Variety's Scores

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For 17,825 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Atlantic City
    Film is blessed with a spare, intriguing script by Yank John Guare, which always skirts impending cliches and predictability by finding unusual facets in his characters and their actions.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Yearling
    Heart-warming story of good earth, family ties and the love of the 11-year-old Jody Baxter for the faun which he is compelled to put out of his life as it becomes a yearling.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The War of the Worlds
    A socko science-fiction feature, as fearsome as a film as was the Orson Welles 1938 radio interpretation of the H.G. Wells novel.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Caine Mutiny
    The Caine Mutiny is highly recommendable motion picture drama, told on the screen as forcefully as it was in the Herman Wouk best-selling novel. The intelligently adapted screenplay retains all the essence of the novel.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carmen Jones
    Preminger directs with a deft touch, blending the comedy and tragedy easily and building his scenes to some suspenseful heights. He gets fine performances from the cast toppers, notably Dorothy Dandridge, a sultry Carmen whose performance maintains the right hedonistic note throughout.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolute Beginners
    Absolute Beginners is a terrifically inventive original musical for the screen. Daring attempt to portray the birth of teenagedom in London, 1958, almost exclusively through song is based upon Colin MacInnes' cult novel about teen life and pop fashion in the percolating moments just before the youth cultural explosion in the early 1960s.
  7. The Feeling of Being Watched
    Equal parts angry and anxious, Boundaoui’s smart, unsettling documentary functions both as a real-world conspiracy thriller and a personal reflection on the psychological strain of being made to feel an outsider in one’s own home.
  8. Swinging Safari
    A cheerfully vulgar, consistently amusing and sometimes hilarious parody of life in a suburban Aussie cul-de-sac in the mid-1970s.
  9. The Other Story
    The screenplay, co-written by Nesher and psychology professor Noam Shpancer, feels well-researched, poignantly highlighting the little things parents do that unintentionally traumatize their children. It also brims with the snappy dialogue that Nesher’s films are known for.
  10. Straight Up
    A little of this can go a long way (the film is sometimes a bit airless), but James Sweeney is a filmmaker with the rare ability to toss antically inspired dialogue right off the edge of his brain. Straight Up is the work of a startling talent.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Buddy Holly Story
    The Buddy Holly Story smacks of realism in almost every respect, from the dramaturgy involving Holly and his back-up band, The Crickets, to the verisimilitude of the musical numbers.
  12. The Ground Beneath My Feet
    Without proselytizing, and without distracting from the main thrust of her gripping, intelligent psychodrama, Kreutzer and her predominately female team have created a story both knottily specific and usefully general in its understanding that for many women, an ultimately untenable level of watchful self-control is the price of ambition.
  13. Rojo
    Rojo is a witheringly provocative examination of temporary moral eclipse becoming permanent moral apocalypse.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beaches
    [An] engaging tearjerker.
  15. Promare
    Every bit as loud and ambitious as one might expect from a visual artist with such a hyperactive imagination, sci-fi action-adventure Promare checks all the conventional anime boxes — post-apocalyptic setting, mecha suits and plenty of fan service — but it’s still an exciting watch.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Demon Seed
    Excellent performances and direction (Donald Cammell), from a most credible and literate screenplay [from a novel by Dean R. Koontz], make production an intriguing achievement in story-telling.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Murder by Death
    A very good silly-funny Neil Simon satirical comedy, with a super all-star cast.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rollerball
    Norman Jewison's sensational futuristic drama about a world of Corporate States stars James Caan in an excellent performance as a famed athlete who fights for his identity and free will.
  19. Rosie
    This small, tough film provides no easy solutions.
  20. Luz
    Comparisons do not come easy with Luz, an arresting first feature for German writer-director Tilman Singer that is equal measures demonic-possession thriller, experiment in formalist rigor, and flummoxing narrative puzzle-box.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bang the Drum Slowly
    The baseball version of Brian’s Song has reduced more than a few tough guys to tears.
  22. The Personal History of David Copperfield
    Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield comes across as a bright and jaunty corrective to the dour and stuffy Dickens adaptations that have come before.
  23. Hustlers
    Flashy, fleshy and all-around impossible to ignore, Hustlers amounts to nothing less than a cultural moment, inspired by an outrageous New York Magazine profile (which serves as the sturdy six-inch stilettos on which the movie stands) adapted by writer-director Lorene Scafaria at her most Scorsese, and starring Jennifer Lopez like you’re never seen her before.
  24. Love, Antosha
    A touching and surprising portrait of an actor who had much more going on in his life – from a serious illness to some seriously left-field artistic inclinations – than was mentioned in his obituaries.
  25. Black Widow
    Black Widow is very much about the origin of Natasha — her skills and her identity. The movie features just enough kinetic combat to give a mainstream audience that getting-your-money’s-worth feeling, but right from the opening credits (built around a dreamy slow-mo cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), most of it has a gritty, deliberate, zap-free tone that is strikingly — and intentionally — earthbound for a superhero fantasy.
  26. Dolemite Is My Name
    A total motherf—kin’ blast. ... You might have to go all the way back to the ’80s to find a Murphy performance driven by this much pleasurable funky verve.
  27. The Laundromat
    The Laundromat is Soderbergh at his most playful, and also Soderbergh at his most wonkish, and damned, in this case, if the two don’t chime together.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ladyhawke
    LadyHawke is a very likeable, very well-made fairytale that insists on a wish for its lovers to live happily ever after.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    She-Devil
    The casting is a real coup, with Barr going her everywoman TV persona one better by breaking the big screen heroine mold, and Streep blowing away any notion that she can’t be funny.
  30. Los Reyes
    You don’t have to be a “dog person” to find these two irresistible, although those with a soft spot for animals may be surprised by how deeply attached they get over the course of the film.
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