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. Killerman
    Bader does a respectable job of sustaining interest by repeatedly introducing clichés and genre tropes, then upending expectations or taking unpredictable detours.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
    Melvin Van Peebles produced this film, edited it, wrote the screenplay, composed the music and played the leading role. He comes out ahead in all but one category: there are some serious problems with his screenplay.
  3. Driven
    Against the film’s own boisterous inclinations, Pace gives it something like a heart, albeit a closed, melancholic one: that’s some acting, and it’s maybe more than these agreeably derivative proceedings deserve. Like its less interesting chancer of a protagonist, however, Driven will take what brushes with greatness it can get.
  4. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.
  5. Gwen
    Approach the film with managed genre expectations, however, and there’s much to admire (and duly shiver over) in its formidable, stormcloud-hued atmospherics, low-simmer storytelling and a particularly fine, unaffected breakout performance by teenage actress Eleanor Worthington-Cox in the testing title role.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Devils
    As if the story alone weren’t bizarre enough, Russell has spared nothing in hyping the historic events by stressing the grisly at the expense of dramatic unity.
  7. Consequences
    Ultimately, Stante’s raw energy and sure hand with actors are more encouraging than the screenplay’s lack of depth is bothersome.
  8. Tigers Are Not Afraid
    For a film bursting with so many ideas, only a fraction of them seem to work. And yet, as an artistic statement, “Tigers” proves as fearless as its kid characters, and an indicator of incredible things to come from its creator.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Punisher
    Dolph Lundgren looks just as if he’s stepped out of a comic book. Thankfully, he breezes through the B-grade plot with tongue firmly placed in cheek.
  10. Cuck
    Cuck is powerful so long as we’re simply trapped observing Ronnie’s all-too-palpable incomprehension and childlike tantrums over his dead-end circumstances. But when those circumstances start to feel rigged, the film’s value as analysis of a hot-button social phenomenon begins to cool.
  11. Can You Keep a Secret?
    Its candy-floss-lite sentiments and strong lead performances carry the picture beyond the genre’s limitations. That said, it lacks a sense of uniqueness to set it apart from other female-centric book-to-screen adaptations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Duellists
    It does not quite achieve a more lusty visual feel for the times and the strange relations of these two men to themselves and to the women in and out of their lives.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slam Dance
    Slam Dance is like junk food. It's brightly packaged, looks good and satisfies the hunger for entertainment, but it isn't terribly nourishing or well-made.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Missouri Breaks
    The trouble with The Missouri Breaks is that one is seriously drawn to it on its upfront elements, but leaves with a depressing sense of waste. As a film achievement it’s corned beef and ham hash.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Manitou
    This bout between good and Satan includes some scares, camp and better than average credits.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fearless Vampire Killers
    Ferdy Mayne is the menacing Dracula, and Sharon Tate, lady in question, looks particularly nice in her bath. Alfie Bass, the innkeeper; Iain Quarrier as the count’s effeminate son, who has some fangs all his own; Terry Downes, the toothy hunchback castle handyman (who might be Quasimodo returned), and Jessie Robbins, innkeeper’s spouse, lend proper support.
  17. Bloodline
    Well acted (though Garriga doesn’t quite make a coherent character out of Lauren, or create believable marital chemistry with Scott), this is a smooth movie that maybe should have been a little less tidy for maximum impact.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Koyaanisqatsi
    Koyaanisqatsi is at first awe-inspiring with its sweeping aerial wilderness photography. It becomes depressing when the phone lines, factories, and nuke plants spring up. The pic then runs the risk of boring audiences with shot after glossy shot of man’s commercial hack job on the land and his resulting misery.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One Million Years B.C.
    Biggest novelty gimmick of this likely click for unsophisticated situations is that, despite four writers on screenplay [including director Michael Carreras], dialog is minimal, consisting almost entirely of grunts. More saleable gimmick is that, at last, the nubile Raquel Welch is on view.
  20. Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight
    Mix "Night of the Living Dead" with Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" movies, then add a hefty dose of "Beavis and Butt-Head"-style silliness, and you have "Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight," a fang-in-cheek horror thriller that likely will please fans and turn off non-devotees.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cul-de-sac
    As a study in kinky insanity, Cul-de-Sac creates a tingling atmosphere. This sags riskily at times when the director unturns the screws and does not keep control of his frequently introduced comedy.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fortune Cookie
    Generally amusing (often wildly so) but overlong.
  23. Ne Zha
    Ne Zha has something vital to teach the American animation industry — about the glories of letting the dark side rip — but it’s also clear that Chinese animators, working under more restrictions than we have, have absorbed a great many of the breakneck freedoms of American pop culture. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a beautiful symbiosis.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Navy Seals
    Nifty performances make this routine action flick better than it probably has a right to be.
  25. Girl on the Third Floor
    What’s ultimately less impressive is Stevens’ script, which to varying degrees draws on the templates of “The Amityville Horror,” “The Shining,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and other conspicuous predecessors, but lacks the original fillip or three that might have turned an enjoyable exercise into something really first rate.
  26. Color Out of Space
    Entertaining but uneven, the result is a deliberately over-the-top sci-fi horror exercise that loses some focus as the action grows more psychedelically unhinged — its oscillating tone not necessarily helped by Nicolas Cage growing likewise, in one of his less inspired gonzo-style performances.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ocean's 11
    Laboring under the handicaps of a contrived script, an uncertain approach and personalities in essence playing themselves, the production never quite makes its point, but romps along merrily unconcerned that it doesn't.
  28. No Place Like Home (2006)
    A watchable mess with ultra-laid-back Me Decade vibe.
  29. Jexi
    Lucas and Moore write some whiplash funny lines, and since the film is just a throwaway, you can enjoy it on a trivial synthetic revenge-of-the-nerd level.
  30. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
    There’s a momentum to his story — it has a heist-movie-style checklist, carried out by a team composed of only one — that has its own satisfactions, and set-pieces with real tension, even if they lead to a less-than-novel place.
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