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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    • 48 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mutiny on the Bounty
    This is a superb blending of direction, photography and special effects artistry.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
    Once the inept, draggy start is passed, the film’s pace builds with ever-growing force.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Period of Adjustment
    Period of Adjustment is lower case Tennessee Williams, but it also illustrates that lower case Williams is superior to the upper case of most modern playwrights.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Manchurian Candidate
    One of the wildest fabrications any author has ever tried to palm off on a gullible public. But the fascinating thing is that, from uncertain premise to shattering conclusion, one does not question plausibility of the events being rooted in their own cinematic reality.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Longest Day
    A solid and stunning war epic.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cléo from 5 to 7
    Sometimes invention falters, as in the scene with the songwriters. But Varda then easily picks up the threads and keeps alive interest in the girl and her plight.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Miracle Worker
    Where the picture really excels, outside of its inherent story values, is in the realm of photographic technique. It is here that director Penn and cameraman Ernest Caparros have teamed to create artful, indelible strokes of visual storytelling and mood-molding.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Birdman of Alcatraz
    Birdman of Alcatraz is not really a prison picture in the traditional and accepted sense of the term. Birdman reverses the formula and brings a new breadth and depth to the form. In telling, with reasonable objectivity but understandably deep compassion the true story of Robert Stroud, it achieves a human dimension way beyond its predecessors.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hell Is for Heroes
    Producer Henry Blanke has framed and mounted a gripping, fast-paced, hard-hitting dramatic portrait of an interesting World War II battlefield incident. But there are occasional duds in the film's dramatic arsenal.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Boys' Night Out
    Since the element of story surprise, so vital in humour, is completely absent in the Ira Wallach screenplay, adapted by Marion Hargrove from a story by Arne Sultan and Marvin Worth, the audience is forced to seek comedy rewards in isolated doses – individual gags and situations.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Music Man
    Allowing something of slowness at the very start and the necessities of establishing the musical way of telling a story, plus the atmosphere of Iowa in 1912, that's about the only criticism of an otherwise building, punching, handsomely dressed and ultimately endearing super-musical.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lolita
    Vladimir Nabokov's witty, grotesque novel is, in its film version, like a bee from which the stinger has been removed. It still buzzes with a sort of promising irreverence, but it lacks the power to shock and, eventually, makes very little point either as comedy or satire.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Road to Hong Kong
    The script is spiced with a number of private jokes (golf, Hope’s nose, Crosby’s dough, reference to gags from previous Road films) but not enough to be irritating. Major disappointment is Joan Collins, who though an okay looker, never seems quite abreast of the comedians.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ride the High Country
    It is Sam Peckinpah’s direction, however, that gives the film greatest artistry. He gives N. B. Stone Jr.’s script a measure beyond its adequacy, instilling bright moments of sharp humor and an overall significant empathetic flavor.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jules and Jim
    A tender tale [from the novel by Henri-Pierre Roche] that avoids mawkishness and impropriety in treating the lives of two friends who are mixed up with a woman they share.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is an entertaining and emotionally involving western. Yet, while it is an enjoyable film it falls distinctly shy of its innate story potential.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cape Fear
    As a forthright exercise in cumulative terror Cape Fear is a competent and visually polished entry.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Experiment in Terror
    The film treatment embraces a number of unnecessary character bits that merely extend the plot and, despite their striking individual reaction, deter from the suspense buildup.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Testament of Orpheus
    [Cocteau] still has a flair for provoking strange moods in ordinary landscapes, as well as utilizing simple trick effects effectively and judiciously. He ribs himself at times but is quite clear in his summation that a poet is rarely recognized in his time.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sweet Bird of Youth
    Sweet Bird of Youth is a tamer and tidied but arresting version of Tennessee Williams' Broadway play. It's a glossy, engrossing hunk of motion picture entertainment, slickly produced by Berman.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Through a Glass Darkly
    Not a pleasant film, it is a great one.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lover Come Back
    This is a funny, most-of-the-time engaging, smartly produced show. Farce has Rock Hudson as would-be conqueror of Doris Day, who as the victim of a who's-who deception plays brinkmanship with surrender.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Victim
    This is telling, moving stuff.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Children's Hour
    Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, in the leading roles, beautifully complement each other. Hepburn’s soft sensitivity, mar- velous projection and emotional understatement result in a memorable portrayal. MacLaine’s enactment is almost equally rich in depth and substance.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Judgment at Nuremberg
    Judgment at Nuremberg is twice the size of the concise, stirring and rewarding production on television's Playhouse 90 early in 1959. A faster tempo by producer-director Stanley Kramer and more trenchant script editing would have punched up picture.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One, Two, Three
    Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three is a fast-paced, high-pitched, hard-hitting, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Story is so furiously quick-witted that some of its wit gets snarled and smothered in overlap. But total experience packs a considerable wallop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    El Cid
    El Cid is a fast-action color-rich, corpse-strewn, battle picture. The Spanish scenery is magnificent, the costumes are vivid, the chain mail and Toledo steel gear impressive. Perhaps the 11th century of art directors Veniero Colasanti and John Moore exceeds reality, but only scholars will complain of that. Action rather than acting characterizes this film.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Babes in Toyland
    Walt Disney's first live-action musical, a lavish translation to the screen of Victor Herbert's operetta, Babes in Toyland, is an expensive gift, brightly-wrapped and intricately packaged. But some of the more mature patrons may be distressed to discover that quaint, charming Toyland has been transformed into a rather gaudy and mechanical Fantasyland. What actually emerges is Babes in Disneyland.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    West Side Story
    West Side Story is a beautifully-mounted, impressive, emotion-ridden and violent musical which, in its stark approach to a raging social problem and realism of unfoldment, may set a pattern for future musical presentations. Screen takes on a new dimension in this powerful and sometimes fascinating translation of the Broadway musical to the greater scope of motion pictures.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Hawaii
    Hal Kanter's breezy screenplay, from a story by Allan Weiss, is the slim, but convenient, foundation for a handsome, picture-postcard production crammed with typical South Seas musical hulaballoo.
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