Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. How Stella Got Her Groove Back
    Like "Waiting to Exhale" except more so, film jerks from scene to scene with little sense of rhythm, continuity or dramatic shaping.
  2. A Dirty Shame
    Frequently hilarious but ultimately is a protracted one-joke affair that strays into undisciplined chaos.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Two Jakes
    This oft-delayed sequel proves a jumbled, obtuse yet not entirely unsatisfying follow-up to Chinatown, rightly considered one of the best films of the 1970s.
  4. Unscrewed
    An often genuinely funny mockumentary.
  5. Nonnas
    Nonnas repeatedly drives home its point about the unifying force of a homecooked meal as an embodiment of community, and even as it overcrowds its narrative pot with too many unnecessary condiments that get lost in the mix, the result is ultimately palatable.
  6. Waterworld
    A not-bad futuristic actioner with three or four astounding sequences, an unusual hero, a nifty villain and less mythic and romantic resonance than might be desired.
  7. Guilty of Romance
    There are too many twists, insignificant literary references and drawn-out scenes of sex and violence to sustain either the pic’s running time or its ideas, with Sono’s message obscured in the final reels by an ambiguous treatment of his leading ladies.
  8. For Here or to Go?
    Writer-producer Rishi S. Bhilawadikar’s too-busy script nevertheless scores legitimate points about the complexities and paradoxes of the visa application process, the resulting limbo in which many legitimately productive immigrants find themselves, and other frustrating and soul-searching issues facing ethnic communities.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Dogs of War
    The Dogs of War [from Frederick Forsyth's novel] is an intelligent and occasionally forceful treatment of a provocative but little-examined theme, that of mercenary warrior involvement in the overthrow of a corrupt black African dictatorship. Film fails to really get at the heart of the whys and hows of mercenary life, and also rejects the idea of generating any sense of camaraderie among the men.
  10. Return to Paradise
    None of the characters is given much depth or meaningful backgrounding, leaving the capable thesps with plenty of anguish and emotion to play but not much else.
  11. Posse
    Despite all its agreeable revisionism and breezy bonhomie, Posse has the feel of a mish-mash of elements all thrown into a big pot and stirred. Lacking dramatic grounding and structuring, even the pertinent revelations that will be most surprising and interesting to modern audiences carry more intellectual than emotional resonance.
  12. Capital
    Costa-Gavras develops such a propulsively suspenseful pace — with no small assist from Armand Amar’s mood-enhancing Euro-tech score — that his drama comes across as the cinematic equivalent of an engrossing page-turner you might purchase off the rack at an airport newsstand.
  13. a-ha: the Movie
    As a movie with the title A-ha: The Movie should do, this one, directed by the Norwegian filmmaker Thomas Robsahm (with Aslaug Holm as co-director), tells you everything you need to know about the career of A-ha, even as it leaves out most of their personal lives.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
    Producer Hal Wallis has taken the historic meeting of Wyatt Earp, a celebrated lawman of the West, his brothers and Doc Holliday, with the Clanton gang in the O.K. Corral of Tombstone, Arizona, and fashioned an absorbing yarn [suggested by an article by George Scullin] in action leading up to the gory gunfight.
  15. Transporter 2
    Slick kidnapping yarn starts off like a bat out of hell and never sags.
  16. Million Dollar Arm
    Sometimes a hard-hitting expose, sometimes a big-hearted crowdpleaser, Million Dollar Arm wants it both ways to be sure, but its instincts are mostly right on the money, as are its actors.
  17. Mimic
    Del Toro clearly knows his way around the camera, but the shadowy eeriness that saturates the early going slowly becomes monotonous and winds up being just dull, and even partially obscures the action in the long underground finale.
  18. After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
    Though its weak bounty-hunter plot makes almost no sense, After Blue satisfies that thirsty spot in our psyche too few films succeed in tickling, where dreams are born, hormones churn and logic simply doesn’t apply.
