Variety's Scores

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For 17,757 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: 9,120 out of 17757
  2. Mixed: 7,002 out of 17757
  3. Negative: 1,635 out of 17757
17757 movie reviews
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Green Pastures
    A simple, enchanting, audience-captivating all-[black] cinematic fable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Secret Agent
    Secret Agent dallies much on the way but rates as good spy entertainment, suave story telling, and, in one particular case, brilliant characterization.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Show Boat
    Show Boat, Universal’s second talkerized version, is a smash filmusical. Basic tender romance [from Edna Ferber’s novel] between Magnolia (Irene Dunne) and Gaylord Ravenal (Allan Jones), romantic wastrel of the Mississippi river banks, has been most effectively projected by this reproduction of the classic [1927] Edna Ferber-Oscar Hammerstein II-Jerome Kern operetta.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Great Ziegfeld
    William Powell’s Zieggy is excellent. Preserving the sympathies, he endows the impersonation with all the qualities of a great entrepreneur and sentimentalist without sacrificing the shades and moods called for.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Desire
    The direction is subtle and inspired, with many smart little Lubitschian touches adding to the general appeal of the yarn [by Hans Szekely and R.A. Stemmle] and its plot.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Story of Louis Pasteur
    It couldn't have been an easy film to make, and the fact that it holds as much general interest as it does speaks volumes. But the producers couldn't avoid some dull stretches of scientific discourse.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Captain Blood
    Captain Blood, from the Rafael Sabatini novel, is a big picture. It's a spectacle which will establish both Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Director Michael Curtiz hasn't spared the horses. It's a lavish, swashbuckling saga of the Spanish main.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Metro achieves in A Tale of Two Cities a screen classic.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mutiny on the Bounty
    Mutiny takes its time, and plenty of it, without being guilty of a single dull moment.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Top Hat
    This one can't miss and the reasons are three - Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin's 11 songs and sufficient comedy between numbers to hold the film together.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The 39 Steps
    Yes, they can make pictures in England. This one proves it. International spy stories are most always good, and this is one of the best. [19 Jun 1935, p.21]
    • Variety
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Raven
    A good horror flicker. Just vaguely 'suggested' by the Edgar Allen Poe classic, the adaptation wanders not a little, but the basic romance is wisely kept to the fore, and Bela Lugosi, as the psycopathic medico to whom Irene Ware is indebted for her life contributes the shocker aspects forcibly.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Informer
    The Informer is forcefully and intelligently written, directed and acted.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bride of Frankenstein
    Karloff manages to invest the character with some subtleties of emotion that are surprisingly real and touching.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Man Who Knew Too Much
    An unusually fine dramatic story handled excellently from a production standpoint. Built along gangster lines, but from an international crook standpoint, with a lot of melodramatic suspense added.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strauss' Great Waltz
    The Great Waltz is a field day for music lovers plus elegant entertainment. Producers were nearly two years on this film, but the extra effort shows in the nicety with which its many component parts fit together. It is Luise Rainer who makes the film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Roberta
    Roberta is musical picture-making at its best - fast, smart, good looking and tuneful.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    David Copperfield
    It was almost an adventure to try to bring to the screen the expansively optimistic Micawber, but he lives again in W.C. Fields, who only once yields to his penchant for horseplay.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Imitation of Life
    John M. Stahl directs this kind of thing very well. He keeps the Fannie Hurst ‘success story’ brand of snobbishness under control and the film flows with mounting interest, if at moments a trifle slowly.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Gay Divorcee
    All through the picture there's charm, romance, gaiety and eclat.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Miss Marker
    This picture is a good response to that element that claims there is nothing good in pictures. Clean, funny, with thrills and heart appeal all nicely blended. [22 May 1934, p.15]
    • Variety
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thin Man
    The Thin Man was an entertaining novel, and now it's an entertaining picture.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Death Takes a Holiday
    It is the kind of story and picture that beckons the thinker, and for this reason is likely to have greater appeal among the intelligentsia. [27 Feb 1934, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It Happened One Night
    One of those stories that without a particularly strong plot manages to come through in a big way, due to the acting, dialog, situations and direction. In other words, the story has that intangible quality of charm which arises from a smooth blending of the various ingredients. Difficult to analyze, impossible to designedly reproduce. Just a happy accident.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flying Down to Rio
    This picture makes its bid via numbers staged by Dave Gould to Vincent Youman melodies. But Rio’s story [from a play by Anne Caldwell, based on an original story by Louis Brock] lets it down. It’s slow and lacks laughs to the point where average business seems its groove.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Son of Kong
    This is the sequel to and wash-up of the King Kong theme, consisting of salvaged remnants from the original production and rating as fair entertainment.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alice in Wonderland
    On the screen it is vividly realized in all its fantastic angles. The humor is genuine and the treatment satisfying on its literary side. But an hour and a quarter of it is overpoweringly sedative. [26 Dec 1933, p.10]
    • Variety
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Women
    Intelligent, grown up rendition of the Louisa Alcott classic.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Duck Soup
    In place of the constant punning and dame chasing, Duck Soup has the Marxes madcapping through such bits as the old Schwartz Bros. mirror routine, so well done in the hands of Groucho, Harpo and Chico that it gathers a new and hilarious comedy momentum all over again.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man
    The strangest character yet created by the screen [from the novel by H.G. Wells] roams through The Invisible Man.
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