Variety's Scores

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For 17,831 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: 9,163 out of 17831
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17831
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17831
17831 movie reviews
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    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Arrival
    A straight-faced updating of the 1950s space monster formula, film stars Charlie Sheen as the rogue scientist who battles E.T.s, uncovers government conspiracies and, most impressive of all, suppresses giggles when confronted with some of the silliest alien effects in memory. [03 June 1996, p.50]
    • Variety
  2. Mansfield 66/67
    There’s value in examining the myth of Mansfield and its impact, but here poor Jayne herself is lost.
  3. The Neon Bible
    For about the first half hour, Davies and his superb creative team weave a potent spell. But, starting with a poorly staged revival meeting sequence, things start to go wrong; Davies's grip slackens, and the artifice overwhelms the perilously slim storyline.
  4. The 15:17 to Paris
    The oddity of the movie — and this is baked into the way Eastwood conceived it, sticking to the facts and not over-hyping anything — is that this vision of real-life heroism is so much less charged than the Hollywood version might be that it often feels as if a dramatic spark plug is missing.
  5. No Stone Unturned
    In a strange way, the movie, as doggedly made as it is, remains stubbornly uncompelling. That, I think, is because Gibney’s own connection to the subject, while it charges him with righteous passion, has resulted in a rare loss of perspective.
  6. Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer
    A would-be new “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” it’s energetic and polished enough to avoid feeling like a rip-off — “Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny,” this is not — but there the compliments pretty much end.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    1492: Conquest of Paradise
    All Ridley Scott's vaunted visuals can't transform 1492 from a lumbering, one-dimensional historical fresco into the complex, ambiguous character study that it strives to be.
  8. Casper
    Another demonstration of the hazards involved turning a six-minute animated short into a big budget movie, Casper will doubtless spur nostalgic recognition among grown-ups but skews so heavily toward children that it offers little to divert anyone over the age of 8.
  9. Bullet Head
    The result is a film that somehow manages to be fairly watchable, yet nonetheless really needed intervention from the conceptual stage onward.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hammett
    Over polished by too many script rewrites, perhaps emasculated by massive footage scraps and belated re-shoots, project emerges a rather suffocating film taking place in a rickety Chinatown.
    • Variety
  11. Remember Me
    Writer-director-star Steve Goldbloom’s debut feature is an uneven trifle overly dependent on the familiar, uninspired comedy of immature man-boys behaving badly. But it has an ace up its sleeve in the person of historied veteran Rita Moreno, whose unpredictable performance in an underwritten role gooses things to an amiable degree.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Volunteers
    Volunteers is a very broad and mostly flat comedy [from a story by Keith Critchlow] about hijinx in the Peace Corps, circa 1962. Toplined Tom Hanks gets in a few good zingers as an upperclass snob doing time in Thailand, but promising premise and opening shortly descend into unduly protracted tedium.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dragnet
    Dragnet tries very hard to parody its 1950s TV series progenitor but winds up more innocuous than inventive.
  14. The Goldfinch
    What you experience isn’t the book, exactly; it’s the strenuous creative labor that went into adapting it. What cast a winding spell on the page has become an occasionally compelling but mostly labored live-action illustration.
  15. Alita: Battle Angel
    This manga-based cyberpunk origin story is a pretty zappy effects showcase, weighed down by a protracted, soul-challenged Frankenstory that short-circuits every time it gets moving.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Searching for Bobby Fischer
    Unfortunately, as scripter, debuting director Steven Zaillian (who wrote Awakenings) also feels compelled to throw in Karate Kid-type flourishes, a rather stale genre that doesn’t lend itself all that well to chess. The narrative is ruthlessly edited, jumping around in a manner that skips needed exposition and abandons characters.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Permanent Midnight
    Stiller’s attempted image makeover, though admirable, doesn’t make it. His perform-ance is strictly from the clenched-teeth, “Look at me, I’m acting!” school.
  18. Half Magic
    Half Magic is hobbled by a debut director’s desire to be liked. But Graham’s passion is sincere, even if her tone and rushed pace — the byproduct of cramming in every idea in case she doesn’t get a second chance — teeters on sitcom.
  19. Scorched Earth
    Equal parts 1960s-style Spaghetti Western pastiche and ’80s-style “Mad Max” knockoff, Scorched Earth is the sort of divertingly hokey post-apocalyptic B-movie that would have amused undiscriminating Blockbuster Video renters a generation ago, and now might pass muster as the pilot for a weekly SyFy series.
  20. Nostalgia
    Though lent a degree of executional grace by helmer Mark Pellington, Nostalgia nonetheless emerges an inorganic experiment that might’ve seemed more at home developed for the stage or as a novella.
  21. Sheikh Jackson
    All told, it’s a well-crafted but middling drama whose attention-catching gimmick only gets in the way.
  22. My Art
    The very artlessness of My Art is what sometimes makes it endearing, but its storytelling could use a few more foundational lines.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Not as a Stranger
    Though some scenes come off fairly well, Mitchum is poker-faced from start to finish.
  24. The Last Movie Star
    Despite a few good moments, this well-intentioned seriocomedy mostly wobbles between crude yocks, lame generation-gap humor and sentimental cliche.
  25. Maya
    This is the first stumble in Hansen-Løve’s hitherto impressive filmography — the kind of directorial misstep that at least makes it clear how deft her footwork usually is.
  26. Outlaw King
    Whatever its value as rabble-rousing historical reenactment, Outlaw King never quite compares to the many films it’s so keen to imitate, and in some cases outright quote.
  27. The Banishment
    The undeniably talented helmer’s sophomore feature has little of the emotional power of “The Return,” though d.p. Mikhail Krichman does stellar work and thesping is faultless.
  28. Dear Dictator
    Pleasant enough to watch, even innocuous, Dear Dictator is something that gets worse the more you think about it.
  29. Monsters and Men
    Mixing “gritty” handheld camerawork with an almost zen-like kind of restraint, Green’s approach is frustratingly thin on the kind of specifics that make for rich drama, leaving audiences to fill in the gaps.
  30. The Catcher Was a Spy
    There’s a curious lack of credibility and urgency in this big-screen adaptation, the kind of respectable near-miss that can happen when worthy talent apply themselves to a project they’re just not ideally suited for.
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