Variety's Scores

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For 17,833 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: 9,165 out of 17833
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17833
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17833
17833 movie reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Night on Earth
    An easy to take followup to his previous pic Mystery Train. Beginning with an outer-space shot gradually zeroing in on planet Earth, the director covers in five separate segments his favorite theme of lonely people interacting but ultimately facing the great void alone.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Down by Law
    The Jim Jarmusch penchant for off-the-wall characters and odd situations is very much in evidence. The black-and-white photography is a major plus, and so is John Lurie’s score, with songs by Tom Waits. Both men are fine in their respective roles, but Benigni steals the film.
  3. Along for the Ride
    What’s ultimately moving about Along for the Ride is that it communicates how Dennis Hopper, by sticking true to his reckless muse, was an artist who changed things, and maybe changed everything.
  4. Best Men
    At heart, Best Men is a modest picture that harks back in many ways to U.S. movies of the late ’60s and early ’70s in its unconventional attitudes and anti-establishment tone. Pacing never lingers, and, unlike in Guncrazy, there’s no narrative fat; at the same time, there isn’t much emotional residue either. In short, it’s simply a quality B movie.
  5. Adventures in Public School
    More antic and likable than it is laugh-out-loud funny, Adventures in Public School is handled with skill on modest means.
  6. The Rhythm Section
    This isn’t an easy role, but Lively aces it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mystery Train
    Mystery Train is a three-episode pic handled by indie writer-director Jim Jarmusch in his usual playful, minimalist style.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hellraiser
    Hellraiser is a well-paced si-fi cum horror fantasy. Pic is well made, well acted, and the visual effects are generally handled with skill.
  9. A Quiet Place
    A Quiet Place is a tautly original genre-bending exercise, technically sleek and accomplished, with some vivid, scary moments, though it’s a little too in love with the stoned logic of its own premise.
  10. The Mercy
    Directed with even-keeled intelligence by James Marsh, and buoyed by a performance of customary reserve and resolve from Colin Firth, The Mercy tells its story...about as well as it can be told. Yet there’s no denying it’s a muted, disconsolate affair, one that by necessity shrinks before viewers’ eyes into something less rousing and noble than what they were initially promised.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cotton Club
    Dramatically, Coppola and co-screenwriter William Kennedy, juggle a lot of balls in the air. The parallel stories of Gere and Hines’ professional rise prove more potent, thanks largely to a mixture of romance, music and gangland involvement. Hines and McKee generate real sparks in their relationship and latter adds an interesting dimension as a light-skinned singer trying to hide her racial origins.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The French Lieutenant's Woman
    The casting of Meryl Streep as Sarah/Anna could not have been better. Sarah comes complete with unbridled passions and Anna is the cool, detached professional. There is never a false note in the sharply contrasting characters.
  13. Abe & Phil's Last Poker Game
    This low-key and deeply felt indie is unsentimentally blunt while addressing the humiliating debilitations that often define geriatric life. At the same time, however, it scrupulously eschews excessive grimness and shameless heart-tugging, and elicits more than a few laughs in the bargain, while focusing more often on how the title characters deal with last chances and unfinished business.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Aristocats
    Helped immeasurably by the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and others, plus some outstanding animation, songs, sentiment, some excellent dialog and even a touch of psychedelia.
  15. In the Land of Pomegranates
    By the end of this meandering yet fascinating documentary, viewers are left with the impression that such attempts to bridge gaps and heal wounds, however well-intentioned, will have, at best, extremely limited success.
  16. Every Day
    There’s a playfulness to Every Day, to how the film says to its audience — through the very structure of its Afterschool Special sci-fi design — that if you want to find love, you’ve got to look beyond the surface.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Light Sleeper
    Paul Schrader has created a pointed companion piece to his earlier portraits of lonely outcasts (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo). Contemplative and violent by turns, this quasi-thriller about a long-time drug dealer leaving the business has a great deal to recommend it but could have been significantly better had Schrader done some fresh plotting and not relied on his standby gunplay to resolve issues.
  18. Life of the Party
    This is a heartier celebration of McCarthy’s talents, a mash note to a comic who can also play flirtatious, empathetic, and human. She’s believable, even if the scenes setting-off her performance aren’t.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Muppet Christmas Carol
    This adaptation of Charles Dickens' Christmas classic is not as enchanting or amusing as the previous entries in the Muppet series. But nothing can really diminish the late Jim Henson's irresistibly appealing characters.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    3 Men and a Baby
    3 Men and a Baby is about as slight a feature comedy as is made - while at the same time it's hard to resist Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg shamelessly going goo-goo over caring for an infant baby girl all swaddled in pink.
  21. What They Had
    Chomko mitigates a fairly heavy narrative agenda with a great deal of humor, sometimes threatening to make things a little too seriocomic, but never quite crossing the line into pat dramedy.
  22. The Life of Jesus
    An uncompromising portrait of thwarted emotions and small-town tedium, The Life of Jesus is a luminous and disconcerting feature debut from scripter-helmer Bruno Dumont. Pic’s deliberate pace, as it details the actions of adolescents with stifled inner lives, poses a commercial obstacle in markets unfriendly to leisurely fare, but film holds definite rewards for patient viewers and fest auds.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Species
    A propulsive sci-fi actioner genetically engineered from spores of the Alien and Terminator series, Roger Donaldson's Species provides a gripping if not overly original account of an extraterrestrial species attempting to overwhelm our own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Broadway Danny Rose
    Broadway Danny Rose is a delectable diversion which allows Woody Allen to present a reasonably humane, and amusing gentle character study without sacrificing himself to overly commercial concerns.
  25. Bomb City
    Bomb City will keep you in its grasp during every moment leading to its climactic violence. And it won’t let go until the closing credits roll.
  26. Living in Oblivion
    An amusing look at the perils of film production, Living in Oblivion is an inside joke with a generosity of heart that makes it accessible to anyone who would take an interest.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big Picture
    The Big Picture is a surprisingly genial, good-natured satire on contemporary Hollywood mores.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Long Walk Home
    An effectively mounted drama about the human impact of changing times on two families, with sturdy performances by Sissy Spacek as an uppercrust white housewife and Whoopi Goldberg as her maid.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alice
    Performances are strong all around, with a succession of top actors making the most of their brief turns. But the center of the pic is Farrow, who’s funny and touching.
  30. August Winds (Ventos de Agosto)
    Mascaro isn’t interested in psychology and instead simply sketches in thoughts and motivations (Shirley’s boredom, Jeison’s father’s dissatisfaction) without exploring them, much in the manner of an observational documentary. The real connective tissue is the locale.
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