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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  1. Thunderstruck
    A by-the-playbook, family-friendly basketball comedy that never strays outside the paint, Thunderstruck likely won’t score much coin during its limited theatrical runs. Still, this lightly amusing confection — a Warner Premiere presentation that all too obviously resembles a typical made-for-homevid product — could rebound during playoffs in smallscreen platforms.
  2. Wonder Woman 1984
    For nearly two hours of its 151-minute runtime, Wonder Woman 1984 accomplishes what we look to Hollywood tentpoles to do: It whisks us away from our worries, erasing them with pure escapism.
  3. Den of Thieves
    Den of Thieves is better at set-up than follow-through. The movie is clever enough, until it cheats. It tries to fill in its characters, until reducing them to plot devices.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hollywood Shuffle
    Most amusing of these is a school for black actors, run by whites, of course, where the students are trained to shuffle, jive and generally fit the preconceived notion of what blacks are like. Another brilliantly conceived bit is Sneakin’ into the Movies, a takeoff of the Siskel & Ebert film reviewing TV show.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
    The Naked Gun 2 1/2 is at least two-and-a-half times less funny than its hilarious 1988 progenitor. But even if the laugh machine isn't operating at top efficiency, it still cranks out a few choice bits of irreverent lunacy.
  6. Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
    Loaded with the usual barrage of irreverent, politically incorrect and virtually non-stop gags. Director Peter Segal and writers Pat Proft, David Zucker and Robert LoCash succumb to occasional bouts of toilet humor, but there’s also some extended hilarity in a scene set around the Academy Awards.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blind Date
    Theme of pure mayhem works well because of chemistry between the main trio of actors, Willis, Basinger and her spurned ex-beau (John Larroquette).
    • Variety
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Prom Night
    Director Paul Lynch seems to capture the spirit of the genre here, but spends a little too much time setting up each murder, thus eliminating some suspense.
    • Variety
  9. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
    Too much of “Bombshell” skims over Lamarr’s more troubling and troubled aspects to paint her in somewhat stock terms as the victim of keep-her-on-that-pedestal misogyny.
  10. Human Flow
    Lost among the bulletins and traveling shots is any sense of the individuals whose distinctiveness is eliminated under the crushing word “refugee.”
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bustin' Loose
    Bustin’ Loose is obviously a personal project for Pryor, who produced and wrote the story, which has admirable ambitions but is also the film’s greatest weakness. Still, Pryor is an infectious comedian and a master of body language, keeping the picture on the move with sheer energy.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Breakin'
    On a plot level, concoction is too derivative of Flashdance for its own good, as the premise once again is untrained, but highly skilled and imaginative, street dancers versus the stuffy, inflexible dance establishment. Aside from the fainthearted choices, however, film is quite satisfactory and breezily entertaining on its own terms.
    • Variety
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twister
    Appealing for its ambition to achieve a unique tone and for its wildly disparate cast, pic never entirely comes together.
  14. Nadja
    After creating such promise through the intriguing setup of stunning twin vampires in trendy, nocturnal Gotham, it’s disappointing that Almereyda develops narrative butterfingers, letting the storyline become too diffuse and cutting among too many principal characters.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    River's Edge
    Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge is an unusually downbeat and depressing youth pic. As group leader Layne, Crispin Glover could have used more restraint: he gives a busy, fussy performance. Others in the cast are more effective, with young Joshua Miller particularly Striking as the awful child, Tim.
  16. In Bed With Victoria
    If anything, what Triet has done is demonstrate that people are allowed to be complicated — and at times contradictory. And the tidy Hollywood ending betrays the fact that Victoria’s problems have less to do with sorting out who’s in her bed than what’s in her head.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Desperately Seeking Susan
    Rosanna Arquette does more than her share in the pivotal part of a bored Yuppie housewife who follows the personal ads, wondering about the identities behind a desperately seeking Susan item that runs from time to time.
  18. Mrs. Hyde
    Half enjoyable, half frustrating.
  19. Kaleidoscope
    Darkly dainty as this ornate storytelling geometry is, however, it’s hard to remain heavily invested in the outcome through a runtime that, even at a modest 90-plus minutes, feels a tad stretched.
  20. The Lodgers
    David Turpin’s screenplay is adequate but slender, with rather too few complications and a foundational mythology that, when finally revealed, proves pretty skimpy itself. That doesn’t trouble O’Malley. He brings so much gloomy, lustrous visual enchantment to the tale that it feels quite bewitching while you’re watching it.
  21. Man in Red Bandana
    Crowther’s courage and sacrifice deserves lionization, and comes shining through in Man with Red Bandana, but there’s no shaking the feeling that he also merits a more elegant cinematic celebration.
  22. Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!
    It has its amusing (and enlightening) moments, but in many ways it’s just dancing around the meat of the matter.
  23. I Love You, Daddy
    There’s a better, tighter, more emotionally focused movie hidden somewhere in the sprawl of “I Love You, Daddy.” It’s a movie that’s just as rude, funny, and observant as this one but that doesn’t tie itself in knots trying to “say” something.
  24. The Insult
    Toward the end, Doueiri attempts to give his two leads a little more nuance, but Tony’s overwhelming anger steamrolls over occasional conciliatory behavior, which winds up feeling just manipulative.
  25. Lean on Pete
    It’s frustrating to watch, but designed in such a way that the boy’s loneliness will haunt long afterward.
  26. Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno
    Another gorgeous three-hour study of young, attractively housed hearts in often turbulent motion, Mektoub is a frequently seductive sensory epic of equivalent ambition, yet despite its woozily pleasurable set pieces, the fraught emotions binding them are less urgent, and the perspective of its protagonist far less immediate.
  27. Racer and the Jailbird
    The whole thing becomes drenched in a kind of downbeat sentimental martyrdom that feels oppressively old-fashioned and moribund.
  28. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
    In short, the movie doesn’t seem nearly skeptical enough of its subject, using his sometimes dodgy memory as a vehicle to remind audiences that their classic Hollywood heroes — so perfect on the silver screen — were human after all, with sex lives and carnal desires like the rest of us. Well, maybe not exactly like the rest of us.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What's Up, Tiger Lily?
    Take a Toho Films (Japan) crime meller [directed by Senkichi Taniguchi], fashioned in the James Bond tradition for the domestic market there, then turn loose Woody Allen and associates to dub and re-edit in camp-comedy vein, and the result is What’s Up, Tiger Lily? The production has one premise – deliberately mismatched dialog – which is sustained reasonably well through its brief running time.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Outlaw Josey Wales
    The screenplay [based on the book Gone to Texas by Forrest Carter] is another one of those violence revues, with carnage production numbers slotted every so often and intercut with Greek chorus narratives by John Vernon and Chief Dan George.
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