Variety's Scores

For 17,760 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:
17760 movie reviews
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The major asset of the film is that it succeeds in maintaining interest and suspense despite obvious viewer foreknowledge of the outcome.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    After a fumbling start which looks like bad editing for TV, The Last American Hero [based on two articles by Tom Wolfe] settles into some good, gritty, family Americana, with Jeff Bridges excellent as a flamboyant auto racer determined to succeed on his own terms and right a wrong to his father, played expertly by Art Lund.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cleopatra Jones is a good programmer with the offbeat twist of having a sexy woman detective as the lead character. The script incorporates a slew of action set pieces, capably directed by Jack Starrett.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wayne carries out characterization realistically and gets firm support right down the line.
  1. The most significant Bond ingredient missing from Live and Let Die is Q, whose gadgets still play a central role. The film also offers a few key additions, including an illuminating glimpse of Bond’s home.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A very fine film about real people on the fringes of both crime and law enforcement.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tati is not an active satirist nor does he use slapstick. He has assimilated the greats but is an individual comic talent who builds meticulous gags founded on a gentle, anarchic individualism that is always sympathetic, personal and, above all, funny and constantly inventive.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pace is sometimes reduced during events sandwiched in between actual gunfire sequences of Dillinger’s career, but there can be no criticism of Milius’ ability to keep such action sequences at top-heat.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Richard Matheson's scripting of his novel Hell House builds into an exceptionally realistic and suspenseful tale of psychic phenomena.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Coburn offers more of his smiles as testimony to the wizardry of Old West dentistry, while Kristofferson ambles through his role with solid charm. Neither conveys the psychological tension felt between the two men whose lives diverge after years of camaraderie.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There's a powerful confrontation of authority and accused between police sergeant Sean Connery and suspected child molester Ian Bannen in Sidney Lumet's The Offence. A brilliant scene, however, does not in itself make for a brilliant overall feature.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The somewhat plausible and proximate horrors in the story of Soylent Green carry the production over its awkward spots to the status of a good futuristic exploitation film.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ryan O'Neal stars as a likeable con artist in the Depression midwest, and his real-life daughter, Tatum O'Neal, is outstanding as his nine-year-old partner in flim-flam.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jack Hill, who wrote and directs with an action-atuned hand, inserts plenty of realism in footage in which Pam Grier in title role ably acquits herself.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Despite its anachronistic emulation of mid-1960s cynical spy mellers, Scorpio might have been an acceptable action programmer if its narrative were clearer, its dialog less 'cultured' and its visuals more straightforward.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Scarecrow is a periodically interesting but ultimately unsatisfying character study of two modern drifters.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Theatre of Blood is black comedy played for chills and mood and emerges a macabre piece of wild melodramatics.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sisters is a good psychological murder melo- drama, starring Margot Kidder as the schizoid half of Siamese twins, and Jennifer Salt as a news hen driven to terror in her investigation of a bloody murder. Brian De Palma's direction emphasizes exploitation values which do not fully mask script weakness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Original production’s appealing aspects have remained intact – a strong Stephen Schwartz score and an infectious joie de vivre conveyed by an energetic, no-name cast. So also, unfortunately, have its flaws – a relentlessly simplistic approach to the New Testament interpreted in overbearing children’s theatre-style mugging.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Robert Altman's film version of Raymond Chandler's novel is an uneven mixture of insider satire on the gumshow film genre, gratuitous brutality, and sledgehammer whimsy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heartwarming entertainment.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Train Robbers is an above-average John Wayne actioner, written and directed by Burt Kennedy with suspense, comedy and humanism not usually found in the formula.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris is an uneven, convoluted, certainly dispute-provoking study of sexual passion in which Marlon Brando gives a truly remarkable performance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elaine May’s deft direction catches all the possibilities of young romance and its tribulations in light strokes and cleverly accents characterization of the various principals.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The overkill and the underdone do it in.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Getaway has several things going for it: Sam Peckinpah's hard-action direction, this time largely channeled into material destruction, although fast-cut human bloodlettings occur frequently enough, and Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw as stars.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Poseidon Adventure is a highly imaginative and lustily-produced meller that socks over the dramatic struggle of 10 passengers to save themselves after an ocean liner capsizes when struck by a mammoth tidal wave created by a submarine earthquake.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's a trim little chiller, with a moderate quota of blood and mayhem, polished performances and smooth direction.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Michael Winner keeps the tempo at fever-pitch despite deficiencies of feature’s opening sequences.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The film serves as a very good screen debut vehicle for Diana Ross, supported strongly by excellent casting, handsome 1930s physical values, and a script which is far better in dialog than structure.

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