Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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    • 30 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
    Writer-director Tom McLoughlin, who made the scare entry One Dark Night, puts comic spin on some of the predictable material and turns in a reasonably slick performance under the circumstances.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Maximum Overdrive
    Master manipulator Stephen King, making his directoral debut from his own script, fails to create a convincing enough environment to make the kind of nonsense he's offering here believable or fun.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heartburn
    Heartburn is a beautifully crafted film with flawless performances and many splendid moments, yet the overall effect is a bit disappointing. Where the film does excel is in creating the surface and texture of their life.
    • Variety
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Haunted Honeymoon
    Pic provokes a few chuckles along the way, but no guffaws.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aliens
    James Cameron's vault into the big time after scoring with the exploitation actioner The Terminator makes up for lack of surprise with sheer volume of thrills and chills - emphasis is decidedly on the plural aspect of the title.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pirates
    Roman Polanski's Pirates is a decidedly underwhelming comedy adventure adding up to a major disappointment.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Club Paradise
    Williams can be a terrific actor/comedian, but the spark isn’t there. Somehow, Murray might have come up with cleverer ways of getting back at complaining guests (Andrea Martin, Steven Kampmann), nerdy, sex-crazed weaklings (Rick Moranis and Eugene Levy, respectively) and the other expected amalgam of folks.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    About Last Night...
    Film lacks much of Mamet's grittiness, but is likable in its own right.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big Trouble in Little China
    Director John Carpenter seems to be trying to make an action-adventure along the lines of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The effect goes horribly awry.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Psycho III
    A few amusing little notions are streched to the point of diminishing returns in Psycho III.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Under the Cherry Moon
    In Under the Cherry Moon, Prince tries to direct too, giving himself a lot of closeups kissing but hardly any of him singing. What is left is a trite story about a rich girl and a poor musician (Prince) that's set on the Riviera and shot in, of all things, black and white.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ruthless People
    Ruthless People is a hilariously venal comedy about a kidnapped harridan whose rich husband won’t pay for her return.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Running Scared
    Nonstop banter between the two stars is rowdy, intimate, natural and often very funny. Hyams keeps most of it fresh, including the action ending, staged within one of Chicago’s architectural spectacles, the cavernous, glass-enclosed Illinois State Building.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Karate Kid Part II
    Script delivers any number of wise old Eastern homilies. Anyone over the age of 18 is liable to start fidgeting when Macchio dominates the action, but then viewers beyond that advanced age are irrelevant with this film.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Legal Eagles
    Loss of intrigue with a scattered plot involving art fraud and murder is made up for by an often witty, albeit lightweight dialog led by the ever-boyish star Robert Redford.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Manhattan Project
    A warm, comedy-laced doomsday story. Using clever one-liners and many humorous situations, Brickman manages successfully to sugarcoat the story’s serious message.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mona Lisa
    A pic that skillfully combines comedy and thriller, romance and sleaze
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ferris Bueller's Day Off
    Paucity of invention here lays bare the total absence of plot or involving situations.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Raw Deal
    Comic book crime meller suffers from an irredeemably awful script, and even director John Irvin’s engaging sense of how absurd the proceedings are can’t work an alchemist’s magic.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Invaders from Mars
    Tobe Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars is an embarrassing combination of kitsch and boredom.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jake Speed
    Jake Speed is fun - a deliberately mindless adventure that keeps tongue firmly in cheek.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cobra
    Cobra is a sleek, extremely violent and exciting police thriller.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Poltergeist II: The Other Side
    This time around, co-scripters Mark Victor and Michael Grais (who wrote the first Poltergeist with Steven Spielberg) have the focus of evil in human form, in the perfectly cast, since deceased, Julian Beck.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Top Gun
    Set in the world of naval fighter pilots, pic has strong visuals and pretty young people in stylish clothes and a non-stop soundtrack.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Three Men and a Cradle
    Coline Serreau's comedy about three hardened bachelors saddled with a newborn baby, produced on a modest budget and without bankable talent, is warm, hilarious and well-made. Serreau's direction is bright and confident, avoiding the saccharine pitfalls of the material.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    8 Million Ways to Die
    What could have been a better film delving into complexities of one tough-but-vulnerable alcoholic sheriff out to bust a cocaine ring, instead ends up an oddly-paced work that is sometimes a thriller and sometimes a love story, succeeding at neither.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Salvador
    The tale of American photojournalist Richard Boyle’s adventures in strife-torn Central America, Salvador is as raw, difficult, compelling, unreasonable, reckless and vivid as its protagonist.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Legend
    Legend is a fairytale produced on a grand scale, set in some timeless world and peopled with fairies, elves and goblins, plus a spectacularly satisfying Satan. At the same time, the basic premise is alarmingly thin, a compendium of any number of ancient fairytales.
    • Variety
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At Close Range
    Audiences will respond to the very strong performances of the two leads, especially Walken in one of his best roles.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolute Beginners
    Absolute Beginners is a terrifically inventive original musical for the screen. Daring attempt to portray the birth of teenagedom in London, 1958, almost exclusively through song is based upon Colin MacInnes' cult novel about teen life and pop fashion in the percolating moments just before the youth cultural explosion in the early 1960s.
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