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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  1. Jaws
    Robert Shaw [is] absolutely magnificent as a coarse fisherman finally hired to locate the Great White Shark; and Richard Dreyfuss, in another excellent characterization as a likeable young scientist.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Nashville
    Nashville is one of Altman’s best films, free of the rambling insider fooling around that sometimes mars entire chunks of every second or third picture. When he navigates rigorously to defined goals, however, the results are superb.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bug
    Its last half is largely static, and the film never revives much interest.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wind and the Lion
    Generally literate and very commercial period action drama, well written and better directed by John Milius.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Breakout
    Director Tom Gries and the entire cast perform as though they all had better things to do.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Eiger Sanction
    Eastwood, who also directs and according to studio did his own mountain climbing without doubles, manages fine suspense. His direction displays a knowledge that permits rugged action.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Return of the Pink Panther
    All hands seem to be having a ball, especially Schell, whose unabashed amusement at Clouseau’s seduction attempts often matches an audience’s hilarity.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    French Connection II
    Hackman’s performance is another career highlight, ranging from cocky narc, Ugly American, helpless addict, humbled ego and relentless avenger.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fortune
    The Fortune is an occasionally enjoyable comedy trifle, starring Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty as bumbling kidnappers of heiress Stockard Channing, who is excellent in her first major screen role. Very classy 1920s production values often merit more attention than the plot.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Smile
    Smile is a hilarious but ultimately shallow putdown of teenage beauty contests.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Day of the Locust
    Magnificent production, combined with excellent casting and direction, make The Day of the Locust as fine a film (in a professional sense) as the basic material lets it be. Nathanael West's novel about losers on the Hollywood fringe has lost little of its verisimilitude in adaptation.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Death Race 2000
    Script, from an Ib Melchior story, makes its satirical points economically, and director Paul Bartel keeps the film moving quickly.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monty Python and the Holy Grail
    Basically an excuse for set pieces, some amusing, others overdone.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Supervixens
    Russ Meyer’s Supervixens is an overlong and overly violent skin pic whose interest lies in its pretentions to be more than a skin film.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brannigan
    Car chases, booby traps, etc round out the formula plot turns.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Escape to Witch Mountain
    Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann are happy choices as the orphans.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tommy
    Ken Russell's filmization of Tommy is spectacular in nearly every way. The enormous appeal of the original 1969 record album by The Who has been complemented in a superbly added visual dimension.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Night Moves
    Night Moves is a paradox: a suspenseless suspenser, very well cast with players who lend sustained interest to largely synthetic theatrical characters.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shampoo
    All the excellent creative components do not add up to a whole. There are, however, strong elements in the film. Warden’s performance is outstanding. He makes the most of a script and direction which gives his character much more dimension than the prototype cuckold.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Great Waldo Pepper
    The Great Waldo Pepper is an uneven and unsatisfying story of anachronistic, pitiable, but misplaced heroism.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge
    Perhaps the film is a triumph of controlled and deliberate mediocrity, but it still closer resembles a clumsy carbon of a bad satire on the original.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wilby Conspiracy
    The Wilby Conspiracy [from Peter Driscoll’s novel] is a good action melodrama about apartheid in South Africa. It was made in Kenya. The stars Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine are relentlessly stalked by Nicol Williamson, superb as a coldly dedicated and brutal policeman out after racial agitators.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Stepford Wives
    Bryan Forbes’ filmization of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives is a quietly freaky suspense-horror story.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Strongest Man in the World
    The students of Medfield College unintentionally zap the laws of nature with unexpected and sometimes hilarious results.
  25. The Man with the Golden Gun
    Enjoyment requires denying the increasingly problematic truth about Bond: As heroes go, 007 represents a bygone notion of the privileged white man taking what’s his and leaving destruction in his wake.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Christmas
    Black Christmas, a bloody, senseless kill-for-kicks feature, exploits unnecessary violence in a university sorority house operated by an implausibly alcoholic ex-hoofer.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Front Page
    The Front Page, with a featured spot by Carol Burnett, sure looks good on paper. But that's about the only place it looks good. The production has the slick, machine-tooled look of certain assembly line automobiles that never quite seem to work smoothly.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Towering Inferno
    The Towering Inferno is one of the greatest disaster pictures made, a personal and professional triumph for producer Irwin Allen.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Young Frankenstein
    Young Frankenstein emerges as a reverently satirical salute to the 1930s horror film genre.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Godfather: Part II
    Al Pacino again is outstanding as Michael Corleone, successor to crime family leadership.
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