Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    Hewing closer to the 1984 template, it’s an improvement on that film — not a particular high bar to reach — though a somewhat mixed bag overall.
  2. Muppets from Space
    A modestly clever comedy in which nothing gets seriously out of hand.
  3. Dog Eat Dog
    That’s not to say Dog Eat Dog is bereft of interesting choices. Far from it, though its infrequent bursts of gonzo brilliance are all in service of such an uninteresting premise.
  4. Valley Girl
    Will there be young people who love this movie as much as their parents loved Coolidge’s “Valley Girl”? Sure, that’s bound to happen, but no one will be talking about this movie in 37 years. And with no new music — just second-rate covers of classic songs — it may well be forgotten in fewer than 37 days, lost to the void of VOD.
  5. A Goofy Movie
    Brightly drawn, fast-moving and mercifully short, efficient effort is a male bonding saga that hinges upon the fears of teenage pooch Max that he’ll grow up to be just as goofy as Dad.
  6. Gnomeo and Juliet
    A welcome dose of honest silliness at a time when most family-oriented toons settle for smart-alecky.
  7. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
    The new film lacks that kinetic haunted-house element. It’s the most somber and meditative and least aggressive of the “Conjuring” films. It’s out to deepen the series’ portrait of the Warrens, and damned if Patrick Wilson, with his gentle tenacity and Pat Boone grin, and Vera Farmiga, who plays Lorraine the psychic in high Victorian collars and embodies her gift with a feverish purity, don’t succeed in making Ed and Lorraine the coziest fighters of evil the movies have ever seen.
  8. Café de Flore
    Modeled on his 2005 hit "C.R.A.Z.Y.," Vallee's fourth feature is another dense, decades-spanning tale that lets a cherry-picked soundtrack and impressive visual sequences do the heavy lifting.
  9. Wanderlust
    Despite some amusing moments, everyone simply works too hard at providing rambunctious zaniness, until one grows painfully aware the inevitable outtakes reel will be superior to the movie.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sweet Bird of Youth
    Sweet Bird of Youth is a tamer and tidied but arresting version of Tennessee Williams' Broadway play. It's a glossy, engrossing hunk of motion picture entertainment, slickly produced by Berman.
  11. Hypnotic
    This slick mix of special effects and practical ingenuity puts Affleck in a fun position, and the slightly grizzled star’s still got the clench-jawed charisma to pull it off. [Work in Progress SXSW 2023]
  12. The Moment
    I actually think The Moment should have pushed further into crackpot satirical extremes. In that case, it wouldn’t have been a movie that featured a “real” version of Charli xcx. But it might have made you laugh more, because it would have been genuinely outlandish rather than just unconvincing.
  13. Surrogate Valentine
    Dave Boyle's picture is fueled by no overriding visual style, relying completely on its actors' chemistry for momentum. Unfortunately, the two strike no sparks.
  14. Silent Night
    Trouble is, apart from some modestly inventive carnage and an undeniably humorous hambone turn by Malcolm McDowell, there's really nothing here to make genre fans dash through the snow (or maneuver through traffic) to megaplexes before the low-budget, high-concept Canadian production's Dec. 4 homevid release.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Breakin'
    On a plot level, concoction is too derivative of Flashdance for its own good, as the premise once again is untrained, but highly skilled and imaginative, street dancers versus the stuffy, inflexible dance establishment. Aside from the fainthearted choices, however, film is quite satisfactory and breezily entertaining on its own terms.
    • Variety
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Target
    Target is a spy thriller that's not only completely understandable and involving throughout, but also continually surprising along the way. It also strangely contains a few scenes of dreadful writing, acting and direction.
  17. American Underdog
    American Underdog is a thoroughly predictable yet hugely entertaining sports biopic that is bound to please almost anyone who’s not a sourball cynic or a snarky critic.
  18. Five Feet Apart
    Fresh off of memorable supporting parts in “The Edge of Seventeen” and “Support the Girls,” Richardson gives a star turn every bit as charismatic and assured as the film is formulaic and forgettable, bringing soul, style and nuance to a character that could have easily been a condescending caricature.
  19. Deep Water
    This erotic thriller is still sexy and plenty entertaining, mind you, but it’s just not very useful insofar as what it says about real relationships.
  20. Khadak
    Beads together complex ideas and gorgeously wrought segments like pearls on a string, but, with its emblematic characters and sometimes baffling, mystical storyline, pic ultimately remains emotionally distant.
  21. Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me
    Despite its efforts to present a well-rounded portrait of this determined starlet, the film ultimately feels like a glossier, slightly less salacious iteration of an “E! True Hollywood Story,” appealing primarily to those who relish tragic tales of the rich and famous.
