Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Puzzle
    We should be grateful that it exists, if only because it affords a long-overdue leading role to Kelly Macdonald.
  2. Midnighters
    Midnighters is brisk and eventful. Yet as a thriller driven by constantly worsening straits, it’s not as cleverly twisty as it would like to be, nor are the well-played characters granted enough dimensionality for their dynamics to be all that surprising or convincing.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Dream Team
    The Dream Team is a hokey comedy that basically reduces mental illness to a grab bag of quirky schtick. Yet with a quartet of gifted comic actors having a field day playing loonies on the loose in Manhattan, much of that schtick is awfully funny.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    See No Evil, Hear No Evil
    With Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in the lead roles, See No Evil, Hear No Evil could only be a broadly played, occasionally crass, funny physical comedy .
  5. All I Wish
    It’s left to Stone to prop up the whole scented-tissue affair, and that she cheerfully does, with a calm, centered force of personality that lends credibility even to the most raggedly developed aspects of her character.
  6. Benji
    Benji may be far too simplistic for adults to find much enjoyment in watching, but it rewards active viewing from kids and displays mostly model behavior on the part of its young protagonists (once they stop keeping secrets from their mother, that is).
  7. Bad Samaritan
    It’s all thoroughly unpleasant, but then, that’s what audiences for this kind of movie want from the experience, so consider it a success of sorts.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Plains Drifter
    High Plains Drifter is a nervously-humorous, self-conscious near satire on the prototype Clint Eastwood formula of the avenging mysterious stranger. Script has some raw violence for the kinks and some dumb humor for audience relief. Eastwood’s second directorial effort is mechanically stylish.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Police Academy 3: Back in Training
    Cast of cartoon misfits is still basically intact and if Police Academy 3 has any charm it’s in the good-natured dopeyness of these people. No bones about it, these people are there to laugh at.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shag
    As a dance flick, Shag suffers from an unexciting dance-style and so-so choreography but compensates with a fine young cast and likable story.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Doc Hollywood
    Has no real taste of its own, but, in its mildness and predictability, offers the reassurance of a fast-food or motel chain.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Rachel Papers
    The basic material is as old as the hills, but Martin Amis, who wrote the original novel some 15 years earlier, explored it in fresh directions.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Three Fugitives
    As for the Nolte-Short pairing, it’ll do, but it’s no chemical marvel. Nolte, not really a comic natural, gruffs and grumbles his way through as hunky straight man to Short’s calamitous comedian.
  14. Death on the Nile
    It’s a moderately diverting dessert that carries you right along. It never transcends the feeling that you’re seeing a relic injected with life serum, but that, in a way, is part of its minor-league charm.
  15. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    Few popes in living memory have seemed as recognizably human as Francis — for all its access, and for all the inherent empathy of its director, Wenders’ film is never able to completely connect the dots between the man and the figure.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    For the Love of Benji
    Only a heart of steel can resist this pooch...The tale itself is slim, and while the plot is a bit contrived, and all of the loose ends tied up a bit too neatly in the film’s last five minutes, it should be remembered that For the Love of Benji is merely a star vehicle. The idea is to watch the dog act.
  17. Beauty and the Dogs
    Ben Hania’s decision to divide the film into 9 chapters, each seemingly orchestrated in a single take, works on a cerebral level, but the form doesn’t serve the story, and while the overall choreography of actors and camerawork is impressive, it never fully satisfies.
  18. Juggernaut
    Even if the ending falls something short of memorable, Juggernaut still holds attention as a strong, well-acted effort that effectively walks the line between dysfunctional family drama and revenge thriller.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Drowning Pool
    The Drowning Pool is stylish, improbable, entertaining, superficial, well cast, and totally synthetic. Stuart Rosenberg’s direction is functional and unexciting.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harper
    Some excellent directorial touches and solid thesping are evident in the colorful and plush production. Abundance of comedy and sometimes extraneous emphasis on cameo characters make for a relaxed pace and imbalanced concept, resulting in overlength and telegraphing of climax.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    1984
    In this unremitting downer, writer-director Michael Radford introduces no touches of comedy or facile sensationalism to soften a harsh depiction of life under a totalitarian system as imagined by George Orwell in 1948.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Earth Girls Are Easy
    Earth Girls Are Easy is a dizzy, glitzy fish-out-of-water farce about three horny aliens on the make in LA. The two val-gals and their alien ‘dates’ take off for a weekend of LA nightlife, where the visitors’ smooth adaptation to Coast culture is intended by director Julian Temple and his screenwriters to affectionately skewer Tinseltown lifestyles.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Fang
    Disney’s workmanlike remake of Jack London’s adventure White Fang boasts enough nature footage and a strong central performance by Ethan Hawke to win over small fry.
  24. Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town
    It’s uneven practically by design, with a tone that slides all the way from kooky farce to anguished psychological study, just about held together by Mackenzie Davis’s lively, spiky turn in the lead.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evil Under the Sun
    Apart from cutting down the number of characters, Hamilton and scripter Anthony Shaffer have also had the audacity to switch things around in the inevitable denouement scene. Poirot points right away at the guilty party, while the true suspense is put into the how’s and why’s that follow.
  26. Mug
    Szumowska...wants to tackle manifold issues, often unrelated to each other, and her attention feels magpie-ish and unsettled.
  27. The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter
    McBride is good for a few chuckles during the first two-thirds of the movie and continues to contribute a fair share of funny business after the plot takes a not altogether persuasive serious turn. But Brolin remains the main attraction, and the saving grace, during this lost weekend in the woods.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Victory
    Script spends so much effort extolling man’s basic goodness and the values of selflessness, teamwork and fair play, that it frequently softens the action. Fortunately, director John Huston has such a firm grip on the dramatic line that does exist – and works some very good performances from the cast, particularly Caine – that the pic survives intact.
  29. The Devil and Father Amorth
    It is often an oddly compelling tabloid foray, since it winds up shedding a crucial ray of light on the mad moment we’re in now. Whether or not you believe in the Devil, the film helps to color in how our culture got possessed.
  30. Unfriended: Dark Web
    "Dark Web” skates by on saturated nastiness, one terrific kill, and the audience’s engagement in seeing if the filmmakers can pull off the stunt. Barely, but it’s fun to watch them try.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »