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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  1. Now and Then
    The adults do little more than provide marquee allure in brief bookending scenes that add little to rest of the pic. For the most part, Now and Then is a showcase for four fine actresses in their early teens.
  2. Blue in the Face
    A piecemeal collection of barely connected scenes and characters, stitched together with videotaped comments from a cross-section of Brooklyn residents.
  3. Strange Days
    A technical tour de force for director Kathryn Bigelow and her team, pic is less accomplished in putting over its characters, emotions and dubious sociopolitical agenda.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jade
    A muddled mix of sex, political corruption and murder, Jade is a jigsaw puzzle that never puts all the pieces together.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kicking and Screaming
    The director is more successful in setting an easy, low-key tone, with nicely framed shots and subtle camera movements downplaying the script's pretensions.
  6. Devil in a Blue Dress
    On its own terms, the plotting of "Devil" is absorbing, and the pieces actually fit together pretty decently. On the other hand, when scenes directly call to mind similar ones in "Chinatown," this effort's stepchild relationship to the classic is forcibly demonstrated.
    • 10 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
    Not even the addition of satanic rituals, farm implements or a Howard Stern-like shock jock (Leo Geter) is enough to paint over the creaky trappings.
  8. To Die For
    Delivers continuous pinpricks of irreverent humor and subversive cultural commentary.
    • Variety
  9. Showgirls
    Impossibly vulgar, tawdry and coarse, this much-touted major studio splash into NC-17 waters is akin to being keelhauled through a cesspool, with sharks swimming alongside.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Seven
    This weirdly off-kilter suspenser goes well beyond the usual police procedural or killer-on-a-rampage yarn due to a fine script, striking craftsmanship and a masterful performance by Morgan Freeman.
  11. Empire Records
    A soundtrack in search of a movie, Empire Records is one teen-music effort that never finds a groove.
  12. Hackers
    There is a great deal more style than substance here. The special effects experts and the other members of the technical crew do their considerable best to give their various hacking sequences the look of warp-speed sci-fi fantasy.
  13. Unstrung Heroes
    A coming-of-age piece that is slight to the point of anemia, Unstrung Heroes sports a willful eccentricity that almost immediately becomes annoying.
  14. Clockers
    A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize.
  15. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.
  16. Nadja
    After creating such promise through the intriguing setup of stunning twin vampires in trendy, nocturnal Gotham, it’s disappointing that Almereyda develops narrative butterfingers, letting the storyline become too diffuse and cutting among too many principal characters.
  17. Kids
    Disturbing because it is so believable, Kids goes well beyond any previous American film in frankly describing the lives of at least a certain group of modern teenagers.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Prophecy
    Daring and unique on the one hand, but hard to swallow on the other, Prophecy is a fantasy thriller about murderous angels waging a war on Earth. First-time director Gregory Widen deserves a pat on the back for attempting risky balancing act.
  19. Desperado
    Could scarcely be more dazzling on a purely visual level, but it's mortally anemic in the story, character and thematic departments.
  20. The Brothers McMullen
    Good old-fashioned virtues of three-dimensional characters, fine dialogue, recognizable life situations and meat-and-potatoes content.
  21. Mortal Kombat
    But where others have sunk in the mire of imitation, director Paul Anderson and writer Kevin Droney effect a viable balance between exquisitely choreographed action and ironic visual and verbal counterpoint.
  22. The Baby-Sitters Club
    The picture’s problem is that it is small in every way. It’s modestly budgeted, and boasts a simple, unflamboyant story. Its score is bland and nondescript, the performers are scrubbed, and everything is tied up in a neat, white bow.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Usual Suspects
    The Usual Suspects is an ironic, bang-up thriller about the wages of crime. A terrific cast of exciting actors socks over this absorbingly complicated yarn that's been spun in a seductively slick fashion by director Bryan Singer.
  24. Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
    Docu glosses over important issues of Wilson’s life and career, but the observations it does make are so illuminating that they almost compensate for the omissions, resulting in a brilliant docu.
  25. Dangerous Minds
    Pfeiffer tackles the part with obvious dedication, but she's thwarted from the get-go by the heavily proscribed nature of the role as written.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Walk in the Clouds
    Aa glossy, fairy-tale romance that's longer on wishfulness than believability.
  27. A Kid in King Arthur's Court
    Run-of-the-mill modern retelling in which a schnooky kid is transported to days of yore to revivify the glory of Camelot. But the juvenilization of the hero turns into an ill-fitting concept that unbalances an already fragile fantasy.
  28. Babe
    The achievement here is a thoroughly compelling story in which the underlying technological razzle-dazzle never intrudes.
  29. River of Grass
    River of Grass works much better as a jokey , theoretical piece of genre revisionism than as a real movie.
  30. Something to Talk About
    Unfortunately, the diverse elements introduced here don’t coalesce into a comfortable package, with much of the background action proving notably listless and unconvincing.
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