Variety's Scores

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For 17,777 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: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Rookie
    Overlong, sadistic and stale even by the conventions of the buddy pic genre.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Grifters
    A curiously uneven movie.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cyrano de Bergerac
    A winner by more than a nose, Cyrano de Bergerac attains a near-perfect balance of verbal and visual flamboyance. Gerard Depardieu's grand performance as the facially disgraced swordsman-poet sets a new standard with which all future Cyranos will have to reckon.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Misery
    Casting of Caan is effective, as his snide remarks and grumpy attittude are backed up by a physical dimension that makes believable his inevitable fighting back. Bates had a field day with her role, creating a quirky, memorable object of hate.
    • Variety
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Eating
    The ladies who lunch - and munch, breakfast, binge, dine, diet, starve and sample - are delicious in Eating, but writer-director Henry Jaglom labors over the stove too long, harming a tasty souffle.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
    Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is an affecting study of an uppercrust Midwestern family in the late 1930s.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Predator 2
    While the film doesn’t achieve the same thrills of the final 45 minutes of Predator in terms of overall excitement, it outdoes its first safari in start-to-finish hysteria. The real star is the pic’s design. Writers don’t waste much time on character development.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rocky V
    When the underdog always wins he's not much of an underdog anymore, and the narrative cartwheels Sylvester Stallone has turned over the years to put Rocky in that position have peeled away the novelty.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Rescuers Down Under
    This sort-of sequel to the 1977 hit The Rescuers boasts reasonably solid production values and fine character voices. Too bad they're set against such a mediocre story that adults may duck.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dances with Wolves
    Costner's directing style is fresh and assured. A sense of surprise and humor accompany Dunbar's adventures at every turn, twisting the narrative gently this way and that and making the journey a real pleasure.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Child's Play 2
    Child’s Play 2 is another case of rehashing the few novel elements of an original to the point of utter numbness.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Jacob's Ladder
    Jacob's Ladder means to be a harrowing thriller about a Vietnam vet (Tim Robbins) bedeviled by strange visions, but the $40 million production is dull, unimaginative and pretentious.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Vincent & Theo
    One of Robert Altman’s most cinematically conventional films as well as one of his most deeply personal.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Graffiti Bridge
    A half-baked retread of tired MTV imagery and childish themes.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Night of the Living Dead
    The story faithfully follows the original except for the bonehead decision to replace the ending with a ‘meaningful’ twist that reeks of pretentiousness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    White Palace
    Outstanding performances by Susan Sarandon and James Spader, working from a relentlessly witty script, make White Palace one of the best films of its kind since The Graduate (1967).
    • 51 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Quigley Down Under
    Quigley Down Under is an exquisitely crafted, rousing western made in Oz.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hot Spot
    Seeps with atmosphere, unfolds at a deceptively relaxed pace, steadily accumulates noirish grit, then dizzily plunges into a Lynch-like plumbing of the dark passions and nasty secrets at the heart of Main Street, USA.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
    Fans of Winona Ryder will definitely want to catch her in an offbeat role as the town rebel in this teen-oriented smalltown saga; unfortunately, the rest of the production doesn't quite match up.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Memphis Belle
    Offering a romanticized view of heroism drawn from the Hollywood war epic, Memphis Belle is unashamedly commercial. Its moral fabric is thinner than that of other David Puttnam productions.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mr. Destiny
    A heavy-handed, by-the-numbers fantasy about an ordinary Joe who thinks his life would have been different if he'd connected with that all-important pitch in a high school baseball game.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Miller's Crossing
    Substance is here in spades, along with the twisted, brilliantly controlled style on which filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen made a name.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Marked for Death
    This dim-witted revenge yarn is the simplest of showcases for Steven Seagal - an extremely compelling action presence with his brutal martial arts fighting style, imposing size and nasty demeanor.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Henry & June
    In its depiction of Depression Paris and sexual candor, Henry & June succeeds. The central performances of Fred Ward, as the cynical, life-loving Miller, and Maria de Medeiros, as the beautiful, insatiable Anais, splendidly fulfill the director’s vision. Pic is less successful in gaining audience sympathy for these hedonists. Also, the character of June (Uma Thurman) is ill-defined.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Desperate Hours
    Desperate Hours is a coldly mechanical and uninvolving remake of the 1955 Bogart pic The Desperate Hours, with Mickey Rourke as the hood terrorizing a suburban family.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An Angel at My Table
    A potentially painful and harrowing film is imbued with gentle humor and great compassion, which makes every character come vividly alive. Campion constructs the film in a series of short, sometimes elliptical scenes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    King of New York
    Complementing Walken’s bravura turn are equally flamboyant performances by David Caruso as the young Irish cop out to destroy Walken, and Larry Fishburne as Walken’s slightly crazy aide-de-camp.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pacific Heights
    The specter of a menace who invades one's home turf and can't be ousted is universally disturbing, and director John Schlesinger goes all out to make this creepy thriller-chiller as unsettling as it needs to be.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Texasville
    Peter Bogdanovich's sequel to The Last Picture Show is long on folksy humor and short on plot. In adapting Larry McMurtry's 1987 follow-up novel (predecessor was penned in 1965, filmed in 1971), Bogdanovich uses an impending county centennial celebration as the weak spine for this slice of small-town Texas life.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Narrow Margin
    Spectacular stunt work and Canadian locations punch up the train thriller Narrow Margin, but feature remake is too cool and remote to grab the viewer.
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