Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mephisto Waltz
    Main fault is a tired script with more than a full quota of arch, laughable dialog, spouted with relish by performers struggling to keep their heads above water.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    They Might Be Giants
    It’s not only unfunny, but increasingly preachy and sentimental – hammering at the cliched tale of the good-hearted nut who’s basically saner, and certainly nicer, than the pack of meanies who attempt to defeat him.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big Jake
    Big Jake is an extremely slick and commercial John Wayne starrer, this time as a long-gone husband out to rescue a grandson from kidnapper Richard Boone.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Escape from the Planet of the Apes
    Escape from the Planet of the Apes is an excellent film, almost as good as the original Planet of the Apes. Arthur Jacobs’ production is marked by an outstanding script, using some of the original Pierre Boulle novel characters; excellent direction by Don Taylor; and superior performances from a cast headed by encoring Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Plaza Suite
    Each of the femme stars is given much screen time and the result not only is excellent spotlighting of their own talents, but also an adroit restraint on Matthau’s presence.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Billy Jack
    Screenplay attempts to encompass too many story facets. Result is that the action frequently drags.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bananas
    Allen and Mickey Rose have written some funny stuff, and Allen, both as director and actor, knows what to do with it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
    Melvin Van Peebles produced this film, edited it, wrote the screenplay, composed the music and played the leading role. He comes out ahead in all but one category: there are some serious problems with his screenplay.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Summer of '42
    Robert Mulligan's Summer of '42 has a large amount of charm and tenderness; it also has little dramatic economy and much eye-exhausting photography which translates to forced and artificial emphasis on a strungout story.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beguiled
    Marking a distinct change of pace for both director Don Siegel and star Clint Eastwood, The Beguiled doesn’t come off, and cues laughter in all the wrong places.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Carter
    Mike Hodges' top-notch adaptation of a Ted Lewis novel not only maintains interest but conveys with rare artistry, restraint and clarity the many brutal, sordid and gamy plot turns.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Vanishing Point
    The action is almost entirely made up of one man driving a car at maximum speed from Denver to, hopefully, San Francisco, against various odds, from the police who try to intercept him, to the oddball individuals he meets along the way.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Andromeda Strain
    The Andromeda Strain is a high-budget science-fact melodrama, marked by superb production, an excellent score, and intriguing story premise and an exciting conclusion. But Nelson Gidding's adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel is too literal and talky.
    • Variety
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bleak Moments
    A film with downbeat themes of solitude, difficulties of communication, coping with a retarded 29-year-old sister, it has enough human insight sans mawkishness or undue sentimentality to make it wryly funny, with its recognition of human foibles that gives it an edge, charm and warmth, tempered with compassion.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There Was a Crooked Man...
    It is the type of action drama in which neither the actors nor director appear to believe the script or characters.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Aristocats
    Helped immeasurably by the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and others, plus some outstanding animation, songs, sentiment, some excellent dialog and even a touch of psychedelia.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Big Man
    Little Big Man is a sort of vaudeville show, framed in fictional biography, loaded with sketches of varying degrees of serious and burlesque humor, and climaxed by the Indian victory over Gen George A. Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brewster McCloud
    Brewster McCloud spares practically nothing in contemporary society. Literate original screenplay is a sardonic fairy tale for the times, extremely well cast and directed.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights is a competent, tasteful, frequently even lovely re-adaption of Emily Bronte's Gothic, mystical love story. But the brooding tension, the electric passion of two lovers compelled to an inevitable tragedy is not generated.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rio Lobo
    Rio Lobo is the sort of western that John Wayne and producer-director Howard Hawks do in their sleep. But by no stretch of nostalgia does it match such previous Wayne-Hawks epics as Red River or Rio Bravo.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Story
    It is generally successful on all artistic levels, propelled by the best-selling Erich Segal novel written from the original screenplay.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gimme Shelter
    Captures that petulant omnisexuality that made many adults consider Jagger a threat to their daughters, sons and household pets alike.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scrooge
    Albert Finney's remarkable performance in the title role; executive producer Leslie Bricusse's fluid adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, plus his unobtrusive complementary music and lyrics; and Ronald Neame's delicately controlled direction which conveys, but does not force, all the inherent warmth, humor and sentimentality.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
    Billy Wilder's enterprise is a strange one because of its shift in directions from quite good satire to straight spy stuff. It is in large part old-fashioned, in that it's mile-wide and ancient-history Sherlock Holmes, but it's also handsomely produced and directed with incisiveness by Wilder.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Great White Hope
    A superior cast, headed by James Earl Jones encoring in his stage role, a colorful and earthy script, plus outstanding production, render film quite palatable.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tora! Tora! Tora!
    Both overall director Richard Fleischer and his Japanese counterparts do a dull job, and the monotonously low-key tone of scene after scene almost suggests that each was filmed without a sense of ultimate slotting in the finished form.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Five Easy Pieces
    The film’s nervewracking quality is consistent with its content. Nicholson’s performance is a remarkably varied and daring exploration of a complex character, equally convincing in its manic and sober aspects.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Wild Child
    It progresses slowly but absorbingly. Truffaut underplays but exudes an interior tenderness and dedication. The boy is amazingly and intuitively well played by a tousled gypsy tyke named Jean-Pierre Cargol. Everybody connected with this unusual, off-beat film made in black-and-white rates kudos.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Take the Money and Run
    A few good laughs in an 85-minute film do not a comedy make. Basically a running gag about hero Allen's ineptitude as a professional crook, scatters its fire in so many directions it has to hit at least several targets. But satire on documentary coverage of criminal flop is overextended and eventually tiresome.
    • Variety
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Catch-22
    Low, cheap comedy mingles nervously with slick, high-fashion technical polish in a slow-boiling stew of specious philosophy and superficial characterization.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »