Variety's Scores

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For 17,828 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: 9,160 out of 17828
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17828
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17828
17828 movie reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
    The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai plays more like an experimental film than a Hollywood production aimed at a mass audience. It violates every rule of storytelling and narrative structure in creating a self-contained world of its own.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mr. Majestyk
    Mr Majestyk makes a first-reel pretense of dealing with the thorny subject of migrant Chicano farm laborers, but social relevance is soon clobbered by the usual Charles Bronson heroics, here mechanically navigated by director Richard Fleischer.
  3. A View to a Kill
    This jokey tone couldn’t be more different from the relative self-seriousness of helmer John Glen’s first 007 directing effort, For Your Eyes Only, and frankly, I yearn for more of that class.
  4. Jigsaw
    For 92 minutes, it more or less succeeds in sawing through your boredom, slicing and dicing with a glum explicitness that raises the occasional tingle of gross-out suspense but no longer carries any kick of true shock value.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Body Double
    Brian De Palma lets all his obsessions hang out in Body Double. A voyeur’s delight and a feminist’s nightmare, sexpenser features an outrageously far-fetched and flimsy plot.
  6. I Feel Pretty
    What sets I Feel Pretty apart is the inspired premise that Renee’s transformation takes place entirely in her head, while those around her are left befuddled by her sudden change of attitude — a concept that begs the question of why our society encourages women to second-guess their self-image in the first place.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask
    Allen's gift is in the depiction of a contemporary intellectual shlump who cannot seem to make it with the chicks always tantalizingly out of reach. That persona could well have served him once more as the focus for a good bit of caustic comedy on today's sexual mores.
    • Variety
  8. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    Linklater, as brilliant a filmmaker as he is, is a kind of Zen rationalist; his shot language and essential humanity invite us to look at Bernadette and think, “You need help.” But that stops the character, even in her baroquely witty lashing out, from becoming a projection of a larger passion.
  9. Distance
    There’s almost none of the generous, involving humanity (and warm humor) of the previous film, nor any clear take on the personalities in the slackly structured script, largely improvised by the actors.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Day of the Dead
    Day of the Dead is an unsatisfying part three in George A. Romero's zombie saga. The acting here is generally unimpressive and in the case of Sarah's romantic partner, Miguel (Antonio DiLeo, Jr.), unintentionally risible.
    • Variety
  11. Awaken the Shadowman
    A slow burn of a horror drama that doesn’t build toward quite enough of a blaze to be truly memorable, Awaken the Shadowman nonetheless ranks a cut above the genre norm for its atmospheric and confident setup
  12. It Stains the Sands Red
    Watchable if never really scary or funny enough to leave a memorable impression.
  13. 12 Strong
    On its own terms, the film is watchable enough, but it’s blunt and stolid and under-characterized, and at 130 minutes it plods.
  14. Action Point
    The trouble is, presenting all of this mayhem within the framework of a by-the-numbers father-daughter bonding story saps the stunts of their usual appeal.
  15. Rebel in the Rye
    Danny Strong’s film is diverting, mildly informative and — to borrow Caulfield’s adjective of choice — somewhat phony, heavy as it is on tortured-writer clichés and contrived art-imitates-life parallels.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mommie Dearest
    This is Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford and the results are, well, screen history. Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, costars and all. Much has been written and said pro-and-con about Crawford since daughter Christina wrote the book on which this film is based. Whatever the truth, director Frank Perry’s portrait here is sorry indeed, 129 minutes with a very pathetic and unpleasant individual.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goin' South
    Picture starts off promisingly enough with Nicholson as a hapless outlaw who makes it across the border but the posse cheats and comes across after him causing his horse to faint. But it never jells, as Nicholson continues to sputter and chomp, acting more like her grandfather than a handsome roue out to overcome her virginity.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fletch Lives
    Film’s saving grace is its scathing satirical sketches of fictional televangelist preacher Jimmy Lee Farnsworth.
  19. Rememory
    The final effect is akin to that of a Hallmark card inscribed by Christopher Nolan, and it’s that earnest self-importance of tone that finally makes this light sci-fi effort a bit of a trudge, despite Dinklage’s committed and empathetic performance.
  20. Te Ata
    The well-intentioned biopic is ungainly, overtly articulating everything it doesn’t need to yet failing to explain much of what starts out as unclear about the tale.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Take the Money and Run
    A few good laughs in an 85-minute film do not a comedy make. Basically a running gag about hero Allen's ineptitude as a professional crook, scatters its fire in so many directions it has to hit at least several targets. But satire on documentary coverage of criminal flop is overextended and eventually tiresome.
    • Variety
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
    Follow-up features much of the original’s cast but none of its key behind-the-scenes creative talent, save producer Paul Maslansky. Only actor to get any mileage out of this one is series newcomer Art Metrano, as an ambitious lieutenant bent upon taking over the department.
  23. 6 Days
    Technically smart but dramatically a bit flat.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Romancing the Stone
    Heading for the jungles in her high heels, Turner is like a lot of unwitting screen heroines ahead of her, guaranteed that her drab existence is about to be transformed – probably by a man, preferably handsome and adventurous. Sure enough, Michael Douglas pops out of the jungle. The expected complications are supplied by the kidnappers, Danny DeVito and Zack Norman.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    National Lampoon's European Vacation
    Story [by John Hughes] of a frenetic, chaotic tour of the Old World, with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo reprising their roles as determined vacationers, is graceless and only intermittently lit up by lunacy and satire.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Secret of My Succe$s
    A bedroom farce with a leaden touch, a corporate comedy without teeth. What it does have is Michael J. Fox in a winning performance as a likable hick out to hit the big time in New York.
    • Variety
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freaky Friday
    Freaky Friday is certainly one of the most offbeat films Walt Disney Productions has ever made, but it isn't one of the best. A promising concept - quarreling mother and teenage daughter switch personalities for a day - has been bungled by a talky, repetitive screenplay and overbroad direction. Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster salvage some scenes through sheer behavioral charm.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    TRON
    Tron is loaded with visual delights but falls way short of the mark in story and viewer involvement. Steven Lisberger has adequately marshalled a huge force of technicians to deliver the dazzle, but even kids (and specifically computer game freaks) will have a difficult time getting hooked on the situations.
    • Variety
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Object of Beauty
    The Object of Beauty is a throwback to the romantic comedies of Swinging London cinema, but lacks the punch of the best of that late 1960s genre. Mildly diverting but empty picture.
    • Variety
  30. Realive
    Realive ultimately aims to be all about matters of the heart, and in that realm Gil’s imagination proves disappointingly limited.
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