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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    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rocky III
    The real question with Rocky III was how Sylvester Stallone could twist the plot to make an interesting difference. He manages. As usual, Stallone the writer-director is less successful in handling all the dramatic interims than staging the battles.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Escape Artist
    Treatment frequently pushes past the careful to the precious, and the quiet, odd tale never becomes more than mildly intriguing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Road Warrior
    Director Miller keeps the pic moving with cyclonic force, photography by Dean Semler is first class, editing is supertight, and Brian May’s music is stirring.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
    Film is most engaging in its romantic sparring between Martin and his gorgeous client, Ward.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Conan the Barbarian
    Director John Milius does a nice job of setting up the initial story.... But for whatever reasons, [Schwarzenegger] has a minimum of dialog and fails to convey much about the character through his actions.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wrong Is Right
    Wrong Is Right represents Richard Brooks' shriek of protest at what he sees as the insane, downward spiral of world history over the past decade. Part political satire, part doomsday melodrama and part intellectual graffiti scribbled on the screen, film is impossible to pigeon-hole.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Sword and the Sorcerer
    Combine beaucoup gore and an atrocity-a-minute action edited in fastpace style. Then, toss in a scantily clad cast of none-too- talented performers mouthing dimwitted dialog and garnish with a touch of medieval gibberish. The result would be something resembling The Sword and the Sorcerer.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Chosen
    Director Kagan and writer Gordon do wonders with the poignant material. Despite the obvious ethnic slant this is a picture which communicates universally.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Diva
    Diva is an extraordinary thriller and first film from Jean-Jacques Beineix, complex, stylish and fast-moving.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chariots of Fire
    The casting is pin point. Charleson and Cross, neither meaningful to film fans up to now, come over as plausible types rather than stereotypes. John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson contribute sharply as university officials dismayed by the upstart young Jew. Nigel Davenport is very good as the Olympic squad’s titular leader, and Patrick Magee is excellent in a brief turn as a blimpish peer of the realm.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cat People
    Paul Schrader’s reworking of the 1942 Val Lewton-Jacques Tourneur Cat People is a super-chic erotic horror story of mixed impact. Kinski was essential to the film as conceived, and she’s endlessly watchable.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Some Kind of Hero
    Some Kind of Hero is yet another example of how Richard Pryor can take a mediocre film and elevate it to the level of his extraordinary talents.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Silent Rage
    Silent Rage seems as if it were made with a demographics sampler entitled ’10 Sleazy Ways to Cash in on the Exploitation Market’. The result is a combination horror-kung fu-oater-woman in peril-mad scientist film with more unintentional laughs than possible in the space of 100 minutes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Basket Case
    Basket Case is an ultra-cheap monster film created by neophyte filmmaker Frank Henenlotter with a tongue-in-cheek approach.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Long Good Friday
    In many respects a conventional thriller set in London's underworld, The Long Good Friday is much more densely plotted and intelligently scripted than most such yarns.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eating Raoul
    The appeal of Paul Bartel’s tongue-in-cheek approach is that he manages to take his story to such a ridiculous extreme, remain genuinely funny and successfully tell his perverse story.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Porky's
    If, by chance, Porky's should prove to be Melvin Simon's swan song in the film industry, it will either be perceived as a thunderously rude exit or a titanic raspberry uttered to audiences everywhere.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Deathtrap
    Despite its intermittently amusing dialog, however, Deathtrap comes across as a minor entertainment, cleverness of which cannot conceal its essential artificiality when blown up on the big screen.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Victor Victoria
    A sparkling, ultra-sophisticated entertainment from Blake Edwards.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Missing
    Lemmon is superior as a man facing up to issues he never wanted to confront personally. Edgy and belligerent most of the time, Spacek is more constrained but she's fully believable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Diner
    Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser and Timothy Daly are terrific as the friends as are Ellen Barkin and Kathryn Dowling as the two females involved with different group members.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evil Under the Sun
    Apart from cutting down the number of characters, Hamilton and scripter Anthony Shaffer have also had the audacity to switch things around in the inevitable denouement scene. Poirot points right away at the guilty party, while the true suspense is put into the how’s and why’s that follow.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Death Wish II
    Charles Bronson, as the avenging vigilante Paul Kersey, is turned loose this time on the creeps of Los Angeles and the results are every bit as revolting as in the original 1974 jackpot fantasy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Swamp Thing
    Short on thrills and laughs...Craven tries in vain, through old-fashioned characters and dialog, to re-create the ’50s B-monster movie. The film’s only asset for adult audiences is Barbeau, who is thoroughly believable and a feisty, rough ‘n’ tumble heroine, able to beat up most bad guys or outrun them through the swamp.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shoot the Moon
    A number of high-powered artists fail to coalesce their talents in Shoot the Moon a grim drama of marital collapse which proves disturbing and irritating by turns.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Barbarosa
    Australian director Fred Schepisi does a careful job of bringing the western legend to light with endearing performances from actors Willie Nelson and Gary Busey.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quest for Fire
    Jean-Jacques Annaud's Quest for Fire is an engaging prehistoric yarn that happily never degenerates into a club and lion skin spinoff of Star Wars and resolutely refuses to bludgeon the viewer with facile or gratuitous effects.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Border
    Despite Jack Nicholson's multi-leveled performance, The Border is a surprisingly uninvolving film.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cannery Row
    This long-in-the-works adaptation of John Steinbeck's waterfront tomes [Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday] displays more appreciation for the values inherent in the material than it does ability to breathe life into it.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Beast Within
    There does come a time when Clemens has to get out of his body and get on with being a bigtime monster. Thanks to Thomas R. Burman’s make-up effects, this sequence actually creates chills as the boy’s head bubbles and bursts and his skin pops and stretches.
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