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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Meaning of Life
    Gross, silly, caustic, tasteless and obnoxious are all adjectives that alternately apply to Monty Python's The Meaning of Life though probably the most appropriate description would simply be funny.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Outsiders
    Francis Coppola has made a well acted and crafted but highly conventional film out of S.E. Hinton's popular youth novel, The Outsiders.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    The Black Stallion Returns
    The Black Stallion Returns is little more than a contrived, cornball story that most audiences will find to be an interminable bore.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bad Boys
    Bad Boys is a troubling and often riveting drama about juvenile delinquency. Director Rick Rosenthal does a topnotch job of bringing to life the seedy, hopeless environment of a jail for juvenile offenders and has gotten some terribly convincing performances from his young cast, notably topliner Sean Penn.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Road to China
    High Road to China is a lot of old-fashioned fun, revived for Tom Selleck after his TV schedule kept him from taking the Harrison Ford role in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ford clearly got the better deal because China just isn't as tense and exciting.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    10 to Midnight
    William Roberts’ screenplay, while it sags in the middle, is damnably clever at dropping in its vicious vigilante theme without being didactic, and J. Lee Thompson’s direction, borrowing from Hitchcock’s editing in Psycho, creates the full horror of blades thrusting into naked bellies without the viewer ever actually seeing it happen.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Gandhi
    Once in a long while a motion picture so eloquently expressive and technically exquisite comes along that one is tempted to hail it as being near perfect. Such a film is Gandhi.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pirates of Penzance
    With the exception of Angela Lansbury, entertaining as the pirates’ nursemaid and aide-de-combat, all principal cast members have repeated their Broadway performances here, and in exemplary fashion.
  10. Local Hero
    While modest in intent and gentle in feel, Local Hero is loaded with wry, offbeat humor and is the sort of satisfying, personal picture that is becoming an increasingly rare commodity these days.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Videodrome
    Film is dotted with video jargon and ideology which proves more fascinating than distancing. And Cronenberg amplifies the freaky situation with a series of stunning visual effects. (Review of Original Release)
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Year of Living Dangerously
    Here is an astonishing feat of acting by New Yorker Linda Hunt, cast by Weir because he could not locate a short male actor to fit the bill. A bizarre, yet touching, romantic triangle develops between Gibson, Hunt, and Sigourney Weaver as a British Embassy official.
  13. Tootsie
    Remarkably funny and entirely convincing, film pulls off the rare accomplishment of being an in-drag comedy which also emerges with three-dimensional characters.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Frances
    Rare to the memory is a film like Frances which runs 140 minutes and its star is on the screen 85% of the time in one intense scene after another. It’s quite an accomplishment for Jessica Lange and it’s too bad a better film didn’t come of it.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Trail of the Pink Panther
    A patchwork of out-takes, reprised clips and new connective footage, Trail of the Pink Panther is a thin, peculiar picture unsupported by the number of laughs one is accustomed to in this series. Stitched together after Peter Sellers' death, this is by a long way the slightest of the six Inspector Clouseau efforts.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Dark Crystal
    The Dark Crystal, besides being a dazzling technological and artistic achievement by a band of talented artists and performers, presents a dark side of Muppet creators Jim Henson and Frank Oz that could teach a lesson in morality to youngsters at the same time it is entertaining their parents.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Verdict
    There are many fine performances and sensitive moral issues contained in The Verdict but somehow that isn't enough to make it the compelling film it should be. David Mamet's script [from a novel by Barry Reed] offers little out of the ordinary.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Best Friends
    Best Friends is probably not the light romantic comedy audiences expect from a Burt Reynolds-Goldie Hawn screen pairing but is nevertheless a very engaging film.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Honkytonk Man
    Honkytonk Man is one of those well-intentioned efforts that doesn't quite work. It seems that Clint Eastwood took great pains in telling this story of an aging, struggling country singer but he is done in by the predictability of the script [from Clancy Carlile's own novel] and his own limitations as a warbler.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Airplane II: The Sequel
    It can’t be said that Airplane II is no better or worse than its predecessor. It is far worse, but might seem funnier had there been no original.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    48 Hrs.
    48Hrs. is a very efficient action entertainment which serves as a showy motion picture debut for Eddie Murphy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sophie's Choice
    Sophie's Choice is a handsome, doggedly faithful and astoundingly tedious adaptation of William Styron's best-seller.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Last Unicorn
    The Last Unicorn represents a rare example of an animated kids' pic in which the script and vocal performances outshine the visuals.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Still of the Night
    It comes as almost a shock to see a modern suspense picture that's as literate, well acted and beautifully made as Still Of The Night. Despite its many virtues, however, Robert Benton's film [from a story by him and David Newman] has its share of serious flaws, mainly in the area of plotting.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Slumber Party Massacre
    Out of traditional horror material consisting of red herrings, sudden shock movements into frame, etc, helmer Amy Jones develops some very stylish sequences.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Creepshow
    George Romero, collaborating with writer Stephen King, again proves his adeptness at combining thrills with tongue-in-cheek humor.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Five Days One Summer
    An attempt at an intimate personal drama that just doesn't come off, Five Days One Summer is so slow that it seems more like Five Summers One Day.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Piranha Part Two: The Spawning
    This is a routine monster film, unrelated to Joe Dante’s 1978 Piranha. Idiotic premise has US government genetic engineering experiments creating a deadly form of grunions (hinted at being used in the Vietnam war).
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Man from Snowy River
    A rattling good adventure story, inspired by a legendary poem [by A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson] which nearly every Australian had drummed into him as a child, filmed in spectacularly rugged terrain in the Great Dividing Ranges in Victoria.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    First Blood
    Director Ted Kotcheff has all sorts of trouble with this mess, aside from credibility. Supposedly, the real villain here is society itself, which invented a debacle like Vietnam and must now deal with its lingering tragedies. But First Blood cops out completely on that one, not even trying to find a solution to Stallone's problems.
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