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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    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fire in the Sky
    A truly harrowing sequence in the final reel fails to save Fire in the Sky, an otherwise prosaic approach to the gee-whiz genre of UFO aliens snatching a human specimen for examination.
  2. Swing Kids
    Apart from its appealing young cast and period score, it has precious little to entice audiences into movie theaters.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Amos & Andrew
    A one-joke sketch that doesn't work as a feature, Castle Rock's Amos & Andrew raises the question: "How did this film ever get made?" Few audience members will sit through its entirety to ponder that issue.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    El mariachi
    Spanish lingo crime meller has a verve and cheekiness that's partly a smart wedding of such influences as Sergio Leone, George Miller and south-of-the-border noir.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Army of Darkness
    Blending almost nonstop violence with humorous parody, Sam Raimi's latest excursion into horror-kitsch seems more like an irreverent "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Groundhog Day
    The film is inconsistent in tone and pace; fortunately the pay-off works, bringing some much needed warmth to the area.
  7. Dead Alive
    Technically, this is Jackson's best to date, with state of the art creature and gore effects by Richard Taylor and prosthetics design by Bob McCarron. There's any amount of dismemberment, disembowelling, beheading, and the like, all of it handled with bloody conviction.
  8. Strictly Ballroom
    Within the confines of this tried-and-true formula, Luhrmann has concocted a feel-good entertainment, which is lively, original (in an old-fashioned sort of way) and charming.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Untamed Heart
    Appealing lead performances elevate this modestly scaled romantic tearjerker, from a first script by Tom Sierchio.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Vanishing
    Some last-reel thrills and cathartic violence provide commercial oomph to the otherwise tedious thriller The Vanishing. This is one remake that sacrifices much of what made the original work so well.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Loaded Weapon 1
    More an imitation than a parody, this would-be comedy is very short on laughs.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sommersby
    Sommersby is an unabashedly romantic and morally intricate Civil War-era tale splendidly acted by Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. It’s one of those rare occasions that the Americanization of a foreign property (here Daniel Vigne’s The Return of Martin Guerre) works as well as the original.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice
    Coming nine years after the original, this supernatural horror sequel is a competently made but uninspired effort. Gore fans should dig it.
    • Variety
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sniper
    Sniper is an expertly directed, yet ultimately unsatisfying psychological thriller. Luis Llosa’s first-rate action direction is undermined by underdeveloped characters and pedestrian dialogue.
  15. Damage
    A complex look at an illicit affair that ends in disaster for everyone in its vicinity, "Damage" is a cold, brittle film about raging, traumatic emotions. Unjustly famous before its release for its hardly extraordinary erotic content, this veddy British-feeling drama from vet French director Louis Malle proves both compelling and borderline risible, wrenching and yet emotionally pinched, and reps a solid entry for serious art house audiences worldwide.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Body of Evidence
    A courtroom drama built around the charge that Madonna's body is a deadly weapon with which she 'fornicated' a man to death, this showcase for the singer-thesp as femme fatale is more silly than erotic.
  17. Man Bites Dog
    An offbeat, darkly hilarious portrait.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alive
    It doesn’t help that character personalities generally aren’t distinct enough to keep track of who’s who throughout the story, leaving the audience to empathize only generally.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Nowhere to Run
    Action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme takes a career step backward in Nowhere to Run, a relentlessly corny and shamelessly derivative vehicle.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lorenzo's Oil
    Lorenzo's Oil is as grueling a medical case study as any audience would ever want to sit through. A true-life story brought to the screen intelligently and with passionate motivation by George Miller, pic details in a very precise way how a couple raced time to save the life of their young son after he contracted a rare, always fatal disease.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hoffa
    This grimly ambitious biopic goes no deeper than that, offering hardly a trace of psychology, motivation or inner life.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trespass
    Throw together The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Rio Bravo, bring in the Ice crew, inject a noxious dose of racial hatred and stir in some sharp action direction and you've got Trespass.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Toys
    Only a filmmaker with Barry Levinson's clout would have been so indulged to create such a sprawling, seemingly unsupervised mess as Toys, a painful exercise that makes Hudson Hawk look like a modest throwaway.
  24. A Few Good Men
    Expert story construction and compelling thesping and direction make all the narrative elements pay off as if calculated by a precision instrument in which all the parts are working perfectly.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Muppet Christmas Carol
    This adaptation of Charles Dickens' Christmas classic is not as enchanting or amusing as the previous entries in the Muppet series. But nothing can really diminish the late Jim Henson's irresistibly appealing characters.
  26. The Distinguished Gentleman
    Uneven but occasionally quite funny political satire.
  27. The Crying Game
    An astonishingly good and daring film that richly develops several intertwined thematic lines, The Crying Game takes giant risks that are stunningly rewarded.
  28. The Bodyguard
    No wonder this Lawrence Kasdan script has been on the shelf for more than a decade: In the custody of director Mick Jackson, it proves a jumbled mess, with a few enjoyable moments but little continuity or flow.
  29. Aladdin
    Floridly beautiful, shamelessly derivative and infused with an irreverent, sophisticated comic flair thanks to Robin Williams' vocal calisthenics, Aladdin probably won't equal its beastly predecessor but should still enjoy a magic carpet ride through the holiday season.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bad Lieutenant
    Abel Ferrara's uncompromising Bad Lieutenant is a harrowing journey observing a corrupt NY cop sink into the depths, with an extraordinary and uninhibited performance by Harvey Keitel in the title role.
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