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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    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
    Action dwells upon the misadventures of the pair as they pursue the outlaw trail, but more importantly, packs the type of fast movement the title indicates.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Sterile Cuckoo
    It is Minnelli’s one-woman show. The 21-year-old Burton is not so much her costar as her straight man.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paint Your Wagon
    What the $17 million-plus film (from the 1951 Lerner-Loewe Broadway musical) lacks in a skimpy story line it makes up in the music and expert choreography. There are no obvious ‘musical numbers’. All the songs, save one or two, work neatly, quietly and well into the script. The actors used their own voices, which are pleasant enough and add to the note of authenticity.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
    The acting is superb. Cannon proves an expert comedienne. She and Gould practically steal the film, although admittedly they have the best lines. Wood and Culp give equally fine performances....The film is almost flawless, presenting the issues in a pleasing, entertaining and thought-provoking manner.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Italian Job
    The cast does its stuff to good effect. Coward, as the highly patriotic, business-like master crook, brings all his imperturbable sense of irony and comedy to his role.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Medium Cool
    Photographed in Chicago against the clamor and violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where cast principals were on their own as they made their way through the crowds and police lines. Buildup to these later sequences frequently is confusing and motives difficult to fathom.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Rain People
    Writer-director Francis Coppola, scrutinizing the flight of a neurotic young woman and her efforts to assist a brain-damaged ex-football player, has developed an overlong, brooding film incorporating some excellent photography. Often lingering too long on detail to build effects, he manages to lose character sympathy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Easy Rider
    Fonda himself has given this a fine production dress, with associate Bert Schneider, and the brilliant lensing, excellent music background ballads, especially Bob Dylan's "Easy Rider," are fine counterpoints to this poetic trip along Southwest America.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Wild Bunch
    Film at 145 minutes is far over-length, and should be tightened extensively, particularly in first half. After a bang-up and exciting opening, it appears that scripters lost sight of their narrative to drag in Mexican songs, dancing and way of life, plus an overage of dialog, to the detriment of action.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Eye of the Cat
    Pic has a few good jolts, successful buildups, and good looking people, but stilted dialog and plot shot through with holes keep mystery at a minimum, suspense overdue. Despite San Francisco as backdrop, with North Beach and Sausalito tossed in for spice, film trips over its own cliches and errors.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    True Grit
    It’s mostly Wayne all the way. He towers over everything in the film – actors, script [from Charles Portis’ novel], even the magnificent Colorado mountains.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The April Fools
    In addition to Lemmon, comedians Jack Weston (as his lawyer) and Harvey Korman (as a drinking companion they encounter in the commuter train’s drinking car) provide their own brand of laughs and the contrasting styles of the three actors gives the plot most of its action.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Midnight Cowboy
    The sometimes amusing but essentially sordid saga of a male prostitute in Manhattan,...Midnight Cowboy is of the modern moment moderne. It has a hot topical theme; a popular actor from last year’s greatest film comedy; a miscellany of competent bit players, a good deal of both sly and broad humor. If the women object, and some will, that it accords their sex scant courtesy, the story hardly presents males as admirable. Indeed in this film the scenery is lovely and only the human race is vile.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Winning
    Overly-long, it nevertheless carries sock appeal in suspenseful racing sequences and its principals in a realistically-developed marital romance score strongly.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mackenna's Gold
    The plot [from Will Henry's novel McKenna's Gold] is good, the acting adequate. But it's the scenery, the vastness of the west, the use of cameras, and of horses, and the special effects which keep the viewer involved and entertained.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Death of a Gunfighter
    Widmark elicits certain sympathy for his actions in his hardboiled interpretation.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Support Your Local Sheriff!
    Support Your Local Sheriff uses as the basis for its comedy the many cliches that have become part and parcel of the Western genre.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Assassination Bureau
    Fused with the capable talents of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden picture emerges as a somewhat unusual and clever comedy after an over-leisurely opening.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Love Bug
    For sheer inventiveness of situation and the charm that such an idea projects, The Love Bug rates as one of the better entries of the Disney organization.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where Eagles Dare
    Highly entertaining, thrilling and rarely lets down for a moment.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity is, in short, a terrific musical film. Based on the 1966 legituner [by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, based on Federico Fellini's film, Nights of Cabiria], extremely handsome and plush production accomplishes everything it sets out to do.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Night They Raided Minsky's
    Norman Lear's period peek at a peculiarly American form of entertainment - burlesque - is most successful in its art direction and nostalgic recapturing of New York's lower East Side during its most hoydenish period.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Red Beard
    It's hokum lifted to the highest denominator, the banal made into near art by great skill and craftsmanship by the Japanese master.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
    Howes goes through the romantic motions with Van Dyke and the maternal ones with the kids, but there is no real sentiment between players.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oliver!
    It’s a bright, shiny, heartwarming musical, packed with songs and lively production highspots and, though the leading performances are not all up to the Lean mark, if memory serves it’s a fine enough thesping ensemble to keep exhibitors and audience enthusiastic.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Faces
    Faces is a long, long (at least an hour too long) look at a 36-hour splitup in the 14-year marriage of a middle-class couple. At least John Cassavetes, who also wrote the screenplay, describes them as middle-class.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yellow Submarine
    This is a full length animated cartoon in which the prime factor is the appearance of the Beatles in caricature form. Here are all the ingredients of a novel entertainment.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ice Station Zebra
    Action develops slowly, alternating with some excellent submarine interior footage, and good shots – of diving, surfacing and maneuvering under an ice field.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vixen!
    Russ Meyer’s film is another of his technically polished sexplicit dramas, this time free of physical violence and brutality, and hyped with some awkwardly developed draft-dodging and patriotism angles.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bullitt
    Conflict between police sleuthing and political expediency is the essence of Bullitt, an extremely well-made crime melodrama [from Robert L. Pike's novel Mute Witness] filmed in Frisco. Steve McQueen delivers a very strong performance as a detective seeking a man whom Robert Vaughn, ambitious politico, would exploit for selfish motives. Good scripting and excellent direction by Peter Yates maintain deliberately low-key but mounting suspense.
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