Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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  1. Legion
    Even when the blood-and-thunder hokiness of the over-the-top plot tilts perilously close to absurdity, the admirably straight-faced performances by well-cast lead players provide just enough counterbalance to sustain audience curiosity and sympathy.
  2. Edge of Darkness
    Campbell's topnotch production team yields predictably polished results, but the director's decision to revisit the late Troy Kennedy Martin's teleplay, finally, feels lacking.
  3. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    Action movies of this scale often start off strong and wind down to forgettable finales, but "Percy Jackson" is the opposite, overcoming a clunky setup to deliver nearly all its thrills in the last half-hour.
  4. The Hurt Locker
    Boal's script stirs a little of everything into the pot, which boils down into seven setpieces divided by brief intervals of camaraderie/conflict among the three protags.
  5. Daybreakers
    The script doesn't wring many surprises or much character involvement from the premise, and the brothers' helming, while slick, is short on scares, action setpieces and humor.
  6. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    But the charm of the film is that it resists turning people into cliches and lets Parker and Grant work their particular magic -- before they get to Wyoming, their performances are as stressed out as their characters, and while it's a dubious conceit that going cowboy is a cure-all, they put the notion across as convincingly as possible.
  7. Where the Wild Things Are
    Director Spike Jonze's sharp instincts and vibrant visual style can't quite compensate for the lack of narrative eventfulness that increasingly bogs down this bright-minded picture.
  8. Law Abiding Citizen
    True torture-porn aficionados will be disappointed, as editor Tariq Anwar cuts away right before blade meets flesh -- a move that feels a tad, well, gutless under the circumstances. But elsewhere, "Citizen" proves startlingly graphic, even by R-rated standards.
  9. The Informant!
    Amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny.
  10. Brothers
    Though it renders a convincing portrait of fractured family life and boasts its share of powerfully acted moments, this schematic tale of two siblings, ripped apart by jealousy, misunderstanding and unshakable trauma, plays like a more polished but less effective twin to the 2005 Danish original.
  11. Funny People
    Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens.
  12. Everybody's Fine
    Though a bit too artful to merit the pejorative "tearjerker" label, the film is rigorously streamlined to deliver a good emotional uppercut by the end, and purely on the strength of its craft, it connects.
  13. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    Little seems new compared to the first installment, except that this version is longer, louder, and perhaps "more than your eye can meet" in one sitting.
  14. 9
    Design aspects are arresting and the filmmaker's abilities are obvious, but the basic survival story remains slight, just as the general setting, no matter how artfully imagined, is by now pretty familiar.
  15. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    Suffers in ways typical to such adaptations -- what was fresh and flavorful in anecdotal description becomes more familiar and sitcom broad in literal depiction.
  16. Taken
    Neeson growls his way through the functional dialogue as an unstoppable killing machine in impressive, cold-eyed style.
  17. Astro Boy
    Appropriately for a film about robots, efficiency is the primary virtue of Astro Boy, a well-oiled CG-animated superhero pic that makes up in competence and vitality what it lacks in originality.
  18. The Devil's Rejects
    If you can stomach the violence -- and despite the R rating, that's a big if -- it's hard to deny that Zombie has made exactly the movie he set out to make, guaranteed to satiate his considerable fan base and sicken just about everyone else.
  19. Blood Diamond
    Africa's enduring sorrow is ripe for drama, but Blood Diamond is, finally, a fitting metaphor for the gems: Potentially brilliant from a distance, but upon closer inspection, one likely will see the flaws.
  20. The Notebook
    A determined and often affecting romance that doesn't speak down to audiences.
  21. I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    Perry's latest emotional roller coaster starts with considerable promise and a high-wattage cast, including Taraji P. Henson and singers Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige, before giving way to melodramatic predictability.
  22. Knowing
    Genre fans always looking for something new and awesome may feel like they've seen most of this before, but the conceptual and emotional strength of Summit's Nicolas Cage starrer largely carries the day.
  23. Bronson
    Too smart/arty for the slasher set, and too violent for high-brows, Bronson may have a tough time finding its niche, although it has "cult hit" written all over it.
  24. Che
    If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he's portrayed here.
