockwell delineates the title role.
  83. The Last Shift
    A gut punch with a side of anguish.
  84. Small Axe: Alex Wheatle
    “Alex Wheatle” is like a sketch for the biopic it might have been, but by the end you feel you’ve glimpsed the key fragment of a life.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Road to Morocco
    Morocco is a bubbling spontaneous entertainment without a semblance of sanity; an uproarious patchquilt of gags, old situations and a blitz-like laugh pace that never lets up for a moment. It's Bing Crosby and Bob Hope at their best, with Dorothy Lamour, as usual, the pivotal point for their romantic pitch.
    • 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.
  87. Supernova
    But it’s Firth’s Sam who finally carries the film’s heart, and exquisitely so, as his fear, anger and mounting insecurity lash out the more he tries to remain undemonstrative. (He also pulls off some able, plaintive piano-playing by his own hand.)
  88. The Human Voice
    The Human Voice, in all its delicious absurdity and kitsch extravagance, ties into the concerns of emotional abandonment and disrupted communication that have long run through his [Almodóvar's] more ostensibly serious works.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Informer
    The Informer is forcefully and intelligently written, directed and acted.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witches
    The wizardry of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and a superbly over-the-top performance by Angelica Huston gives The Witches a good deal of charm and enjoyment.
  91. The Kid Detective
    Both entertainingly old-fashioned and defiantly fresh.
  92. Belushi
    In the film, Belushi’s own letters betray his fear that he had reached the point of no return. Yet there can be a shadow hint of intentionality to all that. Belushi was a bighearted person who craved no limits. In some terrible way, he went out like the rock star he was.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skin Deep
    Revenge is sweet and Ritter gets his due in any number of silly and embarrassing situations which he handles with nearly perfect comic timing.
  94. Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World
    It’s exciting, cloak-and-dagger stuff, no less exciting (or valid) for having been done from someone’s armchair at home. Pool pulls some cheap shots by cutting to Putin, Trump, and Kim Jong-un whenever he needs to personify who they’re up against. But in a world where those three are leading the charge to break the news, Bellingcat are doing their best to put it together again.
  95. All My Life
    The warmth and touching tenderness of All My Life melts even the coldest of hearts in its quest to deliver happy and sad tears.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chimes at Midnight
    A personal viewpoint, it mixes the grotesque, bawdy, comic and heroic, and does have a melancholy under its carousing and battles.
  97. Crazy, Not Insane
    You may not agree with everything Dorothy Lewis says in “Crazy, Not Insane,” but you come out of the movie alive to the place where evil and insanity meet and then fall back apart.
  98. On-Gaku: Our Sound
    True to Ohashi original manga, Iwaisawa’s illustrations are geometric, employing abstract backgrounds and bright, dominant colors. Faces, reduced to a few stark, scrawly lines, heighten the comical effect of the characters’ poker-faced dialogue, without compromising the richness of their expressions.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Baby Doll
    Except for moments of humor that are strictly inherent in the character of the principals, Baby Doll plays off against a sleazy, dirty, depressing Southern background. Over it hangs a feeling of decay, expertly nurtured by director Elia Kazan.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anchors Aweigh
    Anchors Aweigh is solid musical fare. The production numbers are zingy; the songs are extremely listenable; the color treatment outstanding.
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