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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    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kramer vs. Kramer
    Kramer vs. Kramer is a perceptive, touching, intelligent film about one of the raw sores of contemporary America, the dissolution of the family unit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Being There
    Being There is a highly unusual and an unusually fine film. A faithful but nonetheless imaginative adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's quirky comic novel, pic marks a significant achievement for director Hal Ashby and represents Peter Sellers' most smashing work since the mid-1960s.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Human Factor
    Graham Greene's low-keyed, highly absorbing 1978 novel of an aging English double agent finding himself trapped into defecting to Moscow and leaving his family behind may have seemed like ideal material for Otto Preminger's style of dispassionate ambiguity, but helmer doesn't seem up to the occasion, bringing little atmosphere or feeling to the delicate ticks of the story.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1941
    Billed as a comedy spectacle, Steven Spielberg’s 1941 is long on spectacle, but short on comedy. The Universal-Columbia Pictures co-production is an exceedingly entertaining, fast-moving revision of 1940s war hysteria in Los Angeles spawned by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and boasts Hollywood’s finest miniature and special effects work seen to date.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Jerk
    An artless, non-stop barrage of off-the-wall situations, funny and unfunny jokes, generally effective and sometimes hilarious sight gags and bawdy non sequiturs.
  6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
    Producer Gene Roddenberry and director Robert Wise have corralled an enormous technical crew, and the result is state-of-the-art screen magic.
    • Variety
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rose
    Result is an ultra-realistic look at the infusion of money, sex, drugs and booze into the simple process of singing a song, a chore Midler does faultlessly in several excellent concert sequences.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When a Stranger Calls
    More than anything else, When a Stranger Calls resembles a good, old-fashioned grade B thriller.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Santini
    Robert Duvall gives an excellent portrayal of a semi-psychotic, softened with a warmer side. But Duvall has to fight for every inch of footage against the overwhelming performances by several others in the cast - and that's the strength of The Great Santini.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ...and justice for all.
    And Justice for All is a film that attempts to alternate between comedy and drama, handling neither one incompetently, but also not excelling at either task.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Meteor
    Meteor really combines several disasters in one continuous cinematic bummer.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Black Stallion
    The Black Stallion is a perfect gem.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Starting Over
    Starting Over takes on the subject of marital dissolution from a comic point of view, and succeeds admirably, wryly directed by Alan J. Pakula, and featuring an outstanding cast.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Time After Time
    A delightful, entertaining trifle of a film that shows both the possibilities and limitations of taking liberties with literature and history. Nicholas Meyer has deftly juxtaposed Victorian England and contemporary America in a clever story, irresistible due to the competence of its cast.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Onion Field
    James Woods as the near-psychotic Powell is chillingly effective, creating a flakiness in the character that exudes the danger of a live wire near a puddle.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yanks
    Director John Schlesinger has done a beautiful job with both cast and craft in Yanks, a multiple love story set in England in World War II. Yet little that's exciting ever happens in the picture.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Legacy
    The Legacy tries for an added dimension of satanic possession, but winds up a tame, suspenseless victim of its own lack of imagination.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love and Bullets
    Director Stuart Rosenberg could have glossed over the plot’s less believable twists with a brisker style and a lot more attack.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hanover Street
    Hanover Street is reasonably effective as a war film with a love story background. Unfortunately it's meant to be a love story set against a war background.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monty Python's Life of Brian
    Just as wacky and imaginative as their earlier film outings. (Review of Original Release)
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Concorde... Airport '79
    Unintentional comedy still seems the Airport series' forte, although excellent special effects work, and some decent dramatics help Concorde take off.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Brilliant Career
    This Australian film is a charming look [from the book by Miles Franklin] at 19th-century rural days in general and the stirrings of self-realization and feminine liberation in the persona of a headstrong young girl who wants to go her own way.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Seduction of Joe Tynan
    Adroitly combining humor and intimate drama, Joe Tynan joins that list of exemplary Washington-set pix, including Advise and Consent and The Best Man.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Apocalypse Now
    Apocalypse Now was worth the wait. Alternately a brilliant and bizarre film, Francis Coppola’s four year ‘work in progress’ offers the definitive validation to the old saw, “war is hell.”
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sunburn
    Grodin works overtime to carry the picture and does so marvelously, displaying a savvy low-key comedy style.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    North Dallas Forty
    What distinguishes this screen adaptation of Peter Gent’s bestseller is the exploration of a human dimension almost never seen in sports pix. Most people understand that modern-day athletes are just cogs in a big business wheel, but getting that across on the screen is a whole different matter. And in large measure, that success is due to a bravura performance in the lead role by Nick Nolte.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    More American Graffiti
    While dazzling to the eye, the flirtation with split-screen, anamorphic, 16mm and 1:85 screen sizes does not justify itself in terms of the film’s content. What Norton and producer Howard Kazanjian are attempting, and what a variety of technicians pull off flawlessly, is daring, but ultimately pointless.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Amityville Horror
    Flies swarm where they shouldn't, pipes and walls ooze ick, doors fly open, and priests and psychic sensitives cringe and flee in panic. It's definitely a house that audiences will enjoy visiting, especially if unfamiliar with the ending.
    • Variety
    • 22 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Villain
    Rarely has so much talent been used to so little purpose.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lady in Red
    Lewis Teague, a former second-unit director, guides his large cast reasonably well through John Sayles’ craftsmanlike script.
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