Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Hancock
    The effects are snazzy, even if they pass by quite quickly, and there's enough going on to keep audiences watching, if not entirely happy. Smith, Theron and Bateman capably handle the main roles, but such is the skimpiness of the scenario that no further characters make any impact.
  2. Finding Amanda
    Although it avoids overt moralizing or clunky lesson-learning, pic's careful balancing act between tragedy and comedy eventually becomes its sole raison d'etre.
  3. WALL-E
    Walks a fine line between the rarefied and the immediately accessible as it explores new territory for animation, yet remains sufficiently crowd-pleasing.
  4. Wanted
    Like it or not, Wanted pretty much slams you to the back of your chair from the outset and scarcely lets up for the duration.
  5. Gunnin' for That #1 Spot
    Beastie Boy Adam Yauch proves he can make a comprehensive, state-of-the-art docu of interest to basketball aficionados.
  6. Trumbo
    It will serve as a fine entry point for younger auds interested in learning about the price paid by moviemakers and their families swept up in the 1950s anti-Communist net.
  7. Elsa y Fred
    Predictable fare that only occasionally fulfils its intention of being simultaneously heartbreaking and heartening.
  8. The Last Mistress
    Adapting a book by semi-notorious novelist and critic Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-89), Breillat freely stamps her strong and singular feminine insights on a man's material.
  9. Red Roses and Petrol
    It all rings particularly hollow in light of several recent pics ("Last Orders" and "The Barbarian Invasions" chief among them) that have explored similar terrain with much greater emotion and intelligence.
  10. Full Grown Men
    A strong cast, beautiful production values and generally pleasant execution can't disguise the fact both laughs and surprises are on the thin side here, despite the abundant care and affection lavished on the central characters by first-time writer-director David Munro.
  11. Get Smart
    Helmer Peter Segal's formulaic takeoff is neither fish nor fowl, not quite faithful to the show, but not quite bringing it into the 21st century either.
  12. The Love Guru
    So relentlessly juvenile as to merit a new twist on the PG-13 rating -- one that strongly cautions not only those under 13 but anyone much above it, too.
  13. Brick Lane
    Monica Ali's elegant and critically trumpeted debut novel, Brick Lane, about the travails, conflicting emotions and quiet liberation of a Muslim woman in London, is a far lesser thing in its bigscreen transformation.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
    Anchored by a fine performance from Abigail Breslin, this wholesome, engaging entertainment offers something for viewers ages 7 to 107.
  15. Expired
    An occasionally cringe-inducing mix of pathos and humor, the tightly scripted, well-acted and notably art-directed tale follows a lonely, vulnerable meter maid who falls into a comically horrific relationship with a colleague incapable of emotional intimacy.
  16. The Happening
    In short, this is a Shyamalan movie minus the bravado, the swagger; there are no audacious attempts to pull out the rug from under the audience, no ham-fisted lessons about the importance of religious belief or the power of storytelling.
  17. The Incredible Hulk
    A straightforward actioner that delivers the goods with no unnecessary frills or digressions.
  18. Chris & Don. A Love Story
    Made with gentle grace and sensitivity.
  19. My Winnipeg
    Though it may feel undernourished to the faithful, Winnipeg is an easily digestible meal, for the uninitiated and fans alike.
  20. Quid Pro Quo
    A strikingly original and provocative first feature from scribe-helmer Carlos Brooks.
  21. Beauty in Trouble
    Recent history once again intrudes on the present-day lives of working Czechs in the masterful multicharacter drama Beauty in Trouble.
  22. To the Limit
    A visually breathtaking essay about daredevils hooked on the thrill of speed rock-climbing.
  23. Encounters at the End of the World
    Resultant picture -- one of Herzog's best and most purely enjoyable -- may lack the built-in curio factor of "Grizzly Man."
  24. Kung Fu Panda
    A nice looking but heavily formulaic DreamWorks animation entry.
  25. You Don't Mess with the Zohan
    The off-the-wall comedy of Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow leaves a mark on the script, but it would require a talent of Peter Sellers' magnitude to conquer this material, and he's not around.
  26. The Go-Getter
    An unusually fresh-feeling indie with a nice sense of style. The potentially predictable story of a young man who undertakes an impromptu journey to resolve some unfinished family business emerges as an appealing tale of personal growth with hand-crafted contours.
  27. Miss Conception
    Miscast and miscalculated, Miss Conception hopes to collect on Hollywood's recent baby-on-board craze, delivering instead the least credible take on human pregnancy since Arnold Schwarzenegger gave birth in "Junior."
  28. Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan
    This Central Asia-set historical epic from Russian helmer Sergei Bodrov ("Nomad") boasts breathtaking landscapes, dazzling cinematography, bloody battles and unique traditions.
  29. Mother of Tears
    This hectic pileup of supernatural nonsense is a treasure trove of seemingly unintentional hilarity. Although lacking helmer's usual aesthetic panache, this "Mother" is a cheesy, breathless future camp classic.
  30. The Promotion
    A stillborn would-be comedy.
  31. Take Out
    This day in the life of a young man attempting to earn cash for his family back home gathers impact by the reel.
  32. Operation Filmmaker
    Picture raises pithy questions sure to provoke animated discussions pro and con. Credit Davenport for a mostly unbiased presentation that presents her own disenchantment in a balanced manner.
  33. Bigger Stronger Faster*
    More scrupulously reported than your average Michael Moore film but every bit as entertaining, Bigger, Stronger, Faster* is as commercial as documentaries come.
  34. The Foot Fist Way
    The character of Fred Simmons is a Cliff Clavin-esque sensei deluxe in The Foot Fist Way, a low-budget, low-flying farce a la "Napoleon Dynamite" or "Jackass: The Movie."
  35. Savage Grace
    Scripter Howard A. Rodman's treatment of an enthralling book is more a series of vignettes rather than a fully connected work, and helmer Tom Kalin seems unable to decide how much Sirkian melodrama to introduce into the heady mix. Gone are the reasons to be fascinated with these people, merely replaced with maddeningly over-arch dialogue and struggles with characterization.
  36. Sex and the City
    Best in its small moments, the movie should find receptive gal pals congregating for the mother of all viewing parties.
  37. The Strangers
    It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic. Still, after such a long, creepy, cannily restrained buildup, it must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote.
  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. Stuck
    Ingeniously nasty and often shockingly funny as it incrementally worsens a very bad situation, then provides a potent payoff with the forced feeding of just desserts.
  40. Cleaner
    Scrub away a needlessly fussy visual style, trendy narrative tweaks and a climax both morally repugnant and logically absurd, and there’s a tough little noir about buried transgressions coming out of the past in Renny Harlin’s lackluster thriller “Cleaner.” Too mainstream to attract genre interest, and too tangled in its character motivations to sit well with the multiplex crowd, this is a minor stain that should fade quickly and leave only faint traces in ancillary.
  41. The Children of Huang Shi
    Giving Jonathan Rhys Meyers the kind of manly yet paternal role Spencer Tracy once mastered, this carefully wrought international production relates the basic story of reporter George Hogg without any vibrancy, emotion or style.
  42. War, Inc.
    A blackly comic take on the first totally outsourced war? We're too close to being in one right now, which makes this John Cusack vehicle too close for comfort. It's also so close to being funny you can just about taste it -- just about.
  43. Postal
    This anything-goes exercise isn't dull -- one just wishes the outrageousness were more consistently funny.
  44. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    Nineteen years after their last adventure, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford have no trouble getting back in the groove with a story and style very much in keeping with what has made the series so perennially popular.
  45. The Edge of Heaven
    Superbly cast drama, in which the lives and emotional arcs of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- criss-cross through love and tragedy.
  46. 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.
  47. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    Closer to a straight-ahead medieval battle picture than the fantastical, other-worldly journey depicted in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," this new entry is a bit darker, more conventional and more crisply made than its 2005 predecessor.
  48. Reprise
    Final result, with its peculiar happy ending that may or may not be a further fantasy, may leave some auds feeling more drained than satisfied. It's a bit like spending 105 minutes with a litter of frisky, mischievous puppies.
  49. Sangre De Mi Sangre
    Ochoa is such a masterful actor that he makes things fairly interesting despite the script, with Hernandez and Espindola well-cast as two young men operating by different moral compasses.
  50. Lion's Den
    Situated somewhere between neo-realist study and standard women in prison pic, Lion's Den too frequently wanders into common territories to make the material its own.
  51. Speed Racer
    Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers' return behind the camera for the first time since the "Matrix" trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. In every other respect, it's pure cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist.
  52. The Babysitters
    It ultimately fails to deliver on the audacity of its premise. Neither truly original nor a guilty-pleasure genre spin, the picture lacks a hook for general audiences who may find the subject matter distasteful as presented.
  53. The Fall
    This convoluted, arbitrary, overlong whimsy will strike most grown-ups as childish, and is far too violent and pretentious for kids.
  54. Frontier(s)
    Can a movie be an adrenalin-fueled, blood-gushing thrill ride and still be as boring as dirt? Apparently. The French answer to "Hostel" and "Saw" -- Frontier(s) is a 100-minute hemorrhage that doesn't bring anything to the operating table of torture-porn but more gore, cruelty and misery.
  55. Noise
    Amusing but marginal diatribe against aural assault in Manhattan.
  56. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
    A spy spoof that -- rarity of rarities -- represents a remake actually worth making. Current comic fave Jean Dujardin plays title character OSS 117 as a kind of James Bond crossed with Maxwell Smart.
  57. Surfwise
    Somewhat forced happy ending aside, the pic holds together well.
  58. Turn the River
    Atmospheric picture positively vibrates with authenticity, and Janssen's intense, febrile performance earned a special jury prize at the Hamptons fest.
  59. What Happens in Vegas
    This two-seated star vehicle for top-billed Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz wrings a respectable number of laughs from a formulaic scenario about attracted-opposites who bicker and back-stab their way toward happily-ever-aftering.
  60. Before the Rains
    Tale of an idealistic local caught in the crossfire of an illicit affair is too pat and pretty to connect with upscale audiences.
  61. A Previous Engagement
    Stevenson casts her usual magic in this frankly adult, determinedly lighthearted comedy of romantic errors.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Tracey Fragments
    Page is generally commanding as the self-pitying teenager, but there are several moments when, let down by the text, the young thesp obviously does not believe what she is saying.
  63. Unsettled
    Hootnick seems determined to make everyone likable, no matter how vapid, objectionable or ill-articulated their views are. The emphasis on personality over politics or serious debate makes the pic feel lightweight, ill-suited to theatrical exposure.
  64. Battle for Haditha
    Intense, fair-minded entry in the pileup of Iraq pictures.
  65. Iron Man
    Ever-eclectic director Jon Favreau, who briefly pops up onscreen as a Stark minion, maintains a brisk but not frantic pace, and, in concert with lenser Matthew Libatique, production designer J. Michael Riva and the first-rate visual effects team, has made an unusually elegant looking film for the genre.
  66. Fugitive Pieces
    The cool hand of Canadian writer-director Jeremy Podeswa proves a disappointing match for Fugitive Pieces, a generally dull and unmemorable adaptation of Anne Michaels' extraordinary prose-poetry novel.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Made of Honor
    Like a shopworn wedding gown disguised with a new sash, Made of Honor feels recycled from top to bottom. That's because it's essentially a gender-swapped version of "My Best Friend's Wedding."
  68. Mister Lonely
    Less outre than "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," Korine's most lavishly produced pic to date begins as a sweet-tempered tale of social misfits-turned-celebrity impersonators, but falls short of its ambition to say something meaningful about the obsessive nature of celebrity culture.
  69. Redbelt
    An absorbing and colorful, if not particularly convincing, excursion into a demi-monde of fighters, scammers, promoters and self-styled modern samurai, Redbelt gives the impression of Mamet coyly toying with the idea of making a populist little-man-against-the-system sports melodrama without actually attempting to create a film for the masses.
  70. Son of Rambow
    A sweetly raucous adventure. Widely quoted comparisons to "Billy Elliot" and Tim Burton overstate the case for what is really a modestly eccentric entertainment.
  71. XXY
    Picture has more in common with standard child-parent conflict dramas than it would probably care to admit, but its sensitive treatment of an equally sensitive theme elevates it into something memorable.
  72. The Favor
    A pair of beautifully mismatched lead performances elevate a predictable drama to unexpected resonance in The Favor.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Viva
    Viva...is faithful to those cult-adored obscurities in nearly every detail, including their soporific pace. Here, however, sly in-jokes come often enough to make said pacing funny in itself. Performances are slightly stilted or over-the-top in ways true to the original genre.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Plumm Summer
    Montana-set, reality-inspired picture feels like an homage to a bygone era of moviemaking: It takes its time to build character and story, there's hardly a CG effect in sight, and there's nothing high-concept about it.
  75. Baby Mama
    Fey is a delight to watch throughout.
  76. Deception
    Strip out Deception's fleeting nudity and what's left is a throwback to "B" movie days -- a thin thriller, burdened by clunky dialogue and prone to telegraphing its twists.
  77. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
    An over-the-top and beyond-PC comedy that sometimes deftly, sometimes slapdashedly infuses party-hearty anarchy with hectoring moral outrage.
  78. Rogue
    A competent horror yarn filmed in eye-catching Aussie outback locations.
  79. Roman de gare
    Picture gets an undeniable boost from the ace performance of the short, beady-eyed Pinon.
  80. Standard Operating Procedure
    Adds relatively little insight to the public understanding of wayward military behavior more incisively analyzed in "Taxi to the Dark Side."
  81. Then She Found Me
    A smart, subtle and seriously funny dramedy bound to find favor with sophisticated auds.
  82. Up the Yangtze
    A gloriously cinematic documentay of epic, poetic sadness.
  83. Deal
    Public fascination with Texas Hold 'em and other poker variations will likely bolster B.O., though more discriminating auds may choose to pass.
  84. Without the King
    With Swaziland providing this mother lode of material, helmer Michael Skolnik extracts only the most pedestrian of films.
  85. 88 Minutes
    Ludicrous in the extreme, the picture easily snatches from "Revolution" the prize as Al Pacino's career worst.
  86. The Forbidden Kingdom
    On its own terms, it's a handsome albeit unexceptional juvenile adventure shot on some magnificent Chinese locations.
  87. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
    Segel makes an engaging impression throughout Forgetting Sarah Marshall, gamely making himself the butt of many jokes that involve Peter's non-macho proclivities.
  88. Kiss the Bride
    Formulaic gay comedy delivers its share of grins on the way to an (arguably) unexpected ending.
  89. The Life Before Her Eyes
    A femme-centric drama about the aftermath of a high school massacre, profoundly confusing "In Bloom" arrives at some very tenuous moral conclusions that might alienate much of its supposed target audience.
  90. Pathology
    Like its characters, the picture is too clever for its own good, allowing the meticulously researched scenario to be undone by implausible behavior and gaping plot holes.
  91. The Tiger's Tail
    Playing dual roles as a rich Irish businessman riding the economic boom and his down-and-out twin, Gleeson animates Boorman's amusing Prince and the Pauper screenplay, which sports a dark social underbelly that puts Ireland's rich-poor divide centerstage
  92. Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
    Morgan Spurlock, of the "Super Size Me" phenom, serves up a rehash of others' 9/11 reportage, bin Laden biography, Islamic theology and suicide-bomber psychology, in a tone so aghast you'd assume he knew nothing about the War on Terror -- which should make pic very appealing for those who know nothing about the War on Terror.
  93. Zombie Strippers!
    The kind of entertainment perhaps better suited to drinking games than full viewer attention.
  94. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
    While roving interviewer Ben Stein extracts some choice soundbites from scientists on both sides of the creation-vs.-evolution debate, the film's flippant approach undermines the seriousness of its discourse, trading less in facts than in emotional appeals.
  95. Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
    Another superficial film about music from Scott Hicks ("Shine"), picture runs a distant second to the superior new film on John Adams and Peter Sellars, "Wonders Are Many," which really captures how a composer works.
  96. Anamorph
    Beyond its cool, reflective surfaces and infinite plays with perspective lies nothing -- character, relationships, motives all seemingly irrelevant. Even Willem Dafoe as a haunted cop cannot ground these artfully grisly optical illusions, unconnected to any comprehensible storyline.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The First Saturday in May
    Picture successfully elaborates on the sorts of color pieces that traditionally precede the race on television.
  98. Dark Matter
    Never fully succeeds in burrowing under its protagonist's skin, despite conspicuous effort.
  99. Prom Night
    A surprisingly effective teen-skewing thriller that soft-pedals graphic violence (in marked contrast to the R-rated 1980 original) while generating a fair degree of suspense.
  100. Street Kings
    A brutal look at police corruption that allows director David Ayer and "L.A. Confidential" author James Ellroy to pool their deeply cynical insights.
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