Variety's Scores

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For 17,765 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: 9,125 out of 17765
  2. Mixed: 7,004 out of 17765
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17765
17765 movie reviews
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    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where Eagles Dare
    Highly entertaining, thrilling and rarely lets down for a moment.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity is, in short, a terrific musical film. Based on the 1966 legituner [by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, based on Federico Fellini's film, Nights of Cabiria], extremely handsome and plush production accomplishes everything it sets out to do.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Night They Raided Minsky's
    Norman Lear's period peek at a peculiarly American form of entertainment - burlesque - is most successful in its art direction and nostalgic recapturing of New York's lower East Side during its most hoydenish period.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Red Beard
    It's hokum lifted to the highest denominator, the banal made into near art by great skill and craftsmanship by the Japanese master.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
    Howes goes through the romantic motions with Van Dyke and the maternal ones with the kids, but there is no real sentiment between players.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oliver!
    It’s a bright, shiny, heartwarming musical, packed with songs and lively production highspots and, though the leading performances are not all up to the Lean mark, if memory serves it’s a fine enough thesping ensemble to keep exhibitors and audience enthusiastic.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Faces
    Faces is a long, long (at least an hour too long) look at a 36-hour splitup in the 14-year marriage of a middle-class couple. At least John Cassavetes, who also wrote the screenplay, describes them as middle-class.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yellow Submarine
    This is a full length animated cartoon in which the prime factor is the appearance of the Beatles in caricature form. Here are all the ingredients of a novel entertainment.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ice Station Zebra
    Action develops slowly, alternating with some excellent submarine interior footage, and good shots – of diving, surfacing and maneuvering under an ice field.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vixen!
    Russ Meyer’s film is another of his technically polished sexplicit dramas, this time free of physical violence and brutality, and hyped with some awkwardly developed draft-dodging and patriotism angles.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bullitt
    Conflict between police sleuthing and political expediency is the essence of Bullitt, an extremely well-made crime melodrama [from Robert L. Pike's novel Mute Witness] filmed in Frisco. Steve McQueen delivers a very strong performance as a detective seeking a man whom Robert Vaughn, ambitious politico, would exploit for selfish motives. Good scripting and excellent direction by Peter Yates maintain deliberately low-key but mounting suspense.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boston Strangler
    The Boston Strangler, based on Gerold Frank's book, emerges as a triumph of taste and restraint with a telling, low-key semi-documentary style. Adaptation is topnotch not only in structure but also in the incisive, spare dialog which defines neatly over 100 speaking parts.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Barbarella
    Despite a certain amount of production dash and polish and a few silly-funny lines of dialog, Barbarella isn’t very much of a film. Based on what has been called an adult comic strip, the Dino De Laurentiis production is flawed with a cast that is not particularly adept at comedy, a flat script, and direction which can’t get this beached whale afloat.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Finian's Rainbow
    Overall, the $4 million film has an ethereal quality: it’s a blend of real elements, such as love, greed, compassion, prejudice, and other aspects of human nature both noble and otherwise; yet it’s also infused with mystical elements of magic, leprechauns, pixies and wishes that come true.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Romeo and Juliet
    Rarely will audiences be moved to throat-gulping by the plight of the young couple. For all Hussey’s prettiness and Whiting’s shy charm it is clear that they do not understand one tenth of the meaning of their lines and it is a drawback from which the film cannot recover.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shalako
    The film is a slow starter while the various characters are being established and has an over-abrupt and inconclusive ending. Intriguing are the relationships between members of the hunting party.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Night of the Living Dead
    Although pic’s basic premise is repellent – recently dead bodies are resurrected and begin killing human beings in order to eat their flesh – it is in execution that the film distastefully excels.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Charly
    Considering the innumerable stumbling blocks, cast does well. Cliff Robertson seems to overdo the external manifestations of retardation, but he is excellent in the post-operative scenes. With more help from the script he could have been a movingly tragic figure.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Funny Girl
    Barbra Streisand in her Hollywood debut makes a marked impact.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Who's That Knocking at My Door?
    Zina Bethune, as the girl, is believable but Harvey Keitel, as the anti-hero, is alternatively boorish or bewildered. Scorsese occasionally brings the film to life.... Generally, however, his script and direction lack any dramatic value and give far too much exposure to sexual fantasies on the part of the boy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rachel, Rachel
    Rachel, Rachel is a low-key melodrama starring Joanne Woodward as a spinster awakening to life. Produced austerely by Paul Newman, who also directs with an uncertain hand, it marks Newman's feature debut in these non-acting capacities. Offbeat film moves too slowly to an upbeat, ironic climax.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hang 'Em High
    Hang 'em High comes across as a poor-made imitation of a poor Italian-made imitation of an American western.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Inspector Clouseau
    Film is a lively, entertaining and episodic story of bank robbers. Good scripting, better acting and topnotch direction get the most out of the material.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Thomas Crown Affair
    the Norman Jewison film tells a crackerjack story, well-tooled, professionally crafted and fashioned with obvious meticulous care. McQueen is neatly cast as the likeable, but lonely heavy. Dunaway makes an excellent detective who gradually develops a conflict of interests regarding her prey. The only message in this film is: enjoy it.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rosemary's Baby
    Several exhilarating milestones are achieved in Rosemary's Baby, an excellent film version of Ira Levin's diabolical chiller novel. Writer-director Roman Polanski has triumphed in his first US-made pic. The film holds attention without explicit violence or gore.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Odd Couple
    The Odd Couple, Neil Simon's smash legit comedy, has been turned into an excellent film starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Simon's somewhat expanded screenplay retains the broad, as well as the poignant, laughs inherent in the rooming together of two men whose marriages are on the rocks.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Planet of the Apes
    Planet of the Apes is an amazing film. A political-sociological allegory, cast in the mold of futuristic science-fiction, it is an intriguing blend of chilling satire, a sometimes ludicrous juxtaposition of human and ape mores, optimism and pessimism.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    2001: A Space Odyssey
    A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark; Kubrick must receive all the praise - and take all the blame.
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