  19. American Violet
    Dee is an engaging, admirable lead character, and the striking, petite Beharie, in only her second screen role, is a real winner, bringing energy and fortitude to a woman who easily could have joined the ranks of society's victims and losers.
  20. God Bless America
    While it starts out well, Bobcat Goldthwait's black comedy struggles to maintain focus as it turns into a road trip of diminishing rewards in satirical and narrative terms.
  21. Tiger Eyes
    For a certain type of contemplative teen girl, its sensitive handling of heavy material will surely prove affecting, though the picture sometimes veers too far to the sleepy end of low-key.
  22. Religulous
    To the film's credit, Maher never engages in Michael Moore-style gotcha tactics, but rather asks questions that raise more questions, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. To believers expecting a blind hatchet job, this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries.
  23. Jumping the Broom
    A broad African-Amerian family comedy that manages to avoid many of the more predictable cliches of the genre, yet also leaves out the warmth and, too often, the laughs.
  24. Embattled
    At several points in Georgian director Nick Sarkisov’s roaring, blood-and-guts film, it’s hard not to wish it would take things down a notch: A hokey, old-fashioned father-son meller clothed in a younger man’s bling-encrusted robes, it increasingly sacrifices emotional credibility for the violent, amped-up bravado of MMA itself.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ironweed
    Unrelentingly bleak, Ironweed is a film without an audience and no reason for being except its own self-importance. It's an event picture without the event. Whatever joy or redemption William Kennedy offered in his Pulitzer prize-winning novel is nowhere to be found, surprising since he wrote the screenplay.
  26. The Family Stone
    Keaton embodies the formidable Stone matriarch with an offhand sense of humor that cuts like a knife.
  27. The Glass Castle
    Cretton captures the incidents of Walls’ childhood (too many of them, to be honest, as the film really ought to be half an hour shorter), but struggles to connect them to the grown woman Larson plays in the present.
  28. Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish
    Hearing the majestic iambic pentameter rendered in the sharply rising and falling cadences of colloquial Yiddish proves wackily charming, but the lack of correlation between the two plots makes the result feel unfocused.
  29. Bad Match
    The movie is “Fatal Attraction” for the age of the revolving-door hook-up, and in its fevered low-budget way it’s just clever enough to do what it sets out to do. It gives toxic masculinity its just desserts.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    West of the Jordan River
    The 66-year-old helmer delivers not only a thought-provoking, moving and surprisingly optimistic documentary, but an intimate, handmade artifact.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rabid
    Rabid, as the dictionary explains means both ‘affected with rabies’ and ‘extremely violent’. Using both definitions, Rabid, is so accurately titled that this one word tells all. Here is an extremely violent, sometimes nauseating, picture about a young woman affected with rabies, running around Montreal infecting others.
  32. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
    Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is wired-up synthetic fun. It’s a trivial kiddie flick that moves at the speed of your mind playing video games.
  33. The Crazies
    Delivers the essential suspense goods with overall skill and a modicum of intelligence.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
    Robert Englund, receiving star billings for the first time, is delightful in his frequent incarnations as Freddy, delivering his gag lines with relish and making the grisly proceedings funny.
    • Variety
  35. Iron Will
    A seamless albeit frequently cornball scenario.
  36. Ibiza
    Loose-kneed, sloppy, and powered by charisma, this hangout flick doesn’t just embrace gross-out girl comedy cliches, it sticks Jacobs in the air roof of a limousine screaming, “Whooo! I am a total cliché right now and I don’t f–king care!”
  37. Adam
    Emotionally potent performances, gently offbeat humor and writer-helmer Max Mayer's assured touch guide this tender New York love story to a quietly hopeful conclusion.
  38. The Unknown Woman
    Brings peaks of violence and suspense to the vivid story of a young East European prostitute-turned-cleaning lady intent on carrying out a mysterious mission in Italy.
  39. Eleven Minutes
    A skillfully crafted, highly entertaining documentary.
