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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    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bad News Bears Go to Japan
    Producer Michael Ritchie (who directed the first installment) and writer-creator Bill Lancaster encore with Japan resulting in a more vigorous film than the sodden Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Heaven Can Wait
    Heaven Can Wait is an outstanding film. Harry Segall's fantasy comedy-drama play, made in 1941 by Columbia as Here Comes Mr Jordan, returns in an updated, slightly more macabre treatment.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Convoy
    Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy starts out as Smokey and the Bandit, segues into either Moby Dick or Les Miserables, and ends in the usual script confusion and disarray, the whole stew peppered with the vulgar excess of random truck crashes and miscellaneous destruction.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Grease
    Grease has got it, from the outstanding animated titles of John Wilson all the way through the rousing finale as John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John ride off into teenage happiness.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jaws 2
    Despite a notable but effective change in story emphasis, Jaws 2 is a worthy successor in horror, suspense and terror to its 1975 smash progenitor.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Damien: Omen II
    Alas, Little Orphan Damien, lucky enough to be taken in by a rich uncle after bumping off his first pair of foster parents, can’t resist killing the second set, too, along with assorted friends of the family. Damien is obviously wearing out his welcome.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cat from Outer Space
    The fun, as usual with Disney pix, comes in the believable sight gags provided along the way. Also as usual, it’s a good cast of veterans and nothing to tax them beyond their abilities, all ably kept in pace by director Norman Tokar.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Capricorn One
    Capricorn One begins with a workable, if cynical cinematic premise: the first manned space flight to Mars was a hoax and the American public was fooled through Hollywood gimmickry into believing that the phony landing happened. But after establishing the concept, Peter Hyams' script asks another audience - the one in the theatre - to accept something far more illogical, the uncovering of the hoax by reporter Elliott Gould...In general, it is a script of conveniences.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Big Wednesday
    A rubber stamp wouldn’t do for John Milius. So he took a sledgehammer and pounded Important all over Big Wednesday. This film about three Malibu surfers in the 1960s has been branded major statement and it’s got Big Ideas about adolescence, friendship and the 1960s.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Buddy Holly Story
    The Buddy Holly Story smacks of realism in almost every respect, from the dramaturgy involving Holly and his back-up band, The Crickets, to the verisimilitude of the musical numbers.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Martin
    Pittsburg-based auteur George A. Romero is still limited by apparently low budgets. But he has inserted some sepia-toned flashback scenes of Martin in Romania that are extraordinarily evocative, and his direction of the victimization scenes shows a definite flair for suspense.
    • Variety
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The End
    Production is a tasteless and overripe comedy that disintegrates very early into hysterical, undisciplined hamming.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    F.I.S.T.
    In its superb telling of how a humble but idealistic young man escalates to the corrupt heights of unbridled power, F.I.S.T. is to the labor movement in the United States what All the King's Men was to an era in American politics.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Manitou
    This bout between good and Satan includes some scares, camp and better than average credits.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Last Waltz
    An outstanding rock documentary.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Medusa Touch
    Director Jack Gold controls all the angles of this improbable story. Burton has some very effective moments too as does Remick.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pretty Baby
    The film is handsome, the players nearly all effective, but the story highlights are confined within a narrow range of ho-hum dramatization.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Deathsport
    David Carradine is the quiet good guy and the best thing that can be said about his acting and his part is that he doesn’t say much. Claudia Jennings is his partner good guy, the one who gets to amuse the bad guy in the dark room. The best thing that can be said about her performance is that she gets to take off her clothes, twice.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Straight Time
    Straight Time is a most unlikeable film because Dustin Hoffman, starring as a paroled and longtime criminal, cannot overcome the essentially distasteful and increasingly unsympathetic elements in the character. Ulu Grosbard's sluggish direction doesn't help.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    House Calls
    Despite some horsepower casting, House Calls is overall a silly and uneven comedy about doctors which wants to be as macabre as, say, Hospital, and at the same time as innocuous as a TV sitcom. It manages to be neither.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fury
    The Fury features Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes as adversaries in an elaborate game of mind control. Director Brian De Palma is on home ground in moving the plot pieces around effectively.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Return from Witch Mountain
    Pic is loaded with the kind of visual hijinks juve audiences love, and appeal should hold for adults, as well. Playoff looks bright in most situations.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An Unmarried Woman
    Paul Mazursky's excellent screenplay presents Jill Clayburgh in a most demanding role where she is torn between conflicting forces following the surprise confession of weak-willed husband Michael Murphy that he has fallen in love with another woman.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Coming Home
    In general an excellent Hal Ashby film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes on the Vietnam debacle from the standpoint of three participants.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blue Collar
    Paul Schrader's directorial debut is an artistic triumph. Schrader has transformed a carefully researched original screenplay penned by him and his brother Leonard into a powerful, gritty, seamless profile of three automobile assembly line workers banging their heads against the monotony and corruption that is the factory system.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Eraserhead
    Eraserhead is a sickening bad-taste exercise made by David Lynch under the auspices of the American Film Institute. Like a lot of AFI efforts, the pic has good tech values (particularly the inventive sound mixing), but little substance or subtlety.
    • Variety
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Boys in Company C
    The Boys in Company C is a spotty but okay popcorn trade drama about five young Marines and how their lives were changed by duty in the Vietnam war. Laden with barracks dialog and played at the enlisted man's level, the Raymond Chow production, directed well by Sidney J. Furie, features strong performances by some very fine actors.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Duellists
    It does not quite achieve a more lusty visual feel for the times and the strange relations of these two men to themselves and to the women in and out of their lives.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Coma
    Coma is an extremely entertaining suspense drama in the Hitchcock tradition. Robin Cook's novel is adapted by Crichton into a smartly paced tale which combines traditional Hitchcock elements with contemporary personal relationships.
    • Variety
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Opening Night
    Gena Rowlands turns in another virtuoso performance as the troubled actress. Cassavetes’ highly personal work will please his coterie of enthusiasts, but for general audiences it will be viewed as shrill, puzzling, depressing and overlong.
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