  22. Hula Girls
    Utterly predictable but it sure is a lot of fun.
  23. [REC] 4: Apocalypse
    This supposedly final though none-too-conclusive chapter is fast-paced and entertaining, if not especially scary.
  24. Pokémon Detective Pikachu
    Though consistent with the game (with a few extra but obvious twists thrown in for good measure), the story of “Detective Pikachu” doesn’t allow nearly enough Pokémon-related action, while the quality of the computer animation (by Moving Picture Co. and Framestore) falls far short of the basic level of competency audiences have come to expect from effects movies.
  25. Atropia
    While both its lampooning of U.S. militarism and its central character drama lack follow-through, the film contains bright comedic sparks in its keen observations about American media.
  26. Rid of Me
    Bracingly original, alarming and droll, the righteously ribald Rid of Me should prove a breakthrough for helmer James Westby and his producer and leading lady, Katie O'Grady.
  27. The Lucky Ones
    It's hard to find the genuine heartfelt moments in The Lucky Ones.
  28. The Book of Eli
    Some mordant comic touches would have been welcome throughout the picture, which has a somber tone that suffers a bit from lack of modulation and nuance.
  29. The Quarry
    In The Quarry, sin has its wages, but that’s all it has. It’s too dry to offer anything like temptation.
  30. 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.
  31. Long Weekend
    The soulful, comforting sentiments at the core of Basilone’s feature are really what ring true.
  32. Duane Hopwood
    Writer-director Matt Mulhern confidently anchors his drama-comedy about an alcoholic Atlantic City pit boss with good writing and sharp dialogue. Script never treats characters as less than human.
  33. Onmyoji: The Yin Yang Master
    The effects prove extremely uneven, with sub-par touches alongside astonishing and truly unforgettable shots.
  34. Sacred Planet
    Respecting Mother Earth should never be as dull as watching Sacred Planet, a repetitive, globe-hopping Imax project that dresses up well-known ecological truisms with pretty nature photography.
  35. Wasabi
    An acceptably entertaining but borderline bland vehicle for Jean Reno.
  36. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    A self-described abstinence comedy that is funny, sexy and silly in equal measure.
  37. A House on a Hill
    Pic's air of connoisseurist homage overwhelms a haphazard screenplay and characters who are hard to warm up to.
  38. Better Housekeeping
    A triumph of indie casting of unknowns, Good Housekeeping is knee-deep in delicious thesping.
  39. Jig
    Although there is some insightful observational work, and the dancing itself is aces, pic feels overcrowded with characters.
  40. Bridgend
    Even when the director pushes too far...the film’s formal severity feels appropriately claustrophobic — another form of authority closing in on the light.
  41. Brooklyn Rules
    A sometimes funny, occasionally maudlin coming-of-age dramedy that wants to be "Goodfellas" but might have been called "Mild in the Streets."
  42. Fighting Tommy Riley
    The winner by a knockout is Eddie Jones...Without Jones, pic is a standard drama on the sweet science with the usual tropes and a slight tweak on the usual conflicts.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Dark Half
    The writer's desk intriguingly becomes a gladitorial arena for warring manifestations of the same personality in The Dark Half, George A. Romero's adaptation of Stephen King's 1989 bestseller, a classic Jekyll-and-Hyde story.
    • Variety
  44. Guest of Honour
    At once overplotted and under-reasoned, hysterical and stiffly earnest, Guest of Honour is finally one of those strenuously diagrammatic mysteries in which everything notionally connects, which isn’t quite the same as everything making even marginal emotional sense.
  45. Girls Will Be Girls
    Day-glo garish Girls Will Be Girls puts a rude spin on "Valley of the Dolls"-type Hollywood melodramas, to frequently hilarious if disjointed effect.
  46. Beauty Shop
    A sunny and sassy comedy that somehow manages to breathe fresh life into familiar stereotypes and stock situations.
  47. Earth to Echo
    Earth to Echo reaches for the stars with its gentle sci-fi shenanigans, but the rote result remains decidedly earthbound.
  48. Over the GW
    Too narratively disjointed to achieve maximum impact, but too emotionally potent in fits and starts to be dismissed out of hand. Ultimately, Over the GW resembles nothing so much as a rough draft for a more conventional feature.
  49. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain
    Once you get past an incredibly self-indulgent intro — an uncomfortably long mash-up of comedy sketch and road-trip-with-entourage doc that seems simultaneously apologetic and arrogant — you can enjoy approximately an hour of boisterously freewheeling and unabashedly raunchy funny stuff in Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain.
  50. Samba
    Running a full reel longer than needed, the film’s balance of romance, humor and pathos starts to slip in the final stretch... though the emotional notes ring true.
