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 Great Warming
    A more diffuse and prettier case for global calamity that accents the positive and stresses the possibility of reversing the planet's headlong rush to extinction.
  2. Nate & Margaret
    Moving, engagingly low-key curio.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hud
    Hud is a near miss. Where it falls short of the mark is in its failure to filter its meaning and theme lucidly through its characters and story.
    • 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.
  5. Emelie
    This potentially lurid material is lent considerable ballast and believability by the excellent work of its trio of child actors.
  6. The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls
    A documentary that has you falling in love with two of the crazier people you've never met.
  7. The Yellow Handkerchief
    A thoughtful, niche-oriented portrait of four off-the-beaten-path characters trying to find their way.
  8. Everybody's Talking About Jamie
    The songs are nearly all bouncy, look-at-me numbers intended for Jamie and his inner circle . . . . But there’s one new addition that makes all the difference: an original number called “This Was Me,” a terrific ’80s-style anthem (performed by Grant and Frankie Goes to Hollywood lead singer Holly Johnson) that provides younger audiences with some much-needed queer history.
  9. Land of Plenty
    Rocky but respectable Land of Plenty proves the helmer often does better with low budgets, fast schedules and young collaborators. Slushy final 10 minutes nearly trashes with triteness the good work that precedes it.
  10. Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    Genuinely funny, charming and sincere, it’s a respectful and revelatory update in a world where those are few and far between.
  11. On a Clear Day
    By turns whimsically humorous and intelligently sentimental, but also infused with a pungent air of working-class realism.
  12. Most Wanted
    Along with Pilon’s striking performance, the film’s sturdy, subdued craftsmanship keeps it from movie-of-the-week territory, even as Roby’s script ticks overly familiar boxes.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Working Girls
    Borden sugars her pill with clean, crisp, often witty recording of brothel action and shop-talk. All acting is credible and the camerawork is smooth, the non-action a bit on the long winded side.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Harold and Maude
    Director Hal Ashby’s second feature is marked by a few good gags, but marred by a greater preponderance of sophomoric, overdone and mocking humor.
  15. Terrifier 3
    Thornton gives a hell of a performance, like Marcel Marceau inhabited by the fiendish spirit of Charles Manson, with a touch of Divine. In his silent-clown way, he imitates ordinary human emotion — the grins and wide-eyed surprise, the innocent moués, the cartoon-sad frowns — with a stylized frivolity.
  16. Seraphim Falls
    Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alligator
    Alligator is bloody and boisterous, featuring the only man-eating monster in memory named Ramone.
  18. My One and Only
    The ensemble collectively displays crisp comic timing throughout.
  19. Dolores Claiborne
    Deftly cutting between the past and the present, director Taylor Hackford manages to establish a compelling mood and pace even though the pic lacks a thriller's true "Aha!" moment
  20. Puzzlehead
    In his intriguing take on the Frankenstein myth, first-time scripter/helmer James Bai establishes an entire alternate universe with consummate mastery only to fail to coax a convincing performance out of his lead actor.
  21. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
    Result: An undeniably clever commingling of a new cast (and spoken dialogue) with a silent classic. But pic fails to engage consistently on its own terms, and begins to coast on novelty value around the midway point.
  22. Sto je muskarac bez brkova?
    Director Hrvoje Hribar gives a lively professional look to this good-humored film.
  23. The Other Man: F.W. de Klerk and the End of Apartheid
    It’s an opportunity only half seized: Haphazard both as biography and historical survey, the film asks more salient questions than it can answer in a rushed 76 minutes.
  24. Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars
    As absorbing as much of this material is, the lengthy feature does not feel definitive: It commits the typical music-doc sin of devoting nearly all its time to a celebrated first professional decade, then hastily skimming past all events since.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Quartet
    Director James Ivory takes his usual aloofly observant distance and the film's love triangle loses some drastic impetus.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Marooned
    The film is superbly crafted, taut and a technological cliff-hanger.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Run Silent Run Deep
    Run Silent, Run Deep is a taut, exciting drama of submarine warfare in the Pacific during the Second World War.
  28. The Conquest
    Picture takes genre helmer Xavier Durringer ("Chok-Dee") back to his theater roots, with most of the narrative mayhem and laughs coming from the picture's sharp dialogue and strong work by seasoned thesps, who just manage to avoid caricature.
  29. Dreams of a Life
    A riveting tale of a onetime vivacious personality, described by those who knew her as "stunning," "lovely," and "very well liked," but who nevertheless died alone, friendless and seemingly missed by nobody.
  30. Something to Talk About
    Unfortunately, the diverse elements introduced here don’t coalesce into a comfortable package, with much of the background action proving notably listless and unconvincing.
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