Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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 2.4 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. Weekend
    Earnest and understated, Weekend has the intimate look and feel of a two-character stage play that has been opened up -- but only slightly, with minimal addition of supporting players -- for a mostly faithful filmization.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
    Formulaic in adhering to the sitcom-style tone of the first two films, picture finds the chronically underappreciated Greg facing a summer break replete with parental expectations and anxiety over his first crush.
  3. Grave Encounters
    The picture's creepiness factor is sufficient to rate this a notch above genre average.
  4. Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football
    For most of its running time, Fordson wanders far from the gridiron to offer overall impressions of a close-knit community of Arab-Americans who, in the wake of 9/11, often have found themselves targeted and stereotyped as militant Islamists or worse.
  5. A Kiss and a Promise
    Philip Guzman's film offers plenty of intriguing elements, even if the central characters eventually feel too underexplored to fully satisfy.
  6. Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure
    Alternately hilarious and discomfiting, and finally rather poignant.
  7. White Wash
    Covering familiar ground from an unfamiliar angle, Ted Woods' oddball documentary White Wash examines the history of African-American disenfranchisement from a black surfer's viewpoint, in the process countering the racist myth that black people don't swim or surf.
  8. American Teacher
    Its inspiring portraits of hardworking subjects make a fine case for raising the bar by rewarding excellence rather than punishing failure.
  9. Happy Life
    Set in cramped apartments and hole-in-the-wall storefronts in the East Village, Michael M. Bilandic's nanobudget comedy Happy Life plays like a poor schlub's "High Fidelity."
  10. To Rome with Love
    This pleasantly diverting, none-too-strenuous arthouse excursion feels like a throwback to Allen's short-story anthologies, with the added pleasure of seeing a game cast play along.
  11. Klitschko
    The indomitable siblings' unusual background, huge size and highly developed intellects, as well as the dramatic ups, downs and rebounds of their interwoven sagas, should result in a fascinating dual biodoc. But the two-hour pic's lack of economy makes for heavy slogging, with no boxing minutiae too small for exhaustive exposition.
  12. The Great Gatsby
    More often, Gatsby feels like a well-rehearsed classic in which the actors say their lines ably, but with no discernible feeling behind them.
  13. God's Land
    Miller deftly navigates his picture's unusual tonal mix, balancing absurdity, melodrama, comedy of manners and an unblinking ethnographic stare. But the film's nearly three-hour length may consign it to cult status.
  14. Now You See Me
    Thanks to some accomplished hocus pocus and an appealing cast, this would-be “Ocean’s Eleven” of the magic world remains watchable throughout, even as it plods along without ever quite fulfilling its potential.
  15. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    Neatly balancing brightly sentimental comedy with slightly edgier funny business, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone pulls off the impressive trick of generating laughs on a consistent basis while spinning a clever scenario about rival magicians waging a Las Vegas turf war with a wide multi-demographic appeal.
  16. The Assault
    The tense buildup to a blazing, if generic, rescue is the most satisfying part of The Assault, a stylized combo of action and drama from Julien Leclercq.
  17. The Conquest
    Picture takes genre helmer Xavier Durringer ("Chok-Dee") back to his theater roots, with most of the narrative mayhem and laughs coming from the picture's sharp dialogue and strong work by seasoned thesps, who just manage to avoid caricature.
  18. RED 2
    While Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, et al. are still good for a few chuckles as a gang of superannuated government assassins, this globe-trotting action-comedy diversion applies a bigger-is-better philosophy across the board, upping the stakes, the firepower and the travel budget, but keeping real thrills and laughs at a modest trickle.
  19. Rampart
    While the film is drenched in atmosphere and packs a verbal and visceral punch, its relentless downward spiral makes for an overdetermined, not entirely satisfying character study.
  20. Barbershop Punk
    Topolski and his story are so engaging that the resulting discord of voices and agendas can't drown out the voice of the little guy questioning the system.
  21. God's Fiddler: Jascha Heifetz
    Once Heifetz becomes a household name, Rosen struggles mightily to milk drama not from his musical genius, but from his relatively unremarkable personal life.
  22. Answers to Nothing
    Stitching together a quilt of stories involving disparate Angelenos in the mode of "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts" and myriad other crisscrossers, this somber drama is well crafted and watchable but lacks the distinctive story content, style and standout performances to become more than a serviceable reboot of familiar ideas.
  23. Footnote
    Footnote is a decidedly male-centric film. Structurally, the picture is divided into named chapters that make for cute markers but give it the not-entirely satisfying feel of a jaunty satire.
  24. Albatross
    Brown Findlay, reportedly cast before she filmed "Downton Abbey," is a real find. Germany's Koch suggests astute fishing beyond the obvious casting pools, and Ormond clearly relishes her change-of-pace role as tough, casually profane Joa.
  25. Chico & Rita
    Think of Chico and Rita as a test, one that gauges whether your love of Cuban jazz can exceed your threshold for lousy animation -- a real "good tunes/bad toons" quandary.
  26. The Snowtown Murders
    The result is a movie that can be admired in many respects from a distance but is progressively less emotionally engaging.
  27. Keyhole
    Maddin's singular humor and fabulous black-and-white mise-en-scene can't sustain this fever dream beyond its initial fascination, making for an intriguing transitional work unlikely to broaden his audience.
  28. Casa de mi Padre
    A likable enough lark that rarely achieves outright hilarity.
  29. Peeples
    Peeples may appropriate its entire premise and plot structure from “Meet the Parents,” but its heart is suffused with French cinema.
  30. Escape Plan
    Mercifully free of tongue-in-cheek meta-humor, Escape Plan is a likably lunkheaded meat-and-potatoes brawler that never pretends to be more sophisticated than it is.
  31. Cirkus Columbia
    Though burdened by major problems of tone, Tanovic's fourth feature succeeds in making clear the incredulity with which most people regarded the thought of war and dissolution of Yugoslavia, as well as the machinations of various opportunistic groups.
  32. Natural Selection
    This filmed-in-Texas road movie finds a smooth groove between self-conscious quirkiness and broadly played farce.
  33. October Baby
    Newcomer Rachel Hendrix grabs attention and sustains sympathy as a lovely yet troubled 19-year-old student determined to unlock the secrets of her past after learning the circumstances of her birth.
  34. Headhunters
    A smooth, intriguing opening and a predictable but emotionally satisfying home stretch bookend helmer Morten Tyldum's otherwise by-the-numbers Norwegian thriller Headhunters.
  35. Payback
    Payback is a rarefied conceptual documentary that will appeal to a limited but highly appreciative audience.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Children of Paradise (1945)
    This ambitious French film turns out to be a strange mixture of the beautiful, the esoteric and the downright dull. Some startling flashes of inspired mimicry and fresh Gallic humor are wedded to the not un-Hollywoodian concept of the femme fatale who, willy-nilly in this instance, leads men to their ruin in an uneven performance of writing and direction.
  37. Convento
    Documentarian Jarred Alterman emphasizes oddball lyricism in the one-of-a-kind Convento, in which a 400-year-old Portuguese monastery provides the canvas for a Dutch family's artistic experimentation.
  38. The Perfect Family
    Watching a consummate pro like Turner navigate an uneven script, veering from farcical determination, her cheeks puffed like those of a demented chipmunk, to utter devastation, can be immensely entertaining, particularly when she's backed by an able cast, as she is here.
  39. Polisse
    Though rough edges are very much part of picture's fabric and charm, the current two-hour-plus edit is too choppy, with many sequences feeling rushed or underdeveloped.
  40. Seven Psychopaths
    Compared to McDonagh's best work for stage ("The Lieutenant of Inishmore") and screen ("In Bruges"), Seven Psychopaths feels like either an older script knocking around the bottom of a drawer or a new one hastily tossed off between more ambitious projects.
  41. People Like Us
    If they never fully sell the situation, the actors nonetheless deliver strong, emotionally accessible work.
  42. Womb
    Its quietly unsettling storytelling, precision visuals and almost mythical isolated setting all feel Hungarian to the core.
  43. The Road
    This low-budget shocker eventually pays off, displaying just enough narrative ingenuity to compensate for a cinematically crude and logistically sketchy deployment of the requisite blood-and-guts mayhem.
  44. How to Grow a Band
    Devotees of folk and bluegrass -- and, of course, diehard Nickel Creek fans -- are the natural audience for this leisurely paced documentary.
  45. 21 and Over
    Promising crude straight-boy humor, but delivering sensitive buddy moments and tons of male nudity, this by-the-numbers gut-buster looks slick, moves fast and packs enough laughs to enliven spring-break receipts and earn its helmers more work.
  46. Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog
    Puppy appeal nudges past some dramatic deficiencies -- if just by a nose.
  47. Madea's Witness Protection
    The interaction among opposites inspires an abundance of predictable race-based jokes, many of which have the saving grace of actually being funny.
  48. Carrie
    Director Kimberly Peirce’s intermittently effective third feature eschews De Palma’s diabolical wit and voluptuous style in favor of a somber, straight-faced retelling, steeped in a now-familiar horror-movie idiom of sharp objects, shuddering sound effects and dark rivulets of blood.
  49. Red Hook Summer
    For those expecting Mookie's mid-career encore to signify a return to Spike Lee's roots, Red Hook Summer instead surprises -- and to some extent delights -- as yet another radically unique entry in the director's iconoclastic oeuvre.
  50. Crazy Eyes
    These two non-lovers have real chemistry, and it's hard not to be intoxicated by the strange cocktail of watching them together, even as the story appears to be going nowhere.
  51. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    First-time writer-director Stephen Chbosky adapts his young-adult bestseller with far more passion than skill, which suits familiar scenes of adolescent awkwardness aptly enough.
  52. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
    Rather than channeling James Thurber’s satirical tone, Stiller plays it mostly earnest, spinning what feels like a feature-length “Just Do It” ad.
  53. Extraterrestrial
    Results are offbeat and amusing, but also a bit thin as the whole essentially amounts to one long shaggy-dog joke.
  54. Ikland
    Though generally engrossing, Ikland's multiscreen displays and cross-cultural theatrical experiments prove more distracting than effective.
  55. Nate & Margaret
    Moving, engagingly low-key curio.
  56. The Inbetweeners Movie
    Brit sitcom The Inbetweeners, which tracked the travails of four male misfits in their last years at high school, makes a satisfying leap to the bigscreen in summer holiday adventure The Inbetweeners Movie.
  57. You've Been Trumped
    Collectivist in spirit, this mostly entertaining film lacks an official host or voiceover narration, which first works swimmingly but eventually becomes too diffuse.
  58. Deconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott
    Though the picture meanders somewhat in the absence of a clear throughline, the focus on Scott's music and electronic experimentation remains strong throughout, thanks to an eclectic roster of musicians and scholars and a generous sampling of his compositions.
  59. Need For Speed
    Paul plays the part with the flinty, tightly wound charisma of a small man who makes up in moxie what he lacks in stature. There’s something of the young James Cagney in him, and he’s by far the best thing Need for Speed has going for it.
  60. The Man with the Iron Fists
    As endearing as it is exhausting, The Man With the Iron Fists bears strong resemblance to a hyperactive puppy: sloppy, scatterbrained, manic and migraine-inducing, but possessing an earnest sense of excitement.
  61. Big Boys Gone Bananas!*
    A David-and Goliath story that delves into corporate scare tactics, legal effrontery, brand protection, media manipulation, online propagandizing and craven behavior.
  62. The Internship
    This big-hearted underdog comedy from director Shawn Levy is, much like its two leads, exceedingly affable and good-natured despite being undeniably long in the tooth.
  63. Craigslist Joe
    He's a nondescript protagonist, his benefactors, and he's never truly in need; as is made clear at the start, he has a comfortable life to return to whenever he chooses. So the picture becomes simply the moderately diverting record of an offbeat vacation.
  64. Kick-Ass 2
    As diverting as this action-packed caper often is, it feels not just weightless but emotionally and morally stunted whenever it veers into grown-up dramatic territory.
  65. Rio 2
    This hyperactive toon extravaganza has color, flair and energy to burn. But it’s the sort of relentless juggling act that finally proves more exhausting than exhilarating.
  66. Girl Model
    While Girl Model falls a bit short in the delivery of hard facts and incriminating evidence, it more than makes up for that with its knotty psychological profile of Arbaugh.
  67. Home
    Unimaginative and downright predictable by grownup standards, but bursting with elements sure to appeal to younger auds.
  68. 17 Girls
    Impressively, the rookie scribe-helmers' sense of equilibrium is unerring and also surprisingly subtle.
  69. Fred Won't Move Out
    Irregularly spiked with some droll sitcom-style humor, this thoughtful but exceedingly modest miniature will be best nursed within the festival circuit.
  70. Snitch
    It's nice to have actors of Sarandon and Pepper's caliber onboard for the office-bound wheeler-dealer scenes, but mostly, it's the prospect of witnessing Johnson at the helm of an 18-wheeler as he rams his way through machine-gun fire that excites.
  71. In Our Nature
    Writer-director Brian Savelson drags four characters all the way out to the woods to orchestrate the sort of politely confrontational chamber piece best suited to an Off Off Broadway stage in In Our Nature, an eloquent but overly rehearsed drama.
  72. Dark Skies
    In the end, a pretty good buildup to OK payoff without any real surprises en route makes Dark Skies feel just enough above average to make one wish it had one memorable spark of conceptual inspiration up its sleeve.
  73. Smurfs: The Lost Village
    It’s not a rousing animated comedy that parents will cherish along with their kids. It’s more like a colorful and diverting pacifier.
  74. My Life as Abraham Lincoln
    Luft grounds the film with an insistently believable performance, while other thesps float in and out of cliche.
  75. My Father and The Man In Black
    Holiff Sr.’s extensive audio diaries and taped phone conversations with Cash give authentic voice to the film’s otherwise stodgy re-creations of this true odd couple’s stormy relationship.
  76. A Whisper to a Roar
    A Whisper to a Roar traces a too-familiar step-by-step political pattern: the transformation of a liberator into a despot, his subsequent reign of tyranny and the popular uprising against it.
