Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Gun Crazy
    Script points up the physical attraction between Dall and Cummins but, despite the emphasis, it is curiously cold and lacking in genuine emotions. Fault is in the writing and direction, both staying on the surface and never getting underneath the characters.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On the Town
    The pep, enthusiasm and apparent fun the makers of On the Town had in putting it together comes through to the audience and gives the picture its best asset.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adam's Rib
    Adam's Rib is a bright comedy success, belting over a succession of sophisticated laughs. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin have fashioned their amusing screenplay around the age-old battle of the sexes.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They Live by Night
    Nicholas Ray adapted the novel and directed, demonstrating a complete understanding of the characters. It’s a firstrate job of moody storytelling.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a western meller done in the best John Ford manner.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Under Capricorn
    Under Capricorn is overlong and talky, with scant measure of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller tricks.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Third Man
    Supporting characters turn in excellent portrayals. Camera work on an exceptionally high plane, and in his painstaking direction Carol Reed lives up to his high reputation.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    White Heat
    The tight-lipped scowl, the hunched shoulders that rear themselves for the kill, the gargoyle speech, the belching gunfire of a trigger-happy paranoiac - one with a mother complex, no less - these are the standard and still-popular ingredients that constitute the James Cagney of White Heat.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mighty Joe Young
    Mighty Joe Young is fun to laugh at and with, loaded with incredible corn, plenty of humor, and a robot gorilla who becomes a genuine hero.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Neptune's Daughter
    Neptune's Daughter is a neat concoction of breezy, light entertainment. It combines comedy, songs and dances into an amusing froth.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Women
    The tender story, with its frank and unashamed assault on the emotions, still has its effective moments at times when the sentiment doesn’t grow a little too thick.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Take Me Out to the Ball Game
    Take Me Out to the Ball Game, backgrounded by an early-day baseball yarn, is short on story, but has some amusing moments - and Gene Kelly.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Force of Evil
    Force of Evil fails to develop the excitement hinted at in the title. Makers apparently couldn't decide on the best way to present an expose of the numbers racket, winding up with neither fish nor fowl as far as hard-hitting racketeer meller is concerned. A poetic, almost allegorical, interpretation keeps intruding on the tougher elements of the plot. This factor adds no distinction and only makes the going tougher.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Canterbury Tale
    Sincerity and simplicity shine through every foot of this oversized modern version of the Chaucer epic tale. Here is rare beauty.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Act of Violence
    It is strong meat for the heavy drama addicts, tellingly produced and played to develop tight excitement.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Snake Pit
    The Snake Pit is a standout among class melodramas. Based on Mary Jane Ward's novel, picture probes into the processes of mental illness with a razor-sharp forthrightness, giving an open-handed display of the make-up of bodies without minds and the treatments used to restore intelligence.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hamlet
    This is picture-making at its best.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rope
    Hitchcock could have chosen a more entertaining subject with which to use the arresting camera and staging technique displayed in Rope. Theme is of a thrill murder, done for no reason but to satisfy a sadistical urge and intellectual vanity.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Red River
    Howard Hawks' production and direction give a masterful interpretation to a story of the early west and the opening of the Chisholm Trail, over which Texas cattle were moved to Abilene to meet the railroad on its march across the country.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Foreign Affair
    While subject is handled for comedy, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder have managed to underlay the fun with an expose of human frailties and, to some extent, indicate a passive bitterness among the conquered in the occupied areas.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Key Largo
    A tense film thriller has been developed from Maxwell Anderson's play, Key Largo. Emphasis is on tension in the telling, and effective use of melodramatic mood has been used to point up the suspense.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Paradine Case
    The Paradine Case offers two hours and 11 minutes of high dramatics.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
    The comedy team battles it out with the studio's roster of bogeymen in a rambunctious fracas that is funny and, at the same time, spine-tingling. Stalking through the piece to add menace are such characters as the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man and Dracula.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Search
    This simple film was made in the American zone of Germany, principally in and around the rubbled remains of Nuremberg. Only four of its actors are professionals, the others having been recruited on the spot.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Naked City
    Throughout, despite its omniscient, stark melodrama, there has been no sight lost of an element of humor. Barry Fitzgerald, as the film’s focal point, in playing the police lieutenant of the homicide squad, strides through the role with tongue in cheek, with Don Taylor as his young detective aide.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bishop's Wife
    Henry Koster's sympathetic direction deftly gets over the warm humor supplied by the script, taken from Robert Nathan's novel of the same title.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
    A distinguished work that will take its place in the repertory of Hollywood's great and enduring achievements.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Walk Alone
    I Walk Alone is tight, hard-boiled melodrama.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Road to Rio
    McLeod's direction blends the music and comedy into fast action and sock chuckles that will please followers of the series.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Narcissus
    The cast has been well chosen, but Kerr gets only occasional opportunities to reveal her talents.
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