Variety's Scores

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For 17,805 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: 9,148 out of 17805
  2. Mixed: 7,020 out of 17805
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17805
17805 movie reviews
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  1. Summering
    Nostalgia may be the strongest emotion engendered by this breeze-blown dandelion seed of a film, which nods to the bittersweet complexities of growing up and confronting adulthood, but never gets as far as fully dramatizing them.
  2. American Ultra
    Too often plays like an earnest yet unsatisfying adaptation of a cult graphic novel, with most of the charm lost in translation.
  3. Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America
    The pic nicely straddles a line between Sosa’s private and public personas, never quite delving deep although Vila covers all the bases.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Nine 1/2 Weeks
    The virtual absence of anything interesting happening between them - like plausible attraction, exotic, amazing sex, or, God forbid, good dialog - leaves one great big hole on the screen for two hours.
  5. Two for the Money
    Despite nice touches, pic meanders in the middle and ends flatly.
  6. Jungle Cruise
    It’s like watching a romantic comedy while strapped to a roller-coaster with a VR headset on. Jungle Cruise is at once a love story, a made-for-4DX action movie, a “Pirates of the Caribbean”-style fairy tale featuring a ghostly conquistador (Edgar Ramirez) and his pewter-armored henchman with digital snakes slithering through them, and God knows what else.
  7. Management
    Picture benefits greatly from appealing performances by Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn, who deftly apply darker emotional shadings to their characters when necessary, and equally fine work from a small ensemble of solid supporting players.
  8. The Boss Baby
    The Boss Baby, the jokey new 3D animated lark from DreamWorks Animation (it’s being distributed by 20th Century Fox), is a visually brisk, occasionally clever low-concept comedy that’s also trying, half-heartedly, to be some sort of Pixarish masterpiece. You may wind up wishing that it had been one or the other.
  9. Joan of Arc
    Needless to say, a historical anti-musical that makes [the previous film] “Jeannette” look like “Moulin Rouge!” by comparison is going to win the filmmaker few converts.
  10. Nothing Like the Holidays
    So "The Family Stone" becomes "The Family Rodriguez," and to their credit, the able performers wring as much mileage as they can from such familiar material.
  11. My Name Is Khan
    Riotously overstuffed and enormously enjoyable drama.
  12. Murder by Numbers
    Engrossing but psychologically shallow tale.
  13. A Perfect Murder
    The dilemma in this Perfect Murder is its singular failure at creating a rooting interest for a character or situation.
  14. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer
    A drama of impeccable intentions flawed by arch dialogue and only OK direction.
  15. Time Lapse
    A first feature for helmer Bradley King and co-scenarist BP Cooper (though the latter has produced several indies), Time Lapse works due to both their escalating pileup of well-thought-out complications and credible character psychologies nicely communicated by expert performances.
  16. Northmen: A Viking Saga
    The cast is earnestly committed, and if there are a few too many hokey last-second rescues from certain doom, Northmen nevertheless rarely risks curdling into camp.
  17. The Night Eats the World
    The very definition of a well-made movie that nonetheless really needn’t have been made at all, Rocher’s entry into the canon will attract a few zombie completists, but provide little fun for the average genre buff and underwhelming reward for art-house audiences.
  18. Cobweb
    Director Samuel Bodin’s first theatrical feature is atmospheric, and departs from stock slasher conventions just enough to make for an entertaining if unexceptional scarefest.
  19. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    The third voyage in the "Priates" trilogy could be touted as "The biggest, loudest and second-best (or second-worst) 'Pirates' ever!" -- not necessarily a ringing endorsement, but honest.
  20. 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."
  21. How About You ...
    Comedic and sentimental beats are as predictable as the storytelling is sloppy.
  22. Boundaries
    Boundaries, to be sure, delivers you to a place you know you’re going, but there should always be room for a movie that does that this well.
  23. Love in the Villa
    Love in the Villa’s building blocks may be as phony and manufactured as that balcony, but romantics will assuredly see and feel that the sentimental thematic resonance surrounding love and destiny comes from a genuine place.
  24. Shelter
    None of these elements feel very fresh, least of all in Ward Parry’s formulaic screenplay. But they’re executed with sufficient slick professionalism to make for a passable if unmemorable diversion.
  25. Trash
    Trash works in large part thanks to the infectious energy and sheer pleasure in comradeship exuded by the three young teen boys.
  26. After the Wedding
    Granted, Freundlich has the benefit of Bier’s screenplay contributions to guide him, but in his particular execution, the story feels grounded for a very different strategy from Bier’s: Rather than going out of his way to include recognizable human moments, he strips away anything excessive, allowing subtext to surface in the quiet spaces between dialogue.
  27. Fatima
    While not especially artful, Fatima honors those who stand by their convictions. That its role models are children makes the message all the more remarkable.
  28. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
    It’s a shame that the plot gets so carried away with the supernatural power struggle, since the mile-a-minute movie is far more engaging when focused on Ruby — who makes an appealing addition to the DreamWorks Animation family — and the sitcom-ready aspect of kraken-human relations.
  29. Therapy for a Vampire
    If a diagram were the same thing as a script, then Therapy for a Vampire might be a smashingly silly lark. But as written and directed by Daniel Ruehl, the film is a blueprint of mild anemic kitsch.
  30. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
    Picture is impressively crafted and acted but far too narrowly and benignly conceived to satisfy even on its own terms.
  31. Find Me Falling
    Kliris negotiates tonal shifts effortlessly: The jokes never undercut the drama as both dovetail neatly into each other.
  32. Champions
    The performances come with certain limitations (the line readings sound memorized, never spontaneous), but as a whole, the movie makes memorable, three-dimensional characters of its players, and that’s a start.
  33. Conspiracy Theory
    A below-par star vehicle for Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, Conspiracy Theory is a sporadically amusing but listless thriller that wears its humorous, romantic and political components like mismatched articles of clothing.
  34. The Devil Has a Name
    What should have been a galvanizing David-versus-Goliath story pales in comparison with Amazon series “Goliath,” which is comparably colorful but far more coherent as it hits so many of the same beats.
  35. The Campaign
    Roach, who also counts such lowbrow laffers as "Austin Powers" and "Meet the Fockers" on his resume, manages to keep things broad without sacrificing smarts.
  36. My Policeman
    Alas, the older actors don’t have all that much to do (editor Chris Dickens keeping cutting back to McKee reading), but the younger trio are strong, albeit restrained, in their roles. Corrin, so great as a wife betrayed in “The Crown” (they played Princess Diana), could do this role in their sleep, while Styles has the tricky task of making Tom’s betrayal feel tragic for all involved.
  37. Ticket to Paradise
    Looking and sounding like it could have been made 20 or 30 years ago, “Ticket” may not contain that much sparkling and sophisticated wit — or indeed many big belly laughs — but delivers sufficient smiles and chuckles to register as an easily enjoyable if unmemorable diversion for audiences seeking simple escapist entertainment.
  38. Garage Days
    Visually inventive and refreshingly witty, pic provides an insider's look at the contempo Sydney music scene and showcases a smart young cast.
  39. Letters to Juliet
    Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan's script relentlessly piles on goopy conversation-stoppers like "Do you believe in destiny?" and "I didn't know that true love had an expiration date."
  40. Hood to Coast
    Expertly constructed, impressively lensed and surprisingly entertaining.
  41. A Kind of Murder
    While thrills are mitigated by convoluted plotting and suspect character behavior, the film’s uniquely bleak twist on classic noir conventions is enlivening.
  42. Newness
    The trouble with Newness — and the reason it’s shot in such a clinical vérité fashion — is that it’s a thesis movie, heady and ambitious yet overly thought out.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Son of Kong
    This is the sequel to and wash-up of the King Kong theme, consisting of salvaged remnants from the original production and rating as fair entertainment.
  44. The Island
    Frenetic actioner about refugees from a genetic cloning plant starts off intriguingly, burns up its ideas in the first hour and pads out the rest with joltingly repetitive action sequences.
  45. Lottery Ticket
    The script is never nearly as clever as the premise ought to allow, and the madcap fun is far too frequently derailed by tonal inconsistencies.
  46. It Lives Inside
    Though the results aren’t terribly original or memorable, they do provide a creepy 90-odd minutes.
  47. The Ten
    Second feature from duo David Wain and Ken Marino of comedy group the State is, like their "Wet Hot American Summer," uneven but often hilarious.
  48. Look
    Conceit often stretches -- and breaks -- the limits of what the tales can handle, though the implication of viewers as voyeurs gives pic a subversive edge.
  49. The Laureate
    Well-acted, nicely crafted and a handsome period piece within modest means, this isn’t the most novel, memorable or intellectually deep enterprise of its type. But it will satisfy viewers looking for a slightly racier variation on “Downton Abbey” terrain.
  50. You People
    You People alternates between energetic set-pieces by a nimble roster of comedians and intervals of tedium during which the actors seem lost, unable to jump-start the script’s plentiful thin stretches.
  51. Blast from the Past
    A time-warp comedy that starts out kinda "Pleasantville" and gets pretty Tepidsville, Blast From the Past expends scant imagination or style on a fun premise that seems an open invitation to both.
  52. Child of God
    The crazed intensity of Franco’s filmmaking, while duly evocative of Haze’s primitive state, is ultimately too hectic and unmodulated for anything to burrow deep and stay there.
  53. My Salinger Year
    The movie doesn’t show a complex enough representation of either adult life or the New York literary world to offer much depth to grownups (it’s far more engaged with Joanna’s romantic life and dream sequences set at the Waldorf Astoria), which means that My Salinger Year must have been intended to inspire young women for whom 1995 seems like the ancient past.
  54. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    Uma Thurman, a female superhero with emotional problems and dating issues, doesn't so much fight the forces of evil as battle the wit-starved movie's torpor -- indeed, her perf suggests what the entire film might have been.
  55. Step Up 2: The Streets
    Rather than mixing classical and modern styles the way "Step Up" did, this hip-hop-powered sequel is all about new moves, which should keep the kids coming back after the pic's initial Valentine's Day crush.
  56. Welcome to the Rileys
    Nothing short of preposterous, Jake Scott's film imagines a grieving couple (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) who play surrogate parents to an underage stripper ("Twilight's" Kristen Stewart) and spins it for the "Blind Side" crowd.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Prince of Darkness
    Carpenter spends so much time turning the screws on the next scare that he completely forsakes his actors, who are already stranded with a shoddy script.
  58. As I Lay Dying
    Franco offers up a competently acted, technically adequate Cliff Notes take on Faulkner’s narratively refracted tale of dirt-poor Mississippi folk in mourning.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Charly
    Considering the innumerable stumbling blocks, cast does well. Cliff Robertson seems to overdo the external manifestations of retardation, but he is excellent in the post-operative scenes. With more help from the script he could have been a movingly tragic figure.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Runaway
    This Michael Crichton robotic nightmare is so trite that the story seems lifted from Marvel Comics, with heat-seeking bullets and a villain so bad he would be fun if the film wasn’t telling us to take this near-futuristic adventure with a straight face.
  61. Home on the Range
    An engagingly rambunctious toon Western that likely will attract herds of family auds, if not multitudes of teens and tweeners, to megaplex corrals.
  62. Straight-Jacket
    A fey and frisky farce with a fabulous fashion sense, Straight-Jacket artfully balances broadly campy humor and ironically overplayed soap opera.
  63. Burn Your Maps
    Burn Your Maps is one of those movies that’s glib and facile and threadbare all the way through, then the ending sort of gets to you (you’d have to be made of pretty stern stuff if it didn’t), so you think back over what you’ve seen — and it’s still a crock.
  64. The Case for Christ
    Although it sporadically errs on the side of sentimentality and simplification, The Case for Christ sustains interest, and even generates mild suspense, while offering a faith-based spin on the template of an investigative-journalism drama.
  65. Poseidon
    Thanks to its simple construction, Wolfgang Petersen's large-scale liner moves reasonably well, though anyone with the faintest memory of its 1972 predecessor will wonder where most of the plot went.
  66. Now You See Me
    Thanks to some accomplished hocus pocus and an appealing cast, this would-be “Ocean’s Eleven” of the magic world remains watchable throughout, even as it plods along without ever quite fulfilling its potential.
  67. Wide Awake
    Reflecting the zeitgeist of the last decade, with children increasingly having to come to terms with the untimely deaths of parents and friends as a result of AIDS and other illnesses, Wide Awake tackles its issues with an admirably uncompromising honesty, though it suffers from being dramatically obvious. [16 Mar 1998, p.64]
    • Variety
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Funny Farm
    Director George Roy Hill shows little distinction with this material [from Jay Cronley’s book], but then again, the material here isn’t very distinctive. Some of the setups work better than others, though most are of the sitcom variety.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Airport 1975
    Jack Smight’s direction has the refreshing pace of a filmmaker who knows his plot can crash unless he hurries.
  70. Dreamland
    For all its salaciousness and scenery-chewing, it’s the dullness of Dreamland that provides further proof that dreams tend to be of fascination mainly — perhaps only — to the dreamer.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Guarding Tess
    Comedy, pathos and thrills alternately collide, creating problems in both pacing and developing a consistent tone.
  72. The Other Boleyn Girl
    A sexy, good-looking political bodice-ripper with an almost flawless cast at the top of its game.
  73. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    Bruckheimer's passably enjoyable, antiquity-themed epic should satisfy its young male core demographic well enough, but won't connect with other auds on the level of Bruckheimer's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise.
  74. Dark Skies
    In the end, a pretty good buildup to OK payoff without any real surprises en route makes Dark Skies feel just enough above average to make one wish it had one memorable spark of conceptual inspiration up its sleeve.
  75. The American Society of Magical Negroes
    The sly beauty of The American Society of Magical Negroes is that it’s a wicked satire of white people that’s also an empathetic satire of Black people.
  76. Cease Fire
    Audiences hooked on Persian mainstream will devour this irreverent romantic comedy, spiced with saucy dialogue that spoofs traditional gender roles through gritted teeth.
  77. Race You to the Bottom
    It's a bad heterosexual date movie (more a date-gone-wrong), has too limited a gay angle for that demographic, and is about characters who are not particularly likable as individuals or as a couple.
  78. Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry
    While it admirably avoids either schoolboyish titters or schoolmarmish prudery, the docu's cheery neutrality comes at the expense of any point of view at all.
  79. Bel Borba Aqui
    A vibrant catalogue of his outdoor pieces presented in context with an exhaustive portrait of Borba as a boundlessly energetic, iconoclastic creator, the documentary ties itself too tightly to its subject, mimicking forms and rhythms it never fully makes its own.
  80. 28 Hotel Rooms
    Lacking much dramatic or intellectual stimulation, it's ultimately a limp effort.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Halloween III: Season of the Witch
    There’s not much to say about Halloween III that hasn’t already been said about either of the other two Halloween pics or a slew of imitators.
  82. How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change
    An environmental documentary that consists of roughly one-third doom-and-gloom to two-thirds wide-eyed optimism, and that is more potent in individual scenes than it is as a sprawling whole.
  83. A Dog's Way Home
    For every shameless trick the filmmakers employ to pluck our heartstrings, resonant chords are struck elsewhere, teaching audiences about family, the power of unconditional love, and the ripple effects of compassion.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kelly's Heroes
    Nearly satirical in its overall effect, plot caroms between cliche dogface antics, detailed and gratuitous violence, caper melodramatics, and outrageous anachronism.
  85. Line of Duty
    High on energy if low on credibility.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wrong Is Right
    Wrong Is Right represents Richard Brooks' shriek of protest at what he sees as the insane, downward spiral of world history over the past decade. Part political satire, part doomsday melodrama and part intellectual graffiti scribbled on the screen, film is impossible to pigeon-hole.
  87. Nobody's Hero
    Moonlighting as a broad bedroom farce, this heavily plotted but oddly low-energy film winds up too distracted and diluted to score as a vital political satire.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Society
    Society is an extremely pretentious, obnoxious horror film that unsuccessfully attempts to introduce kinky sexual elements into extravagant makeup effects.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fandango
    Fandango emerges as a quite promising feature debut by writer-director Kevin Reynolds, with its feet squarely within the overused boys-coming-of-age genre but its heart betraying an appealingly anarchic, iconoclastic bent.
  90. Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare
    You might hesitate to call a film this fixated on child terror, adult perversity and sadistic violence “good,” exactly. But there’s no question director Scott Jeffrey casts a skillfully disturbed spell over a tale that emerges a cross between “It” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
  91. Sugar Hill
    A self-indulgent drama about a Harlem drug kingpin trying to go straight, Sugar Hill plays like a dreary variation on New Jack City.
  92. Elles
    A typically smart performance by Juliette Binoche isn't enough to keep Elles from drowning in pseudo-intellectual pretension and general banality.
  93. Cowboys & Aliens
    While Cowboys & Aliens offers little in the way of sociological insight (except perhaps giving the white man a taste of his own resource-stealing medicine), it's still a ripping good ride.
  94. The Greatest Hits
    “The Greatest Hits” feels like the remainder-bin version of better love stories.
  95. The Purge: Anarchy
    For all the philosophical and metaphorical shortcomings of his script, however, DeMonaco is an efficient orchestrator of action.
  96. Blonde
    With a passion that’s inquisitive, nearly meditative, and often powerful, Blonde focuses on the mystery we now think of when we think of Marilyn Monroe: Who was she, exactly, as a personality and as a human being? Why did her life descend into a tragedy that seems, in hindsight, as inevitable as it is haunting?
    • 49 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mickey Blue Eyes
    An engaging, often very funny fish-out-of-water story that provides Hugh Grant with his best part to date.
  98. Where the Money Is
    Newman's charismatic, multishaded performance elevates the hodgepodge caper comedy a couple of notches above its preposterous plotting and self-consciously movieish texture.
  99. The Four Feathers
    There is no one to become attached to in The Four Feathers, no interest or sympathies appealed to or engaged.
  100. The Crimson Rivers
    Adequately entertaining but not particularly memorable.
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