Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cocoanuts
    That's all it has --comedy-- but that's enough. [29 May 1929, p.14]
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Foreign Affair
    While subject is handled for comedy, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder have managed to underlay the fun with an expose of human frailties and, to some extent, indicate a passive bitterness among the conquered in the occupied areas.
  5. Enola Holmes
    The movie has contemporary issues of gender equality on the mind — and an endearingly radical protagonist in Enola.
  6. Love, Guaranteed
    If likability is a trait you value, Love, Guaranteed delivers the undemanding pleasure of watching two fundamentally decent people tumble into fondness and then love.
  7. Desert One
    You emerge from Desert One knowing certain aspects of the Iran-hostage crisis better than you did before. That makes it a worthy film, and an absorbing one.
  8. The August Virgin
    So many movies seek to distract, whereas this one creates a space — like Eva, left behind in a near-empty city — to reflect and reevaluate.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lassie Come Home
    From the novel of Eric Knight, and with Fred M. Wilcox directing his first feature picture, Lassie emerges as nice entertainment enhanced by color photography and good scenic shots.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Charlotte's Web
    Heartwarming entertainment.
  11. The Boys in the Band
    What holds the movie together, apart from Quinto’s dreamy geek mystique and delectable delivery of every line, is the tormented passion that Jim Parsons brings to it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life with Father
    Irene Dunne and William Powell have captured to a considerable extent the charm of the play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse [based on the book by Clarence Day Jr]. The major humor of the story, based on Father's eccentric characteristics and Mother's continual mollifying of his tantrums, is still evident in the pic.
  13. 12 Hour Shift
    Grant’s screenplay builds a Rube Goldbergian narrative of escalating, piled-up crises, from which she also engineers a just-credible-enough exit strategy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wind and the Lion
    Generally literate and very commercial period action drama, well written and better directed by John Milius.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Honeymoon in Vegas
    Writer-director Andrew Bergman has a rare talent for intelligently conceived farce, and he has plenty of fun with the premise of "Honeymoon in Vegas," an adult twist on Damon Runyon's "Little Miss Marker." Sarah Jessica Parker is the saucy, sympathetic prize in a poker game between her divorce-detective fiance Nicolas Cage and sharkish Vegas gambler James Caan. The Columbia release is a bit rough around the edges but should make merry at the B.O.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    To Each His Own
    Charles Brackett, who wrote and produced, injected a human quality in the script, and Mitchell Leisen makes full use of it in his direction.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Z
    Z is a punchy political pic [from the novel by Vassilis Vassilikos] that mixes action, violence, and conspiracy on a robust, lavish scale.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lady on a Train
    Lady on a Train is a mystery comedy containing plenty of fun for both whodunnit and laugh fans. Melodramatic elements in the Leslie Charteris original are flippantly treated without minimizing suspense, and the dialog contains a number of choice quips that are good for hefty laughs.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lover Come Back
    This is a funny, most-of-the-time engaging, smartly produced show. Farce has Rock Hudson as would-be conqueror of Doris Day, who as the victim of a who's-who deception plays brinkmanship with surrender.
  21. Buoyancy
    In doing justice to the stories of thousands, Rathjen has somewhat undersold the personal story of its single protagonist.
  22. The Comeback Trail
    Some people just don’t have the patience for lead performances that are as broad as a “Yellowstone” barn, and as hammy as a butcher shop specialty. I laughed unashamedly throughout the entire film. But your mileage may vary.
  23. Unpregnant
    It’s as comforting as a prescription drug commercial, which could send some parents into a conniption. But Unpregnant advocates loudest for allowing young women the space to make their own choices — and that they have friends, longtime or newfound, willing to help when they stumble.
  24. Paper Spiders
    What begins as a wry tale of a maturing family in bittersweet flux spirals unpredictably into a study of living with extreme mental illness, as experienced by both the afflicted and their gradually alienated nearest and dearest.
  25. Yellow Rose
    Like Andrew Ahn’s “Driveways” earlier this year, Yellow Rose is ultimately a film about kindness. The world can be cruel, but the film’s characters tend not to be. Group those movies with Sundance prize-winner “Minari,” and audiences have three terrific indies about growing up Asian in America — although this is the only one that sets the experience to music.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Man of a Thousand Faces
    As Chaney, James Cagney has immersed himself so completely in the role that it is difficult to spot any Cagney mannerisms. Jane Greer, as his second wife, is particularly appealing in her devotion to her ‘difficult’ spouse.
