Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. An American Affair
    Like many aspects of An American Affair, the music and the lopsided dramatic priorities take the viewer right out of the movie.
  2. Examined Life
    Stimulating film, enlivened by creative location shooting.
  3. Madea Goes to Jail
    Wildly uneven effort, which is notably more strained and slapdash than such earlier efforts as "Madea's Family Reunion" and "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns."
  4. Eleven Minutes
    A skillfully crafted, highly entertaining documentary.
  5. The Velveteen Rabbit
    A low-key charmer that's bound to enchant small children and amuse their parents during many hours of repeat viewings.
  6. Delhi-6
    Admirably ambitious but ultimately frustrating musical dramedy.
  7. Katyn
    This plays almost like an academic master class, meticulously exploring the event's ramifications but only catching full fire at the end.
  8. Gomorrah
    Utilizing a mesmerizing documentary style that studiously avoids glamorizing the horrors, Garrone cherrypicks episodes from Saviano's muckraking tract, building to a chillingly matter-of-fact crescendo of violence, though interwoven tales tend to dissipate the full force of the criminal Camorra families' insidious control.
  9. Two Lovers
    This very New York tale is old-fashioned in good ways that have to do with solid storytelling, craftsmanship and emotional acuity.
  10. Friday the 13th
    As in his "Chainsaw" remake, Nispel's scare tactics amount to little more than carefully timed cattle-prod shocks, aided by high-volume speaker blasts that were beyond the budgetary reach of the early '80s films.
  11. The Caller
    Frank Langella's note-perfect, tour-de-force turn as a man elegantly shaping his own demise is nicely counterpointed by a shambling Elliott Gould as a bird-watching private eye.
  12. Coraline
    This eccentric and deliriously inventive fantasy finds stop-motion auteur Henry Selick scaling new heights of ghoulish whimsy, buoyed by a haunting score that works its own macabre magic.
  13. He's Just Not That Into You
    No one has anything to distract them from the minutiae of their love lives, which they proceed to incinerate through overanalysis. It's a moral fable, maybe, if you make half a million a year.
  14. The Pink Panther 2
    Serves up enough goofy pranks and fractured wordplay to keep the series purring along.
  15. Confessions of a Shopaholic
    As a young lady who can't say no to a beautiful dress or accessory, Isla Fisher is not to be denied, and her irrepressible comic personality overcomes a number of the film's impediments.
  16. The International
    Graced with well-chosen location eye candy, Tom Tykwer's biggest production to date is proficient but lacks the added tension and characterization to put it anywhere near the top tier of contempo action suspensers.
  17. Fanboys
    End result feels like an uneven cross between an amateur "Project Greenlight" pic and such recent comedies as "Superbad" and "Pineapple Express," in which indie directors brought a certain edge to material that might once have felt more at home under the National Lampoon label.
  18. The Objective
    With a low-budget look, cliched dialogue, a stale plot and so-so acting, this supernatural thriller is unlikely to achieve the phenomenal success of its fabled predecessor.
  19. Taken
    Neeson growls his way through the functional dialogue as an unstoppable killing machine in impressive, cold-eyed style.
  20. The Uninvited
    Weak even by the standard of uninspired recent Asian-horror remakes, The Uninvited is more likely to induce snickers and yawns than shudders and yelps.
  21. New in Town
    It doesn't help that Zellweger, in an unfortunate attempt to make the aud appreciate her character's uptightness, spends many of the early scenes moving about as stiff as a flagpole in January.
  22. Service (Serbis)
    Brillante Mendoza’s latest opus that revels in shock value.
  23. Shadows
    Overlong, ponderous and occasional risible.
  24. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
    Senesh was a budding writer, and her poems and diary entries add flavor to an already dramatic tale in Roberta Grossman's Blessed Is the Match.
  25. The Lodger
    What needed to be a taut, structurally sound psychothriller instead malfunctions from the start.
  26. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
    First-time helmer Patrick Tatopoulos (who designed creatures for all three pics) offers a satisfyingly exciting monster rally that often plays like a period swashbuckler.
  27. Donkey Punch
    Shows the sort of edge in places that will be appreciated by horror fanboys of all ages, but is mostly too overwrought and over-the-top.
  28. Inkheart
    Despite abundant talent on both sides of the camera and a bevy of eye-catching supernatural beasties, this f/x-heavy story of a literature-loving father and daughter battling dark forces unleashed from the pages of a rare tome doesn't conjure much in the way of bigscreen magic.
  29. Outlander
    Not helped by a wooden perf from Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien who accidentally imports a real alien to eighth-century Earth.
  30. Of Time and the City
    Result is by turns moving, droll and charming, and niftily assembled, but not necessarily that profound.
  31. Chandni Chowk to China
    As with many a Bollywood epic, you can bring the kids, your lunch, your cell phone, your unfiled taxes. There's so much here, and in such heaping, lengthy portions, you could probably weave a sari before the end credits.
  32. Cherry Blossoms
    A successful novelist whose films bear the expansive plotting and telling character detail of the page, Doerrie never seems in any particular hurry to tell her tales, preferring the journey to the destination.
  33. Hotel for Dogs
    Ultimately warm and furry, with a wet nose buried in gross receipts.
  34. My Bloody Valentine
    At heart an unabashedly retro work, reveling in the cliches and conventions of the slasher horror pics that proliferated in the early 1980s.
  35. Notorious
    A rock-solid biopic with a foolproof rise-and-fall storyline and a warmly nuanced performance by Jamal Woolard.
  36. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
    An almost shockingly amateurish one-note-joke comedy.
  37. Bride Wars
    A shrill, mechanical comedy.
  38. The Unborn
    Whereas Japanese horror movies have been criticized for not making sense, The Unborn errs on the opposite extreme, coming off all the more ridiculous for over-explaining itself.
  39. Just Another Love Story
    Contrived excess is rarely as entertaining as it is in the ironically titled Just Another Love Story, a furiously overheated romantic thriller from Danish writer-helmer Ole Bornedal.
  40. Silent Light
    Reygadas' typically arresting widescreen visuals and the presence of non-pro actors speaking in German-derived Plautdietsch makes for an initially hypnotic combination, but the spell breaks its hold well before the end of the picture's inflated running time, signaling an endurance test for all but the most ascetic arthouse auds.
  41. Defiance
    A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
  42. Good
    Considering its theme and setting, there's something very wrong with a Good that seems merely competent, uninspired and a bit old-hat.
  43. Revolutionary Road
    A near-perfect case study of the ways in which film is incapable of capturing certain crucial literary qualities, in this case the very things that elevate the book from being a merely insightful study of a deteriorating marriage into a remarkable one.
  44. Waltz with Bashir
    It's these surreal touches, deployed with tactical restraint, that make the picture extraordinary and convey the febrile atmosphere of warfare, where by fear, horror -- and later guilt -- distort and distend perception and memory.
  45. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion.
  46. The Spirit
    Plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bedtime Stories
    With Bedtime Stories, Sandler has delivered on his promise to make a movie his kids can enjoy. What's more, he's managed to do so without alienating his core audience.
  48. Last Chance Harvey
    Stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson (reunited after 2006's "Stranger Than Fiction") are so disarmingly charming that even the most treacly moments work an emotional magic.
  49. Marley & Me
    This perky, episodic film is as broad and obvious as it could be, but delivers on its own terms thanks to sparky chemistry between its sunny blond stars, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and the unabashed emotion-milking of the final reel.
  50. Valkyrie
    Has visual splendor galore, but is a cold work lacking in the requisite tension and suspense.
  51. The Secret of the Grain
    An overlong, dramatically unbalanced picture whose emotional wallop gets somewhat diffused.
  52. Theater of War
    What emerges from Walter's docu is not a sense of failure, but a recognition that the play's the thing, enriched by every flawed performance, perfection almost irrelevant to its cry of anguish.
  53. The Tale of Despereaux
    This graphically well-rendered kidpic is less crass and mouthy than many recent feature-length toons, but also more sluggish and ungainly as it tries to approximate DiCamillo's singularly delicate tone.
  54. The Class
    Talky in the best sense, the film exhilarates with its lively, authentic classroom banter while its emotional undercurrents build steadily but almost imperceptibly over a swift 129 minutes. One of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year.
  55. Moscow, Belgium
    Accomplished freshman outing by Flemish TV director Christophe van Rompaey features a knockout perf from actress Barbara Sarafian ("8½ Women").
  56. Seven Pounds
    An endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head. Intricately constructed so as to infuriate anyone predominantly guided by rationality and intellect.
  57. Yes Man
    Genial but slim, picture is certainly a light-hearted alternative to weighty year-end awards bait, but the conceit isn't realized fully enough.
  58. The Wrestler
    Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky's fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle.
  59. Nothing But the Truth
    Competently constructed and nicely acted by Kate Beckinsale and Vera Farmiga.
  60. Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
    Longtime fans of Walker's warm, sepulchral baritone, startlingly evocative songwriting and lushly imaginative instrumentation will rejoice at this revealing documentary.
  61. Gran Torino
    Highlighted by the star's vastly entertaining performance, this funny, broad but ultimately serious-minded drama about an old-timer driven to put things right in his deteriorating neighborhood looks to be a big audience-pleaser.
  62. 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.
  63. Timecrimes
    Timecrimes welds a B-movie plotline to precision-engineered writing and a down-to-earth style; add an engagingly sloppy, nonplussed hero, who remains unfazed by the time-bending scrape in which he finds himself, and the result is memorably offbeat.
  64. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    This botched remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" seriously dishonors the seriously fine 1951 sci-fi landmark on which it's based.
  65. Nothing Like the Holidays
    So "The Family Stone" becomes "The Family Rodriguez," and to their credit, the able performers wring as much mileage as they can from such familiar material.
  66. Adam Resurrected
    Largely set in two of the least appetizing locations imaginable, a concentration camp and an insane asylum, this is a rigorously made film that does almost nothing to invite the viewer into its world.
  67. Dark Streets
    As a dancing chanteuse, Bijou Phillips gives it her all, which isn't enough, and a wooden Mann doesn't help, although Izabella Miko brings a modicum of unaffected charm to her role as the Other Woman.
  68. Where God Left His Shoes
    Piles the pathos high as if to see how many hard-luck cliches its pugilist hero can fend off without succumbing to schmaltz. Given John Leguizamo's knockout perf, sentimentality never dares raise its head, and the improbably stacked deck from which his character is dealt gives the pic's would-be "neo-realist" premise a peculiar edge.
  69. The Reader
    Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.
  70. Wendy and Lucy
    "Old Joy" helmer Kelly Reichardt plays to her strengths in Wendy and Lucy, a modest yet deeply felt road movie about an idealistic young drifter, her faithful canine and the wide-open spaces of the Pacific Northwest.
  71. Hunger
    Picture represents a powerful, pertinent but not entirely perfect debut for British visual-artist-turned-feature-helmer Steve McQueen, who demonstrates a painterly touch with composition and real cinematic flair, but who stumbles in film's last furlough with trite symbolism.
  72. Cadillac Records
    Most of the details are right-on in Cadillac Records, though the director's efforts to sell it sometimes steers the film into mawkish or hokey territory.
  73. Local Color
    Alas, even the soft-hearted may find this formulaic yarn of a young man's apprenticeship to a cantankerous artist too rosy-hued and treacly.
  74. Nobel Son
    Uneven but enjoyably titillating black comedy should elate Rickman fans while pleasing aficionados of extra-flakey caper flicks.
  75. Punisher: War Zone
    Along with torrents of gore, Punisher: War Zone has moments that are deliriously funny, because the violence is so awful and so casual.
  76. Frost/Nixon
    Frank Langella's meticulous performance will generate the sort of attention that will attract serious filmgoers.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Black Balloon
    Collette acts as an anchor for the ensemble, but the young leads credibly hold their own onscreen.
  78. Let Them Chirp Awhile
    That Blitstein pulls off this tiredly self-reflexive conceit with relative panache is due in no small part to the scruffy grace of leads Justin Rice ("Mutual Appreciation") and indie fixture Brendon Sexton III.
  79. Four Christmases
    Oddly misanthropic, occasionally amusing but thoroughly cheerless holiday attraction that is in no way a family film.
  80. Milk
    Brolin's work is superlatively expressive of the inchoate impulses roiling inside his sorry character. But good as most of the cast is, the show belongs squarely to Penn.
  81. Transporter 3
    Boasts a measure of the retro machismo, style and attitude some 007 fans have found lacking in "Quantum of Solace." But it also has a pointless storyline, incoherent editing and a polyglot cast that renders some of the dialogue utterly incomprehensible.
  82. Twilight
    A disappointingly anemic tale of forbidden love that should satiate the pre-converted but will bewilder and underwhelm viewers who haven't devoured Stephenie Meyer's bestselling juvie chick-lit franchise.
  83. The Betrayal - Nerakhoon
    Though an admirable attempt to allow the characters to tell their own story in their own voices, docu may be a bit too freely associative, as it becomes difficult at times to identify individual characters... Picture's second half, which proceeds in a more linear fashion, is resolutely gripping.
  84. Bolt
    Bears some telltale signs of Pixar's trademark smarts, but still looks like a mutt compared to the younger company's customary purebreds.
  85. Lake City
    Moore and Hill's script plunges Spacek in a mawkish stew of banality and improbability composed of bits and pieces of earlier roles.
  86. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
    How many thrillers could put the outcome in the title and still provide as many white-knuckle moments as Harvard Beats Yale 29-29?
  87. Australia
    Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long.
  88. Quantum of Solace
    Stripped of "Royale's" humor, elegance and reinvented old-school stylishness, Quantum has little left except its plot, which is rudimentary and slightly barmy, in the line of the Roger Moore pics of the '70s and '80s.
  89. A Christmas Tale
    Largely thanks to the snappy editing, short scenes and a strong cast led by a matronly Deveuve and Amalric's enjoyable perf as the black sheep of the family, A Christmas Tale never devolves into a tedious two-and-a-half hours of self-examination. But it also never goes very far, either.
  90. Eden
    Picture loses its delicate edge when it builds to a prescribed dramatic flashpoint within an overly compressed timeframe
  91. We Are Wizards
    Meandering mindlessly, Wizards comes off as yet another humdrum Pottery artifact.
  92. Dostana
    Gay's the way, but the way's not really gay, in the fluffy and largely entertaining Dostana.
  93. The Dukes
    With Davi and Chazz Palminteri fronting a first-rate ensemble cast, and a tasty soundtrack of golden oldies, this unpretentious indie dramedy has much to recommend.
  94. How About You ...
    Comedic and sentimental beats are as predictable as the storytelling is sloppy.
  95. Slumdog Millionaire
    Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast.
  96. Role Models
    Laden with more than enough profane humor to warrant its R rating, this is nonetheless a formulaic crowd-pleaser.
  97. JCVD
    A French-language meta-movie parody par excellence, constitutes the headiest stretch of the beefy star's career since, well, ever.
  98. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    Opening half-hour has some of the best stuff in the movie, walking a precarious line between black irony and showing the war from a totally German viewpoint, without tipping over into gallows humor or parody.
  99. Gardens of the Night
    Well-meaning but underachieving drama.
  100. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    Lively and quite funny without being obnoxious, this follow-up smoothly mixes the original's New York Zoo escapees with a number of engaging new characters.
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