Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. The Watch
    What's onscreen feels as half-assed and juvenile as it was probably always envisioned to be, suggesting an umpteenth retelling of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by way of "The Hangover," or perhaps a far less inspired version of "Attack the Block" transplanted to small-town Ohio.
  2. Bodyguard
    Indian helmer Siddique delivers a middling melange of action, romance, music and slapstick in his hotly anticipated Hindi version of "Bodyguard."
  3. The Grey
    The picture's dialogue-heavy stretches and ambiguous finale could leave ticketbuyers impatient for less chatter and more chomping.
  4. 5 Days of War
    Set during the brief, brutal 2008 flare-up between Russia and Georgia, the drama has some exhilarating moments, but they're dampened by concessions to conventionally bloviating music, overly theatrical dialogue and inadvertently comic slo-mo.
  5. Tanner Hall
    Refigured from a never-made TV pilot, this shallow boarding school-set coming-of-ager traverses familiar territory without offering anything fresh.
  6. The Double
    While there's the sense that this old guy/young guy spy angle has been done better by films like "Spy Game" a decade ago, Gere, never looking tougher or handsomer, and Grace, adding some action skills to his relatively cerebral persona, invigorate the proceedings in roles that would seem to benefit the actors' career arcs.
  7. Father of Invention
    Colorless exposition and a lack of imagination or wit stall Father of Invention at the starting gate.
  8. Revenge of the Electric Car
    Revenge is a disappointment. Admittedly, the picture deploys the same kind of cinematic bells and whistles that made "Killed" so enjoyable. But without true tension, the documentary feels as slickly manufactured as its va-va-voom subject.
  9. Hysteria
    Dancy manages a few sly moments, and Everett is as ever a scene-stealer, if barely recognizable under a beard and altered features, and with a raspy voice. But the estimable Pryce and Jones are wasted, along with many other fine thesps, while Gyllenhaal works too gratingly hard in an already strained role.
  10. Puncture
    Though conceptually intriguing, the mix of downward drug spiral with uphill struggle for good never really coalesces.
  11. The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch
    Euro-financed production throws large chunks of change at a corporate espionage saga spanning several continents, yet most of the money seems to have landed in locations, with too little allocated to the script and stunt departments.
  12. Special Treatment
    Again co-written by and co-starring writer-thesp Richard Debuisne, picture has some of the duo's trademark sharp dialogue but again fails to fully come together on a narrative level.
  13. Chasing Madoff
    Chasing Madoff is a useful reminder that all is far from well with our financial institutions, which continue to lobby for less regulation rather than more. But the human element of the film is so weirdly distracting it often deflects from its primary target.
  14. The Lady
    This handsomely mounted picture is, at nearly 2 1/2 hours, far too long and indigestible for a film whose protagonist spends most of her screen time under house arrest.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shaolin
    Well-mounted Chinese-Hong Kong martial-arts co-production Shaolin elevates enlightenment above brute strength, but weak helming undercuts the pic's punch.
  16. Silent Souls
    Beautifully assembled, but emotionally inert despite its focus on bereavement and love's endurance, Russian art film Silent Souls reps at the very least a significant step up for its helmer, Aleksei Fedorchenko.
  17. Limelight
    Watching Limelight, about the rise and politically engineered fall of onetime Manhattan nightclub kingpin Peter Gatien, is like looking through a family album: If you're in the family, you might be interested.
  18. Echotone
    There's a potentially fascinating and appreciably more concise 60-minute documentary to be found somewhere amid the uneven and unfocused 88-minute hodgepodge that is Echotone.
  19. Inside Out
    Veering crazily in tone, Inside Out might fail to catapult its star into wider acceptability, but should delight fans of lightly absurd actioners.
  20. Brother's Justice
    It's an easy watch that nonetheless consistently feels like a grazing blow rather than a knockout.
  21. Berlin 36
    The picture sports a strong lead cast but is diminished by TV-style helming and production qualities.
  22. Step Up Revolution
    Step Up Revolution, the fourth entry in the venerable dance franchise, is a narrative failure but a triumph of sheer spectacle.
  23. Finding Joe
    Campbell's career and influence encompass much wider fields of interest than are considered here, despite the picture's colorful surface. Narrowing its focus to the simplest inspirational gist, with zero insight into the man behind it, Finding Joe winds up seeming like an infomercial for a personal-growth program.
  24. 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.
  25. The Sons of Tennessee Williams
    Tim Wolff's documentary is a diverting mix of colorful interviewees and footage from one such krewe's 40th anniversary ball, but it doesn't probe very deep.
  26. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    Like one of those kitchen machines that can turn nearly any ingredient into ice cream, Lasse Hallstrom has sweetened the satire right out of Paul Torday's side-splitting political sendup Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
  27. Loosies
    The tale of a pickpocket's redemption through love, plus a vengeance-seeking cop and assorted betrayals, Loosies weakly channels Sam Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" but without the explosive action, iconic thesping and stylistic punch.
  28. RA. One
    Much of the film is marked by a sense of dead air, owing to the fact that there's not a lot of story, but nevertheless, per Bollywood conventions, a lot of time to fill.
  29. Chasing Mavericks
    The outstanding big-wave footage proves more credible than the overfamiliar dramatics in Chasing Mavericks.
  30. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    An epic showcase for mediocre CGI and slapdash screenwriting.
  31. Glitch in the Grid
    Leiser flexes his animation muscles with a bewitching stop-motion technique, but it proves a poor fit with a scattershot storyline that includes quasi-interview and improv segments that never coalesce into a coherent whole.
  32. Snowmen
    Picture narrowly avoids outright bathos, thanks largely to first-rate perfs by its child thesps and by Ray Liotta. But by self-righteously rejecting facile solutions, then employing them anyway in the tradition of "no ending left behind," the result conforms to parents' old-fashioned notions of kid movies rather than demonstrating true kid appeal.
  33. Hipsters
    Although a massive hit at home, taking approximately $16 million at the wickets, this great-looking but tonally uneven pic won't jive with audiences quite so well anywhere else.
  34. Retreat
    A potential menage a trois of terror is served up as rather weak tea in Retreat, which fails to make its alleged suspense, thrills or even its mist-enshrouded landscapes particularly plausible.
  35. Broken City
    Competent but juiceless New York melodrama, an unpersuasive marriage of head-slamming action and middling civic intrigue that treats issues like gay rights and public housing as red herrings rather than actual talking points.
  36. 5 Star Day
    Buday's astrology-themed romantic comedy boasts a promising premise, convincing chemistry between its attractive leads and fine thesping by a defensively edgy Jena Malone. But the uneven script, repetitive tropes and over-indulgence of actorly bits slow the pace, tipping youthful casualness into complacency.
  37. Killing Bono
    Taking liberties with journalist Neil McCormick's memoir to create narrative tension, screenwriters Simon Maxwell and prolific scribe team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("The Commitments") overstuff the story with subplots and trite character arcs.
  38. Dog Sweat
    Great for ADD-style viewing but not for advancing Iranian cinema's currently challenged profile.
  39. The Greening of Whitney Brown
    This simplistic story of bucolic redemption has few pretensions to depth, ambiguity or realism, relying on its name cast, sprightly lead and a helluva horse to attract family audiences.
  40. In Darkness
    For the film to work, Holland needs audiences to connect as deeply with the trapped Jews as Socha eventually does. With the exception of the group's leader, movie-star handsome Mundek Margulies (German-born, internationally recognized Benno Furmann), the characters are flat as shadows.
  41. Don 2
    Though the picture is respectful of the heist-film template -- the gathering of the crew, the readying of props, the planned circumvention of all obstacles -- its main imperative consists of placing Kahn in impossible situations and watching him trick or strongarm his way out.
  42. Angels Crest
    Another in the procession of dead children movies that followed Atom Egoyan's magisterial "The Sweet Hereafter," helmer Gaby Dellal's sophomore effort unfolds in a similarly snow-blanketed small town filled with grieving adults, the community divided in apportioning blame. In contrast with Egoyan's labyrinthine structure and complex storylines, Crest cobbles together bits of plot and a motley assortment of half-formed characters.
  43. The Big Fix
    Alternately gutsy and preachy, specific and scattered, the righteously angry pic risks alienating those who could be galvanized by its proof of Big Oil's corrupting omnipotence.
  44. A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    Part personal quest, part testimonial and part fund-raiser, A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps fulfills disparate agendas for helmer Dina Rosenmeier, a mildly resentful daughter wondering why her humanitarian mother prioritized orphaned Indian children over her own offspring.
  45. Sparkle
    Sparkle deals in such well-worn rise-and-fall music-bio tropes that it's hard to blame it for simply coasting on narrative shorthand at times. But the lackadaisical storytelling can inch toward outright laziness.
  46. Fanny, Annie & Danny
    The more difficult characters here (all female) and resulting character dynamics are so consistently shrill that the picture feels a bit too one-dimensional and cruel to leave the small-tragedy aftertaste it could have.
  47. Captain Phillips
    There is something too dry and austere about Greengrass and Ray’s telescoped vision, which touches only fleetingly on the pirates’ motives, the suffering of the Somali people and the collateral damage of global capitalism.
  48. Norwegian Wood
    Lovely but listless.
  49. Lula, the Son of Brazil
    The screenplay by Daniel Tendler, Fernando Bonassi and Lula biographer Parana succumbs to many of the most unfortunate narrative tendencies of biopics, including a proclivity for piling on incident after incident as a substitute for real character insight.
  50. It's About You
    Luckily, the music trumps the indifferently shot concert footage and lends shape to the evocatively lensed recording sessions in iconic locations. Nothing, unfortunately, mitigates Markus' sincere but trite and awkward narration.
  51. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
    In sartorial terms, the fabric is to die for, but helmer Whitney Sudler-Smith's documentary follows a banal pattern, while the finishing lacks finesse.
  52. Won't Back Down
    Grossly oversimplifying the issue at hand, writer-director Daniel Barnz's disingenuous pot-stirrer plays to audiences' emotions rather than their intelligence, offering meaty roles for Maggie Gyllenhaal as a determined single mom, and Viola Davis as the good egg among a rotten batch of teachers, while reducing everyone else to cardboard characterizations.
  53. Detention
    What starts as a bracing rush quickly devolves into a deadening assault of stimuli.
  54. Tonight You're Mine
    Picture may not be Scots helmer David Mackenzie's best effort, but it's easily his most lighthearted, a cheery trifle that reps a contrast to his recent pictures, the apocalyptic "Perfect Sense" and U.S.-set comic misfire "Spread."
  55. Girl in Progress
    Never finds its own groove, alternating between high-school dramedy and overworked-single-mom narratives without ever really becoming a mother-and-daughter story until the closing scenes.
  56. Scalene
    Carefully crafted and impressively thesped, particularly by Margo Martindale, Zack Parker's ambitious, self-styled thriller channels a wide spectrum of high-concept classics, from "Rashomon" to "Memento." But the resolution of its conflicting truths proves so bizarre and idiotically off-the-wall that it mitigates all that precedes it.
  57. Escape from Planet Earth
    A lightweight, warp-speed, brightly colored trifle.
  58. We Have a Pope
    The results veer between occasional smiles and outright pretension, with only Piccoli's mastery transcending the material.
  59. To the Arctic
    Alternates between intimate wildlife saga and majestic views of the North Pole, offering strong visual compensations for its meandering structure, syrupy tone and excessive sampling of Paul McCartney's back catalog.
  60. Bombay Beach
    In an inspired twist, Har'el brings surreal levity to the potentially downer subject by interrupting her elegiac regional portraiture with a series of amateur dance numbers. Still, without dramatic momentum, this fringe-appeal snapshot feels less like a film than a coffee-table photo project come to life.
  61. Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements
    Even devotees of the Replacements' defiant perversity will be unsatisfied with this talky tribute to a noisy band.
  62. Crazy Horse
    What's generally missing here though is a sense of the creative process; rather than sweat-and-tears rehearsals breaking the dances into individual movements, the numbers are largely shown nearly complete. Consequently, there's little sense of the discipline involved, or the struggle for perfection that makes dance documentaries so engrossing.
  63. A Good Day to Die Hard
    Willis still packs that rapscallion charm, balancing his wisecracking, reluctant-hero shtick with the unstoppable, all-American quality that earned the original film its title. But the chemistry between him and Courtney is nonexistent, with the younger thesp, who makes co-star Cole Hauser look expressive, adding so little to the equation, one can only hope the studio doesn't plan to pass the franchise on to him.
  64. The Swell Season
    Swell never really gathers momentum, remaining a collection of moments, some more privileged than others.
  65. A Warrior's Heart
    While the sheer novelty of a feature about lacrosse may be enough to generate some audience curiosity about A Warrior's Heart, this respectably crafted but thoroughly predictable indie rarely deviates from the gameplan followed by countless other dramas about self-absorbed young hotheads who get a shot at redemption on the playing field.
  66. Windfall
    Variably articulate subjects drone on and on in an 83-minute film that could easily make its TV news-style point in a half-hour or less.
  67. The Forgotten Space
    Sekula's overwritten narration, with its fair share of whoppers, does his argument no favors, overwhelming genuinely interesting statistics.
  68. The Samaritan
    If anything, this Canadian production misses a great opportunity to dig into its setting and examine the dark side of seemingly pristine Toronto, even as the script by Elan Mastai and director David Weaver labors over a mostly boilerplate storyline.
  69. Intruders
    A fitfully creepy, overly protracted chiller that plays more like a noncommittal sampler of horror techniques than the vivid nightmare it's clearly aiming for.
  70. Transformers: Age Of Extinction
    It’s the robots — endowed here with character-rich physicality and almost human-scaled facial features — who give the film its emotional heft.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tomorrow, When the War Began
    Parochial paranoia dovetails with adolescent angst in the glossy sci-fi coming-of-ager Tomorrow When the War Began.
  72. The FP
    This unabashedly derivative, vaguely post-apocalyptic riff on well-worn '80s-movie tropes plays its boilerplate premise with endearing earnestness, but runs thin in no time.
  73. Identity Thief
    With Identity Thief, Melissa McCarthy proves she's got what it takes to carry a feature, however meager the underlying material.
  74. Iron Sky
    Much more amusing in theory than in execution.
  75. Touchback
    This handsomely produced but ponderously uplifting trifle should be flagged for excessive schmaltz and offensive illogic.
  76. Blue Like Jazz
    Remains as tame in its presentation as its target audience would expect. Students drink beers on occasion, but no one is shown having sex, taking mind-altering substances or using language that would jeopardize a PG-13 rating. On the plus side, the film also abstains from any overt message-mongering.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Darling Companion
    It meanders about as much as its eponymous pooch.
  78. Hit So Hard
    Though stylistically incoherent at times, picture benefits from the percussionist's plainspokenness.
  79. God Bless America
    While it starts out well, Bobcat Goldthwait's black comedy struggles to maintain focus as it turns into a road trip of diminishing rewards in satirical and narrative terms.
  80. Chernobyl Diaries
    Scattered stretches of suspense and a few undeniably potent shocks are not enough to dissipate the sense of deja vu that prevails throughout Chernobyl Diaries, a wearyingly predictable thriller about "extreme tourists."
  81. Jack and Diane
    If Benicio del Toro designed Hallmark cards, or if "Lady and the Tramp" were lesbians, they'd have a lot in common with Jack & Diane, a well-constructed, well-intentioned but too deliberate attempt to provoke the unprovokable.
  82. Jack Reacher
    Reacher is a brawny action figure whose exploits would have been a good fit for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone back in the day, but feel less fun when delegated to a leading man like Tom Cruise. The star is too charismatic to play someone so cold-blooded, and his fans likely won't appreciate the stretch.
  83. Shakespeare High
    Alex Rotaru's very busy documentary focuses more on the kids' stories than on their work; considering how sensational some of them are, it's probably a strategic advantage.
  84. Apart
    Editor-turned-writer-helmer Aaron Rottinghaus has a keen eye, but doles out the details of this mystery at such a dysfunctional pace, it's difficult to get engaged.
  85. Middle of Nowhere
    Solidly acted but aloof and slow as molasses.
  86. Pray for Japan
    It's hard not to be moved by the words of love, gratitude and resilience spoken by earthquake/tsunami survivors and volunteers in Pray for Japan. But well-meaning platitudes go only so far in this sincerely felt, raggedly structured compilation of footage.
  87. The Words
    A literary film that stands to work best for those who don't read, The Words is a slick, superficially clever compendium of stories about authors of uncertain talent and varying success.
  88. All In: The Poker Movie
    Loaded with history, interviews, hole-cam drama and some rather grand digressions, Douglas Tirola's picture seems a bit late for the poker craze, and at any rate will be preaching largely to the converted.
  89. The Playroom
    Although Dyer's sophomore feature clearly intends to capture the magical otherness of a child's p.o.v., nothing in her strangely aloof mise-en-scene or her late sister Gretchen's script yields anything more than a group of well-thesped, believable suburban kids upset by their parents' behavior.
  90. MIS Human Secret Weapon
    Junichi Suzuki's documentary ratchets up the sentiment when a cooler touch would have sufficed.
  91. In Their Skin
    An unnerving home-invasion thriller, In Their Skin has narrative bones we've certainly seen before, bearing perhaps the closest resemblance to Michael Haneke's two versions of "Funny Games." Nonetheless, the same simple premise achieves full creepy impact here without succumbing to cheap genre thrills or cool arthouse abstraction.
  92. Maleficent
    Uncertain of tone, and bearing visible scarring from what one imagines were multiple rewrites, the film fails to probe the psychology of its subject or set up a satisfying alternate history, but it sure is nice to look at for 97 minutes.
  93. Fightville
    Ready-to-order fan base certainly means exposure, but helmers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein aren't interested in glorifying the gore of ultimate fighting as much as revealing its heart.
  94. The Broken Tower
    Though clearly besotted with Crane’s poetry, the writer-director-star never achieves full immersion in the man’s life or work; the sense is of people playing a very cerebral game of dress-up.
  95. Meeting Evil
    The picture could provide modest amusement for indulgent viewers with a taste for tales of loquacious killers and not-so-innocent bystanders.
  96. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
    A costumer that's well named for being pleasant and conventional but little more.
  97. 42
    A relentlessly formulaic biopic that succeeds at transforming one of the most compelling sports narratives of the 20th century into a home run of hagiography.
  98. Grassroots
    Registers like a quaint display of local color.
  99. Liberal Arts
    This makes the film feel perilously close to widescreen sitcom, as do montages of New York set to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony.
  100. For Greater Glory
    Despite enough good intentions to pave a four-lane highway, the ardently sincere but dramatically unfocused For Greater Glory plays like a multipart miniseries that has been hacked down to feature length.
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