  25. 300
    A blustery, bombastic, visually arresting account of the Battle of Thermopylae as channeled through the rabid imagination of graphic novelist Frank Miller.
  26. Coco Before Chanel
    More sentimental than chic, Gallic biopic Coco Before Chanel nonetheless knits a convincing portrait of the designer's journey from her humble beginnings as a provincial seamstress to the halls of Parisian haute couture.
  27. Appleseed
    Craft connoisseurs won't be disappointed with the splendidly executed result. However, everyone else is likely to wonder what the fuss about given the plot's dated cyborgs-and-supercomputers hijinks.
  28. She's One of Us
    While the director's penchant for extended silences and stagy character positioning make it all seem rather studied, the drama nonetheless is compellingly unsettling.
  29. Aliens of the Deep
    Documentary's visual wonders and well-pitched enthusiasm happily outstrip its clunkily ingenuous ain't-science-fun narrative.
  30. Emile
    A routine memory piece about long-buried family secrets that bubble back to the surface to wreak havoc.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Because of Winn-Dixie
    Uneven though it is, Because of Winn-Dixie, based on Kate Di Camillo's novel, is tough to dislike.
  32. Man of the House
    More than passably amusing.
  33. Hostage
    What sends this initially tense thriller over the precipice is a plot scheme that never knows when enough is enough.
  34. Fifty-Fifty
    Schizo manages to keep it fresh.
  35. Steamboy
    Dry storytelling and boy's-toys mechanics will stop this from being the next "Spirited Away"-style crossover hit.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    First Love
    While engaging, pic eventually betrays itself as having a trivial attitude to its chosen subject, with a climactic scene that is genuinely, but inappropriately, amusing.
  37. Palindromes
    Like the symmetrical word that supplies its title, the mordant comedy-drama recovers ground to become a boldly intriguing if not entirely satisfying subversion of American family values.
  38. Down and Derby
    A modestly amusing family-friendly comedy about a miniature car race that brings out the worst in overzealous fathers who compete with each other through their children.
  39. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    Colorful, sometimes endearing but highly uneven picture.
  40. Torremolinos 73
    Somewhat wacky tale, based on real events, is kept anchored in reality through attention to detail and by first-rate central perfs.
  41. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Strikingly crafted but rather empty drama.
  42. Fighting Tommy Riley
    The winner by a knockout is Eddie Jones...Without Jones, pic is a standard drama on the sweet science with the usual tropes and a slight tweak on the usual conflicts.
  43. A Hole in One
    This oddball tale of a small-town gangster's troubled girlfriend hovers uncertainly on the edge of an absurdist universe.
  44. Unleashed
    Slick transitions and punchy pace leave just enough time for Hopkins and Freeman to make dopey dialogue sound far smarter than it is. And as both pit bull and puppy dog, Jet Li convinces.
  45. Lost
    Schlocky yet resourceful.
  46. Madagascar
    Pleasant, if mediocre family fare.
  47. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
    Result is hardly a diabolical failure, if not quite a heavenly masterpiece. Schrader's intelligent, quietly subversive pic emphasizes spiritual agony over horror ecstasy, while paying occasional lip-service to the need for scares.
  48. Second Best
    While Second Best is mildly engaging thanks largely to an appealingly self-effacing turn from Joe Pantoliano, writer-director Eric Weber's script could have used an extra polish or two.
  49. 6ixtynin9
    The film goes more and more off-kilter, with its jumble of black comedy and bloodshed and its mild-mannered protagonist embroiled in violent crime making it an unsophisticated foray into Coen brothers territory.
  50. The Fearless Freaks
    Will please devotees without attracting many, if any, new converts.
  51. A Common Thread
    Thoughtful cross-generational portrait is full of familiar building blocks rendered fresh by first time feature helmer Eleonore Faucher.
  52. Apres Vous (After You)
    Elegantly written, well-thesped comedy is too hermetic and bittersweet to be laugh-out-loud funny, but sustains a fairly successful ratio of uncomfortable situations to amusing solutions.
  53. The Deal
    Never entirely convincing yet always watchable.
  54. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    An exhaustingly elaborate romantic fantasy actioner.
  55. High Tension
    Deftly juggles gore and suspense, and punchline holds an intellectual frisson or two for fans of gender-role speculation, but basically this is one more horror pic on the distinguished road already trodden by "Texas Chain Saw Massacre," "Maniac" and the like.
  56. Café Lumière
    Hou fans will find what they're looking for; others will wonder when the action starts.
  57. The Great Water
    Extraordinary perfs by a mostly young cast likely will be cancelled out by the grim subject.
  58. Heights
    An entertaining ensembler marbled with wit and heartache.
  59. Lila Says
    Easy on the eye but light on originality.
  60. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    Stands reasonably well on its own as an urgent, updated genre meditation on nurture vs. nature.
  61. Undead
    Precociously inventive horror pic that combines brain-eating zombies with outer space aliens.
  62. Chronicles
    Starts out bracingly but gradually loses focus. Ecuadorian writer-director Sebastian Cordero's screenplay trades in underdeveloped conflicts and blank characters, hinting far too early at the killer's probable identity.
  63. Wedding Crashers
    Despite flashes of nudity, crudity and mockery of women's raging hormones at the first sight of a trousseau, at its core it's just a big pushover with the heart of a chick flick.
  64. The Island
    Frenetic actioner about refugees from a genetic cloning plant starts off intriguingly, burns up its ideas in the first hour and pads out the rest with joltingly repetitive action sequences.
  65. The Edukators
    Ambling drama shows an exasperating lack of economy and a weakness for diatribe dialogue, but becomes progressively more involving after a laborious start.
  66. The Dukes of Hazzard
    Loud, silly but kind of lame-brained fun with car chases aplenty, "Dukes" faithfully plays like an extended episode of the series, albeit with an additional gallon or so of fuel-injected raunchiness.
  67. Junebug
    Has a washed-out look that may be off-putting to auds who might otherwise enjoy the pic's uncondescending view of Southern characters and customs.
  68. Secuestro express
    Assuming the victims' point of view in the type of kidnapping that's now epidemic in Latin America, Jonathan Jakubowicz's Kidnap Express depicts a nocturnal Caracas with tense energy.
  69. A State of Mind
    Admirably non-judgmental docu about life in "the least visited, known, understood country in the world," per Brit director Daniel Gordon, brings a refreshing balance to the usual blind vilification of the country.
  70. The 40 Year Old Virgin
    Crude, sophomorically homophobic but frequently funny, pic also overstays its welcome a bit and indulges in some juvenile excesses. All told, though, The 40 Year Old Virgin delivers enough belly laughs.
  71. Reel Paradise
    Although it will most readily appeal to cinephiles…offers sufficient reality-based incident and ponderable cultural issues to attract curious audiences.
  72. Wall
    Helmer -- an Arab Jew who has lived on both sides of Jerusalem and is comfortable speaking idiomatic Arabic and Hebrew -- is particularly well qualified to tackle her subject.
  73. An Unfinished Life
    A film is in trouble when, despite the presence of an A-list cast and a well-regarded director, the best thing in it is a partly digitized bear.
  74. HellBent
    A straight-ahead slasher pic with the big difference of an all-gay male character cast, Hellbent is fun -- if minor horror fun -- ably handled by first-time feature helmer Paul Etheredge-Ouzts.
  75. Just Like Heaven
    As uneven as the topography of its San Francisco locales, but the amiable peaks mostly offset the flat stretches and valleys. A variation on a very old meet-cute theme with a touch of otherworldly romance.
  76. The Thing About My Folks
    Good-natured but only memorable as a platform for the amusingly feisty Peter Falk, The Thing About My Folks plies a light approach to the problems grown children face when their parents appear on the verge of divorce.
  77. Dorian Blues
    Sharp performances and writing lend it a fresh appeal well above this genre's average.
  78. Occupation: Dreamland
    Helmers Garrett Scott and Ian Olds offer a sympathetic look at the average Joe doing duty in hell -- as well as a sharp indictment of the Pentagon's cavalier support for the troops.
  79. Where the Truth Lies
    Atom Egoyan's most mainstream and genre-oriented picture in his 20-year career applies a thick noir lacquer to a jumbled, time-jumping tale of a young female journalist prying the facts out of the aging entertainers and their cronies.
