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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    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Donovan's Reef
    Donovan's Reef, for a director of John Ford's stature, is a potboiler. Where Ford aficianados will squirm is during that occasional scene that reminds them this effort-less effort is the handiwork of the men who made Stagecoach and The Informer.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Irma la Douce
    Two hours and 23 minutes is an awfully long haul for a frivolous farce.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hud
    Hud is a near miss. Where it falls short of the mark is in its failure to filter its meaning and theme lucidly through its characters and story.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dr. No
    First screen adventure of Ian Fleming's hardhitting, fearless, imperturbable, girl-loving Secret Service Agent 007, James Bond, is an entertaining piece of tongue-in-cheek action hokum. Sean Connery excellently puts over a cool, fearless, on-the-ball, fictional Secret Service guy. Terence Young directs with a pace which only occasionally lags.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sanjuro
    The charm of this fascinating Toho production, stylishly directed by Akira Kurosawa, is the personality of the hero, powerfully played by Toshiro Mifune.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Birds
    The premise is fascinating. The idea of billions of bird-brains refusing to eat crow any longer and adopting the hunt-and-peck system, with homo sapiens as their ornithological target, is fraught with potential. Cinematically, Hitchcock & Co have done a masterful job of meeting this formidable challenge. But dramatically, The Birds is little more than a shocker-for shock’s-sake.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How the West Was Won
    It's a story [suggested by the series How the West Was Won in Life magazine] which naturally puts the spotlight on action and adventure, and the three directors between them have turned in some memorable sequences.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Days of Wine and Roses
    Miller’s gruelling drama illustrates how the unquenchable lure of alcohol can supersede even love, and how marital communication cannot exist in a house divided by one-sided boozing.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    To Kill a Mockingbird is a major film achievement, a significant, captivating and memorable picture that ranks with the best of recent years.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mutiny on the Bounty
    This is a superb blending of direction, photography and special effects artistry.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
    Once the inept, draggy start is passed, the film’s pace builds with ever-growing force.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Period of Adjustment
    Period of Adjustment is lower case Tennessee Williams, but it also illustrates that lower case Williams is superior to the upper case of most modern playwrights.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Manchurian Candidate
    One of the wildest fabrications any author has ever tried to palm off on a gullible public. But the fascinating thing is that, from uncertain premise to shattering conclusion, one does not question plausibility of the events being rooted in their own cinematic reality.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Longest Day
    A solid and stunning war epic.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cléo from 5 to 7
    Sometimes invention falters, as in the scene with the songwriters. But Varda then easily picks up the threads and keeps alive interest in the girl and her plight.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Miracle Worker
    Where the picture really excels, outside of its inherent story values, is in the realm of photographic technique. It is here that director Penn and cameraman Ernest Caparros have teamed to create artful, indelible strokes of visual storytelling and mood-molding.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Birdman of Alcatraz
    Birdman of Alcatraz is not really a prison picture in the traditional and accepted sense of the term. Birdman reverses the formula and brings a new breadth and depth to the form. In telling, with reasonable objectivity but understandably deep compassion the true story of Robert Stroud, it achieves a human dimension way beyond its predecessors.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hell Is for Heroes
    Producer Henry Blanke has framed and mounted a gripping, fast-paced, hard-hitting dramatic portrait of an interesting World War II battlefield incident. But there are occasional duds in the film's dramatic arsenal.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Boys' Night Out
    Since the element of story surprise, so vital in humour, is completely absent in the Ira Wallach screenplay, adapted by Marion Hargrove from a story by Arne Sultan and Marvin Worth, the audience is forced to seek comedy rewards in isolated doses – individual gags and situations.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Music Man
    Allowing something of slowness at the very start and the necessities of establishing the musical way of telling a story, plus the atmosphere of Iowa in 1912, that's about the only criticism of an otherwise building, punching, handsomely dressed and ultimately endearing super-musical.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lolita
    Vladimir Nabokov's witty, grotesque novel is, in its film version, like a bee from which the stinger has been removed. It still buzzes with a sort of promising irreverence, but it lacks the power to shock and, eventually, makes very little point either as comedy or satire.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Road to Hong Kong
    The script is spiced with a number of private jokes (golf, Hope’s nose, Crosby’s dough, reference to gags from previous Road films) but not enough to be irritating. Major disappointment is Joan Collins, who though an okay looker, never seems quite abreast of the comedians.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ride the High Country
    It is Sam Peckinpah’s direction, however, that gives the film greatest artistry. He gives N. B. Stone Jr.’s script a measure beyond its adequacy, instilling bright moments of sharp humor and an overall significant empathetic flavor.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jules and Jim
    A tender tale [from the novel by Henri-Pierre Roche] that avoids mawkishness and impropriety in treating the lives of two friends who are mixed up with a woman they share.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is an entertaining and emotionally involving western. Yet, while it is an enjoyable film it falls distinctly shy of its innate story potential.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cape Fear
    As a forthright exercise in cumulative terror Cape Fear is a competent and visually polished entry.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Experiment in Terror
    The film treatment embraces a number of unnecessary character bits that merely extend the plot and, despite their striking individual reaction, deter from the suspense buildup.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Testament of Orpheus
    [Cocteau] still has a flair for provoking strange moods in ordinary landscapes, as well as utilizing simple trick effects effectively and judiciously. He ribs himself at times but is quite clear in his summation that a poet is rarely recognized in his time.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sweet Bird of Youth
    Sweet Bird of Youth is a tamer and tidied but arresting version of Tennessee Williams' Broadway play. It's a glossy, engrossing hunk of motion picture entertainment, slickly produced by Berman.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Through a Glass Darkly
    Not a pleasant film, it is a great one.
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