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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    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Iron Eagle
    Director Sidney J. Furie fills in the rest with breakneck action and some dandy dogfights. Much of the dialog is simply laughable.
  2. 4/20 Massacre
    Though the deaths are diverse and fairly gory (Brennan Jones designed the special makeup f/x), “4/20 Massacre” isn’t very scary. It is, however, lively and well-enough crafted, with decent performances.
  3. Woman Walks Ahead
    Woman Walks Ahead offers dimension to its leading lady, but holds its Native characters to the same old surface stereotypes. Such a movie is a step in the right direction, but farther behind than it seems to realize.
  4. Rhino Season
    Burdened with a complex flashback structure and an unemotional core, this multi-decade saga of an imprisoned Iranian poet and his family has surprisingly little resonance.
  5. Reprisal
    Reprisal is not a very good movie, but it leaves you with tantalizing hints that some people involved with it are capable of doing something much better.
  6. The Party's Just Beginning
    The movie, a wayward portrait with surrealist touches, is trying for something genuine. Yet despite some good scenes, some tart lines...and an atmosphere of saintly desperation that suggests “Trainspotting” redone as a darkened YA fable, the movie is wispy and meandering; it doesn’t gather power as it goes along.
  7. Stockholm
    The opening title says “Based on an absurd but true story,” yet there’s nothing absurd about the facts. Improbable? Yes. Hapless and desperate? Most definitely. But the absurdity — the impulse to giggle — is mostly there in the eye of the writer-director, Robert Budreau, who collaborated with Hawke two years ago on the entrancing Chet Baker biopic “Born to Be Blue” but here comes off as a far less sure-handed filmmaker.
  8. Zoe
    Zoe, like Cole, ties itself up in a lot of high-minded hand-wringing, and the result is that the movie, though it’s not badly told, fails to grip you.
  9. Shock and Awe
    The shock feels less than shocking and the awe less than awesome in Rob Reiner’s righteously motivated but clunkily executed exposé of media manipulation in the run-up to the Iraq War.
  10. The Delta
    Sachs commits a major error by deciding to center on Lincoln’s character, for John is a far more interesting, complex and disturbing personality.
  11. Lion's Den
    Situated somewhere between neo-realist study and standard women in prison pic, Lion's Den too frequently wanders into common territories to make the material its own.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cable Guy
    Carrey’s character lacks the empathy or poignance to command ongoing interest, and Broderick’s role strains one’s patience because he’s hopelessly dimwitted and slow to react in any way vaguely resembling human behavior.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Deep
    Efficient but rather colorless...It’s possible that inside this slick piece of engineering there is a genuinely mordant satire of human greed struggling to get out, but it never quite gets to the surface.
  14. Far from the Tree
    Good intentions aside, Far From the Tree puts all its energy into disproving a thesis that many of us don’t actually believe — that the tree is inherently perfect, and that anything other than a direct copy of one’s parents is a crisis in need of resolving.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
    Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore takes a group of wellcast film players and largely wastes them on a smaller-than-life film – one of those ‘little people’ dramas that make one despise little people.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Papillon
    For 150 uninterrupted minutes, the mood is one of despair, brutality, and little hope. The script is very good within its limitations, but there is insufficient identification with the main characters.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The King of Comedy
    The King of Comedy is a royal disappointment. To be sure, Robert De Niro turns in another virtuoso performance for Martin Scorsese, just as in their four previous efforts. But once again – and even more so – they come up with a character that it’s hard to spend time with. Even worse, the characters – in fact, all the characters – stand for nothing.
  18. The Year of Spectacular Men
    With the right script, this trio could make a fantastic flick. Forget these “spectacular” men. These flawed women are plenty.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Harold and Maude
    Director Hal Ashby’s second feature is marked by a few good gags, but marred by a greater preponderance of sophomoric, overdone and mocking humor.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Red Sonja
    Red Sonja [based on stories by Robert E. Howard] returns to those olden days when women were women and the menfolk stood around with funny hats on until called forth to be whacked at.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Billy Jack
    Screenplay attempts to encompass too many story facets. Result is that the action frequently drags.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Deliverance
    In the depiction of sudden, violent death, there is the rhapsodic wallowing in the deadly beauty of it all: protruding arrows, agonizing expiration, etc. It’s the stuff of which slapdash oaters and crime programmers are made but the obvious ambitions of Deliverance are supposed to be on a higher plane.
  23. Destination Wedding
    Destination Wedding barely holds together as a coherent film. It’s too callous for coos, too chipper to examine the dark corners of the soul. Yet it works as a valentine to old-fashioned star power — two modern legends, older if no wiser, daring the audience to somehow love them for all their faults, and on that level, somehow succeeding.
  24. The Bookshop
    This is a frustratingly patchy adaptation, in which some of Fitzgerald’s shrewdest observations on the savage politics and politesse of supposedly tranquil English village life get a little bit lost in the Europudding. A fine, sensitive leading turn from Emily Mortimer helps shore up these quiet, lightly dust-covered proceedings, but can’t quite put The Bookshop in the black.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Light of Day
    Despite the over-the-edge quality of her character, Rowlands makes even the most ludicrous lines seem feasible. Fox is basically miscast as the good-natured brother who idolizes his sister and tries to cover for her. Jett looks the part and even manages to hit the mark from time to time, but for every hit there’s a miss.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hang 'Em High
    Hang 'em High comes across as a poor-made imitation of a poor Italian-made imitation of an American western.
  27. Discreet
    Opaque and formally ungainly, this itchy meditation on a host of contemporary social ills offers audiences a vividly, deliberately ugly worldview, but finally makes for hollow viewing.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Four Seasons
    Tale is populated strictly with Ordinary People, but Alda’s script doesn’t begin to scratch the surface to discover what makes them tick and is particularly stingy in giving Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno anything to work with.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dragonslayer
    A well intentioned fantasy with some wonderful special effects, Dragonslayer falls somewhat short on continuously intriguing adventure.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Breezy
    Clint Eastwood's third directorial effort is an okay contemporary drama about middle-aged William Holden falling for teenage Kay Lenz. Associate producer Jo Heims' script works the problem over with perhaps too much ironic, wry or broad humor for solid impact.
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