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. 10 Items or Less
    Interplay between a jaunty Freeman as an unemployed movie star and the magnetic Paz Vega as a no-nonsense grocery store checker gives pic humanity and lift.
  2. Hands of Stone
    Gets the job done, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that you’re watching a routinely conceived, rather generic boxing flick. It’s utterly competent, yet it makes Duran’s story seem a little so-what?
  3. Goodbye Christopher Robin
    All of this is reasonably interesting, but not as dramatic as it ought to be.
  4. Salvable
    Franklin & Marchetta have made a respectable first feature that is well-realized in every aspect — save the earnest but mediocre basic material it ultimately fails to elevate.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Walk in the Clouds
    Aa glossy, fairy-tale romance that's longer on wishfulness than believability.
  6. Stockholm
    The opening title says “Based on an absurd but true story,” yet there’s nothing absurd about the facts. Improbable? Yes. Hapless and desperate? Most definitely. But the absurdity — the impulse to giggle — is mostly there in the eye of the writer-director, Robert Budreau, who collaborated with Hawke two years ago on the entrancing Chet Baker biopic “Born to Be Blue” but here comes off as a far less sure-handed filmmaker.
  7. 12 Strong
    On its own terms, the film is watchable enough, but it’s blunt and stolid and under-characterized, and at 130 minutes it plods.
  8. Melinda and Melinda
    Radha Mitchell stirs memories of complex Allen heroines from Annie Hall on down, even if the action is dispersed via a larger ensemble cast which he currently favors.
  9. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Doing for the cheesier Ross Hunter-style bigscreen soaps of the early/mid-'60s what "Far From Heaven" did for the plush Douglas Sirk melodramas of a decade earlier -- albeit with tongue planted much further in cheek -- writer/star Charles Busch's Die Mommie Die! is an enjoyable genre homage-cum-parody.
  10. Friday
    Rather like a cross between "Up in Smoke" and an episode of "The Jeffersons, Friday is a crudely made, sometimes funny bit of porchfront humor from the 'hood.
  11. Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
    This earnest, slight romance doesn’t generate enough sparks to overcome the anxiety of its obvious influence. But as a simple valentine to Hong Kong’s expat nightlife, the film makes for charming, breezy viewing, and the director shows promise going forward.
  12. Too Late
    As a spiritually “lost” man searching for a more literally lost woman, Hawkes has just the offhand gravitas required for a noir hero. Yet in a movie where character backstory and plot coherence hardly figure, any emotional realism the actor provides is wholly his invention.
  13. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
    In this bright, engaging film, Kerr’s story is faithfully and lovingly preserved, though its tougher, quirkier details are mollified by a layer of palatable movie gloss.
  14. The Treatment
    This offbeat charmer succumbs to the same airless artificiality that has claimed many recent efforts in the genre.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Mercy
    Despite some graphically brutal violence and a fair bit of 'too-cool' police jargon, No Mercy turns out to be a step above most other films in this blooming genre of lone-cop-turned-vigilante stories.
  16. Everything's Cool
    Can a movie about global warming genuinely be called lighthearted? If so, Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand's Everything's Cool comes as close as one imagines possible, essaying yet more inconvenient truths about the potential future of our planet in the same buoyant, irreverent style the filmmakers brought to their last activist docu, "Blue Vinyl."
  17. Toad Road
    Though it can be taken at first glance as an archetypal “nothing happening” movie, there’s just enough going on here to suggest repeat viewings might reward curiosity.
  18. Arthur the King
    This true-life tale about perseverance, compassion and second chances cuts right to the quick. While it doesn’t stray from a predictable path, the journey is rarely dull, making our travels and these characters’ travails feel worthy of the big screen.
  19. How to Be a Latin Lover
    There are some very funny bits and pieces scattered amid the proceedings, along with a few darkly comical gags that appear to belong in a different movie, but are more than welcome here.
  20. Hamlet 2
    Amusing but unevenly inspired tale of a deluded high school drama teacher's attempt to stage a career-saving extravaganza has some laughs, to be sure.
  21. Monster Summer
    It’s a fun movie that lands on the right side of “innocuous,” being pleasantly formulaic rather than simply bland.
    • 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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brighton Beach Memoirs
    Performances are skilled all the way through.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Gardens of Stone
    Gardens of Stone, Francis Coppola's muddled meditation on the Vietnam War, seems to take its name not so much from the Arlington Memorial Cemetery, where much of the action takes place, but from the stiffness of the characters it portrays.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yanks
    Director John Schlesinger has done a beautiful job with both cast and craft in Yanks, a multiple love story set in England in World War II. Yet little that's exciting ever happens in the picture.
  26. Bruno
    Undeniably funny, outrageous and boundary-pushing, this further documentation of Sacha Baron Cohen's sheer nerve will draw an abundant share of "Borat" fans.
  27. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    These two actors, with nothing matching but their goatees, have a spiky bromantic chemistry. They don’t just ping off one another’s lines — they lock and load each other.
  28. Amu
    Admirably idealistic but dramatically awkward.
    • 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.
  30. The Big Uneasy
    Well-intended and informative, but also unfocused, unwieldy and a little smug, picture pales in comparison to the really first-rate films on the subject ("When the Levees Broke," "Trouble the Water").
  31. When Animals Dream
    When Animals Dream lacks peasants bearing flaming torches to hunt down Frankenstein’s monster outside the terrorized village. But it also lacks the depth to avoid seeming just as corny, albeit in a dressed-up, self-consciously important way.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Stepford Wives
    Bryan Forbes’ filmization of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives is a quietly freaky suspense-horror story.
  33. Strays
    Strays balances human expectations and lost-in-translation animal experiences for a smart, suitably raunchy adventure that should resonate even if you don’t have a furry friend waiting at home for you afterward.
  34. Puccini for Beginners
    While it tips its hat to screwball comedy, Puccini for Beginners owes more to contemporary sitcom. It also has way more in common with "Sex and the City" than "The L Word." None of that is entirely a bad thing in a film that never really soars but has enough breezy humor.
  35. 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.
  36. Firebrand
    Firebrand is clever to reframe Catherine as an important figure in England’s change. It just goes too far.
  37. Dear Mr. Watterson
    It is, in short, everything you’d expect from a crowd-sourced documentary, designed to celebrate its subject, while mostly just validating the aesthetic taste of its backers.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Deathtrap
    Despite its intermittently amusing dialog, however, Deathtrap comes across as a minor entertainment, cleverness of which cannot conceal its essential artificiality when blown up on the big screen.
  39. CSNY/Déjà Vu
    Making music, making fun of themselves and making as much political hay as possible, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young set out to alleviate the public allergy to Iraq War films with CSNY Deja Vu, a doc that seems quite likely to effect a cure.
  40. Nutcrackers
    What the movie needs isn’t a shaggy Christmas pageant, but the kind of catharsis one might expect when four of its characters lost their mom and the fifth ought to be mourning his sister.
  41. The Château
    Modest but engaging.
  42. Reno: Rebel Without a Pause
    Nancy Savoca's workmanlike record of a La Mama stage performance taped last December finds the comic spinning some not-especially-interesting anecdotes about her bewildered actions that day, before turning toward more incisive political commentary.
  43. Return to Me
    A simplistic, highly contrived romantic comedy about the mysterious workings of fate.
  44. Chuen jik sat sau
    High-octane plunge into pop gangster psychology.
  45. From Hell
    Surprisingly conventional Olde London Towne gaslight mystery, gussied up with some doctored visuals, and an eccentric performance by Johnny Depp.
  46. Let's Get Frank
    A fascinating portrait of an era, as well as of a unique public servant.
  47. The Bread, My Sweet
    Lightweight but likable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Johnny Dangerously
    Stapleton is also well-cast in her cliched role, as are Peter Boyle as the good mobster Dundee and Joe Piscopo as the bad Vermin. Deliberately overworking the Cagney mannerisms, Michael Keaton is initially good, too, in the title role, as is Griffin Dunne as Johnny’s D.A. brother. Unfortunately, the material given all of them just gets worse and worse.
  49. The Etruscan Smile
    Brian Cox rages robustly and arrestingly against the dying of the light in The Etruscan Smile, an unabashedly formulaic yet undeniably affecting coming-to-terms drama that may cause as much discomfort as delight for those who recognize bits and pieces of their own fathers (or themselves) in the cantankerous character Cox portrays so persuasively.
  50. Whole New Thing
    "Thing" suffers the familiar curse of Canadian seriocomedy -- just nice enough in content and stylistically like a telepic.
  51. The First Purge
    The First Purge is a slipshod B-movie comic book rooted in gangbanger clichés. It’s a threadbare “Boyz N the Hood” meets “Lord of the Flies.”
  52. Blue Chips
    More numbing than exciting.
    • Variety
  53. Fierce People
    Whenever Sutherland comes on scene, any inadequacies in the film's depiction of the well-to-do become irrelevant.
  54. Cymbeline
    Having learned a thing or two from Baz Luhrmann, Almereyda substitutes guns for daggers and picks his locations carefully, creating a rich, sultry-looking environment within which to stage the drama.
  55. Barrage
    After a taut, flinty opening that sees Huppert and Chammah sparring to quietly heart-ripping effect, the air trickles out of this sensitive but cliché-laced drama
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Night of the Living Dead
    The story faithfully follows the original except for the bonehead decision to replace the ending with a ‘meaningful’ twist that reeks of pretentiousness.
  57. The Misfortunates
    Calling the Strobbe clan a working-class family would imply that some of its members worked (or had class), but none of the lowlife protags do in the visually robust and often hilarious Flemish tragicomedy The Misfortunates.
  58. 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.
  59. Entanglement
    Like James’ direction, full of off-center and oddly angled compositions that aren’t warranted by the action, Entanglement dresses up familiar romantic-comedy themes with affected gimmicks to jumbled ends.
  60. Escape from L.A.
    Nocturnal setting, uneven tone, abrasive score and only fitfully successful attempts at humor create a generally grim atmosphere, occasionally leavened by goofy ideas and flashes of explosive action.
    • Variety
  61. Wasp Network
    It leaves viewers gratified by the filmmaking bravura and the sheer pleasure of watching this superb cast in top form, but also feeling shortchanged.
  62. What We Did on Our Holiday
    Re-creating the show’s winning formula of three amiably precocious young children trading smarts with fondly exasperated parents, the pic swings for a much more eventful story arc, with mixed results.
  63. Eddie the Eagle
    The pic gets quite a lot of mileage out of several note-perfect musical choices...and Fletcher includes just enough odd angles and quirky compositions to suggest a slightly stranger, loopier vision for this film lurking somewhere beneath.
  64. The Discovery
    Though The Discovery starts out with a great premise, its mystery dissipates over a somewhat tepid course as the concept ultimately heads in a direction we’ve seen many times before, and depends overmuch on chemistry that fails to materialize between stars Jason Segel and Rooney Mara.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bride of Re-Animator
    Fans of Stuart Gordon's 1985 Re-Animator will probably dig this campy gorefest sequel directed by the original's producer, Brian Yuzna.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Star
    A strong performance by Bette Davis, in a tailor-made role, gives a lift to The Star that it might not have had otherwise.
  67. The Critic
    The film is a heady brew of period thriller, compelling melodrama and jet-black comedy, and the second most remarkable thing about it is how seamlessly these diverse elements gel.
  68. M3GAN 2.0
    M3GAN 2.0 is amusing at moments, overblown at others. Here’s hoping that “M3GAN 3.0” is brasher, funkier, crazier.
  69. Bobby
    Emilio Estevez's Bobby is a passionate outcry for peace and justice in America that becomes deeply involving by the final climactic scene.
  70. Screened Out
    Why watch Screened Out? Because it shows you something you didn’t know.
  71. Booty Call
    Though straining at the bounds of good taste (and occasionally spilling over), the story remains vigilant in its primary focus.
  72. Moxie
    It’s a welcome entry into a familiar genre that will resonate with young audiences burdened by the unwritten rules of their respective educational institutions. And that’s thanks in large part to an immensely likable ensemble cast guided by Poehler’s sure-handed energy behind the camera, as well as the film’s ambitious aims to be intersectional in its social and political themes.
  73. Seberg
    Every time it threatens to truly pierce the psyche of its subject, played with typically intriguing, elusory intelligence by Kristen Stewart, the more ordinary mechanics of the movie she’s serving get in the way.
  74. Saturday Fiction
    [A] grandiloquently incoherent misfire
  75. A Decent Factory
    Fascinating case study of the moral quagmire of globalism.
  76. The Forgotten Space
    Sekula's overwritten narration, with its fair share of whoppers, does his argument no favors, overwhelming genuinely interesting statistics.
  77. Redlegs
    Filmmaker magazine editor/critic Brandon Harris' debut feature, Redlegs, puts its indebtedness to Cassavetes upfront -- or rather, in back, spelled out clearly amid the closing acknowledgements -- as three protagonists act out a junior version of "Husbands'" epic drunken wake.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lifeguard
    An unsatisfying film, of uncertain focus on a 30-ish guy who doesn't yet seem to know what he wants. Script takes Sam Elliott through another Southern California beach summer as a career lifeguard, encountering the usual string of offbeat characters found in the type of made-for-TV feature which this project resembles.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Educating Rita
    Aided greatly by an expert film adaptation by its playwright, Willy Russell, Gilbert has come up with an irresistible story about a lively, lower-class British woman hungering for an education and the rather, staid, degenerating English professor who reluctantly provides her with one.
  80. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
    A passable, tolerable, not unbearable, totally inoffensive adaptation of Judith Viorst’s beloved 1972 children’s book.
  81. The Exterminating Angels
    Brisseau trains his deft camera on the crescendo of female sexual pleasure and how women can heighten the intensity of already blissful sensations via transgressive flourishes. If exiting viewers could all be asked "Was it good for you?" the likely answer is "Yes."
  82. Captive State
    Although the TV ads and other promotional material appear to promise a megaplex-ready thrill ride about space invaders and rebellious Earthlings, this rigorously intelligent, cunningly inventive, and impressively suspenseful drama plays more like a classic tale about a disparate group of resistance fighters united in a guerrilla campaign against an occupying force.
  83. Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    A handsome although dramatically muddled Noodle Western.
  84. Malèna
    Combining a coming-of-age story with the sad odyssey of a woman punished for her beauty, the film ultimately has too little depth, subtlety, thematic consequence or contemporary relevance.
    • Variety
  85. Fackham Hall
    The movie, in its mud-on-the-doily way, is amusing enough to get by. But it never shocks you into laughter.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
    Unfortunately, Aussie helmer Stephen Hopkins adopts a music-video approach, delaying the boring exposition for several reels and usually cutting away from climaxes to destroy much of the film’s impact. Acting is highly variable. Saving grace is the series of spectacular special effects set pieces featuring fanciful makeup, mattes, stopmotion animation and opticals.
  87. Paper Heart
    There may be a fairly sharp line dividing those who find the whole delightfully odd, and those irked by what could be read as a faux childlike simplicity to the enterprise.
  88. Dare
    This "Cruel Intentions"-style cesspool of teenage hanky-panky may be more scandalous than its chaste Disney counterpart, but that doesn't necessarily make it any more authentic.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Big Wednesday
    A rubber stamp wouldn’t do for John Milius. So he took a sledgehammer and pounded Important all over Big Wednesday. This film about three Malibu surfers in the 1960s has been branded major statement and it’s got Big Ideas about adolescence, friendship and the 1960s.
  90. My Son
    Themes of parental guilt and the effects of broken families on children are hinted at early but discarded in favor of genre pleasures, which Carion provides to increasingly formulaic effect.
  91. The Cuban
    The real learning here ought to be that if you cast two such charismatic performers as Louis Gossett Jr. and Shohreh Aghdashloo in your movie, it would be better to clear all the Life Lesson clutter away and just let them get on with it.
  92. U Turn
    The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre.
  93. Oblivion
    A moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way.
  94. Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between
    Even though this Netflix original doesn’t condescend to its targeted teen audience, it fails to surmount basic issues dealing with narrative credulity and the outcome’s predictability.
  95. Outlaw Johnny Black
    The new film nonetheless provides more than a few good laughs, even when it seems to be taking horse opera clichés a tad too respectfully, and showcases a fine cast of actors dedicated to both the silliness and the seriousness of the enterprise.
  96. The Boys in the Boat
    The Boys in the Boat is a gentleman’s sports movie, with Clooney working hard to make one “like they used to.” He brings it off, even if there’s a lingering quaintness to it all.
  97. Spies in Disguise
    The trouble with a film like Spies in Disguise isn’t that it’s less than sparklingly animated but that as technically bravura as it is, there is never anything at stake.
  98. Spellbound
    In the end, Jenson’s most radical twist on fairy-tale tradition is the belief that a pat “happily ever after” isn’t nearly as helpful as providing an example of how to cope with unhappiness.
  99. Greta
    Falls squarely in B movie territory but, by virtue of its two lead performers, winds up being far more enjoyable than it has any right to be.
  100. The Berlin File
    The Berlin File boasts knockout action setpieces that provide an impressive big-budget showcase for Ryoo Seung-wan's technical smarts.
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