  27. Notturno
    It is problematic that many of the film’s most powerful segments are its most prurient, and even more, that they are juxtaposed with the poetic and the prosaic.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    True Grit
    It’s mostly Wayne all the way. He towers over everything in the film – actors, script [from Charles Portis’ novel], even the magnificent Colorado mountains.
  29. Vinyl Nation
    The clichéd word that’s most bandied about by vinyl enthusiasts really does apply to the movie that’s been made about it: “warmth.”
  30. Freaky
    As a meta entry in that most disposable of genres, the teen slasher movie, Freaky manages to feel original, which is saying something, since it’s basically warping conventions we’ve all seen a million times before.
  31. The Dark and the Wicked
    Ireland conveys subtle differences between paranoia and white-knuckled fear with an appealing fragility, while Oliver-Touchstone invites sympathy and disquiet with just a few twitches of her wrinkles. However, the glaring absence of any background to the main characters’ lives and relationships gives the cast less to work with than they deserve.
  32. Enemies of the State
    While Enemies of the State does not necessarily provide all the answers, it sneakily sharpens your analytical radar by its haunting end. And in today’s conspiracy-theory-fueled world, that just might be everything.
  33. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds
    “Fireball” is a documentary about meteorites, but what makes it a Herzog film is that it’s in love with meteorites.
  34. In Between Dying
    The existential road movie gets an offbeat, elliptical yet peculiarly compelling Transcaucasian makeover in director Hilal Baydarov’s second fiction feature, In Between Dying.
  35. Limbo
    Limbo sincerely and intelligently finds its own way.
    • 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.
  37. MLK/FBI
    MLK/FBI leaves you wanting more, but it provides a gripping chapter in the story of how the forces of American power set out to destroy one of America’s greatest leaders, even as his private behavior had the effect of handing them a weapon.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Road to Utopia
    Technically picture leaves nothing to be desired. Paul Jones, producer, and Hal Walker, who directed, make a fine combination in steering and in the production value provided.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Favorite Blonde
    A progressively funny film.
  41. Love and Monsters
    In Love and Monsters, love is good, monsters are bad and feeling like Tom Cruise is “awesome.”
  42. What the Constitution Means to Me
    Director Heller does a better job of adapting Schreck’s play than the team behind Disney Plus’ recent “Hamilton” film, in part because the underlying production is so much simpler.
  43. The Lie
    The Lie is far from a total success, but it has enough tension and talent to make you hope that Blumhouse keeps aiming a quiet thriller or two at adults.
  44. Small Axe: Red, White and Blue
    Yet Red, White and Blue mostly lacks the gritty period flavor of the other Small Axe films. It’s a little glossed over. The (minor) daring of the movie is its downbeat narrative. It’s structured like the air seeping out of a tire, so that it presents us with a character of idealistic strength, commitment, and personal heroism only to plop him into a set of circumstances that won’t allow him to be a hero.
    • 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.
  46. The Artist's Wife
    It’s entirely possible that The Artist’s Wife would have hit the same pitch-perfect notes had it been set during a long hot summer. But the wintery ambiance enhanced by Ryan Earl Parker’s evocative cinematography feels altogether appropriate for a story about one life winding down, and another on the verge of a restorative spring.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pillow Talk
    A sleekly sophisticated production that deals chiefly with s-e-x.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Incredible Shrinking Man
    Director Jack Arnold works up the chills for maximum effect.
  50. Lupin III: The First
    The unflaggingly perky caper has no down time, so one can’t help wishing for more the laid-back gamesmanship and boyish banter of the older renditions.
  51. A Call to Spy
    In a world hungering for depictions of national valor and compassion, the movie’s variations on heroism are a boon.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    They Were Expendable
    The picture vividly portrays the big job the little boats did. The battle scenes in which the P-Ts go after Jap cruisers and supply ships were exceptionally well directed.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mister Roberts
    James Cagney is simply great as the captain of the ship. William Powell tackles the role of ship’s doctor with an easy assurance that makes it stand out and Jack Lemmon is a big hit as Ensign Pulver.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Curse of Frankenstein
    Peter Cushing gets every inch of drama from the leading role, making almost believable the ambitious urge and diabolical accomplishment.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Horror of Dracula
    Both director Terence Fisher as well as the cast have taken a serious approach to the macabre theme that adds up to lotsa tension and suspense.
  57. The Opening Act
    Becoming a successful stand-up comic is an uphill climb, one that not everybody is cut out for, and The Opening Act is a likable ode to those hard knocks.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
    Done in the satirical Sturges vein, and directed with that same touch, the story makes much of characterization and somewhat wacky comedy, plus some slapstick, with excellent photography figuring throughout.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thin Man
    The Thin Man was an entertaining novel, and now it's an entertaining picture.
  60. Atarrabi & Mikelats
    Atarrabi and Mikelats isn’t a movie for everyone — in fact, by design, it’s probably a movie for very few. Yet it confirms the reverent audacity of Eugène Green’s talent. He’s 73 years young. He still has the chance to make a film that will blow the world away.
  61. The Show
    Fun if perhaps a little too tongue-in-cheek for its own good, the results will no doubt appeal most to Moore fans who’ll revel in his Byzantine plotting, noirish tropes and other signature elements.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Daughters of Darkness
    Daughters of Darkness is so intentionally perverse that it often slips into impure camp, but Kumel and Seyrig hold interest by piling twists on every convention of the vampire genre.
  63. Pink Skies Ahead
    The catchy title’s a clever way of saying “It gets better,” and in the end, that feels as true for Winona as it does for the high-potential writer-director who created her.
  64. The Donut King
    Gu’s to be commended for recognizing that the hollow part of a donut might provide such a rich window into another culture. There’s much to learn about the immigrant experience from her research, even if the movie leaves us craving two things: donuts, obviously, but also a more well-rounded sense of all the incredible personalities she too-politely engages with along the way.
  65. Kindred
    Kindred is a demonstration of how a naturalistic horror film can be derivative, in the most flagrant and shameless way, and still work.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dead of Winter
    Mary Steenburgen is first-rate as the struggling actress.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Masque of the Red Death
    Vincent Price is the very essence of evil, albeit charming when need be.
  68. Hard Target
    A briskly vigorous, occasionally brilliant actioner.
  69. Coming Home Again
    While this is not exactly a premise with mass appeal, Wang’s movie is still an unassuming exercise, defiantly in contrast to Hollywood’s typically over-sentimental terminal illness fare.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Some Came Running
    The story is pure melodrama, despite the intention of the original novel’s author, James Jones, to invest it with greater stature. But the integrity with which the film is handled by all its contributors lifts it at times to tragedy.
  71. Citizen Penn
    Some of this is stirring stuff, and all of it is worth learning about, but as a documentary Citizen Penn is more diligent than riveting.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    High Society
    Fortified with a strong Cole Porter score, film is a pleasant romp for cast toppers Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Their impact is almost equally consistent. Although Sinatra has the top pop tune opportunities, the Groaner makes his specialties stand up and out on showmanship and delivery, and Kelly impresses as a femme lead.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Narcissus
    The cast has been well chosen, but Kerr gets only occasional opportunities to reveal her talents.
  74. Rams
    Of course, the film’s main selling point is the particular chemistry of its two leads. It’s a delight to see the usually dapper Neill convince as a disheveled farmer, with his unshaven face, wild hair and utilitarian clothing. Meanwhile, Caton, with his baleful glare and drunken muttering, is utterly believable as the older, angrier brother.
    • 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.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thing Called Love
    Perhaps there's not much new to say about the dues and disappointments involved in breaking into the country music scene, but the scenes are fresh and the emotions real in Peter Bogdanovich's tune-laden, mixed-mood drama.
  77. The White Tiger
    The White Tiger isn’t a fairy tale, but by the end the movie still leaves you feeling that it has made a wish into a command.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Harry and Tonto
    A pleasant film about an old man who rejuvenates himself on a cross-country trek. Script is a series of good human comedy vignettes, with the large supporting cast of many familiar names in virtual cameo roles.
