Variety's Scores

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For 17,835 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: 9,166 out of 17835
  2. Mixed: 7,032 out of 17835
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17835
17835 movie reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Molly Maguires
    The Molly Maguires, based on a Pennsylvania coal miners' rebellion of the late 19th century, is occasionally brilliant. Sean Connery, Richard Harris and Samantha Eggar head a competent cast.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Great White Hope
    A superior cast, headed by James Earl Jones encoring in his stage role, a colorful and earthy script, plus outstanding production, render film quite palatable.
  3. Cyrano, My Love
    As fizzy as a freshly poured glass of Perrier-Jouët, though considerably less complex, writer-director Alexis Michalik’s Cyrano, My Love attempts to give the “Shakespeare in Love” treatment to the timeless French play “Cyrano de Bergerac,” with shamelessly derivative yet undeniably entertaining results.
  4. Chained for Life
    At times Schimberg’s gambits feel too coy, their aim too dry despite the sensational hooks. But more often than not, the immediate impact is engagingly droll, and there’s no questioning the overall adventurousness, confidence and originality.
  5. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound
    Making Waves is a brisk 94 minutes, the last half hour of which is a quick-study primer on the categories of movie sound. The film is quite educational.
  6. Black Christmas
    You can’t take a movie like this too seriously, but it’s still one of the rare slasher films that offers a holiday from bloodshed for its own sake.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fire and Ice
    Ralph Bakshi's newest animation feature is interesting for two special reasons: (1) the production represents a clear design on Bakshi's part to capture a wider and younger audience and (2) the animation marks the film debut of America's leading exponent of heroic fantasy art, Frank Frazetta, who coproduced.
  8. No. 7 Cherry Lane
    Many will be left bewildered by the sheer, deranged obsessiveness of Yonfan’s nostalgia head-trip — indeed, there were whistles and walkouts at its first Venice press screening — but accustomed Yon-fans and patient adventurers will fall madly for its madness.
  9. The Weekend
    Notwithstanding any comparisons, there’s more assured personality here than there was in her last feature, the bright, proficient but somewhat synthetic big-studio teen romance “Everything, Everything.” Much of that film took place, by narrative necessity, in hermetically sealed rooms; here, the fresh autumn air agrees with everyone involved.
  10. Jallikattu
    A fever-pitch, adrenaline-soaked vortex of social issues drama, deconstruction of the male id, and hokey, hubristic descent into hell, this crazed howl of human brutality morphing inexorably into bestial savagery deserves, and feels destined to find, a willingly cultish following on the festival circuit.
  11. My Zoe
    Her (Delpy) risk-taking is admirable, and given the excellent craft, never less than engaging to watch, but it does not always pay off.
  12. Dream Horse
    This is a well-cast, artfully handled effort that exercises sufficient restraint to really earn its requisite laughter and tears.
  13. Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer
    If anyone out there thinks the National Enquirer is merely harmless entertainment, “Scandalous” give them no shortage of alarming reasons to reconsider.
  14. Danger Close
    By turns viscerally exciting and predictably formulaic — and, quite often, both at once — Danger Close is an efficiently crafted and consistently involving old-school war movie propelled by matter-of-fact professionalism on both sides of the cameras.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tom Jones
    It has sex, Eastmancolor, some prime performers and plenty of action. Tony Richardson has directed John Osborne’s screenplay with verve, though, occasionally, he falls back on camera tricks and editing which are disconcerting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Matewan
    Matewan is a heartfelt, straight-ahead tale of labor organizing in the coal mines of West Virginia in 1920 that runs its course like a train coming down the track.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cry-Baby
    John Waters' mischievous satire of the teen exploitation genre is entertaining as a rude joyride through another era, full of great clothes and hairdos.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Time Machine
    The social comment of the original has been historically refined to encompass such plausible eventualities as the physical manifestation of atomic war weapons. But the basic spirit of Wells' work has not been lost.
  19. Sometimes Always Never
    Riley, Nighy, Lowe and Agutter all find some truthful, moving place to work from, despite the ever-present threat of being upstaged by a kitschy sconce or an eye-jangling turquoise-and-pink color scheme.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    House of Usher
    In patronizingly romanticizing Poe's venerable prose, scenarist Richard Matheson has managed to preserve enough of the original's haunting flavor and spirit. The elaborations change the personalities of the three central characters, but not recklessly so.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bloody Mama
    The best performance in the film, and one of the most outstanding screen portrayals in many moons, is that of Pat Hingle, playing a wealthy businessman kidnapped for high ransom.
  22. Celebration
    Celebration doesn’t feel entirely fair, but it’s a priceless addition to our understanding of how Yves Saint Laurent — the man, the myth, la marque — operated: a flawed film whose mere existence makes it essential viewing.
  23. Richard Jewell
    A good story is a good story, and Eastwood knows how to tell a good story.
  24. Good Girls Get High
    With heartening, encouraging messages that speak to the target audience and beyond, Good Girls Get High doesn’t stray too far from the formula, but manipulates it in such a way that feels fresh.
  25. Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
    Bully. Coward. Victim. isn’t as authoritative a chronicle as “Where’s My Roy Cohn?,” but in its loosely anecdotal way it may bring us a notch or two closer to who Roy Cohn was.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pit and the Pendulum
    A physically stylish, imaginatively photographed horror film which, though needlessly corny in many spots, adds up to good exploitation.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One, Two, Three
    Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three is a fast-paced, high-pitched, hard-hitting, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Story is so furiously quick-witted that some of its wit gets snarled and smothered in overlap. But total experience packs a considerable wallop.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How the West Was Won
    It's a story [suggested by the series How the West Was Won in Life magazine] which naturally puts the spotlight on action and adventure, and the three directors between them have turned in some memorable sequences.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Shaggy D.A.
    Jones is a pleasant light comedian whose style is perfectly suited to the WASPish world of Disney. As his wife, Suzanne Pleshette has her first film role in five years, and her beauty and intelligence livens a part that might have been dull without her.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cat from Outer Space
    The fun, as usual with Disney pix, comes in the believable sight gags provided along the way. Also as usual, it’s a good cast of veterans and nothing to tax them beyond their abilities, all ably kept in pace by director Norman Tokar.
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