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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    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Goonies
    Territory is typical small town Steven Spielberg; this time set in a coastal community in Oregon. Story is told from the kids' point-of-view and takes a rather long time to be set in motion.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Perfect
    Set in the world of journalism, pic is guilty of the sins it condemns - superficiality, manipulation and smugness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fletch
    What propels this contempo LA yarn about a dissembling newspaper columnist on the trail of a nefarious con man (Tim Matheson) is the obvious and successful byplay between Chevy Chase’s sly, glib persona and the satiric brushstrokes of director Michael Ritchie. Their teamwork turns an otherwise hair-pinned, anecdotal plot into a breezy, peppy frolic and a tour de force for Chase.
  4. A View to a Kill
    This jokey tone couldn’t be more different from the relative self-seriousness of helmer John Glen’s first 007 directing effort, For Your Eyes Only, and frankly, I yearn for more of that class.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rambo: First Blood Part II
    The charade on the screen, which is not pulled off, is to accept that the underdog Rambo character, albeit with the help of an attractive machine-gun wielding Vietnamese girl (Julia Nickson), can waste hordes of Vietcong and Red Army contingents enroute to hauling POWs to a Thai air base in a smoking Russian chopper with only a facial scar (from a branding iron-knifepoint) marring his tough figure.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Brewster's Millions
    It’s hard to believe a comedy starring Richard Pryor and John Candy is no funnier than this one is, but director Walter Hill has overwhelmed the intricate genius of each with constant background action, crowd confusions and other endless distractions.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trancers
    Only Hunt in the femme role breaks through a script that rarely rings new.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Code of Silence
    Code of Silence is a predictability cacophonous cops-and-crooks yarn [by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack] that is actually quite good for the type.
    • Variety
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Purple Rose of Cairo
    Tale is a light, almost frivolous treatment of a serious theme, as Woody Allen here confronts the unalterable fact that life just doesn't turn out the way it does (or did) in Hollywood films. For all its situational goofiness, pic is a tragedy, and it's too bad Allen didn't build up the characters and drama sufficiently to give some weight to his concerns.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Just One of the Guys
    Key male part of quiet outsider whom Hyser brings to life is essayed by another film newcomer, Clayton Rohner, but Rohner looks too old to be a high school kid.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Company of Wolves
    Admirably attempting an adult approach to traditional fairy tale material, The Company of Wolves nevertheless represents an uneasy marriage between old-fashioned storytelling and contemporary screen explicitness.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cat's Eye
    The three stories just don’t connect and efforts to join them never work. However, an excellent roster of talent does try its best.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Desperately Seeking Susan
    Rosanna Arquette does more than her share in the pivotal part of a bored Yuppie housewife who follows the personal ads, wondering about the identities behind a desperately seeking Susan item that runs from time to time.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ladyhawke
    LadyHawke is a very likeable, very well-made fairytale that insists on a wish for its lovers to live happily ever after.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
    Follow-up features much of the original’s cast but none of its key behind-the-scenes creative talent, save producer Paul Maslansky. Only actor to get any mileage out of this one is series newcomer Art Metrano, as an ambitious lieutenant bent upon taking over the department.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    1984
    In this unremitting downer, writer-director Michael Radford introduces no touches of comedy or facile sensationalism to soften a harsh depiction of life under a totalitarian system as imagined by George Orwell in 1948.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mask
    Based on a true story, Mask is alive with the rhythms and textures of a unique life. Both in the background and foreground, Mask draws a vivid picture of life among a particular type of lower middle class Southern California whites. Much of the credit for keeping the film from tripping over must go to the cast, especially Stoltz, who, with only his eyes visible behind an elaborate makeup job, brings a lively, life-affirming personality to his role without a trace of self-pity.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hit
    Frears and writer Peter Prince have taken a potentially familiar tale of a gangland betrayal and revenge and made something richly inventive and most entertaining.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Sure Thing
    The Sure Thing is at heart a sweetly old-fashioned look at the last lap of the coming-of-age ordeal in which the sure thing becomes less important than the real thing. Realization may not be earth shattering, but in an era of fast food and faster sex, return to the traditional is downright refreshing.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Into the Night
    The film itself tries sometimes too hard for laughs and at other times strains for shock. Goldblum is nonetheless enjoyable as he constantly tries to figure out just what he’s doing in all of this.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Breakfast Club
    Does director John Hughes really believe, as he writes here, that 'when you grow up, your heart dies.' It may. But not unless the brain has already started to rot with films like this.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lost in America
    Brooks, who directed and cowrote with Monica Johnson, is irrepressible but always very human.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Turk 182
    Besides its compelling storyline, Turk 182! features outstanding performances across the board, with Hutton perfect in the role of the determined unassuming hero.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Mean Season
    Jordan is at his shrewdly crazed best, anchoring the movie with a felt terror, initially just through his off-screen voice as he manipulates the reporter over the phone and ultimately through his cunning.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Witness
    Witness is at times a gentle, affecting story of star-crossed lovers limited within the fascinating Amish community. Too often, however, this fragile romance is crushed by a thoroughly absurd shoot-em-up, like ketchup poured over a delicate Pennsylvania Dutch dinner.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Falcon and the Snowman
    All the way through The Falcon and the Snowman director John Schlesinger and an exemplary cast grapple with a true story so oddly motivated it would be easily dismissed if fictional. Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn are superb.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heaven Help Us
    Very funny in spots and wonderfully evocative of Brooklyn, circa 1965, pic suffers somewhat by dividing its attention between outrageous pranks and realistic sketches of the Catholic school experience.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Killing Fields
    A story of perseverance and survival in hell on earth, The Killing Fields represents an admirable, if not entirely successful, attempt to bring alive to the world film audience the horror story that is the recent history of Cambodia.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Passage to India
    An impeccably faithful, beautifully played and occasionally languorous adaptation of E.M. Forster's classic novel about the clash of East and West in colonial India.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fandango
    Fandango emerges as a quite promising feature debut by writer-director Kevin Reynolds, with its feet squarely within the overused boys-coming-of-age genre but its heart betraying an appealingly anarchic, iconoclastic bent.
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