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.
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