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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    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The African Queen
    An engrossing motion picture. Just offbeat enough in story, locale and star teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn to stimulate the imagination. It is a picture with an unassuming warmth and naturalness that can have a bright boxoffice chance
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Room for One More
    A happy combination of good humor and warm drama has been put together with neat results in Room for One More.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rashomon
    Unveiled at the Venice film fest [in August 1951], this caused a flurry in critical circles for its brilliance of conception, technique, acting and its theme of passion.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quo Vadis
    Quo Vadis is a super-spectacle in all its meaning. That there are shortcomings [in this fourth version of the tale] even Metro must have recognized and ignored in consideration of the project’s scope.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miracle in Milan
    Miracle in Milan, an involved and rambling screenplay, originally written by Cesare Zavattini in 1940 and later published as a novel entitled Toto the Good, contrasts sharply with the simplicity and warm humanity of [the same writer-director team's] Bicycle Thief and gives director Vittorio De Sica less opportunities to guide his thespers to those extremely human, heart-warming performances which are his speciality. Whereas Thief was aimed at the audience heart, Miracle is aimed at the brain.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    On Dangerous Ground
    Ray manages to inject an occasional bit of excitement into the yarn, and had the psychotic touches been eliminated in the script, film could have qualified as okay, even if grim, melodrama.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When Worlds Collide
    Top honors for this inter-planetary fantasy rest with the cameramen and special effects technicians rather than with performances of the non-name cast.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An American in Paris
    One of the most imaginative musical confections turned out by Hollywood in years...Kelly is the picture’s top star and rates every inch of his billing. His diversified dancing is great as ever and his thesping is standout. But he reveals new talents in this one with his choreography.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Detective Story
    William Wyler has polished the legit hit by Pulitzer-prizewinner Sidney Kingsley into a cinematic gem. Scripters have stuck almost to the letter of the original play. Even the location seldom changes from Kingsley's single set, the realistic headquarters room of the detective squad.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Angels in the Outfield
    Clarence Brown has carved a tremendously satisfying filmization from a script [based on a story by Richard Conlin] that, from every evidence, could have gone completely haywire if handled clumsily, dealing as it does with fantasy. Religious angle also presented a delicate situation, but Brown has handled it all masterfully.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Lavender Hill Mob
    With The Lavender Hill Mob, Ealing clicks with another comedy winner.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    La Ronde
    Ophuls has used a dearth of closeups, brilliant decor playing a vital part. Film gains an opulence in the expert lensing of Christian Matras. There is much filming through carved glass, linen, silks and mirrors to create the aura of romance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Cast, although secondary to the story, works well.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Streetcar Named Desire
    Tennessee Williams' exciting Broadway stage play - winner of the Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics award during the 1947-48 season - has been screenplayed into an even more absorbing drama of frustration and stark tragedy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alice in Wonderland
    Walt Disney has gone a long way towards tightening the leisurely, haphazard adventure of Alice in the wonderland of her imagination. He has dropped some characters and sequences in the interest of a better picture, but the deletions are not missed.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Flying Leathernecks
    Actual color footage of battle action in the Pacific has been smartly blended with studio shots to strike a note of realism.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Place in the Sun
    Stevens has mounted his production lavishly. Undoubtedly cognizant of the shortcomings of the story itself as popular entertainment, studio toppers have wisely permitted the film every possible compensating advantage. The result is a big picture in both concept and execution.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Oliver Twist
    From every angle this is a superb achievement.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On Moonlight Bay
    All of the characters are good for some hefty laughs, and Del Ruth’s direction and the writing supply plenty of touches that keep punching the risibilities and jogging nostalgic memory.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Strangers on a Train
    Given a good basis for a thriller in the Patricia Highsmith novel [script adaption by Whitfield Cook] and a first-rate script, Hitchcock embroiders the plot into a gripping, palm-sweating piece of suspense.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harvey
    Harvey, Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize play, loses little of its whimsical comedy charm in the screen translation.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    King Solomon's Mines
    King Solomon's Mines has been filmed against an authentic African background, lending an extremely realistic air to the H. Rider Haggard classic novel of a dangerous safari and discovery of a legendary mine full of King Solomon's treasure.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All About Eve
    All About Eve has substance in virtually every dramatic and romantic mood, which have been given proper shading and projection by producer Darryl F. Zanuck and Mankiewicz.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sunset Boulevard
    Performances by the entire cast, and particularly William Holden and Gloria Swanson, are exceptionally fine.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Treasure Island
    Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, has been handsomely mounted by Walt Disney. Settings are sumptuous and a British cast headed by American moppet Bobby Driscoll faithfully recaptures the bloodthirsty 18th-century era when pirates vied for the supremacy of the seas.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Winchester '73
    Stewart brings real flavor and appeal to the role of Lin, in a lean, concentrated portrayal.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Gunfighter
    The Gunfighter is a sock melodrama of the old west. There's never a sag or off moment in the footage as it goes about depicting a lightning draw artist, the fastest man with a gun in the old west, and what his special ability has done to his life.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Father of the Bride
    Minnelli could have timed many of the scenes so that laughs would not have stepped on dialog tag lines. Also he permits the wedding rehearsal sequence to play too long, lessening the comedic effect.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Asphalt Jungle
    Ironic realism is striven for and achieved in the writing, production and direction. An audience will quite easily pull for the crooks in their execution of the million-dollar jewelry theft around which the plot is built.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stage Fright
    Alfred Hitchcock doesn't stress melodrama throughout. He plays a surprising number of sequences strictly for lightness. Also, he has a choice cast to put through its paces, and there's not a bad performance anywhere [In this adaption by Alma Reville of a novel by Selwyn Jepson]. The dialog has purpose, either for a chuckle or a thrill, and the pace is good.
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