Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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 2.4 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Titanic
    A spectacular demonstration of what modern technology can contribute to dramatic storytelling.
  2. Mousehunt
    Mouse Hunt is the cat's meow. Blending the graceful slapstick of Laurel and Hardy with the mock-Gothic visuals of "The Adams Family," this often screamingly funny comedy about a resilient rodent has enough across-the-board appeal to click with audiences of all ages.
  3. The Apostle
    Beautifully detailed and deftly structured, every scene in The Apostle logically leads to the next one, each elaborating on the central theme of religious redemption.
  4. Deconstructing Harry
    A tremendous, stellar cast is mostly confined to minor roles, but all shine under Allen's assured direction.
  5. Scream 2
    Visceral, witty and appropriately redundant, the sequel has a winning commercial recipe that's certain to cook up excellent returns in all areas.
  6. Amistad
    Aiming to instruct as well as entertain --- and often struggling to reconcile these two divergent goals.
  7. Good Will Hunting
    This beautifully realized tale is always engaging and often quite touching.
  8. Alien: Resurrection
    As a series of action set pieces, the movie is frequently gripping and always highly watchable. However, when the movie strays into weirder territory --- where, one feels, Jeunet's heart really lies --- there's a growing feeling of inadequacy.
  9. Flubber
    Despite a couple of slow stretches along the way, director Mayfield does a generally fine job of integrating the eye-popping special effects with the simple but serviceable plot. The pace is just brisk enough to satisfy youngsters with short attention spans, and Williams is winning enough to keep audiences of all ages involved.
  10. Welcome to Sarajevo
    The film's persistent skimming from one vantage point to another, with no dominant dramatic line until midway through, will unsettle audiences expecting a more regular construction and something on which to hook their emotions over the long term.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Sweet Hereafter
    Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan's most ambitious work to date, The Sweet Hereafter is a rich, complex meditation on the impact of a terrible tragedy on a small town.
  12. The Rainmaker
    As carefully constructed, handsomely crafted and flavorsomely acted as a top-of-the-line production from Hollywood's classical studio era, Francis Ford Coppola's screen version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker would seem to represent just about all a filmmaker could do with the best-selling author's patented dramatic formulas without subverting them altogether.
  13. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    An outstanding lean film trapped in a fat film's body.
  14. Anastasia
    Lacks the special creative spark needed to lift it to an uncommon imaginative level.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
    Pic consists largely of choppily edited fight scenes (usually involving somersaults and back flips) combined with various computer graphic effects.
  16. The Jackal
    With its strong premise, a couple of fine performances and highly polished tooling, The Jackal scores as an involving high-tech thriller that occasionally hits peaks of pulsating excitement.
  17. Starship Troopers
    A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun.
  18. The Wings of the Dove
    Visually the film impresses, with Eduardo Serra's widescreen camerawork evocatively capturing the streets and interiors of London and a rain-swept Venice. Pacing is crisp, with little time wasted on inessentials. Dialogue is often caustically witty, and the relations clearly delineated.
  19. Bean
    Atkinson, who is in almost every scene, boasts a full-on comic personality that on the cinema screen is a bit daunting at times, and it's an open question as to whether the Carrey crowd will go for this seriously eccentric Brit.
  20. Eve's Bayou
    Anchored by a strong cast, including Samuel L. Jackson (also credited as a producer), Lynn Whitfield and Diahann Carroll, this talented debut by a black female writer-director is a well-made, if also old-fashioned, multi-generational drama.
  21. Mad City
    In actuality, however, what unfolds onscreen is a simplistic and obvious expose about the manipulative power of the news media that by now is so familiar that its cynical perspective is not likely to upset or provoke anyone.
  22. Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
    Undoubtedly the most wildly original and audacious documentary in this year's Sundance Film Festival, Kirby Dick's Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is an uncompromising chronicle of the flamboyant poet and performance artist who died in 1996.
  23. An American Werewolf in Paris
    An enjoyably trashy blend of impressive special effects, low-key refs to Landis's movie, and sudden moments of horror breaking the jokey tone.
  24. Happy Together
    Maverick director Wong Kar-wai manages to pour old wine into new jars with Happy Together, a fizzy chamber yarn about two gay Hong Kongers in Argentina that's as slim as a bamboo flute but is his most linear and mature work for some time.
  25. Gattaca
    Gattaca, New Zealander helmer Andrew Niccol's impressive feature debut, is an intelligent and timely sci-fi thriller that, with the exception of some illogical plot contrivances, is emotionally engaging almost up to the end.
  26. A Life Less Ordinary
    Part kooky romance, part screwball comedy, part quirky fantasy and part Roadrunner cartoon, this is a movie that has everything except an involving storyline and characters.
  27. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    A polished genre piece with superior fright elements.
  28. The Devil's Advocate
    A fairly entertaining supernatural potboiler that finally bubbles over with a nearly operatic sense of absurdity and excess.
  29. The Maker
    Acreditable mix of character study and thriller elements, Tim Hunter's The Maker skirts but manages to elude several current genre traps - particularly those cliches surrounding both angstful-teen dramas and hip neo-noirs.
  30. Gummo
    Gummo is personal, honest and raw, but it's also erratic, self-indulgent and full of ideas that are not fully explored. [8 Sept. 1997, p.80]
    • Variety
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