Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mission: Impossible
    All Mission Impossible had to do was not self-destruct. Mission accomplished. Does it ignite? Not really, but Tom Cruise's first adventure as a producer has just enough hightech firepower, old-fashioned star power and a director who knows how to harness it all.
  2. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
    Has some genuinely amusing moments of dumb and dumber silliness.
  3. The Wings of the Dove
    Visually the film impresses, with Eduardo Serra's widescreen camerawork evocatively capturing the streets and interiors of London and a rain-swept Venice. Pacing is crisp, with little time wasted on inessentials. Dialogue is often caustically witty, and the relations clearly delineated.
  4. Volcano
    A furiously paced popcorn picture whose outrageous implausibility is somewhat amusing, Volcano delivers enough spectacular action to get it off to a hot B.O. start, although like the lava in the picture, it may not flow quite as far as anticipated.
  5. Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead
    Tartly written and vividly performed by a fine ensemble cast, Gary Fleder's bracingly entertaining first feature covers familiar ground in a fresh, breezy way.
  6. The Chamber
    An intelligently proficient movie that works more effectively as a family drama than a legal thriller.
  7. The Relic
    Still, this strikingly proficient production boasts genuinely scary thrills and first-rate visual and creature effects.
  8. The Rock
    This is a pure popcorn picture that benefits heavily from its trio of highly skilled, charismatic leading thesps, an unusual setting that provides plenty of visual stimulation, and a confrontational standoff that actually stems from a legitimately provocative premise.
  9. Booty Call
    Though straining at the bounds of good taste (and occasionally spilling over), the story remains vigilant in its primary focus.
  10. Brassed Off
    This well-played, often very sparky dramedy about the shenanigans in a northern brass band composed of miners threatened with pit closure gets a bad attack of social realism in the latter stages that rocks the crowded craft.
  11. The Devil's Own
    The Devil's Own is neither the best nor the worst $90 million-$100 million-area budgeted picture ever made, but it must be the one in which the cost is least evident on the screen.
  12. Face/Off
    A provocative premise, virtuoso direction and two dazzling lead performances go a long way toward offsetting a lack of dramatic structure and a sense of when to quit in Face/Off.
  13. Flubber
    Despite a couple of slow stretches along the way, director Mayfield does a generally fine job of integrating the eye-popping special effects with the simple but serviceable plot. The pace is just brisk enough to satisfy youngsters with short attention spans, and Williams is winning enough to keep audiences of all ages involved.
  14. Hoodlum
    Director Bill Duke renders the period saga with passion, but lacks the sort of fluid, organic style the material requires; the film falls short of its aim for mythic proportion. Still, there's a vibrancy that's engrossing, if uneven.
  15. Night Falls on Manhattan
    Lumet never tires of exploring moral quandaries. But what separates his films from the pack is his appreciation for all perspectives.
  16. Paradise Road
    Though carefully rendered from a historical perspective, this powerful account of female friendship and bonding under the most cruel conditions lacks the narrative focus and dramatic shapeliness to generate emotional excitement.
  17. Rosewood
    Ultimately, however, the film's ambition, urgency and acute observations prevail over the many stock elements to forge an estimable work that is notably serious and analytical for a Hollywood-produced film in this day and age.
  18. Basquiat
    As writer and director, Schnabel should be commended for avoiding Hollywood's biopic cliches about artists, as Basquiat's meteoric rise to fame and tragic death at the age of 27 would have fit perfectly the timeworn formula.
  19. Evita
    Director Alan Parker has done a dazzling job creating screen images to accompany the wall-to-wall music, resulting in a musical fresco that is much closer to a sophisticated filmed opera than to any conventional tuner.
  20. While You Were Sleeping
    Director Jon Turteltaub has a smooth style suited to classic farce and knows just how to pace the material to accentuate the positive.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kicking and Screaming
    The director is more successful in setting an easy, low-key tone, with nicely framed shots and subtle camera movements downplaying the script's pretensions.
  22. Heavy
    Character-driven to a fault, Heavy proceeds in such leisurely fashion that there are times one wishes it would shed a few minutes in order to get on with its business.
  23. Sleepless in Seattle
    Yet for all the enjoyable flourishes, and there are many, Ephron keeps pausing to remind us, through various contrivances, that this is a movie, making it hard for anyone to really get lost in the story.
