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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    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Time Bandits
    When you can count the laughs in a comedy on the fingers of one hand, it isn’t so funny. Time Bandits, is a kind of potted history of man, myth and the eternal clash between good and evil as told in the inimitable idiom of Monty Python. Not that the basic premise is bad, with an English youngster and a group of dwarfs passing through time holes on assignment by the Maker to patch up the shoddier parts of His creation. What results, unfortunately, is a hybrid neither sufficiently hair-raising or comical.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Halloween II
    There are incredibly almost never any really terrific scares in 92 minutes - just multiple shots of violence and gore that are more gruesome than anything else.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Looker
    Writer-director Michael Crichton has used interesting material, public manipulation by computer-generated TV commercials, to create Looker, a silly and unconvincing contempo sci-fi thriller.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Quartet
    Director James Ivory takes his usual aloofly observant distance and the film's love triangle loses some drastic impetus.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The French Lieutenant's Woman
    The casting of Meryl Streep as Sarah/Anna could not have been better. Sarah comes complete with unbridled passions and Anna is the cool, detached professional. There is never a false note in the sharply contrasting characters.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Dinner with Andre
    An overlong but mainly captivating conversation, consisting largely of stream of consciousness monologs by Gregory.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Watcher in the Woods
    The acting and writing are barely professional but the art direction, especially Alan Hume’s stunning camerawork, gives the pic a gloss.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paternity
    There are several funny bits in Paternity a harmless enough romantic comedy that strangely has its strongest laughs in its least important scenes.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Enter the Ninja
    Enter the Ninja represents an unusual hybrid action film, an Italian Western-type story filmed as a contemporary Japanese martial arts action film in the Philippines. Results are pleasant though unspectacular.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mommie Dearest
    This is Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford and the results are, well, screen history. Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, costars and all. Much has been written and said pro-and-con about Crawford since daughter Christina wrote the book on which this film is based. Whatever the truth, director Frank Perry’s portrait here is sorry indeed, 129 minutes with a very pathetic and unpleasant individual.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Southern Comfort
    Pic is most exciting as a visual experience, as Walter Hill once again proves himself a consummate filmmaker with a great talent for mood, composition and action choreography.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    True Confessions
    Comes off as relatively mild fare which fails to pack a dramatic or emotional wallop.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    So Fine
    So Fine is quite all right. Andrew Bergman, screenwriter on Blazing Saddles and The In-Laws, has come up with a somewhat less zany concoction this time but makes an impressively sharp directorial debut highlighted by some good bedroom farce.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Continental Divide
    For a picture that you can't really believe for a second, Continental Divide still comes off as a reasonably engaging entertainment thanks to some lively performances and a liberal dose of laughs throughout the script.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Raggedy Man
    This is standard stuff and hardly worth Spacek’s talents.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Haunting of Julia
    Film has a fairly tight script which, in first half at least, builds up scary tensions nicely. There's a performance by Mia Farrow which is somewhat reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby, and enough supernatural trappings to please those who are fascinated by the occult.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gallipoli
    Peter Weir's Gallipoli tackles a legend in human terms and emerges as a highly entertaining drama on a number of levels, none of them inaccessible to anyone unfamiliar with the actual events.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Private Lessons
    Dan Greenburg’s script from his own novel [philly] is very effective in presenting an innocent youth’s point-of-view confronted with the sexual stimuli that pervade modern society. Inability to flesh out this central notion into a feature-length screenplay is a pity, but Private Lessons should satisfy general audiences with its diversions of frequent nudity, softcore sex, dominant rock music score and gags.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An American Werewolf in London
    A clever mixture of comedy and horror which succeeds in being both funny and scary, An American Werewolf in London possesses an overriding eagerness to please that prevents it from becoming off-putting, and special effects freaks get more than their money's worth.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Prince of the City
    The film is a concentrated, unrelievedly serious and cerebrally involving entry, exhaustively detailing the true-life saga of a Gotham detective who turned Justice Dept informer to eke out widespread corruption in his special investigating unit during the 1960s.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They All Laughed
    Rarely does a film come along featuring such an extensive array of attractive characters with whom it is simply a pleasure to spend two hours.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    An Eye for an Eye
    An Eye for an Eye is an effective martial arts actioner vehicle for Chuck Norris.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heavy Metal
    Courtesy of a vastly overlong, relatively unrousing 27-minute end-piece that may be the technical highpoint of the film, but lacks the punch and tightness of the earlier segments, the venture tends to run out of steam. Still, the net effect is an overridingly positive one.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Victory
    Script spends so much effort extolling man’s basic goodness and the values of selflessness, teamwork and fair play, that it frequently softens the action. Fortunately, director John Huston has such a firm grip on the dramatic line that does exist – and works some very good performances from the cast, particularly Caine – that the pic survives intact.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blow Out
    Writer-director Brian De Palma's Blow Out is a frequently exciting $18 million suspense thriller which suffers from a distracting emphasis upon homages to other motion pictures.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wolfen
    Wolfen is consistently more interesting than it is thrilling. Wadleigh creates a surreal point-of-view for the killers that works effectively, accented by handy digital sound.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tarzan the Ape Man
    This endless romp through the jungle, lacking any focus, fun or excitement (sexual or otherwise), seems to exist merely as a reason for husband John to find another 1001 ways to photograph wife Bo in varying stages of undress.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eye of the Needle
    It’s a good yarn, remindful of some of Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang’s wartime mellers as well as Michael Powell’s 1939 tale of a World War I German agent in Scotland, The Spy in Black.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arthur
    Arthur is a sparkling entertainment that attempts, with a large measure of success, to resurrect the amusingly artificial conventions of 1930's screwball romantic comedies.
    • Variety
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Endless Love
    A Cotton-candy rendition of Scott Spencer's powerful novel, Endless Love is a manipulative tale of a doomed romance which careens repeatedly between the credible and the ridiculous.
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