Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Forever Strong
    The performances are credible across the board, excessive sentimentality is largely avoided, and the sequences devoted to rough-and-tumble rugby match-ups are expertly shot and edited.
  2. Smother
    Diane Keaton can still sink her actorly teeth into a wacked-out character, and Vince Di Meglio's screwball comedy provides her with one of her best purely comedic roles since "Annie Hall."
  3. Eagle Eye
    The picture's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act.
  4. Nights in Rodanthe
    Hardly groundbreaking, but for those with an appetite for an increasingly rare gust of unapologetic romance, well, as they say, any port in a storm.
  5. The Elephant King
    The film may be too mainstream for arthouses, and too arty for the mall.
  6. Morning Light
    The film feels more like the ultimate scrapbook for the participants than the vicarious thrill the pair no doubt imagined for audiences.
  7. The Secret Life of Bees
    Like a mouthful of honey, The Secret Life of Bees is cloyingly sweet and gooey, and you're not quite sure you can swallow it undiluted.
  8. Blindness
    Meirelles' slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago's prose.
  9. Flash of Genius
    Moderately inspiring in the way such true-life stories of "the indomitable human spirit" are always constructed to be.
  10. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    This is the kind of sparsely plotted comedy that depends on compelling characters, but it stars two young actors defined by ironic detachment.
  11. Body of Lies
    A mostly formulaic approach that becomes more disappointing as the yarn unwinds.
  12. City of Ember
    A fabulously designed underground metropolis proves more involving than the teenagers running through its streets in City of Ember, a good-looking but no more than serviceable adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's 2003 novel.
  13. Quarantine
    A modestly inventive, sporadically exciting thriller that nonetheless proves too faithful to its central conceit for its own good.
  14. Fear(s) of the Dark
    An omnibus of black-and-white animation with a couple exceptionally clever episodes tied together by an unnecessary recurring monologue.
  15. Passengers
    Cruising somewhere between therapy drama and paranoid thriller, this middlebrow tone poem aims for ambiguity but often veers into soporific, suspending answers (and often, viewer interest) en route to an ending that explains all.
  16. Pride and Glory
    Feels like a film that should have been made at least 25 years ago. Or made as a period piece. Heavy, doom-laden and, unfortunately, entirely predictable.
  17. High School Musical 3: Senior Year
    While Ortega and fellow choreographers Charles Klapow and Bonnie Story stretch their imaginations, there's something almost lazy about the picture's underachiever script.
  18. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
    The way Kuenne presents the material, with an aggressive style that lingers less than a second on most shots, it's impossible not to feel emotionally exhausted.
  19. The Haunting of Molly Hartley
    This softcore thriller runs strictly by the numbers.
  20. My Name Is Bruce
    Cheerfully embracing his status as cult B-movie genre megastar even as he sends it up, Bruce Campbell's sophomore directorial excursion, My Name is Bruce, is a big in-joke of definite if limited appeal.
  21. Gardens of the Night
    Well-meaning but underachieving drama.
  22. We Are Wizards
    Meandering mindlessly, Wizards comes off as yet another humdrum Pottery artifact.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. The Reader
    Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.
  27. 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.
  28. Defiance
    A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
  31. 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.
  32. Outlander
    Not helped by a wooden perf from Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien who accidentally imports a real alien to eighth-century Earth.
  33. 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.
  34. 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.
  35. 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.
  36. 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.
  37. 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.
  38. Obsessed
    Don't expect a pot full of boiling bunnies, because nothing so creatively crazy ever happens in Obsessed, a "Fatal Attraction"-inspired predatory-female domestic thriller that spends much time spinning its wheels and making auds practically beg for an explanation to all the madness and obsession.
  39. 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."
  40. The Edge of Love
    While the period drama has several redeeming features, tonally it's all over the map, veering between artsy stylization and hum-drum, sometimes almost twee melodrama.
  41. Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
    "Pathfinder" meets "Gerry" in Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America, a striking and virtually wordless story of two Vikings separated from their tribe and left to stumble through the North American wilderness.
  42. Spinning Into Butter
    In style and content, Sarah Jessica Parker starrer is the kind of earnest, talky, modestly scaled social-issue pic that seems predestined for the smallscreen.
  43. American Swing
    Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart's documentary is just functionally assembled, lacking the style or larger social context that distinguished similar studies like "Inside Deep Throat."