  40. Cabin Fever
    Uncertain whether to go for straight suspense or gross-out effects, genre in-joking or schlock cinema-of-parodic-excess, Eli Roth's backwoods horror opus Cabin Fever seldom sticks with any one tactic.
  41. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
    Contains interesting ideas, but often those ideas are not fully realized.
  42. Santa Smokes
    A meandering, semi-improvised tale of a terminal Gotham loser who works as Santa when he bombs as an actor.
  43. Greedy Lying Bastards
    Craig Rosebraugh’s docu Greedy, Lying Bastards covers ground well-traveled by environmental exposes from “An Inconvenient Truth” to “The Island President.” Rosebraugh, however, focuses less on the issue of global warming itself and more on the deniers and their big-money backers.
  44. The Cut
    The script, co-written by vet Mardik Martin, is pedestrian, and the mise-en-scene, striving hard for a classic Hollywood look, lacks grandeur, notwithstanding impressive location work.
  45. Radioactive
    As startling as it is to see the beloved scientist hated in her time, that we’re able to see this headstrong legend as a sexual being at all is a credit to how much Pike gradually humanizes her as a woman, while never pleading for our pity.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How the West Was Won
    It's a story [suggested by the series How the West Was Won in Life magazine] which naturally puts the spotlight on action and adventure, and the three directors between them have turned in some memorable sequences.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flesh+Blood
    Flesh + Blood is a vivid and muscular, if less than fully startling, account of lust, savagery, revenge, betrayal and assorted other dark doings in the Middle Ages.
  48. Winner
    It’s not a typical whistleblower movie, like “The Insider” or “Official Secrets” (both excellent), but more of a prickly character portrait, imbued with humor and a headstrong sense of defiance (courtesy of co-writer Kerry Howley, channeling Winner’s voice).
  49. Race
    Stephen Hopkins’ film offers a safe, middlebrow slice of history that beats a snoozy lecture any day. Making a few admirable attempts to complicate what could have been a standard-issue inspirational sports narrative, Race is better than it has to be, but not by too much.
  50. Our Time
    Die-hard acolytes will argue that the camerawork transcends or even complements the storyline; most everyone else will wonder what happened to an auteur whose work was awaited with such eager anticipation.
  51. The End of Love
    Oddly overstuffed with cameos by bigscreen actors playing tongue-in-cheek versions of themselves, Webber's Los Angeles-set, microbudget dramedy delivers some rare and beautiful moments of daddy day-care, but its tone shifts more wildly than a preschooler's disposition and its narrative is stillborn.
  52. Midnight's Children
    It’s a vibrant journey, but not a terribly illuminating one.
  53. The Human Surge
    If the slender paradox at the heart of the film is that the thing that connects us most is the difficulty of connection, The Human Surge is a victim of its own effectiveness: It’s rigorous, rarefied, and utterly remote.
  54. On the Road
    Evocatively lensed, skillfully made and duly attentive to the mercurial qualities of its daunting source material, Walter Salles' picture pulses with youthful energy but feels overly calculated in its bid for spontaneity, attesting to the difficulty and perhaps futility of trying to reproduce Kerouac's literary lightning onscreen.
  55. You're Not You
    While the film’s last two acts begin to deepen its characters in generally satisfying ways, You’re Not You throws down its initial gauntlet with an off-putting lack of subtlety.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Indian Runner
    A tortured examination of the disintegration of a Mid-western family, The Indian Runner is very much actors' cinema. Rambling, indulgent and joltingly raw at times, Sean Penn's first outing as a director takes a fair amount of patience to get through but has an integrity that intermittently serves it well.
  57. For My Father
    Israeli helmer Dror Sahavi's well-meaning but simplistic terrorist melodrama, gingerly counterbalancing religious fanatics on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, utilizes a lyrical "Romeo and Juliet"-type encounter between a reluctant suicide bomber and a Jewish escapee from Orthodox closed-mindedness to plead mutual tolerance.
  58. In the Land of Pomegranates
    By the end of this meandering yet fascinating documentary, viewers are left with the impression that such attempts to bridge gaps and heal wounds, however well-intentioned, will have, at best, extremely limited success.
  59. Nightbitch
    Sinking her teeth into Mother the way Mother herself might a bloody steak, Adams courageously embodies Mother’s exasperation, finding the comedy in every setback.
  60. Watchmen
    The movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there's simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated.
  61. Boy Culture
    A strong cast, formal visual style and cynical voiceover that propels the action help elevate this Seattle-set gay romp from the ranks of the stereotypical.
  62. Crush
    What’s jarring in Crush is the absence of some requisite dose of youthful mischief, a sense of stakes and perhaps even a lightly scandalous touch, integral to the spirit of many of the genre staples Cohen and co-writers Kirsten King and Casey Rackham attempt to revive on their own terms.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Omega Man
    The Omega Man is an extremely literate science-fiction drama starring Charlton Heston as the only survivor of a worldwide bacteriological war, circa 1975. Thrust of the well-written story [adapted from Richard Matheson's novel] is Heston's running battle with deranged survivors headed by Anthony Zerbe.
  64. Saints and Soldiers
    Well mounted, frequently gripping.
  65. The Chorus
    No stereotype is left unheralded and no heartstring left untugged in this freely adapted remake of Jean Dreville's mostly forgotten "La cage aux rossignols"
  66. Deadpool & Wolverine
    This singular mutant satire works best as an irreverent homage to what’s come before, as opposed to the prototype for future superhero movies.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mermaids
    As eccentric mother-daughter films go, this one [from the novel by Patty Dann] falls into the same category as Terms of Endearment, with many of the same comedic pleasures and dramatic pitfalls. The delightful Ryder, billing notwithstanding, is really the star. Cher is also fine as the cavalier, self-centered mom, an equally amusing if less sympathetic character.
  68. Lords of Dogtown
    It's a wipeout once the pic skids into melodrama and an overly schematic sense of how success tore the group apart.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Diary of a Wimpy Kid
    It's a spry, fluffy comedy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Invaders from Mars
    Tobe Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars is an embarrassing combination of kitsch and boredom.
  71. Focus
    While not quite the “art” it’s billed to be, if the perfect con is about diverting one’s focus, then this one keeps you distracted till the end.
  72. Another Day
    Another Day tackles a tough topic with profound grace. This kind of cinematic workmanship, so finely effortless that it’s almost invisible, doesn’t come by often.
  73. Blue in the Face
    A piecemeal collection of barely connected scenes and characters, stitched together with videotaped comments from a cross-section of Brooklyn residents.
  74. Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
    On a dramatic level, Dutch-born helmer Jan Kounen's hyper-stylized, emotionally vacuous film is like a pair of designer pants that look great but don't fit, or a rare vinyl recording that keeps skipping at the best parts.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How to Eat Fried Worms
    A decidedly old-fashioned family film that may prove too quaint for modern audiences.
  76. Live Cargo
    Live Cargo is one of the most evocatively shot debut films in recent memory, which is why its shabby storytelling is such a crushing disappointment.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nighthawks
    Nighthawks is an exciting cops and killers yarn with Sylvester Stallone to root for and cold-blooded Rutger Hauer to hate.
  78. The Wizard of the Kremlin
    Even as The Wizard of the Kremlin flirts with being a movie of ideas, it flits in and out of things. It rarely stays in one place long enough to let us suck in our breath at how Putin’s Russia heralded what may turn out to be the new autocratic world.
  79. Leatherheads
    Arch and funny in equal measure, this looks like a theatrical non-starter that Clooney fans and football devotees might be tempted to check out down the line on DVD or on the tube.
  80. Paper Towns
    It may not subvert every cliche of the high-school romance genre, but director Jake Schreier’s coming-of-age dramedy nonetheless pulses with moving and melancholy moments.
