Variety's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Time Machine
    The social comment of the original has been historically refined to encompass such plausible eventualities as the physical manifestation of atomic war weapons. But the basic spirit of Wells' work has not been lost.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Inherit the Wind
    This is a rousing and fascinating motion picture. Producer-director Stanley Kramer has held the action in tight check.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bellboy
    From an artistic standpoint, The Bellboy is minor-league screen comedy, the victim of its energetic star's limited craftsmanship.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bells Are Ringing
    Better Broadway musicals than Bells Are Ringing have come to Hollywood, but few have been translated to the screen so effectively.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Darby O'Gill and the Little People
    People of all sizes will get a bang out of Darby O'Gill And The Little People. [29 Apr 1959, p.6]
    • Variety
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    House of Usher
    In patronizingly romanticizing Poe's venerable prose, scenarist Richard Matheson has managed to preserve enough of the original's haunting flavor and spirit. The elaborations change the personalities of the three central characters, but not recklessly so.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Apartment
    Second half of the picture is loosely constructed and tends to lag as the rahers go through their paces in over-extending the major plot angle. Most of the time, it’s up to director Wilder to sustain a two-hour-plus film on treatment alone, a feat he manages to accomplish more often than not, and sometimes the results are amazing.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pollyanna
    In Walt Disney's Pollyanna Hayley Mills' work more than compensates for the film's lack of tautness and, at certain points, what seems to be an uncertain sense of direction.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Suddenly, Last Summer
    It has some very effective moments, but on the whole it fails to move.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On the Beach
    On the Beach is a solid film of considerable emotional, as well as cerebral, content. But the fact remains that the final impact is as heavy as a leaden shroud. The spectator is left with the sick feeling that he's had a preview of Armageddon, in which all contestants lost.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ben-Hur
    Ben-Hur is a majestic achievement, representing a superb blending of the motion picture arts by master craftsmen.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pillow Talk
    A sleekly sophisticated production that deals chiefly with s-e-x.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Look Back in Anger
    Richardson's is a technical triumph, but somewhere along the line he has lost the heart and the throb that made the play an adventure. The film simultaneously impresses and depresses.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    North by Northwest
    North by Northwest is the Alfred Hitchcock mixture - suspense, intrigue, comedy, humor. Seldom has the concoction been served up so delectably.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Nun's Story
    Fred Zinnemann's production is a soaring and luminous film. Audrey Hepburn has her most demanding film role, and she gives her finest performance. Despite the seriousness of the underlying theme, The Nun's Story [from the book by Kathryn C. Hulme] has the elements of absorbing drama, pathos, humor, and a gallery of memorable scenes and characters.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Anatomy of a Murder
    Preminger purposely creates situations that flicker with uncertainty, that may be evaluated in different ways. Motives are mixed and dubious, and, therefore, sustain interest.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Porgy and Bess
    As screen entertainment, Porgy and Bess retains most of the virtues and some of the libretto traits of the folk opera.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wild Strawberries
    Pic sometimes talks too much in philosophical asides, but it remains a searching pictorial analysis of a man’s life. Expert directorial touches and notations of director Ingmar Bergman, and the dignified miming of oldtime director Sjostrom, plus other fine thespic additions, make this an offbeater. It’s a personal and profound work.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rio Bravo
    Producer-director Howard Hawks makes handsome use of force in logically unravelling his hard-hitting narrative, creating suspense at times and occasionally inserting lighter moments to give variety.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Room at the Top
    Neil Paterson's literate, well-molded screenplay is enhanced by subtle, intelligent direction from first-timer Jack Clayton and a batch of topnotch performances.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Some Like It Hot
    Some Like It Hot, directed in masterly style by Billy Wilder, is probably the funniest picture of recent memory. It's a whacky, clever, farcical comedy that starts off like a firecracker and keeps on throwing off lively sparks till the very end.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Shaggy Dog
    There are a good many laughs on this simple premise and the script’s exploitation of them. The only time the film falters badly is in its choice of a gimmick to get the boy-who-turns-into-a-dog turned back, for good and all, into a boy.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Diary of Anne Frank
    A film of often extraordinary quality. It manages, within the framework of a tense and tragic situation, to convey the beauty of a young and inquiring spirit that soars beyond the cramped confinement of the Frank family's hideout in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Imitation of Life
    Lana Turner is outstanding in the pivotal role played in Universal’s 1934 version by Claudette Colbert.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sleeping Beauty
    Some of the best parts of the picture are those dealing with the three good fairies, spoken and sung by Verna Felton, Barbara Jo Allen and Barbara Luddy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Some Came Running
    The story is pure melodrama, despite the intention of the original novel’s author, James Jones, to invest it with greater stature. But the integrity with which the film is handled by all its contributors lifts it at times to tragedy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Separate Tables
    Much of the appeal of Terence Rattigan's play was due to the remarkable change in characterization they were able to make as they assumed different roles in each of the segents. Rattigan and John Gay have masterfully blended the two playlets into one literate and absorbing full-length film.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Uncle
    Somewhat long for a comedy, Jacques Tati's film has inventiveness, gags, warmth and a 'poetic' approach to satire.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Seventh Seal
    Film has superior technical narrative, impressive lensing and thesping.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Old Man and the Sea
    It captures the dignity and the stubborness of the old man, and it is tender in his final defeat. And yet it isn’t a completely satisfying picture. There are long and arid stretches, when it seems as if producer and director were merely trying to fill time.
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