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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    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Brazil
    Chillingly hilarious.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Color Purple
    There are some great scenes and great performances in The Color Purple, but it is not a great film. Steven Spielberg’s turn at ‘serious’ filmmaking is marred in more than one place by overblown production that threatens to drown in its own emotions. But the characters created in Alice Walker’s novel are so vivid that even this doesn’t kill them off and there is still much to applaud (and cry about) here.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Clue
    Clue is campy, high-styled escapism. In a short 87 minutes that just zip by, the well-known board game's one-dimensional card figures like Professor Plum and others become multi-dimensional personalities with enough wit, neuroses and motives to intrigue even the most adept whodunnit solver.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Jewel of the Nile
    As a sequel to Romancing the Stone, the script of The Jewel of the Nile is missing the deft touch of the late Diane Thomas but Lewis Teague's direction matches the energy of the original.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Chorus Line
    Chorus often seems static and confined, rarely venturing beyond the immediate. Attenborough merely films the stage show as best he could.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Spies Like Us
    Spies is not very amusing. Though Chase and Aykroyd provide moments, the overall script thinly takes on eccentric espionage and nuclear madness, with nothing new to add.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fool for Love
    Robert Altman directs a fine cast with all the authority and finesse a good play deserves, so it's too bad the play fooled them all. Sam Shepard's drama of intense, forbidden love in the modern West is made to seem like specious stuff filled with dramatic ideas left over from the 1950s.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Sherlock Holmes
    Young Sherlock Holmes is another Steven Spielberg film corresponding to those lamps made from driftwood and coffee tables from redwood burl and hatchcovers. It’s not art but they all serve their purpose and sell by the millions.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rocky IV
    Beyond its visceral appeal, Rocky IV is truly the worst of the lot, though Stallone himself is more personable in this one and that helps.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    White Nights
    Pic shies away from the world of classical dance, personified by leading man Mikhail Baryshnikov, in favor of Gregory Hines' 'improvography' and assorted modern stuff in blatant music video contexts.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    King Solomon's Mines
    Cannon’s remake of King Solomon’s Mines treads heavily in the footsteps of that other great modern hero, Indiana Jones – too heavily. Where Jones was deft and graceful in moving from crisis to crisis, King Solomon’s Mines is often clumsy with logic, making the action hopelessly cartoonish. Once painted into the corner, scenes don’t resolve so much as end before they spill into the next cliff-hanger.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fever Pitch
    Weak script, poor acting and miscasting aside, it's the power of the subject that makes this an enjoyable ride. Writer/director Richard Brooks thoroughly researched the Territory of the compulsive gambler and captures the obsession with almost a documentary eye.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Target
    Target is a spy thriller that's not only completely understandable and involving throughout, but also continually surprising along the way. It also strangely contains a few scenes of dreadful writing, acting and direction.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Twice in a Lifetime
    The pic is loaded with jock humor and incidental comments that allow the characters’ frustrations to seep out. Audiences will love Burstyn’s warm wrinkles and visit with her daughters to a male strip joint, as well as Hackman’s workmanlike heroism.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Subway
    Result may disappoint some for its singular lack of ambition or purpose and its ragged narrative, but still proves a charmingly cartoonish escapade, strong on humor and rock rhythms.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Death Wish 3
    Death Wish 3 adds significantly to the body count scored to date in this street-rampant series. Thrills, however, are way down due to script’s failure to build motivation for Paul Kersey’s latest killing spree.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
    Beneath its verbose, title, Jack Sholder's follow-up to Wes Craven's 1984 hit is a well-made though familiar reworking of demonic horror material.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    To Live and Die in L.A.
    To Live and Die in L.A. looks like a rich man's Miami Vice. William Friedkin's evident attempt to fashion a West Coast equivalent of his [1971] The French Connection is engrossing and diverting enough on a moment-to-moment basis but is overtooled.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Re-Animator
    Pic has a grisly sense of humor, and sometimes is so gross and over the top the film tips over into a bizarre comedy.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sweet Dreams
    Clearly the coal miner's daughter's cousin by both birthright and ambition, Sweet Dreams upholds the family honor quite well, with Jessica Lange's portrayal of country singer Patsy Cline certainly equal to Sissy Spacek's Oscar-winning recreation of Loretta Lynn.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
    The film [based on The Destroyer series by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy] never seems to know where it's going and, when the smoke has cleared, doesn't seem to have got there either.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Commando
    In Commando, the fetching surprise is the glancing humor between the quixotic and larky Rae Dawn Chong and the straight-faced killing machine of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chong lights up the film like a firefly, Schwarzenegger delivers a certain light touch of his own, the result is palatable action comics.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jagged Edge
    A well-crafted, hardboiled mystery by Joe Eszterhas, with sharp performances by murder suspect Jeff Bridges and tough-but- smitten defense attorney Glenn Close.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Boys Next Door
    Unfortunately the film itself doesn’t live up to the expectations. Even if intentions are worthy, it emerges glib and uninvolvingly.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Invasion U.S.A.
    A brainless plot would be almost forgivable were it not for the perverse depiction of innocents butchered in Invasion U.S.A.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Journey of Natty Gann
    More a period piece of Americana than a rousing adventure, The Journey of Natty Gann is a generally diverting variation on a boy and his dog: this time it's a girl and her wolf.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Agnes of God
    Fonda’s relentless interrogating, mannered chain-smoking and enforced two dimensionality cause her to become tiresome very early on. She remains a brittle cliche of a modern professional woman. Bancroft gives a generally highly engaging performance as a religious woman too knowledgeable to be one-upped by even the craftiest layman.
  28. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
    Beautiful, yet flawed film.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    After Hours
    The cinema of paranoia and persecution reaches an apogee in After Hours, a nightmarish black comedy from Martin Scorsese. Anxiety-ridden picture would have been pretty funny if it didn't play like a confirmation of everyone's worst fears about contemporary urban life.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    American Ninja
    Director Sam Firstenberg stages the numerous action scenes well, but engenders little interest in the non-story.
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