  79. The Endless Trench
    The Endless Trench plunges us into a living nightmare with enough atmospheric precision of its own: It needn’t literally spell things out for us.
  80. The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    This is gripping stuff, to be sure, yet the movie, volatile as it is, lacks a full dramatic center and the momentum that would flow out of it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vixen!
    Russ Meyer’s film is another of his technically polished sexplicit dramas, this time free of physical violence and brutality, and hyped with some awkwardly developed draft-dodging and patriotism angles.
  82. Monsoon
    Monsoon is a graceful and truthfully irresolute investigation into the strange, often poignantly unreciprocated relationship that many first- and second-generation emigrants have with the far-off foreign country of the past.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Russia House
    John le Carre's glasnost-era espionage novel has been turned into intelligent adult entertainment, but somber tone, utter lack of action and sex, and complexity of plot tilts this mainly to upscale audience.
  84. Little Fish
    A portrait of life’s impermanence, it’s a bittersweet small-scale saga whose occasional sluggishness is offset by its sensitivity.
  85. Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist
    Essentially a single interview with Friedkin interspersed with repeatedly revisited clips, Leap of Faith chiefly examines — per its title — the film’s spiritual allusions and illusions, distinguishing it from just any old making-of doc.
  86. Dirty God
    Much attention will deservedly be paid to Knight’s impressively nuanced performance – it’s one thing to cast an amateur who’s been through similar experiences, and quite another to get that person to inhabit a fictional character.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Red Tent
    Some spectacularly beautiful Arctic footage, plus an exciting personal story of survival, make the production compelling and suspenseful.
  88. Identifying Features
    A film that straddles the line between artful and arty like this one isn’t designed for a wide public. There are moments that are striking, even if the their impact is muddied by a minimalism that at times feel pretentious. “Features” is ultimately worth the sit, but it needn’t have required quite so much effort.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Anderson Tapes
    Scripter Frank Pierson with director Sidney Lumet has injected broadly comic aspects and the laughs work without reducing suspense.
  90. What We Wanted
    It’s a handsome, sensitive entry in the genre — one that treats its internally bruised characters with the care of a patient, kindly therapist.
  91. Queer Japan
    I wish that “Queer Japan” had delved more into historical matters of fashion and androgyny, or into the life of someone like Yukio Mishima. It’s a very present-tense movie, but how did the movements on display evolve? Kolbeins would have done well to show us. Instead, he presents a snapshot of a revolution in midair, leaping to find a form for how to remake the future.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White Christmas
    Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, along with VistaVision, keep the entertainment going in this fancifully staged production, clicking well.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Fine Madness
    Too heavyhanded to be comedy, yet too light to be called drama, the well-mounted production depicts a non-conformist poet-stud in an environment of much sex, some violence and modern headshrinking. Fine direction and some good characterizations enhance negative script outlook.
  94. Scream
    The new Scream is about as good as “Scream 2” was — it keeps the thrill of the original “Scream” bouncing in the air like a blood-drenched balloon — but the film is basically a set of variations on a very old sleight-of-hand fear blueprint. Except that it’s now old enough to seem new again.
  95. First Knight
    Literate, sober-minded and almost rigorously chaste, First Knight sweeps the viewer up in the doings of these impressive, larger-than-life characters and offers a credible portrait of regal personages whose priorities are well sorted.
  96. My Octopus Teacher
    My Octopus Teacher never loses our goodwill: If we wind up wishing it had a little less man and a little more beast, that only serves its cause.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man Who Came to Dinner
    Superb casting and nifty work by every member of the company rates plenty of breveting.
  98. The Dig
    It’s hard to say whether the period this picture exhumes was any more innocent than what the world now faces, but that’s certainly the way Stone plays it, acting like an urbane orchidologist, cross-breeding contemporary art-house touches with the old-school refinement of a vintage Masterpiece Theatre production. Sometimes the best escape from the craziness of today is to lose oneself in history.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On Moonlight Bay
    All of the characters are good for some hefty laughs, and Del Ruth’s direction and the writing supply plenty of touches that keep punching the risibilities and jogging nostalgic memory.
  100. Giving Voice
    Filmmakers Stern and Villena use an intimate approach with the participants in the documentary.
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