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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    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pee-wee's Big Adventure
    Children should love the film and adults will be dismayed by the light brushstrokes with which Paul Reubens (one of three credited screenwriters, but star-billed under his stage name, Pee-wee Herman) suggests touches of Buster Keaton and Eddie Cantor.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Real Genius
    What lifts the production above the run-of-the-mill is swift direction by Martha Coolidge, who has a firm grasp over the manic material.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Weird Science
    Hughes’ true gift is at capturing the naturalistic rhythms and interaction between the boys with a great ear for dialog. Le Brock is just right as the film’s calm but commanding center.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Hills Have Eyes Part II
    It’s dull, formula terror pic cliches, with one attractive teenager after another picked off by the surviving cannibals.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fright Night
    Director Tom Holland keeps the picture wonderfully simple and entirely believable (once the existence of vampires is accepted, of course).
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Follow That Bird
    Simple premise has the slightly goofy yellow, eight-foot fowl Big Bird taken away from Sesame Street by the officious Miss Finch so he can grow up among his own kind, a bird family named the Dodos, in Oceanview, Ill.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Some will find him (Hurt) mesmerizing, others artificially lowkeyed.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    National Lampoon's European Vacation
    Story [by John Hughes] of a frenetic, chaotic tour of the Old World, with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo reprising their roles as determined vacationers, is graceless and only intermittently lit up by lunacy and satire.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Black Cauldron
    By any hard measure, the $25 million animated Cauldron is not very original. The characters, though cute and cuddly and sweet and mean and ugly and simply awful, don't really have much to do that would remain of interest to any but the youngest minds.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Day of the Dead
    Day of the Dead is an unsatisfying part three in George A. Romero's zombie saga. The acting here is generally unimpressive and in the case of Sarah's romantic partner, Miguel (Antonio DiLeo, Jr.), unintentionally risible.
    • Variety
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Coca-Cola Kid
    The mix of earthy symbolism, offbeat eroticism, the picaresque and the rough-and-tumble social, rather unpolitical satire now seems poured from a bottle that has been left uncapped overnight.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Explorers
    Throughout, director Joe Dante and writer Eric Luke load the proceedings with references to sci-fiers of an earlier day, such as War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, Journey to the Center of the Earth and many others, but this is nothing compared to what happens when the trio of youngsters finally take off into outer space and make contact with an alien race.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silverado
    Rather than relying on legendary heroes of Westerns past, writer-director Lawrence Kasdan with his brother Mark have used their special talent to create a slew of human scale characters against a dramatic backdrop borrowing from all the conventions of the genre.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
    Gibson impressively fleshes out Max, Tina Turner is striking in her role as Aunty (as well as contributing two topnotch songs, which open and close the picture) and the juves are uniformly good.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Back to the Future
    Performances by the earnest Fox, the lunatic Lloyd, the deceptively passionate Lea Thompson, and, particularly, the bumbling-to-confident Glover, who runs away with the picture, merrily keep the ship sailing.
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pale Rider
    It’s all been seen before, but Eastwood serves it up with authority, fine craftsmanship and a frequent sense of fun. This film is graced not only by an excellent visual look and confident storytelling, but by a few fine performances, led by Eastwood’s own.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    St. Elmo's Fire
    Beyond occasional mutterings of words like ‘love’ and ‘beer,’ there’s never any explanation in the dialog that would hint at motivation.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cocoon
    A fountain of youth fable [from a novel by David Saperstein] which imaginatively melds galaxy fantasy with the lives of aging mortals in a Florida retirement home, Cocoon weaves a mesmerizing tale.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lifeforce
    Pic [from the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson] descends into subpar Agatha Christie territory.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prizzi's Honor
    Picture is a stretch for Nicholson, who speaks in a street-tough, accented gangster-ese that initially takes some getting used to, but shortly becomes totally convincing. Turner manages to use her loveliness to jolting results.
  22. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
    Miyazaki’s first hit fascinates as a glimpse into the master’s then-developing style, even when the final-act storytelling gets woozy.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Goonies
    Territory is typical small town Steven Spielberg; this time set in a coastal community in Oregon. Story is told from the kids' point-of-view and takes a rather long time to be set in motion.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Perfect
    Set in the world of journalism, pic is guilty of the sins it condemns - superficiality, manipulation and smugness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fletch
    What propels this contempo LA yarn about a dissembling newspaper columnist on the trail of a nefarious con man (Tim Matheson) is the obvious and successful byplay between Chevy Chase’s sly, glib persona and the satiric brushstrokes of director Michael Ritchie. Their teamwork turns an otherwise hair-pinned, anecdotal plot into a breezy, peppy frolic and a tour de force for Chase.
  26. A View to a Kill
    This jokey tone couldn’t be more different from the relative self-seriousness of helmer John Glen’s first 007 directing effort, For Your Eyes Only, and frankly, I yearn for more of that class.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rambo: First Blood Part II
    The charade on the screen, which is not pulled off, is to accept that the underdog Rambo character, albeit with the help of an attractive machine-gun wielding Vietnamese girl (Julia Nickson), can waste hordes of Vietcong and Red Army contingents enroute to hauling POWs to a Thai air base in a smoking Russian chopper with only a facial scar (from a branding iron-knifepoint) marring his tough figure.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Brewster's Millions
    It’s hard to believe a comedy starring Richard Pryor and John Candy is no funnier than this one is, but director Walter Hill has overwhelmed the intricate genius of each with constant background action, crowd confusions and other endless distractions.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trancers
    Only Hunt in the femme role breaks through a script that rarely rings new.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Code of Silence
    Code of Silence is a predictability cacophonous cops-and-crooks yarn [by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack] that is actually quite good for the type.
    • Variety
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