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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    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Godfather
    Overlong at about 175 minutes (played without intermission), and occasionally confusing. While never so placid as to be boring, it is never so gripping as be superior screen drama.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Pink Flamingos
    Around the above premise spins the nitwit plot of the poorly lensed 16mm picture Pink Flamingos – one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    Slaughterhouse-Five is a mechanically slick, dramatically sterile commentary about World War II and afterward, as seen through the eyes of a boob Everyman. Director George Roy Hill's arch achievement emphasizes the diffused cant to the detriment of characterizations, which are stiff, unsympathetic and skin-deep.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frogs
    Cast is generally firstclass and Milland’s presence, though comparatively brief, is always commanding.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Silent Running
    Silent Running depends on the excellent special effects of debuting director Douglas Trumbull and his team and on the appreciation of a literate but broadly entertaining script. Those being the highlights, they are virtually wiped out by the crucial miscasting of Bruce Dern. Production lacks dramatic credibility and teeters on the edge of the ludicrous.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What's Up, Doc?
    The script and cast are excellent; the direction and comedy staging are outstanding; and there are literally reels of pure, unadulterated and sustained laughs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cabaret
    It is literate, bawdy, sophisticated, sensual, cynical, heart-warming, and disturbingly thought-provoking.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hot Rock
    Peter Yates’ direction and uniformly good cast partly overcome a William Goldman script [from Donald E. Westlake’s novel] that has many exciting and funny bits, but lacks a clear, unifying thrust.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Cowboys
    The story [from a novel by William Dale Jennings] is long and episodic, and its gentle treatment makes the length something of a hindrance to maximum enjoyment.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirty Harry
    Strip away the philosophical garbage and all that's left is a well-made but shallow running-and-jumping meller. Don Siegel produces handsomely and directs routinely.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Straw Dogs
    Director Sam Peckinpah indulges himself in an orgy of unparalleled violence and nastiness with undertones of sexual repression in this production.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mary, Queen of Scots
    A large cast of excellent players appears to good advantage under the direction of Charles Jarrott. Superior production details and the cast help overcome an episodic, rambling story.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kidnapped
    An intriguing adventure piece set against that period in Scottish history when the English were trying to take over that country's rule.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Minnie and Moskowitz
    Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel play the title roles in Minnie And Moskowitz, an oppressive and irritating film in which a shrill and numbing hysteria of acting and direction soon kills any empathy for the loneliness of the main characters. John Cassavetes wrote and directed in his now-familiar home-movie improvisational and indulgent style.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Clockwork Orange
    A brilliant nightmare... The film employs outrageous vulgarity, stark brutality and some sophisticated comedy to make an opaque argument for the preservation of respect for man's free will - even to do wrong.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Harold and Maude
    Director Hal Ashby’s second feature is marked by a few good gags, but marred by a greater preponderance of sophomoric, overdone and mocking humor.
  17. Diamonds Are Forever
    Whatever connection Bond had to the real world has now been severed in favor of delivering the most satisfying possible experience for audiences, such as a throwaway scene of Q using an electromagnetic device to beat the slot machines or allowing homosexual henchmen Wint and Kidd to devise elaborate (and yet easily escapable) traps.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hospital
    The heavily sprayed-on sociological angle is that hospitals today treat patients like baggage.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bedknobs and Broomsticks
    The magic of Walt Disney lingers magnificently on in Bed knobs and Broomsticks.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nicholas and Alexandra
    Sam Spiegel comes up with a rarity: the intimate epic, in telling the fascinating story of the downfall of the Romanovs.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Play Misty for Me
    When it’s not serving as an overdone travelog for the Monterey Peninsula-Carmel home environment of star, producer and debuting director Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me is an often fascinating suspenser about psychotic Jessica Walter, whose deranged infatuation for Eastwood leads her to commit murder. For that 80% of the film which constitutes the story, the structure and dialog create a mood of nervous terror which the other 20% nearly blows away.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    200 Motels
    The film is a series of surrealistic sequences allegedly inspired by the experiences of a rock group on the road. The incidents are often outrageously irreverent. The comedy is fast and furious, both sophisticated and sophomoric.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Sentimental in a theatrical way, romantic in the old fashioned way, nostalgic of immigration days, affirmative of human decency, loyalty, bravery and folk humor.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Last Picture Show
    Notre Dame professor Edward Fischer has said that the best films, like the best books, tell how it is to be human under certain circumstances. Larry McMurtry did a beautiful job of this in his small novel (which he transferred to the screen), The Last Picture Show.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Daughters of Darkness
    Daughters of Darkness is so intentionally perverse that it often slips into impure camp, but Kumel and Seyrig hold interest by piling twists on every convention of the vampire genre.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The French Connection
    Producer and screenwriter have added enough fictional flesh to provide director William Friedkin and his overall topnotch cast with plenty of material, and they make the most of it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lawman
    Lancaster, as usual, is a highly convincing marshal, tough and taciturn. Ryan is also excellent as the faded, weak marshal with only memories. But it’s Cobb who quietly steals the film as the local boss who, however, unlike in many such films, is no ruthless villain.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Omega Man
    The Omega Man is an extremely literate science-fiction drama starring Charlton Heston as the only survivor of a worldwide bacteriological war, circa 1975. Thrust of the well-written story [adapted from Richard Matheson's novel] is Heston's running battle with deranged survivors headed by Anthony Zerbe.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Willard
    Some good jump moments and at least two stomach-churning murders committed by the rats with tight direction of Daniel Mann develop pic into sound nail-chewer.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Red Tent
    Some spectacularly beautiful Arctic footage, plus an exciting personal story of survival, make the production compelling and suspenseful.
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