Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. The Running Man
    It hangs together and mostly obeys the rules of mainstream commercial cinema. Yet it’s clear that what drew Wright to the project was his infatuation with the sci-fi sociology of a retro-future USA.
  2. Dinner for Schmucks
    An uproarious odd-couple remake of Francis Veber's hit French farce "The Dinner Game."
  3. Butt Boy
    If your sense of humor favors stupid ideas done smartly, however, Butt Boy offers pleasures that aren’t even all that guilt-inducing.
  4. The Recruit
    The whole picture may be hokey, but the first part is agreeably so, the second part not. At the very least, one comes away with a new appreciation of the difficulty of inner-office romance at the CIA.
  5. Dinosaur
    An eye-popping visual spectacle that serves up a vivid picture of what the planet might have looked like when reptiles ruled the Earth.
  6. Ned Kelly
    An impressively staged, dark-toned revisiting of the life and times of Australia's boldest and most charismatic outlaw.
  7. Swapped
    On the story level, Swapped is simple to a fault, yet there’s a surprise enchantment to it — it’s a woodland fairy tale for seven-year-olds, but on that score it’s visually ravishing and actually rather touching.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cable Guy
    Carrey’s character lacks the empathy or poignance to command ongoing interest, and Broderick’s role strains one’s patience because he’s hopelessly dimwitted and slow to react in any way vaguely resembling human behavior.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alive
    It doesn’t help that character personalities generally aren’t distinct enough to keep track of who’s who throughout the story, leaving the audience to empathize only generally.
  10. Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp
    “Portrait” abounds in the sort of ironies and contrasts that can make a biodoc fascinating even to auds totally unfamiliar with its subject.
  11. 2 Days in the Valley
    2 Days in the Valley will rank high on any list of films containing the greatest number of scenes in which people are threatened at gunpoint. Marked by a wearying amount of hostile and antisocial behavior by its criminal and civilian characters alike, writer-director John Herzfeld's debut outing features a measure of unexpected humor and some good character work by the ensemble cast.
  12. The Fluffy Movie
    An enjoyable if never electrifying record of his Unity Through Laughter stand-up tour.
  13. The Yellow Birds
    The film keeps acting like it has something big to tell us; it plods and broods with self-importance. Yet in almost every crucial way, The Yellow Birds is a flat and listless piece of moviemaking, a monotonous indie dirge.
  14. Joy
    Despite another solid performance from Jennifer Lawrence, anchoring Russell’s sincerely felt tribute to the power of a woman’s resolve in a man’s world, it’s hard not to wish Joy were better — that its various winsome parts added up to more than a flyweight product that still feels stuck in the development stage.
  15. Brave the Dark
    Brave the Dark is a low-key inspirational indie that sensitively elicits empathy and sympathy without ever pushing too hard or simplifying complexities.
  16. The Three Stooges
    Peter and Bobby Farrelly tone down the abuse without compromising the numbskulls' unique style of physical comedy, making for an unexpectedly pleasant yet unapologetically lowbrow outing true to the spirit that has made the trio such an enduring comedy fixture since its bigscreen debut in 1930.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Betty Blue
    Director Jean-Jacques Beineix has adapted a novel by Philippe Djian, considered an enfant terrible of the new literary generation. It's another feverish tale of amour fou.
  18. Summerland
    Summerland is very pretty, and bursts with affection for its gently befuddled characters, but for all its eager charms, streaming like colored pennants from every turret, it’s a castle in the air.
  19. Wassup Rockers
    A thoroughly winning and unexpectedly observant lark about the antics of seven Latino skateboarding pals in South-Central Los Angeles.
  20. Touchback
    This handsomely produced but ponderously uplifting trifle should be flagged for excessive schmaltz and offensive illogic.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stir Crazy
    Director Sidney Poitier’s chief role seems to be providing enough space for Pryor and Wilder to do their schtick without going too far afield from the scant storyline
    • 56 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Steel Magnolias
    Field does some spectacular underplaying through the bulk of the action, revealing layer after layer of the feelings of this kindly tempered, deeply worried mother.
  23. Pyewacket
    It’s the rare horror film that’s actually more effective in psychological terms than in suspense ones.
  24. The Extra Man
    Although too devoted to matters literary, theatrical, operatic and sexually outre to make it with general audiences, this adaptation of Jonathan Ames' novel exudes the sort of smarts and sophisticated charm specialized audiences seek.
  25. That Sugar Film
    Fast-paced, entertaining and informative.
  26. A Fragile Trust
    [A] meticulous postmortem.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Black Rain
    This gripping crime thriller about hardboiled NY cop Michael Douglas tracking a yakuza hood in Osaka, Japan, boasts magnificent lensing and powerfully baroque production design.
    • Variety
  28. Monsters vs Aliens
    A film of chuckles, smiles and light amusement rather than big laughs, galvanizing excitement and original invention.
  29. Mr. Bean's Vacation
    This is a thoroughly Euro bedmate to the 1997 "Bean," with the Gauls rather than the Yanks as the butt of Bean's bumblings.
  30. W.
    For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, W. is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Going Shopping
    Item may draw curious women looking to cool their heels, say, while out shopping, but straight men can be expected to stay away in droves and Jaglom regulars will probably wait for the DVD.
  32. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
    Although the pacing is more laidback than in “Au revoir Taipei,” the humor more rooted in believable (if bizarre) real-life situations than in slapstick shenanigans, the comic timing remains spot-on and the jokes fetchingly offbeat in an utterly Taiwanese way.
  33. Kamikaze Girls
    Wears out its welcome at 100 minutes, but could find an audience in the West as a latenight attraction at gay fests.
  34. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    It would be too much to say that what Smith has come up with here is inspired, but it is pretty funny and very energetic.
  35. 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.
  36. Bokeh
    The result is a “What if?” exercise that ultimately doesn’t take its starting premise to any place that’s terribly interesting. However, for at least as long as it appears to be heading somewhere, Bokeh holds attention with polish and resourcefulness on a limited budget.
  37. Max
    The film is ultimately too glib in its suggestion that Hitler's discovering his career path was a matter of sheerest chance, even an accident.
  38. The Manson Family
    Its own mythology aside, this flamboyant, graphic and disturbing quasi-docu reenactment of a notorious chapter in U.S. counterculture life is a fascinating if peculiar accomplishment.
  39. Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space
    The kind of tale where even viewers who didn't miss a frame will feel as if they entered in the middle, muddled but amusing account of an adorable yet profanity-prone feline who travels through time and space is fueled by irony and incongruity.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strauss' Great Waltz
    The Great Waltz is a field day for music lovers plus elegant entertainment. Producers were nearly two years on this film, but the extra effort shows in the nicety with which its many component parts fit together. It is Luise Rainer who makes the film.
  41. Concussion
    Effective enough as a cautionary tale about willful ignorance and as a showcase for Will Smith...the film is let down by its confused and cliche-riddled screenplay, which struggles mightily to take a complex story and finesse it to fit story beats it was never meant to hit.
  42. Live and Let Die
    The most significant Bond ingredient missing from Live and Let Die is Q, whose gadgets still play a central role. The film also offers a few key additions, including an illuminating glimpse of Bond’s home.
  43. 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.
  44. The Merry Gentleman
    Despite its shortcomings as a plausible, compelling story, The Merry Gentleman, Michael Keaton's directorial debut, exhibits genuine promise behind the camera.
  45. Finding Eleazar
    Will be of keen interest to fans but plays to the unwashed as cringingly pompous.
  46. Dr. Feelgood: Dealer or Healer?
    Marson’s lively narrative employs a lot of diverse voices as well as a surprising amount of archival footage in telling a story that’s ethically complex yet easy to follow.
  47. The Beach Bum
    Simultaneously shaggy and hyper-stylized, The Beach Bum plays like a less-coked-out “Scarface,” the collected works of Charles Bukowski, and a Cheech & Chong movie all rolled up in one — an epic goof in which the cast (not just McConaughey but Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence, Jonah Hill, and Jimmy Buffett) play elaborate, semi-improvised caricatures of outlandish tropical fruits.
  48. Touchy Feely
    Trading her improv-based filmmaking style for a more traditional screenplay-grounded model, Lynn Shelton delivers an uneven mix of half-formed conflicts.
  49. Dom Hemingway
    Shepard balances a livelier-than-life script with striking, super-saturated images, which makes the film feel bigger than it is.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mommie Dearest
    This is Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford and the results are, well, screen history. Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, costars and all. Much has been written and said pro-and-con about Crawford since daughter Christina wrote the book on which this film is based. Whatever the truth, director Frank Perry’s portrait here is sorry indeed, 129 minutes with a very pathetic and unpleasant individual.
  51. A Jihad for Love
    Predicament makes the picture kin to 2001's "Trembling Before G-d," about gay Orthodox Jews. Both docs share the same fascination and limitation.
  52. Love Affair
    A film of gorgeous surfaces and negligible emotional resonance, this third rendition of a perennial sentimental favorite is easy on the eyes and has its share of beguiling moments in the early going, but crucially lacks a compelling climax and any sense of urgency in its storytelling.
  53. Spaceman
    Spaceman, it’s my duty to report, is a glum and meandering science-fiction fairy tale of a movie.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Getaway
    The Getaway has several things going for it: Sam Peckinpah's hard-action direction, this time largely channeled into material destruction, although fast-cut human bloodlettings occur frequently enough, and Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw as stars.
  55. The Foreigner
    The Foreigner amounts to an above-average but largely by-the-numbers action movie in which Chan does battle with generic thugs and shadowy political forces.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pacific Heights
    The specter of a menace who invades one's home turf and can't be ousted is universally disturbing, and director John Schlesinger goes all out to make this creepy thriller-chiller as unsettling as it needs to be.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hot Spot
    Seeps with atmosphere, unfolds at a deceptively relaxed pace, steadily accumulates noirish grit, then dizzily plunges into a Lynch-like plumbing of the dark passions and nasty secrets at the heart of Main Street, USA.
  58. Prefontaine
    This first dramatic feature by "Hoop Dreams" director Steve James has one foot still squarely planted in the docu aesthetic and notably lacks any psychological interest or emotional depth.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    Almodovar's inventive direction, superb lensing by Jose Luis Alcaine, a fine score by Ennio Morricone and top technical credits make pic a pleasure to watch.
  60. I'm So Excited
    Longtime Pedro Almodovar followers who have secretly been hankering for a return to the broad, transgressive comedy of his early work will be thrilled by I’m So Excited, a hugely entertaining, feelgood celebration of human sexuality that unfolds as a cathartic experience for characters, audiences and helmer alike.
  61. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    [Portman's] drearily empathetic film lacks whatever universality has made “Tale” such an international phenomenon.
  62. Monuments
    There’s not a lot here that’s wholly new, and the film’s tone of melancholy, offbeat uplift signals from the outset that we shouldn’t expect any grand revelations. Instead its pleasures come in smaller packages.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Back to the Future Part III
    Recovers the style, wit and grandiose fantasy elements of the original. The simplicity of plot, and the wide expansiveness of its use of space, are a refreshing change from the convoluted, visually cramped and cluttered second part.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caravaggio
    Much of the joy of the film is to be found in the way Jarman and his team recreate the look and color of the original paintings.
  65. He liu
    The three principal actors fit their roles like gloves, and the handsome camerawork (by Liao Peng-jung) is a major asset. There's no music, just natural sounds on the track. Except for a shot in which the microphone boom is clearly visible, the film is highly professional in every aspect.
  66. America's Heart and Soul
    Features 20-odd valiant souls treasuring their freedom and overcoming obstacles while skycams soar over purple mountains' majesty and an acrobatic pilot does loop-de-loops over fruited plains.
  67. The Terminal
    This buoyant, optimistic fable seems to share in the late Ronald Reagan's optimism for America. It does so with the help of a gifted comic ensemble led by Tom Hanks.
  68. Punks
    Slick, ingratiating and high-spirited enough to win over gay men of all colors.
  69. Antiviral
    Icky though it is, Antiviral never builds the sort of character investment or narrative momentum that would allow its visceral horrors to seriously disturb, rather than seeming like choice gross-out moments lovingly designed for maximum viewer recoil.
  70. Spark: A Burning Man Story
    "Spark” remains a lovingly made and shot tease, designed to ensure that what really happens at Burning Man stays at Burning Man.
  71. Instructions Not Included
    Instructions Not Included is a sporadically amusing but unduly protracted dramedy that slowly — very slowly — devolves into a shameless tearjerker during its third act.
  72. Stray Bullets
    It’s admirably well-crafted within its mostly savvy limitations.
  73. Safety
    Although Safety takes its cues from a true story, its beats are comfortingly familiar — or annoyingly so, depending on your fondness for the rhythms of the genre.
  74. Picture This
    Sweet, silly and sincere, director Prarthana Mohan’s spin has a clear understanding of what makes its source material revelatory and resonant.
  75. Olympic Dreams
    An engagingly wistful dramedy.
  76. Odessa... Odessa!
    Glacial in its pacing but beautifully, mournfully evocative of its subjects' ethnic/psychic exile.
  77. Friends with Kids
    Unfolds in a glib, familiar sitcom universe (think "Seinfeld" crossed with "Friends" sans ethnic flavor but with plenty of Judd Apatow-style crass patter about sex and body parts).
  78. Extraterrestrial
    Results are offbeat and amusing, but also a bit thin as the whole essentially amounts to one long shaggy-dog joke.
  79. Detour
    A moderately tense but also somewhat monotonous and overstretched exercise in claustrophobic suspense that doesn’t compare well to similar efforts like “Buried” and “127 Hours.”
  80. Quid Pro Quo
    A strikingly original and provocative first feature from scribe-helmer Carlos Brooks.
  81. Man of Steel
    The humorless tone and relentlessly noisy (visually and sonically) aesthetics leave much to be desired.
  82. My Name Is Emily
    the film thrums with an urgency that’s both asset and liability, at once invested with deep feeling and undone by a barrage of flashbacks, allusions, and counterintuitive bits of wisdom.
  83. A Bag of Marbles
    Even when the chips are down, every boy’s adorable beret looks box-fresh. It’s the boys themselves, however, who often cut through the Camembert to deliver a shot of honest, imperilled feeling.
  84. The Unicorn
    Lead players Lauren Lapkus and co-scripter Nick Rutherford are amply engaging and sympathetic, even when the behavior of their characters is cringe-worthy embarrassing. No, never mind: Make that especially when those characters are humiliating themselves for our enjoyment.
  85. Havana Suite
    The surprisingly watchable delight strikes universal chords.
  86. The Harvest/La Cosecha
    The Harvest/La Cosecha, whose exec producers include actress Eva Longoria, has few artistic pretensions, but its observations are potent.
  87. Payback
    Payback is a rarefied conceptual documentary that will appeal to a limited but highly appreciative audience.
  88. Drunktown's Finest
    Unfortunately, Drunktown’s Finest too often suffers from stilted performances and scripting.
  89. Embers
    Embers offers a series of compelling premises and never follows through on them, content to drift along on its characters’ dull malaise and allow self-conscious visual poetry to stand in for real emotion.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fog
    John Carpenter is anything but subtle in his approach to shocker material. Story exposition and setting are well-established before the opening titles are over, and The Fog proceeds to layer one fright atop another.
  91. Cinderella the Cat
    The film plays on a number of clever riffs on the Cinderella tale, all in the darkest of veins, from the sadism of Mia’s step-siblings to Salvatore’s drug empire built on shoes made from soluble cocaine.
  92. Dogs
    Although the director cut his teeth working in commercials and on more comedic material, he has no trouble orchestrating the breath-catching suspense of Dogs, depicting violent confrontations with a certain chilling detachment, then reveling in the gruesome result.
  93. The Absence of Eden
    While “Absence of Eden” lacks narrative originality, it often dazzles visually.
  94. The Best You Can
    An optimistic film that feels truthful about aging, even if it doesn’t say anything we haven’t heard before.
  95. American Fable
    Gorgeously shot, and helmed with a sense of daring and verve that belies Hamilton’s greenness to feature filmmaking, this is a debut of obvious promise, although its story never quite rises to the level of its craft.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mission
    The script is based on a little-known but nonetheless intriguing historical incident in mid-18th century South America, pitting avaricious colonialists against the Jesuit order of priests. The fundamental problem is that the script is cardboard thin, pinning labels on its characters and arbitrarily shoving them into stances to make plot points.
  97. For a Good Time, Call...
    Doesn't rise much above sitcom level in material or execution, but provides enough laughs and goodwill to be disarmingly entertaining.
  98. A Christmas Carol
    Shortchanging traditional animation by literalizing it while robbing actors of their full range of facial expressiveness, the performance-capture technique favored by director Robert Zemeckis looks more than ever like the emperor's new clothes in Disney's A Christmas Carol.
  99. Offseason
    Though thinly conceived overall with not much philosophy to back its daunting visuals, Offseason still offers some genuinely spine-tingling images and sounds that will keep midnight audiences on their toes until the end.
  100. Desperado
    Could scarcely be more dazzling on a purely visual level, but it's mortally anemic in the story, character and thematic departments.
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