  44. The Haunting in Connecticut
    Long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension.
  45. Paris 36
    Schematically scripted tale revels in its multiple story arcs, but shows signs of battle fatigue in the later reels.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dragonball: Evolution
    A popular Japanese manga series gets a pleasing if paint-by-numbers live-action makeover in Dragonball Evolution, which half-heartedly tries to keep the faith for its pubescent male fanbase.
  47. 17 Again
    Zac Efron's squeaky-clean tweener-bait profile is unlikely to be threatened by 17 Again, an energetic but earthbound comic fantasy that borrows a few moves, if little inspiration, from "Big" and "It's a Wonderful Life."
  48. Sleep Dealer
    Despite some clever virtual-reality concepts and projections about the next frontier of globalization, Alex Rivera's ambitious directing debut lacks the vision, or the budget, to pull off its fusion of sci-fi and aspirational saga.
  49. Fighting
    For all the utter phoniness of Fighting -- the cockeyed, faux-verite shooting, the lurches in storytelling, the lack of character development, a contrived crisis between Shawn and his would-be girlfriend Zulay and Tatum's dopey-charming thing--Fighting's not so bad.
  50. The Soloist
    Has moments of power and imagination, but the overworked style and heavy socially conscious bent exude an off-putting sense of self-importance, making for a picture that's more of a chore than a pleasure to sit through.
  51. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
    Mostly clunky and vaguely unsavory.
  52. Year One
    Lacks seismic guffaws but elicits many mild smiles.
  53. New World Order
    Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel's New World Order is less about an international cabal seeking world enslavement than about those who fervently believe such conspiracies exist and who crusade to defeat them.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
    Where the original had a vaguely tenable narrative hook (deadbeat dad finds redemption through nocturnal heroics), the new pic seems purely a vehicle for lavish visuals and cheap gags.
  55. Tennessee
    Ultimately, nothing can save this pic from the warm fuzzies.
  56. Tetro
    When Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods. Tetro represents something of a middle ground in that respect.
  57. $9.99
    A deliberately coarse character style that's more Gumby than Gromit.
  58. Chéri
    Like a passable bottle of champagne, Cheri fizzes and slides down quite easily but lacks real body and doesn't really hit the spot.
  59. Weather Girl
    Engaging lead performances and snatches of witty repartee help lubricate the creaky plot mechanics in Weather Girl, a lightly amusing but thoroughly predictable dramedy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    G-Force
    A fur-covered "A-Team" for the kiddies, G-Force is heavy on splashy pyrotechnics and predictably light on plot.
  61. A Woman in Berlin
    A stately, intermittently gripping, ultimately overlong drama.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lake Tahoe
    A lazy exercise in cute minimalist humor, low-budget but visually glossy Mexican film Lake Tahoe is so dry and slight that it threatens to drift right off the screen.
  63. Beeswax
    Beeswax, the third feature from American indie auteur Andrew Bujalski ("Funny Ha Ha," "Mutual Appreciation"), offers yet another low-key take on twentysomethings finding their way.
  64. 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.
  65. The Baader Meinhof Complex
    An explosive performance by Johanna Wokalek gives some relief to an otherwise long and humdrum series of characters.
  66. Taking Woodstock
    The picture serves up intermittent pleasures but is too raggedy and laid-back for its own good, its images evaporating nearly as soon as they hit the screen.
  67. St. Trinian's
    Mildly amusing result, with plenty of slack in its 100 minutes, should work OK with its target audience of female Brit tweenies, who won't notice the pic's shoddy technical package, sloppy direction and the way the original films' antiestablishment tone has morphed into a celebration of dumbed-down "yoof" culture.
  68. Rashevski's Tango
    Picture touchingly conveys the everyday closeness of the Rashevskis, who are wont to tango their troubles away, but spiritual upheavals and tonal shifts feel artificial and strained.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sorority Row
    An average slasher picture that meanders indecisively between gore and gags.
  70. Donne-moi la main
    The bros are built, and "Hand," with its gorgeous shots of mist-shrouded woods and sun-burnished hay, plus a brief but rapturous foray into gay sex, may attract queer auds.
  71. The Burning Plain
    Many of the weaknesses and few of the strengths of Guillermo Arriaga as a scripter are evident in his directing debut, The Burning Plain.
  72. The Blue Tooth Virgin
    Simultaneously insightful and idiotic.
  73. Trucker
    Playing a negligent mother isn't usually the way to get ahead in the acting biz, but the elfin Michelle Monaghan must have seen Trucker as her vehicle out of the ingenue parking lot of sidekicks and potential hostages.
  74. Motherhood
    Though pregnant with possibility, Motherhood fails to deliver.
  75. 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.
  76. 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.
  77. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    In attempting to address its subject's ideological discrepancies, "Kunstler" lacks the objectivity needed to put the lawyer's shift from '60s fist-pumper to '80s and '90s headline-grabber in proper context.
  78. Storm
    A potentially gripping legal thriller about what happens when Western Europe attempts to solve Central European problems ends up as dull entertainment in Storm.
  79. Fix
    The diversity of visual tactics, characters, settings and incidents keep this shaggy-dog tale consistently diverting.
  80. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
    Feels as schizophrenic as its eponymous heroine.
  81. Across the Hall
    Creepy but uneven.
  82. The Slammin' Salmon
    It is the presence of Duncan as a Mike Tyson-esque, malaprop-spouting ex-champion that, at least momentarily, lifts the pic out of its mediocrity.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wonderful World
    Joshua Goldin's directing debut has soulful qualities that have been compressed into a paint-by-numbers production.
  84. Creation
    Isn't about science vs. faith so much as that well-worn dramatic hook, the loss of a child.
  85. The Exploding Girl
    Both comely leads offer engaging presences, and there’s some pretty imagery, shot adequately on HD, but it’s all so slight and featherweight one viewer sneezing could blow it all offscreen.
  86. Alice in Wonderland
    For all its clever design, beguiling creatures and witty actors, the picture feels far more conventional than it should; it's a Disney film illustrated by Burton, rather than a Burton film that happens to be released by Disney.
  87. Brooklyn's Finest
    It’s more like "Hamlet" -- the ending, at least, with enough blood and corpses to fill a housing project. The only thing missing is a point, which Fuqua circles for two hours without landing.
  88. Green Zone
    Once Damon's one-man truth squad goes off the reservation and starts behaving too much like Jason Bourne for comfort, the film begins not only spilling more blood but also leaking crucial credibility.
  89. Our Family Wedding
    This broad ethnic farce serves up a full-on culture collision, but -- thanks to a handful of diverting performers -- stops just short of becoming a train wreck.
  90. Remember Me
    The modestly scaled film delivers some moving and affecting moments amid a preponderance of scenes of frequently annoying people behaving badly.
  91. Hot Tub Time Machine
    Even by recent standards for mainstream comedy packaging, "Tub" looks dull and ugly.
  92. Chloe
    Sexual suspicion and game-playing spiral down from the exotically intriguing to outright silliness in Chloe.
  93. Waking Sleeping Beauty
    The documentary has but one revelatory insight -- that "The Lion King" can be read as an allegory of the territorial peeing match between big cats Michael Eisner, Roy Disney and, least flatteringly, Katzenberg.
  94. Ultimate X: The Movie
    Most impressive in an objective sense, as a technical exercise -- its staccato technique preventing greater involvement.
  95. Hush!
    Meandering melodrama about gay relationships, friendship, loneliness and the elastic notion of family is considerably overlong and hampered by too many superfluous scenes.
  96. Die Another Day
    Sports some tasty scenes, mostly in the first half, but also pushes 007 into CGI-driven, quasi-sci-fi territory that feels like a betrayal of what the franchise has always been about.
  97. Cradle 2 the Grave
    Choreographed by long-term Li collaborator Corey Yuen, the martial arts confrontations supply plenty of spark, though they lack the more exhilarating stylistic flourishes of those in "Romeo."
  98. The Weight of Water
    Despite recurrent narrative and dramatic problems, each of Bigelow's pics provides a visual treat, and this film is no exception.
  99. Slap Her... She's French
    Scripters Robert Lee King and Lamar Damon leave no national cliche or double entendre unturned in this good-looking but relentlessly lowbrow outing which plays like "Clueless Does South Fork" with a side order of garlic.
  100. The In-Laws
    The 2003 edition written by Nat Mauldin and Ed Solomon and helmed by Andrew Fleming places the Douglas-Brooks combo inside a much more complicated if not quite as funny world.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »