Variety's Scores

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For 17,828 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: 9,160 out of 17828
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17828
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17828
17828 movie reviews
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    • 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.
  2. 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.
  9. 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.
  12. Far and Away
    Handsomely mounted and amiably performed but leisurely and without much dramatic urgency.
  13. 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.
  18. 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.
  20. Metroland
    A witty script and strong performances hoist Metroland beyond the confines of its rather standard, TV-style approach.
  21. 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.
  23. 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.
  28. 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.
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