Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Futureworld
    Futureworld is a strong sequel to Westworld in which the rebuilt pleasure dome aims at world conquest by extending the robot technology to duplicating business and political figures.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Obsession
    Robertson’s low-key performance is as crucial to the manifold surprise impact as Bujold’s versatile, sensual and effervescent charisma.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    To the Devil a Daughter
    Based on a novel by English author Dennis Wheatley, the picture makes a few too many pretensions to serious exploration of the occult, that hamper the flow.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Gumball Rally
    The Gumball Rally is a silly forced, one-note and strident comedy about a cross-country auto race by a bunch of formula-kooky characters. Former stunt coordinator Chuck Bail produced and directed but he didn't have much of a plot.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lifeguard
    An unsatisfying film, of uncertain focus on a 30-ish guy who doesn't yet seem to know what he wants. Script takes Sam Elliott through another Southern California beach summer as a career lifeguard, encountering the usual string of offbeat characters found in the type of made-for-TV feature which this project resembles.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cannonball!
    Cannoball will please those who won’t rest until they see every car in creation destroyed and aflame.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shivers
    A silly but moderately effective chiller about creeping parasites that systematically (and comically) 'infect' an entire highrise population with nothing less than sexual hysteria.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Outlaw Josey Wales
    The screenplay [based on the book Gone to Texas by Forrest Carter] is another one of those violence revues, with carnage production numbers slotted every so often and intercut with Greek chorus narratives by John Vernon and Chief Dan George.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Tenant
    A tale of a paranoid breakdown of a little bureaucratic clerk that wastes no time in trying to be clinical. It has a humorous tang, underlying the macabre. (Review of original release)
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Omen
    Suspenser starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as the unwitting parents of the Antichrist. Richard Donner's direction is taut. Players all are strong.
    • Variety
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
    It appears that the idea here is to expose and debunk the Buffalo Bill legend, revealing it for the promotional distortion which, in some ways, it most certainly has to have been.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Logan's Run
    Logan's Run is a rewarding futuristic film that appeals both as spectacular-looking escapist adventure as well as intelligent drama.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Murder by Death
    A very good silly-funny Neil Simon satirical comedy, with a super all-star cast.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Midway
    The June 1942 sea-air battle off Midway Island was a turning point in World War II. However, the melee of combat was the usual hysterical jumble of noise, explosion and violent death. Midway tries to combine both aspects but succumbs to the confusion.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silent Movie
    The slender plot of Silent Movie [from a story by Ron Clark] is basically a hook for slapstick antics, some feeble and some very fine (notably a wonderful nightclub tango with Anne Bancroft). Harry Ritz, Charlie Callas, Henny Youngman, and the late Liam Dunn are standouts.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Last Hard Men
    The Last Hard Men is a fairly good actioner with handsome production values and some thoughtful overtones. Charlton Heston and James Coburn are both fine as a retired lawman and his half-Indian nemesis matching their wits in 1909 Arizona along the way to one last bloody confrontation.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Missouri Breaks
    The trouble with The Missouri Breaks is that one is seriously drawn to it on its upfront elements, but leaves with a depressing sense of waste. As a film achievement it’s corned beef and ham hash.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    That's Entertainment, Part II
    That's Entertainment, Part II is a knockout. The very handsome and polished sequel to That's Entertainment! transforms excerpts from perhaps $100 million worth of classic Metro library footage into a billion dollars worth of fun, excitement, amusement, escapism, fantasy, nostalgia and happiness.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stay Hungry
    Underneath it all is a lurching and poorly defined film concept.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All the President's Men
    Some ingenious direction by Alan J. Pakula and scripting by William Goldman remove much of the inherent dramatic lethargy in any story of reporters running down a story.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Family Plot
    Family Plot is a dazzling achievement for Alfred Hitchcock masterfully controlling shifts from comedy to drama thoughout a highly complex plot. Witty screenplay, transplanting Victor Canning's British novel, The Rainbird Pattern, to a California setting, is a model of construction, and the cast is uniformly superb.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Bad News Bears
    The Bad News Bears is an extremely funny adult-child comedy film. Walter Matthau stars to perfection as a bumbling baseball coach in the sharp production about the foibles and follies of little-league athletics.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Lipstick
    Lipstick has pretensions of being an intelligent treatment of the tragedy of female rape. But by the time it's over, the film has shown its true colors as just another cynical violence exploitationer.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Robin and Marian
    Robin and Marian is a disappointing and embarrassing film: disappointing, because Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, the brilliant Robert Shaw, Richard Harris and a screenplay by James Goldman ought to add up to something even in the face of Richard Lester's flat direction; embarrassing, because the incompatible blend of tongue-in-cheek comedy, adventure and romance gives the Robin Hood-revisited film the grace and energy of a geriatrics' discotheque.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
    True to form, John Cassavetes challenges a Hollywood cliche: that technology is so advanced even the worst films usually look good. With ease, he proves that an awful film can look even worse.
  26. Taxi Driver
    It’s a powerful film, an excellent credit for Scorsese, and a terrific showcase for the versatility of star Robert De Niro.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dog Day Afternoon
    The entire cast is excellent, top to bottom. Dog Day Afternoon is, in the whole as well as the parts, film-making at its best.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hustle
    The film’s drawbacks are simply a lack of some restraint, since otherwise all the elements are present for a sensational, hardhitting human story.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Killer Elite
    The Killer Elite is an okay Sam Peckinpah actioner starring James Caan and Robert Duvall as two modern mercenaries who wind up stalking each other in a boringly complex double-cross plot [from the novel by Robert Rostand].
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Barry Lyndon
    Ryan O'Neal's excellent performance captures the shallow opportunism endemic to the title character who is brought down as much by his own flaws as by the mores of the ordered social structure of 18th-century England. Casting, concept and execution are all superb.
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