  77. Split: A Deeper Divide
    None of this will be news to informed viewers, and the documentary's broad theme necessitates quick, superficial treatment of myriad underlying causes. But it's a solid, fairly even-handed spur for discussion that will be particularly welcome in classroom settings.
  78. Question One
    Of particular interest to gay-rights activists and their adversaries, this "War Room"-like but extremely civil documentary seems best suited to community venues and the smallscreen.
  79. Orchestra of Exiles
    Despite lively commentaries by a pantheon of master musicians and magnificently performed classical pieces, "Exiles" only distantly echoes Huberman's visionary adventure.
  80. La Rafle (The Round Up)
    Turning one of the darkest moments in modern French history into syrupy historical drama, writer-director Rose Bosch's The Round Up is a polished, pathos-driven re-creation of the Vichy regime's mass imprisonment and disposal of 13,000 Parisian Jews in summer 1942.
  81. Price Check
    After a strong start, the picture itself has trouble checking out, but it provides a terrific showcase for indie princess Posey, leading a topnotch cast.
  82. 56 Up
    Certain moments in the film resemble nothing so much as attending a school reunion, being buttonholed by an old acquaintance and shown snapshots of the grandkids. A complacently conservative acceptance sometimes seems to blanket all of 56 Up, as if maturity entails a serene blessing of the status quo.
  83. Wagner & Me
    For Fry, the music's complexity, ambiguity, innovation and humanity far surpass Wagner's personal limitations. He may not convince his viewers of the rightness of his conclusions, but he certainly makes a fervent case for the triumph of art over biography.
  84. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    Swan is more of a doodle than a fully formed idea, though not necessarily less enjoyable for it, since it was clearly intended to be an undisciplined, anything-goes kinda story.
  85. Trashed
    Presented and narrated with warmth and welcome moments of humor by thesp Jeremy Irons, often seen wearing a hat that looks salvaged from a recycling bin, the picture delivers a judicious mix of human interest and useful statistics that will make it accessible to middle-class audiences.
  86. Welcome to the Punch
    A proficient but personality-free policer that demands little of either its audience or its enviable best-of-British cast, this simplistic urban morality tale miscasts the appealing James McAvoy as one good cop whose dogged pursuit of Mark Strong’s alpha criminal only uncovers the rot within police ranks.
  87. Fairhaven
    While there's something undeniably fascinating about the way Fairhaven repeatedly avoids predictable payoffs for portentous dramatic setups, narrative momentum is conspicuous by its absence.
  88. The Last Exorcism Part II
    Never mind the inherent titular redundancy: The Last Exorcism Part II is a generally effective sequel to the 2010 sleeper that injected at least a little new life into the heavily taxed found-footage-horror subgenre.
  89. Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola
    Agreeably amusing but unduly extended, Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola suggests what might have resulted had Rodgers and Hammerstein lived long enough to attempt a Broadway musical about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
  90. Koch
    Barsky wisely includes just enough dissenting voices and admissions of grievous error by Koch himself to prevent the picture from seeming like a 100% feel-good puff piece.
  91. As Luck Would Have It
    Though it slickly offers up drama, black comedy and enjoyable performances in due measure, the picture never develops much bite, though it does bare its fangs.
  92. The Maze Runner
    As world-creation YA pictures go, The Maze Runner feels refreshingly low-tech and properly story-driven.
  93. Simon Killer
    Considering how graphic Campos is willing to be, "restrained" may not the right word for his approach, and yet Simon Killer withholds so much that some amount of frustration is sure to follow.
  94. About Last Night
    The actors give the proceedings a mostly quick-witted repartee that prevails over the occasionally stale script.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    About Last Night...
    Film lacks much of Mamet's grittiness, but is likable in its own right.
  96. Beyond the Hills
    Observing the situation at an icy remove, Beyond the Hills never builds the palpable menace and pressure-cooker anxiety of "4 Months," and its dramatic progression feels obvious, even predictable, by comparison.
  97. The Way, Way Back
    The story of a teen desperate for a father figure who finds encouragement from a wild-and-crazy water-park employee -- rather than from the guy auditioning to be his stepdad -- can be explosively funny in parts, but overall feels pretty familiar, relying more on its cast than the material to win favor.
  98. Gut Renovation
    The latest in a line of documentaries decrying the destruction of viable working-class businesses and residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Su Friedrich’s film bypasses sadness and indignation for flat-out anger and well-aimed sarcasm.
  99. Kon-Tiki
    This is filmmaking of great ambition and ability, though it’s not always conducive to solid storytelling.
  100. Black Nativity
    Lemmons advances this story with straight-faced conviction, orchestrating narrative and spectacle with a grandiosity that proves easier to admire from a distance than it is to engage with onscreen.
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