  80. Land of Plenty
    Rocky but respectable Land of Plenty proves the helmer often does better with low budgets, fast schedules and young collaborators. Slushy final 10 minutes nearly trashes with triteness the good work that precedes it.
  81. Innocent Voices
    While the respectable result is a more meaningful film than just about anything Mandoki worked on during his 17 years in Hollywood ("Angel Eyes," "Message in a Bottle"), pic suffers from an overindulgence of triumph-over-adversity cliches and a meandering narrative.
  82. The President's Last Bang
    South Korean cinema finally gets its first full-blown political satire with The President's Last Bang, a virtuoso slice of sustained black humor.
  83. Doom
    It's really not all that bad. Ultra-derivative bigscreen transplant of one of the most successful (and controversial) games ever made plays like a mutant cross between a biotech thriller and a zombie movie, with all the alien autopsies, blood-gushing protuberances and meaningless scientific jargon that come with the territory.
  84. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    Modestly engaging but mostly unexceptional.
  85. Shopgirl
    Martin hits all the right notes while subtly conveying both the appealing sophistication and the purposeful reserve of Ray. But he cannot entirely avoid being overshadowed by Dane's endearingly vulnerable, emotionally multifaceted and fearlessly open performance.
  86. Ushpizin
    An enjoyable seriocomic tale of a poor couple whose holiday-time miracle becomes a test of faith.
  87. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    At first seems like a pleasantly pat piece of verite advocacy for convention-breaking unions. But it gets really interesting once said relationship unexpectedly dissolves in ugly fashion, offering real-life voyeuristic appeal a la "Capturing the Friedmans."
  88. Prime
    Despite a comic Yiddishe mama turn by Meryl Streep and a sensitively nuanced performance by Uma Thurman in a convincing changeup from her recent kickass action roles, Prime remains an oddly juiceless older woman-younger man romance, with a Freudian twist.
  89. Paradise Now
    Handsomely shot in widescreen, mostly on actual West Bank locations, and well-played by the cast, pic lays out the issues in an accessible but rather too over-correct way, seemingly eager to please all parties at the expense of real passion.
  90. Jarhead
    Part absurdist drama, part personal observational commentary and part hormonal explosion, all seen through the filter of previous war pics, Sam Mendes' third feature has numerous arresting moments but never achieves a confident, consistent or sufficiently audacious tone.
  91. Brooklyn Lobster
    Character's multiple mid-life crises could make this genuinely engaging drama especially appealing to older viewers.
  92. The Dying Gaul
    Despite a reliable cast led by Scott, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard, the human impact is ultimately lost in a too calculated scenario.
  93. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
    For all the film's provocations and documentation, however, Greenwald never seems get to the heart of the matter: that it is the consumer who makes Wal-Mart powerful.
  94. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Mildly engaging but very far from being for 50 Cent what "8 Mile" was for Eminem, this lurchingly structured story of survival against the odds looks to get off to a strong start thanks to the singer's large following.
  95. The Syrian Bride
    Ambitious screenplay by helmer Eran Riklis (best known outside Israel for "Cup Final") and former journalist Suha Arraf puts plenty of human flesh on its characters, who span the religious and cultural spectrum of Golan Heights dwellers.
  96. Rent
    Director Chris Columbus has pasted the grungy "La Boheme" update onto film with slavish respect for the original material but a shortage of stylistic imagination and raw emotions.
  97. Duane Hopwood
    Writer-director Matt Mulhern confidently anchors his drama-comedy about an alcoholic Atlantic City pit boss with good writing and sharp dialogue. Script never treats characters as less than human.
  98. Seamless
    Unlike "Unzipped," with its single focus on the charismatic Mizrahi, Seamless follows three of the 10 finalists, furnishing a quietly fascinating contrast in persona, approach and design.
  99. The Kid & I
    It's the weird proximity of fact and fiction that could push this Penelope Spheeris-directed comedy into another cultish realm entirely.
  100. Mrs Henderson Presents
    A bigscreen feature executed with a cookie-cutter small-screen sensibility, this often charming but untextured fact-based period piece is buoyed along by the redoubtable Judi Dench.
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