  24. Mortal Kombat
    But where others have sunk in the mire of imitation, director Paul Anderson and writer Kevin Droney effect a viable balance between exquisitely choreographed action and ironic visual and verbal counterpoint.
  25. Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
    It's a death-defying hodgepodge anchored by the complete confidence of star Carrey.
  26. Circle of Friends
    Naturally charming without being beautiful, Driver brings extraordinary intensity and tenderness to a role that easily could have become sappy.
  27. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries
    The filmmakers give new saga a freer, looser form than is usual, allowing a superlative ensemble to develop rich characterizations.
  28. The Bridges of Madison County
    Given the intelligent restraint of the treatment, this is about as fine an adaptation of this material as one could hope for, although there is still something of a gap between the impressive skill of the filmmaking and the ultimately irredeemable aspects of the source.
  29. The Long Kiss Goodnight
    With the help of his stunt and special effects teams, Harlin delivers more than enough goods to satisfy genre fans, so main question is whether a female action hero, and Davis in particular, is ready to be embraced by the huge public the film is clearly targeting.
  30. Dolores Claiborne
    Deftly cutting between the past and the present, director Taylor Hackford manages to establish a compelling mood and pace even though the pic lacks a thriller's true "Aha!" moment
  31. Cry, the Beloved Country
    A richly realized piece of Masterpiece Literature, director Darrell James Roodt's Cry, the Beloved Country has an admirable high polish. But more effort could have been made to address its underlying message and provide an emotional punch to equal the book's resonance.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Me
    The criminal life is portrayed with all the glamour of a mugshot in American Me, a powerful indictment of the cycle of violence bred by the prisons and street culture.
  33. The Portrait of a Lady
    A literary adaptation of exceeding intelligence, beauty and concentrated artistry, but one that remains emotionally remote and perhaps unavoidably problematic dramatically.
  34. Grumpier Old Men
    Grumpier is a welcome continuation that leaves you wanting for another chapter that's as rich in humanity and fun as the initial companion pieces.
  35. Jude
    Technically, pic is top-drawer, with restless, fluid cutting by Trevor Waite that adds to the unstarchy look, and a copious musical score by Adrian Johnston that gives a separate "sound" to the many locations (a folksy drone for Marygreen, High Baroque music for academic Christminster, and so on).
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Green Card
    Although a thin premise endangers its credibility at times, Green Card is a genial, nicely played romance.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Against All Odds
    If not for a somewhat murky and misanthropic ending, Against All Odds would stand as a well-engineered second-try at 1947's "Out of the Past."
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swimming to Cambodia
    Spalding Gray's free-associating recollection of his experiences in Thailand during the making of The Killing Fields had an exhilarating immediacy which is mostly absent in this compressed filmed performance of Swimming to Cambodia.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Something Wild
    Conceptually and stylistically compelling under Jonathan Demme's sometimes striking direction.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tucker: The Man and His Dream
    Tucker represents the sunniest imaginable telling of an at least partly tragic episode in recent history.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Manhattan
    Woody Allen uses New York City as a backdrop for the familiar story of the successful but neurotic urban over-achievers whose relationships always seem to end prematurely. The film is just as much about how wonderful a place the city is to live in as it is about the elusive search for love.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fly
    David Cronenberg's remake of the 1958 horror classic The Fly is not for the squeamish. Casting Jeff Goldblum was a good choice as he brings a quirky, common touch to the spacey scientist role.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Mosquito Coast
    It is hard to believe that a film as beautiful as The Mosquito Coast [adapted from the novel by Paul Theroux] can also be so bleak, but therein lies its power and undoing.
  44. Crooklyn
    Both annoying and vibrant, casually plotted and deeply personal, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn ends up being as compelling as it is messy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The City of Lost Children
    A vibrant, bubbling cauldron of breathtaking f/x, gross-out humor and in-your-face imagery.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    48 Hrs.
    48Hrs. is a very efficient action entertainment which serves as a showy motion picture debut for Eddie Murphy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Diner
    Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser and Timothy Daly are terrific as the friends as are Ellen Barkin and Kathryn Dowling as the two females involved with different group members.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man with Two Brains
    The Man with Two Brains is a fitfully amusing return by Steve Martin to the broad brand of lunacy that made his first feature, "The Jerk" [1979], so successful.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Risky Business
    Risky Business is like a promising first novel, with all the pros and cons that come with that territory.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Unbelievable Truth
    The Unbelievable Truth is a promising, reasonably engaging first feature of the art school film variety. Very consciously designed and stylized in all departments, pic has a minor-key feel to it.