  81. Spinster
    Andrea Dorfman’s thoughtful little film arrives at a compromise that feels honest and hard-won — helped along by the infectious, defiantly offbeat presence of erstwhile “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star Chelsea Peretti.
  82. The Cherry Orchard
    Chekhov has never seemed such a long haul as in this awkward adaptation of The Cherry Orchard by veteran director Michael Cacoyannis, 77, who's assembled a good roster of names but ones that are not necessarily right for their roles.
  83. Cruel Intentions
    Nasty, profane and wickedly entertaining for the most part.
  84. Once Upon a Time in Mexico
    Evokes the mythic feel of Sergio Leone Westerns. Despite a convoluted plot that begs for cleaner lines, the wild shoot-outs, cartoonish violence and charismatic cast should lure action fans to theaters.
  85. Hocus Pocus 2
    Hocus Pocus 2 is actually the better made film, even if it amounts to little more than a stealth remake, with strategic decisions about the present-day and old-Salem witch trios being engineered to allow for more sequels, whether or not its star trio return.
  86. Hyena
    What Hyena lacks in invention, however, it makes up for in technical bravado and geographical specificity.
  87. Cold War 2
    Slow to heat up yet quick to burn out, police procedural-thriller Cold War 2 dramatizes internal strife and conspiracy among Hong Kong’s police force and ruling elite, adding some new twists in a narrative framework that ultimately can’t support the film.
  88. 68 Kill
    Haaga and crew aren’t aiming for realism (let alone plausibility) in their raw-luck tall tale, but they straddle cartoonishness and cruelty evenly enough that what some will find hilarious may strike others as just gratuitously mean-spirited.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Rachel Papers
    The basic material is as old as the hills, but Martin Amis, who wrote the original novel some 15 years earlier, explored it in fresh directions.
  90. 1BR
    With its aspects of human captivity, brainwashing, collective insanity and ersatz utopianism, Marmor could have taken his story in myriad tonal directions. But instead of a wild ride, his film emerges a competent one that holds the attention, yet also feels like a missed chance at something truly memorable from a promisingly offbeat premise.
  91. The Last Front
    This English-language production may not be among the most memorable period war films in recent years, but its straightforward, sometimes brutal progress and assured craftsmanship will more than satisfy audiences looking for something other than simple combat spectacle.
  92. Percy Vs Goliath
    While well cast and plenty compelling (including feisty turns from Christopher Walken and Christina Ricci), this reductive farmer drama deals in emotions more than explanations as it seeks to convey what it means for a little-guy grower like Percy Schmeiser to go up against Big Agro.
  93. The Fate of the Furious
    The Fate of the Furious is nothing more than pulp done smart, but scene for scene it’s elegant rather than bombastic, and it packs a heady escapist wallop.
  94. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    Colorful, sometimes endearing but highly uneven picture.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quick Change
    Bill Murray delivers a smart, sardonic and very funny valentine to the rotten Apple in Quick Change. Pic became Murray's directing debut after he and Franklin became too attached to the project to bring anyone else in. Material, based on Jay Cronley's book, is neither ambitious nor particularly memorable, but it's brought off with a sly flair that makes it most enjoyable.
  96. Non-Stop
    Even in the movie’s most ridiculous moments, Collet-Serra keeps the pacing brisk and knows how to divert our attention with a well-timed bit of comic relief.
  97. Extreme Measures
    This chilling look at emergency room politics wrestles contemporary medical ethics to an unsatisfactory draw. Similarly, its mix of real and exaggerated situations doesn't quite jell, making for a commercial diagnosis that's good but not great.
  98. Coastlines
    A melodramatic step backward for writer-director Victor Nunez after his last two pictures, the first-rate "Ruby in Paradise" and "Ulee's Gold."
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Support Your Local Sheriff!
    Support Your Local Sheriff uses as the basis for its comedy the many cliches that have become part and parcel of the Western genre.
  100. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    An outstanding lean film trapped in a fat film's body.
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