  51. Duck
    A small, affecting road movie peopled with sharp vignettes.
  52. Viceroy's House
    Such a sprawling, two-pronged saga may well have been better served in television miniseries format.
  53. Body at Brighton Rock
    Deftly employing the power of suggestion and an emotionally potent sound design, Body at Brighton Rock is a well-crafted thriller with some crafty tricks up its sleeve.
  54. Castle in the Ground
    The result is an earnest, sometimes skillful effort that nonetheless often feels slack and underwritten, as well as ultimately less-than-rewarding.
  55. Malcolm & Marie
    Levinson gives his stars roughly equal time, carefully modulating the sense of balance throughout. His direction seldom seems showy, and yet, we sense the intention behind each cut as power and control shifts throughout the movie.
  56. Astro Boy
    Appropriately for a film about robots, efficiency is the primary virtue of Astro Boy, a well-oiled CG-animated superhero pic that makes up in competence and vitality what it lacks in originality.
  57. Hampstead
    Gleeson and Keaton, for their part, play this bourgeois rags-to-tweed fairytale with such good humor that one is fleetingly able to overlook the frank bogusness of the mechanics that bring them together.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heartbreak Ridge
    Heartbreak Ridge offers another vintage Clint Eastwood performance. There are enough mumbled half-liners in this contemporary war pic to satisfy those die-hards eager to see just how he portrays the consummate marine veteran.
  59. Astronaut
    In the end, only a fraction of McLeod’s ambitions sticks a landing. But Astronaut stays afloat with sweetness, thanks to a measured performance from Dreyfuss.
  60. White Squall
    Director Ridley Scott's lavish production isn't totally satisfying, coasting aimlessly at times before suddenly leaping to a more intense dramatic plane.
  61. Year of the Fish
    That the film is animated gives it an appropriately magical feel, but it can't save the story from being drowned in devices and stereotype.
  62. Blast Beat
    Blast Beat cares far more about testing the limits of the family’s togetherness, and while the resolution doesn’t have the sweetness of a pop song, Arango is happy to settle for heavy metal discordance.
  63. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    There is a sense of bloat and where-do-we-go-from here aimlessness to this unconscionably protracted undertaking.
  64. Rigor Mortis
    The cause of death would appear to be visual-effects overkill in the case of Rigor Mortis, a flashy, incoherent and virtually scare-free Hong Kong horror exercise that marks the directing debut of actor, singer, record producer and fashion maven Juno Mak.
  65. Metroland
    A witty script and strong performances hoist Metroland beyond the confines of its rather standard, TV-style approach.
  66. Point of No Return
    If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then “Point of No Return,” a soulless, efficiently slavish remake of “La Femme Nikita,” creates a whole new category of homage-paying.
  67. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
    There’s a grand paradox at work in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. The film isn’t simply a technological experiment; it’s also a highly original, heartfelt, and engrossing story. And part of the power of it lies in the way that those two things are connected.
  68. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
    Though visually stunning and blessed with immaculate 3D work, film is fatally bogged down by tackling an essentially ridiculous premise (gladiator-attired owls fight genocide) with stony solemnity, and by subsisting on a note of sustained menace and terror in what is ostensibly a children's film.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Overboard
    Overboard is an uninspiring, unsophisticated attempt at an updated screwball comedy that is brought down by plodding script and a handful of too broadly drawn characters. Only element that occasionally lifts pic is the work of the redoubtable Goldie Hawn, who gives a gem of a performance.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity is, in short, a terrific musical film. Based on the 1966 legituner [by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, based on Federico Fellini's film, Nights of Cabiria], extremely handsome and plush production accomplishes everything it sets out to do.
  71. Stick It
    Bridges gives the movie its only genuine pulse as a gym coach known for his hard and manipulative ways.
  72. Eight Legged Freaks
    This update of 1950s drive-in sci-fiers finds the right balance between icky, funny and scary, with sheer energy compensating for a script that could have used more parodic panache.
  73. The Heart of Me
    Solidly entertaining for those who like their dialogue crisp and with a main verb in every sentence.
  74. A Foreign Affair
    An odd concoction: an English-language movie made by Dutch filmmakers working with an American cast on location in Russia and Mexico. That strangeness, combined with sharp casting and affectionate performances, is a big part of "Affair's" charm.
  75. Sky Blue
    The pic plays like one long chase. Nevertheless, fashioned with ultra-sophisticated means, Sky Blue will be a must-see for anime fans around the world.
  76. The Awakening
    Though handsome to look at, so-so supernatural chiller The Awakening recalls "The Others," "The Orphanage" and other haunted-house tales of recent vintage, making an impression more derivative than memorable.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Jewel of the Nile
    As a sequel to Romancing the Stone, the script of The Jewel of the Nile is missing the deft touch of the late Diane Thomas but Lewis Teague's direction matches the energy of the original.
  78. You, Me & Tuscany
    You, Me & Tuscany passes the time painlessly enough, but it’s never quite the escape it wants to be: It’s packaged so familiarly and so cautiously, we hardly believe its celebration of free, restlessly wandering impulse.
  79. Luther: The Fallen Sun
    Paine and his crew do muster some decent action, set in places you’d hardly expect (like crowded Piccadilly Circus), but scenery only goes so far to disguise the utter preposterousness of Cross’ script.
  80. Final Score
    Park your brain cells in the lobby, and this U.K. production about a terrorist attack on a London soccer stadium — with Dave Bautista as Bruce Willis plus 100 or so extra pounds of muscle — is an entertainingly over-the-top ride that doesn’t even try to be “credible.” It’s not quite daft or otherwise distinctive enough to be memorable.
  81. 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.
  82. Deep Water
    Deep Water isn’t terrible for what it is, but what it is is disaster product.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big Trouble in Little China
    Director John Carpenter seems to be trying to make an action-adventure along the lines of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The effect goes horribly awry.
  84. The Hollars
    Krasinki’s film remains resolutely resistant to surprise in style or story terms.
  85. Can't Hardly Wait
    A mediocre attempt to recapture the exuberance and candid portraiture of such high school movie classics as "American Graffiti," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Dazed and Confused."
  86. I.S.S.
    While the landing isn’t as smooth as might be hoped for after the exemplary first act, neither does I.S.S. burn up on reentry.
  87. Red Sparrow
    Lawrence, in this movie, shows you what true screen stardom is all about. She cues each scene to a different mood, leaving the audience in a dangling state of discovery. We’re on her side, but more than that we’re in her head. Even when (of course) we’re being played.
  88. Carrie
    Director Kimberly Peirce’s intermittently effective third feature eschews De Palma’s diabolical wit and voluptuous style in favor of a somber, straight-faced retelling, steeped in a now-familiar horror-movie idiom of sharp objects, shuddering sound effects and dark rivulets of blood.
  89. Apt Pupil
    A creepy, well-acted story of contagious evil, Apt Pupil has more than enough chilling dramatic scenes to rivet the attention but suffers from some hokey contrivances and underlying insufficiencies of motivation.
  90. Katie Says Goodbye
    Even if first-time writer-director Wayne Roberts is sympathetic to the plight he’s chosen for the protagonist, his film never burrows deep enough under her skin to make the string of miserable scenarios connect in a meaningful way.
  91. Measure of a Man
    The conflicts come to no interesting fruition, and occasional comic flourishes (Bobby dancing to a “Soul Train” broadcast, vomiting after drinking alcohol) fall flat.
  92. Tesnota (Closeness)
    Closeness is a tough-minded, rigorously composed, quite brilliantly acted story of the challenges of everyday religious prejudice and ethnic divides in the bleak heart of Russia’s North Caucasus, and in many ways Balagov’s uncompromising but stylized social realism rewards as much as it punishes.
  93. Hubie Halloween
    Director Steve Brill (another regular Sandler ally) keeps a lot of colorful balls in the air, even if the pacing is lumpier than you’d like in an enterprise this sketchy: Set pieces and one-off visual gags are simply stuffed in wherever they fit, like the cinematic equivalent of Hubie’s over-decorated Halloween front yard.
  94. Fly Me to the Moon
    Fly Me to the Moon only needs to sell one thing: that beneath Kelly and Cole’s fast-paced dialogue and combative flirtation, there exists a mutual attraction compelling enough to keep us guessing. We already know how the lunar mission turns out, but never tire of gazing upon stars such as these.
  95. The Guardian
    The overlong but involving drama has obvious cross-generational appeal.
  96. In Time
    It's a fascinating philosophical conceit delivered as a slick, hyper-stylized conspiracy yarn, juicy enough to deliver on both fronts, provided you don't ask too many questions.
  97. Our Brand Is Crisis
    As played by Sandra Bullock, Our Brand Is Crisis political spin doctor Jane Bodine is easily one of the best female roles of the last 10 years.
  98. Seamless
    Unlike "Unzipped," with its single focus on the charismatic Mizrahi, Seamless follows three of the 10 finalists, furnishing a quietly fascinating contrast in persona, approach and design.
  99. Kill the Poor
    Result hovers a little uncertainly between dark comedy and urban drama, but remains compelling thanks to its gritty narrative texture, nervous energy and loose, jumpy structure, which fit well with the DV-shot production's no-frills approach.
  100. Redacted
    Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing "fictional documentary" -- inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad -- has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can't make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form.
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