  51. Disclosure
    Disclosure is polite pulp fiction, a reasonable rendition of potentially risible material. This lavishly appointed screen version of Michael Crichton's page-turner about sexual harassment and corporate power has what it takes to deliver plenty of year-end bounty into Warner Bros.' coffers, although it might have been even more commercial had it been more shamelessly trashy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sixteen Candles
    Ringwald is engaging and credible. For the boys, there's a bright, funny performance by Anthony Michael Hall.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Class Action
    Winning performances by Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and potent direction by Michael Apted pump life into the sturdy courtroom drama formula once again.
  54. Far and Away
    Handsomely mounted and amiably performed but leisurely and without much dramatic urgency.
  55. Lethal Weapon 3
    Lethal Weapon 3 is all about chases and comedy schtick, and in this case the sum of the parts really adds up to more than the whole.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quick Change
    Bill Murray delivers a smart, sardonic and very funny valentine to the rotten Apple in Quick Change. Pic became Murray's directing debut after he and Franklin became too attached to the project to bring anyone else in. Material, based on Jay Cronley's book, is neither ambitious nor particularly memorable, but it's brought off with a sly flair that makes it most enjoyable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Days of Thunder
    This expensive genre film about stock car racing has many of the elements that made the same team's Top Gun a blockbuster, but the producers recruited scripter Robert Towne to make more out of the story than junk food.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Postcards from the Edge
    Mike Nichols' film of Carrie Fisher's novel Postcards from the edge packs a fair amount of emotional wallop in its dark-hued comic take on a chemically dependent Hollywood mother and daughter (Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep).
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Big Man
    Little Big Man is a sort of vaudeville show, framed in fictional biography, loaded with sketches of varying degrees of serious and burlesque humor, and climaxed by the Indian victory over Gen George A. Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876.
  60. The Corruptor
    It's to the filmmakers' credit that, as an actioner, The Corruptor is a character-driven movie, with several plot twists and turns involving the interactions among the gangs, cops, FBI and Internal Affairs.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Empire of the Sun
    It is up to young English thesp Bale to engage the viewer's interest, which he does superbly.
  62. Metroland
    A witty script and strong performances hoist Metroland beyond the confines of its rather standard, TV-style approach.
  63. The Governess
    Minnie Driver gets a showy workout in The Governess, a beautifully crafted, if ultimately opaque, study of art, sensuality and outsider status in early Victorian England.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lethal Weapon
    Lethal Weapon is a film teetering on the brink of absurdity when it gets serious, but thanks to its unrelenting energy and insistent drive, it never quite falls.
  65. The Loss of Sexual Innocence
    Boasting sublime imagery, but no characters to ground his reverie, the new pic heavily relies on an opaque narrative and elliptical editing.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Dead Pool
    The Dead Pool isn't the best and brightest of the Dirty Harry films, either, but just as invincible. It's possible that Clint Eastwood and crew are just enjoying a bit of self-mockery with this one.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Heat
    Schwarzenegger, who when he dons a green suit is dubbed 'Gumby' by Belushi, is right on target with his characterization of the iron-willed soldier, and Belushi proves a quicksilver foil.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rambo III
    The battle scenes in Rambo III are explosive, conflagratory tableaux that make for wrenching, frequently terrifying viewing. Always at ground zero in the chaos is Rambo - gloriously, inhumanly impervious to fear and danger - whose character is inhabited by Stallone with messianic intensity.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Shop of Horrors
    Little Shop of Horrors is a fractured, funny production transported rather reluctantly from the stage to the screen.
  70. Legends of the Fall
    While emotionally intense, it's neither hurried nor charged with false drama. It's also one of the most handsome of recent films, with sterling work by cameraman John Toll and production designer Lilly Kilvert.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
    Surprisingly funny and expectedly rude, this first starring vehicle by vilified standup comic Andrew Dice Clay has a decidedly lowbrow humor that is a sort of modern equivalent of that of the Three Stooges.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Chorus Line
    Chorus often seems static and confined, rarely venturing beyond the immediate. Attenborough merely films the stage show as best he could.
  73. North Face
    An often grippingly staged mountain movie that's good but not great.
  74. Salt
    As a fierce superspy and mistress of many disguises, Jolie represents the one indisputably kickass element in this brisk, professionally assembled but finally shrug-inducing thriller.
  75. The A-Team
    Best enjoyed (a la the "Mission: Impossible" franchise) by simply admiring the explosions and silliness without dwelling too much on the skeletal plot.
  76. Get Him to the Greek
    Barring a few lapses, the gags fly by in rapid-fire fashion, and enough of them connect -- thanks in part to the amusing mix of Hill's hang-dog demeanor with Brand's lanky, relentless hedonism.
  77. Robin Hood
    Impressively made and serious-minded to a fault, this physically imposing picture brings abundant political-historical dimensions to its epic canvas, yet often seems devoted to stifling whatever pleasure audiences may have derived from the popular legend.
  78. The Kids Are All Right
    Sparked by wonderfully lived-in performances from Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right is alright, if not up to the level of writer-director Lisa Cholodenko's earlier pair of new bohemian dramas, "High Art" and "Laurel Canyon."
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Date Night
    An uncommonly engaging date movie.
  80. War and Peace
    Though long-winded and discursive, the professionally assembled material is of immense interest and importance in reminding the viewer of the threat to world peace posed by the continuing posturing on the subcontinent.
  81. My Terrorist
    Sometimes first-person to a borderline-indulgent fault, docu still offers potent spur for discussion on the blurry line between forgiveness and tolerance toward terrorism.
  82. Russian Doll
    A romantic comedy that treads familiar "Green Card" terrain with considerable charm if no great style or originality.
  83. Strange Fruit
    Where pic excels is in the depiction of a rich leftist movement, with several cultures interacting expressively in the 1930s and '40s.
  84. Catching Out
    Rambles into unexpected places, some more interesting than others, but it stays on track long enough to take auds somewhere special.
  85. Marion Bridge
    Sensitive directorial bow by editor Wiebke von Carolsfeld and solid performances lend conviction if not quite distinction to the drama Marion Bridge.
  86. Bombay Eunuch
    Flavorsome package vividly captures Bombay slum life, neither neglecting nor overemphasizing the bawdy, drag-queenish flamboyance hijiras bring to its mix.
  87. Presumed Guilty: Tales of the Public Defenders
    At first a little tabloid in tenor and editorial style, pic soon distances itself from the myriad court TV shows with a fine balance of everyday detail and verite drama.
  88. Punks
    Slick, ingratiating and high-spirited enough to win over gay men of all colors.
  89. The Human Body
    It's the soundtrack, as much as the opticals, which makes this brief Imax trip a thoroughly sensory experience.
  90. From the Other Side
    While it's clear where the filmmaker's sympathies lie, the view presented is relatively balanced.
  91. Bánk bán
    While it creaks along at times, director Csaba Kael's new film version of a Hungarian opera masterpiece, Ferenc Erkel's Bank Ban, is ultimately an invaluable entry in the opera-on-film library.
  92. El bonaerense
    Not exactly a police corruption thriller, the film is more a study of innocence betrayed, though its insights into Argentine law enforcement are pretty scary.
  93. Risk/Reward
    Lacking the overall drama of "Startup.com" or "e-Dreams," pic more than compensates with skillful presentation and the fascinating power of its subjects, femme movers and shakers who perform high-wire juggling acts between their personal and professional lives every day.
  94. Chain Camera
    Provides an intriguing, well-assembled snapshot of kids in the year 2000, bringing the portraits to an appealing conclusion by briefly revisiting each subject at the prom, graduation and then in sweet on-camera farewells.
  95. It's Easier for a Camel...
    Fantasy sequences, including animation, keep the melancholy tone from overwhelming the proceedings.
  96. Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection
    Timely and thought-provoking, if a bit rambling.
  97. The Youth
    Well worth a look, despite its flaws.
  98. Valley of Tears
    Fascinating assemblage combines strike footage first shot in 1979 by Perry when he was working for the Texas Farm Workers Union with film and video lensed over the ensuing 20-plus years.
  99. Titanic Town
    Walters brings real heart to the role.
  100. James' Journey to Jerusalem
    There's a fable-like quality to this first feature by documaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz that packs just as much punch as a more "serious," didactic movie while entertaining the viewer at the same time.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »