Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 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.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lover Come Back
    This is a funny, most-of-the-time engaging, smartly produced show. Farce has Rock Hudson as would-be conqueror of Doris Day, who as the victim of a who's-who deception plays brinkmanship with surrender.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Victim
    This is telling, moving stuff.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Children's Hour
    Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, in the leading roles, beautifully complement each other. Hepburn’s soft sensitivity, mar- velous projection and emotional understatement result in a memorable portrayal. MacLaine’s enactment is almost equally rich in depth and substance.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Judgment at Nuremberg
    Judgment at Nuremberg is twice the size of the concise, stirring and rewarding production on television's Playhouse 90 early in 1959. A faster tempo by producer-director Stanley Kramer and more trenchant script editing would have punched up picture.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One, Two, Three
    Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three is a fast-paced, high-pitched, hard-hitting, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Story is so furiously quick-witted that some of its wit gets snarled and smothered in overlap. But total experience packs a considerable wallop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    El Cid
    El Cid is a fast-action color-rich, corpse-strewn, battle picture. The Spanish scenery is magnificent, the costumes are vivid, the chain mail and Toledo steel gear impressive. Perhaps the 11th century of art directors Veniero Colasanti and John Moore exceeds reality, but only scholars will complain of that. Action rather than acting characterizes this film.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Babes in Toyland
    Walt Disney's first live-action musical, a lavish translation to the screen of Victor Herbert's operetta, Babes in Toyland, is an expensive gift, brightly-wrapped and intricately packaged. But some of the more mature patrons may be distressed to discover that quaint, charming Toyland has been transformed into a rather gaudy and mechanical Fantasyland. What actually emerges is Babes in Disneyland.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    West Side Story
    West Side Story is a beautifully-mounted, impressive, emotion-ridden and violent musical which, in its stark approach to a raging social problem and realism of unfoldment, may set a pattern for future musical presentations. Screen takes on a new dimension in this powerful and sometimes fascinating translation of the Broadway musical to the greater scope of motion pictures.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Hawaii
    Hal Kanter's breezy screenplay, from a story by Allan Weiss, is the slim, but convenient, foundation for a handsome, picture-postcard production crammed with typical South Seas musical hulaballoo.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Comancheros
    The Comancheros is a big, brash, uninhibited action-western of the old school about as subtle as a right to the jaw.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Splendor in the Grass
    Elia Kazan's production of William Inge's original screenplay covers a forbidding chunk of ground with great care, compassion and cinematic flair. Yet there is something awkward about the picture's mechanical rhythm. There are missing links and blind alleys within the story. Too much time is spent focusing on characters of minor significance.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Breakfast at Tiffany's
    Out of the elusive, but curiously intoxicating Truman Capote fiction, scenarist George Axelrod has developed a surprisingly moving film, touched up into a stunningly visual motion picture.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paris Blues
    Within its snappy, flashy veneer is an undernourished romantic drama of a rather traditional screen school.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hustler
    Unfoldment of the screenplay, based on novel by Walter S. Tevis, is far overlength, and despite the excellence of Newman’s portrayal of the boozing pool hustler the sordid aspects of overall picture are strictly downbeat.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Yojimbo
    Though this lacks the epic stature of Seven Samurai, Kurosawa here again shows his mastery of the medium.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pit and the Pendulum
    A physically stylish, imaginatively photographed horror film which, though needlessly corny in many spots, adds up to good exploitation.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
    Voyage is a crescendo of mounting jeopardy, an effervescent adventure in an anything-but-Pacific Ocean.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Guns of Navarone
    It faced the problem of a director-switch in mid-stream. But with a bunch of weighty stars, terrific special effects and several socko situations, producer Carl Foreman and director J. Lee Thompson sired a winner.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Parent Trap
    David Swift, whose writing, direction and appreciation of young Hayley Mills’ natural histrionic resources contributed so much to Pollyanna, repeats the three-ply effort on this excursion, with similar success.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    La Dolce Vita
    The performances are uniformly excellent. Mastroianni is perfect in the key role of the basically good and honest boy who succumbs to the sweet life. Ekberg is a revelation as the visiting star, while Furneaux almost runs off with the picture as the reporter's instinctive, possessive mistress. (Review of original release)
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Absent Minded Professor
    On the surface, Walt Disney's The Absent Minded Professor is a comedy-fantasy of infectious absurdity, a natural follow-up to the studio's Shaggy Dog. But deeply rooted within the screenplay [from a story by Samuel W. Taylor] is a subtle protest against the detached, impersonal machinery of modern progress.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Breathless
    There are too many epigrams and a bit too much palaver in all this. However, it is picaresque and has enough insight to keep it from being an out-and-out melodramatic quickie.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Misfits
    At face value, The Misfits, is a robust, high-voltage adventure drama, vibrating with explosively emotional histrionics, conceived and executed with a refreshing disdain for superficial technical and photographic slickness in favor of an uncommonly honest and direct cinematic approach. Within this framework, however, lurks a complex mass of introspective conflicts, symbolic parallels and motivational contradictions, the nuances of which may seriously confound general audiences.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    101 Dalmatians
    While not as indelibly enchanting or inspired as some of the studio’s most unforgettable animated endeavors, this is nonetheless a painstaking creative effort.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Where the Boys Are
    Mimieux, in a demanding role, gets by dramatically. Visually she is a knockout, and has a misty quality.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Grass Is Greener
    The Hugh and Margaret Wilson screenplay, adapted from their London stage hit, slowly evolves into a talky and generally tedious romantic exercise, dropping the semi-satirical stance that brightens up the early going.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Swiss Family Robinson
    The rather modest 1813 Johann Wyss tale has been blown up to prodigious proportions. The essence and the spirit of the simple, intriguing story of a marvelously industrious family is all but snuffed out, only spasmodically flickering through the ponderous approach.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Exodus
    Transposing Leon Uris' hefty novel to the screen was not an easy task. It is to the credit of director Otto Preminger and scenarist Dalton Trumbo that they have done as well as they have. One can, however, wish that they had been blessed with more dramatic incisiveness.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »