Variety's Scores

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For 17,807 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 17807
  2. Mixed: 7,022 out of 17807
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17807
17807 movie reviews
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  1. Tickling Leo
    A radiant perf by Annie Parisse and a virtuoso turn by Eli Wallach are insufficient to lift this male intergenerational angst-fest out of the ghetto.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Last Time I Saw Paris
    The Last Time I Saw Paris is an engrossing romantic drama that tells a good story with fine performances and an overall honesty of dramatic purpose.
  3. Reminders of Him
    Reminders of Him is notably restrained — a good thing more than not, even if the film does get a bit languid at times. It tells its story without making us feel used.
  4. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
    Won't do anything for adult auds, but this second bigscreen adventure from the popular VeggieTales franchise should easily win over tots with its reliable menu of silly songs, easily digestible morals and wholesome (if not always fresh) produce-based characters.
  5. When Comedy Went to School
    Ron Frank and Melvut Akkaya’s docu isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but as a brief history of the Catskill resorts, liberally laced with well-edited archival promos, songs, homemovies and extended excerpts from routines by Jewish comics who performed there, it consistently entertains.
  6. I Think I Love My Wife
    The main drawback is that under director Rock, actor Rock doesn't possess quite the chops to pull off this character, and the humor and flights of fancy are simply too low-key.
  7. Great Directors
    Some viewers will doubtless argue over Ismailos' choices or balk at her adherence to a romantic single-vision theory of a highly collaborative art. Still, her eclectic pantheon weighs in with entertaining anecdotes and illuminating comments, illustrated with well-chosen samplings of the artists' work.
  8. Riddick
    An improbable but very enjoyable sequel that recaptures much of the stripped-down intensity of Diesel and director David Twohy’s franchise starter "Pitch Black."
  9. Cooties
    Amusing as the Cooties script manages to be, one gets the distinct impression that its authors didn’t bother to visit a school at any point in the research or writing process, missing out on any number of jokes they could have made at public education’s expense.
  10. Dennis the Menace
    Dennis the Menace isn't really appropriate for anyone over the age of 12. Very young children may find the numskull, by-the-numbers gags here amusing, but teens will consider this kids' stuff and adults will be pained.
  11. Spenser Confidential
    The film even pokes fun at itself in the process, fully aware that Spenser Confidential isn’t meant to be taken as seriously as Wahlberg’s last few movies — and just as well, since irreverence plays well on Netflix.
  12. The Monkey's Mask
    Builds and sustains considerable interest through its unexpected characterizations, unusual milieu and atmospheric style.
  13. Green Dragon
    An ultimately moving drama about a displaced people. But its emotional kick is muffled by long-windedness, sentimental overkill and an overpopulated character gallery.
  14. Men in Black II
    Elaborate, sporadically amusing but awfully lightweight followup, which has close to the same tone as its predecessor but makes one realize that freshness had a lot to do with its impact.
  15. Around the World in 80 Days
    Takes plenty of liberties with the material and never generates much genuine excitement, but provides an agreeable ride without overloading it with contemporary filmmaking mannerisms.
  16. The Flying Scotsman
    Helmer Douglas Mackinnon does what he can to make the most of emotional bullet points and gloss over the lack of connective tissue.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Children's Hour
    Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, in the leading roles, beautifully complement each other. Hepburn’s soft sensitivity, mar- velous projection and emotional understatement result in a memorable portrayal. MacLaine’s enactment is almost equally rich in depth and substance.
  18. The Black Dahlia
    "Chinatown" it ain't, not in any department. On its own level, however, new pic generates a reasonable degree of intrigue.
  19. The Ultimate Gift
    Although cynics likely will reject The Ultimate Gift as warmed-over Capra-corn, this predictable but pleasant drama based on Jim Stovall's popular novel may be prized by those with a taste for inspirational uplift and heart-tugging sentiment.
  20. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
    Senesh was a budding writer, and her poems and diary entries add flavor to an already dramatic tale in Roberta Grossman's Blessed Is the Match.
  21. Welcome to the Punch
    A proficient but personality-free policer that demands little of either its audience or its enviable best-of-British cast, this simplistic urban morality tale miscasts the appealing James McAvoy as one good cop whose dogged pursuit of Mark Strong’s alpha criminal only uncovers the rot within police ranks.
  22. Jamie Marks Is Dead
    The potentially ludicrous story is handled artfully enough here to cast an eerie but not off-putting spell throughout, though the ultimate point is more than a tad murky, and the desired poignancy doesn’t fully come across.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Species
    A propulsive sci-fi actioner genetically engineered from spores of the Alien and Terminator series, Roger Donaldson's Species provides a gripping if not overly original account of an extraterrestrial species attempting to overwhelm our own.
  24. At First Light
    Apart from the uncommon notion that these mysterious visitors may actually mean us well, the film seems a little too comfortable with clichés, right down to the men in black who show up mid-movie to ruin everybody’s fun.
  25. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
    "Mark Felt,” despite bits of bureaucratic cloak-and-dagger intrigue and a commanding lead performance by Liam Neeson, is a film that pings off relevance more than it feels charged with it.
  26. An Unfinished Life
    A film is in trouble when, despite the presence of an A-list cast and a well-regarded director, the best thing in it is a partly digitized bear.
  27. How to Make a Killing
    It’s a light-fingered drop-dead screw-loose noir — a quasi-satirical mash-up of greed and desperation and Wall Street chicanery and a dash of romance, with Glen Powell, dishy in Brioni suits, turning his pin-eyed handsomeness into a mask of yuppie treachery.
  28. Imagine Me & You
    A slick but slight Brit pic, chockfull with tart one-liners and pretty posh people, with one major twist: The romantic leads are both women.
  29. Hatchet II
    Outrageously over-the-top gore doubtless will scare off all but the heartiest genre aficionados.
  30. Phoenix, Oregon
    The sort of movie a lot of us need right now. It’s an undemandingly enjoyable and reassuringly predictable dramedy in which nothing, not even the sourball attitudes of its comically unpleasant malcontents, ever is allowed to get out of hand or unduly strain credibility. But it also is too playfully spiky and unaffectedly down-to-earth to come across as bland pablum.
  31. Blood Done Sign My Name
    Comes off as a painfully old-fashioned, flatly directed exercise in passionless historical reenactment.
  32. Stalingrad
    Assaults are filmed in ubiquitous slow-mo to better register the way bodies are thrown into the air. It’s all rather confusing, actually, since the monochromatic tonalities and weak script, lacking in any comprehensible battle strategy, tend to meld the two sides together.
  33. The Good Night
    Though its forays into the subconscious may strike more adventurous cinematic palettes as precious and unimaginative, few will be able to resist Martin Freeman's appealing lead turn or the wry Brit wit that gives this fanciful confection a robust comic core.
  34. Crosscurrent
    Plotless, pretentiously literary and lousy at explaining geography, the movie fails to put Yang’s vision into a fictional framework that’s even remotely engaging.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Phase IV
    This one didn't get the bugs worked out before release. It's another in the Hollywood cycle of films based on every kind of creature enlarged by radiation.
  36. 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.
  37. The Family That Preys
    Bates and Woodard strike up a real dynamic, and picture gives the duo room to improvise, leading to one raucous scene after another as they Thelma-and-Louise it in a top-down convertible.
  38. Stagedoor
    By turns comical and compassionate.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
    The Planet of the Apes series takes an angry turn in the fourth entry, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
  40. Azumi
    Inevitable comparisons to Quentin Tarentino's femme-centered carnage extravaganza "Kill Bill" are not unwarranted insofar as both films featurefeature an abstract, self-conscious, and decidedly post-modern approach to a moribund genre.
  41. Open Season
    A witty, warmly crafted chestnut.
  42. Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
    Will have to overcome an unfortunate title and competition from this year's other nutrition-oriented titles, though it's a natural for the crunchy crowd.
  43. Lola Versus
    It's one girl against the world in Lola Versus, a snappy yet sincere romantic comedy that begins where others end, with the proposal and wedding plans pointing toward happily ever after.
  44. The Promise
    The events being considered deserve better than a sloggy melodrama in which the tragedy of a people is forced to take a back seat to a not especially compelling love triangle.
  45. Preaching to the Choir
    While the film looks good, sense of place is never very convincing. Over time, however, director Charles Randolph Wright and screenwriters Kevin Heffernan and Peter E. Lengyel do manage to create well-defined characters, whose flaws are as important as their gifts.
  46. Me, Myself & Irene
    Funny as much of the action is, however, the approach feels rather less fresh, and the gross-outs seem more gratuitous.
  47. Zhou Yu de huo che
    Chinese thesp Gong Li goes for a striking career makeover in Zhou Yu's Train, a sensual, slickly packaged slice of Euro-style metaphysical cinema centered on a free-thinking woman and the two men in her life.
  48. The Thorn in the Heart
    This moving but far from revelatory portrait of a beloved family figure registers as too slight and personal for significant theatrical play.
  49. A Christmas Horror Story
    None is particularly original (though there is one good final twist), but they’re all reasonably entertaining.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    CB4
    Tamra Davis, a music video director with the well-received feature debut Guncrazy on her resume, might have really had something here had she settled on any one of the many paths the movie starts down.
  51. Thérèse
    Serviceable but uninspired.
  52. Despicable Me 3
    Yes, Despicable Me 3 is unwieldy, but it mostly works, as co-directors Pierre Coffin (who also voices the Minions) and Kyle Balda never lose sight of the film’s emotional center, packing the rest with as much humor as they can manage.
  53. Nomad
    Picture fits seamlessly together although it is somewhat generic in flavor, with an off-the-shelf narrative arch and characterizations drawn using broad brushstrokes.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Running Scared
    Nonstop banter between the two stars is rowdy, intimate, natural and often very funny. Hyams keeps most of it fresh, including the action ending, staged within one of Chicago’s architectural spectacles, the cavernous, glass-enclosed Illinois State Building.
  55. Flashback
    The movie’s pileup of dislocating side-swipes from any tangible here/now is intriguing and well-crafted to a degree many genre fans will find exciting. But others will be justified in wondering if all this stylish, increasingly frenetic sleight-of-hand obscures scant substance.
  56. Look Both Ways
    While the filmmakers’ heads and hearts are in the right place with their resonant sentiments on taking risks and embracing fate, their execution of narrative basics proves lackluster.
  57. The Chaperone
    The Chaperone leaves you wanting to see a movie about the star Louise Brooks became, on camera and off. It could be the great movie that has yet to be made about the silent era, and about the things that women in Hollywood have always faced. Especially one who was unlike any woman the world had seen.
  58. Nine
    Sophisticated, sexy and stylishly decked out, Rob Marshall's disciplined, tightly focused film impresses and amuses.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oh, God! You Devil
    The story didn’t need to get this involved and it winds up constantly trying to pull the picture apart, working against the comedy.
  60. Godmothered
    The movie does serve up a rather satisfying ending, suggesting the studio’s latest politically correct reinterpretation of “true love.” The rest looks cheap and lacks much of a personality.
  61. The Man in the Iron Mask
    An unusually sober and serious-minded telling of Alexandre Dumas' classic tale, this handsome costumer is routinely made and comes up rather short in boisterous excitement.
  62. 30 Minutes or Less
    "Less" has trouble framing simple action, yielding clumsy car chases that put the burden of generating excitement on the music and editing. As a result, pic looks cheap and feels clipped.
  63. The Happy Sad
    Full of warmth and refreshingly matter-of-fact sexuality, the film has its heart in the right place, yet it’s ultimately a bit blander than its subject matter ought to demand, and its chamber-piece intimacy and pileup of coincidences scan particularly awkwardly given its convincingly wide-open depiction of New York.
  64. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
    A few individual scenes of hand-to-hand and foot-to-face combat are undeniably exciting, and Jovovich once again impresses with her kinetic athleticism. Overall, however, the repetitiveness and occasional incoherence of the nonstop action leave the audience exhausted for all the wrong reasons.
  65. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
    Managed (more than directed) by motion-capture star-turned-aspiring blockbuster helmer Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There Be Carnage has all the indications of a slap-dash cash grab. The set-pieces look sloppy, the visual effects are all over the place, and the laughs come largely at the movie’s expense.
  66. They Remain
    They Remain is a movie that lives down to your worst expectations.
  67. Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
    It’s a diverting enough entertainment from a group that has repeatedly proven itself to be capable of much more.
  68. Soul Men
    There's a nice chemistry between Mac and Samuel L. Jackson in this latest variant of the road movie, which contains comedic elements but actually works better as a drama.
  69. Silent House
    Pulling off the thespian equivalent of running a marathon, the hyperventilating Olsen works awfully hard in the service of a film that, in the end, does little or nothing to preserve her character's integrity.
  70. The Best of Enemies
    The Best of Enemies while not nearly as good as “Green Book,” is a rock-solid movie: squarely deliberate, a little long and predictable, but honest and thoughtful enough, precise in its period and locale, with very strong performances.
  71. Dark Matter
    Never fully succeeds in burrowing under its protagonist's skin, despite conspicuous effort.
  72. Hart's War
    Absorbing in a low-key way but more dramatic where its secondary characters are concerned than its leads, and capped by climactic incidents that are less than entirely convincing.
  73. Dr. Dolittle 2
    Even more family-friendly than its immensely popular predecessor.
  74. The Emperor's Club
    A rather stodgily directed pic by Michael Hoffman which extols the virtues of Greek and Roman thinking in the guise of Kevin Kline's classics teacher.
  75. K-PAX
    Frustratingly fritters away what fascination it develops and bows to the basic conventions of a standard detective story mixed with the theme of a physician healing himself.
  76. Jeepers Creepers
    Emerges as the most conventional and least imaginative of the recent crop of high-class fright movies that includes "The Others," "Session 9" and "Wendigo."
  77. The Price of Milk
    Full of surreal occurrences and bizarre, sometimes overly precious humor that may make it too rarefied an exercise for wide acceptance.
  78. Resilience
    Arthouse audiences who welcome challenging material will find sustenance in film's fractured narrative and unflinching characterizations.
  79. The Happy Poet
    Both subscribes to and somewhat departs from the bare-bones improvisational formula established by the mumblecore movement, sometimes sacrificing ambiguity for the sake of broader, telegraphed, one-note laughs.
  80. The Mechanic
    In essence, this one is the equivalent of the "B" movies that flourished during the original's era -- and it proves middling, and occasionally muddled, on almost every level.
  81. Mars at Sunrise
    Suliman (“Paradise Now,” “The Attack”) dominates the screen as Khaled, utterly compelling in and out of jail, his magnificent perf tying up cinematic loose ends.
  82. Elsa & Fred
    For a movie that’s ostensibly about casting off the shackles of old age and embracing excitement in life, there isn’t a single moment here that feels original or spontaneous.
  83. Suburban Gothic
    While the results may be perilously slight, Suburban Gothic’s particular brand of low-key sarcasm and absurdity will tickle those looking for laughs more dry than slapstick (or splatstick) in nature.
  84. Cub
    Jonas Govaerts’ first feature is a pastiche of familiar horror elements that’s well crafted throughout, but falls prey to the common dilemma of finding a payoff worthy of the buildup.
  85. Fall
    Odette edges viewers toward consideration of moral complexities, and places them in the uncomfortable position of observers who are by turns instinctively sympathetic and darkly suspicious.
  86. Hickok
    Less censorious aficionados likely will be willing to look past the rough edges and enjoy the simple pleasures provided by a respectfully sincere retelling of a familiar legend.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Taps
    Taps labors at an unbearably slow pace to an inevitable, depressing conclusion.
    • Variety
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Herbie Rides Again
    Another fat plug for the Volkswagen 'bug' as the runaway (literally) titular star.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Willard
    Some good jump moments and at least two stomach-churning murders committed by the rats with tight direction of Daniel Mann develop pic into sound nail-chewer.
  90. Inside the Rain
    Inside the Rain is so fresh and audacious in so many ways that it’s a bit of letdown when it leans heavily on the cliché of the Gold-Hearted Hooker — or, in this case, the Gold-Hearted Porn Actress and Part-Time Escort — to provide Benjamin with inspiration, emotional support, and, most important, a female lead for his film.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Medusa Touch
    Director Jack Gold controls all the angles of this improbable story. Burton has some very effective moments too as does Remick.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ice Station Zebra
    Action develops slowly, alternating with some excellent submarine interior footage, and good shots – of diving, surfacing and maneuvering under an ice field.
  93. Gold
    Directed with an odd mix of human compassion and giddy abandon by Stephen Gaghan (“Syriana”), Gold is a lively portrayal of what’s often misidentified as the American Dream, but might be more accurately described as the American Fantasy — where men dream of wealth and success without having to put in the work.
  94. Army of Thieves
    Army of Thieves is one of those bombastically blithe and fanciful Netflix action movies, in this case with a romantic heart.
  95. Son of a Gun
    At least three entertaining films are jostling for position in Australian writer-director Julius Avery’s messily propulsive debut feature, Son of a Gun — and if none ultimately emerges dominant, the red-blooded tussle between them is never dull to watch.
  96. Griff the Invisible
    The Melody-Griff evolution is the sweetest part of "Griff the Invisible," and has a certain charm. But anyone looking for a superhero movie is going to be disappointed.
  97. A Tourist's Guide to Love
    Funny, poignant and simultaneously progressive and regressive, it may not add up to five-star escapism, but it’s a jovial jaunt worth taking.
  98. 7 Days in Entebbe
    A distinct air of staleness permeates the whole enterprise — even the palette is brown as an old biscuit, and Rodrigo Amarante’s minimal score is so politely low in the mix that it’s hardly even there.
  99. The Tomorrow Man
    If the ultimate effect is a little more slight than one might’ve hoped, Jones and his appealing cast nonetheless sustain a low-key charm even after the enigmatic initial promise burns off like morning fog.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blind Date
    Theme of pure mayhem works well because of chemistry between the main trio of actors, Willis, Basinger and her spurned ex-beau (John Larroquette).
    • Variety
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