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. The Strangers
    It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic. Still, after such a long, creepy, cannily restrained buildup, it must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote.
  2. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    Action movies of this scale often start off strong and wind down to forgettable finales, but "Percy Jackson" is the opposite, overcoming a clunky setup to deliver nearly all its thrills in the last half-hour.
  3. The Catechism Cataclysm
    In the curious absence of religious satire, toilet humor isn't enough to constitute comedy, while the leads' grating performances make 81 minutes feel eternal.
  4. Haunted Mansion
    While the visual effects are surprisingly weak for a film of this scale, the script (from “Ghostbusters” writer Katie Dippold) proves far better than anyone might expect, establishing an emotional foundation for what might otherwise be a gimmick-driven haunted house movie.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Willow
    Willow is medieval mishmash from George Lucas, a sort of 10th-century "Star Wars" tossed together with a plethora of elements taken from numerous classic fables. Even if Lucas has bastardized his own story with derivative and unoriginal elements, kids probably will love it. For MGM Pictures, b.o. should mean recoupment of its large investment.
  6. Lee Cronin's The Mummy
    Brashly violent, clattery and pleasingly untied to any direct predecessor, the result is more generic than its braggy auteur claims might promise, but there’s a lot here for gorehounds to feast on.
  7. Being Charlie
    Being Charlie is far from a home run, but it’s the kind of solidly struck single after a string of strikeouts that can be just the thing to help set a veteran back on track.
  8. Crown Vic
    A respectable if non-revelatory cruise through a familiar terrain of mean streets and men in blue.
  9. Smile
    Well-meaning but dramatically lopsided tearjerker bogs down in generic teen angst and domestic squabbling.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Pink Flamingos
    Around the above premise spins the nitwit plot of the poorly lensed 16mm picture Pink Flamingos – one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made.
  11. Coffee Date
    Full of unlikely misunderstandings.
  12. 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.
  13. The Open Road
    Boasting strong performances by Jeff Bridges and Justin Timberlake.
  14. Stockholm, Pennsylvania
    From its opening scene, the film feels desaturated and airless, as if the intrusion of energy or color might upset the characters’ delicate task of healing.
  15. One & Two
    There are simply too many loose ends to distract us, and too much empty air in which audiences can’t help but poke holes.
  16. Memories of the Sword
    A visually arresting but vacuous, instantly forgettable period martial-arts romance.
  17. Courted
    Vincent’s calm, almost strenuously low-key film never gathers enough emotional momentum to become a fully dimensional romance — which might be its poignant intention.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The April Fools
    In addition to Lemmon, comedians Jack Weston (as his lawyer) and Harvey Korman (as a drinking companion they encounter in the commuter train’s drinking car) provide their own brand of laughs and the contrasting styles of the three actors gives the plot most of its action.
  19. Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl
    At once a punchy celebration of Swift’s artistry and a piece of promotion that just exposes aspects of the album that may not wear so well over time.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Honky Tonk
    The major power in Honky Tonk is in the love scenes between Clark Gable and Lana Turner.
  21. Fun with Dick and Jane
    The rare Hollywood remake that, by daring to reinterpret its source material within a fresh political context, actually has a reason to exist.
  22. Bella
    Mexican-born helmer Alejandro Monteverde's debut will be remembered as a curious case of a mediocre film that wows crowds.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sgt. Bilko
    Even Steve Martin back in his wild-and-crazy mode can't breathe much life into Sgt. Bilko - a somewhat unlikely candidate for translation from the TV sitcom vaults to the bigscreen. Bilko can't really be much more than the series - the exploits of an unscrupulous army scam artist constantly looking for new ways to make a buck.
  24. Dumbstruck
    It's only natural that audiences should root for such characters to succeed, but since human nature also harbors a mean streak, it's peculiar that Dumbstruck doesn't better exploit the obvious humor of its eccentric subject.
  25. Accepted
    Sweetly amusing, gently anarchic and never mean-spirited.
  26. 3 Generations
    Dellal’s likably chaotic direction and a bevy of solid performances make sure the film’s beating heart outweighs most of its contrivances.
  27. Before the Rains
    Tale of an idealistic local caught in the crossfire of an illicit affair is too pat and pretty to connect with upscale audiences.
  28. Josie and the Pussycats
    Sensationally exuberant, imaginatively crafted and intoxicatingly clever.
  29. What Women Want
    Sheer energy and audience allure to burn, even if numerous speed bumps cause many of the comic possibilities to go tumbling overboard.
  30. Borstal Boy
    Mixes a rites-of-passage story with political and sexual elements to solid but finally uninvolving results.
  31. The Guru
    A generally entertaining but rather old-fashioned romantic comedy.
  32. Enemies of Laughter
    Indie comedy about an unsuccessful playwright who very nearly talks himself out of his last best chance for happiness recalls the early work of Woody Allen. But pic stands on its own merits as witty and well-observed grown-up fare.
  33. Better Than Sex
    Cheekily diverting, decidedly feel-good, tremendously sexy entertainment.
  34. Easy
    Increasingly complicated comic maneuvers turn what should have been a hip look at sexuality into an antsy pic too busy to settle down.
  35. Brother
    The mix feels flat and the story remains a fairly banal account of underworld exploits whose emotional gears never fully engage.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When Worlds Collide
    Top honors for this inter-planetary fantasy rest with the cameramen and special effects technicians rather than with performances of the non-name cast.
  37. Chaplin
    Telling the entire story of Chaplin's 88 years was probably a hopeless goal, but the biopic does offer the saving grace of a truly remarkable central performance by Robert Downey Jr. and some lovely moments along the way.
  38. La mission
    Rather predictable in its major plot points and social-issue pleadings, the picture is better suited to cable than the big screen, but nonetheless offers solid drama with nice streaks of humor, warmth and local color.
  39. In the Cut
    Beautifully crafted and highlighted by an arresting change-of-pace perf by Meg Ryan as an English teacher erotically awakened by a homicide detective. But the story's unpalatable narrative holes and dramatic missteps will hold sway over the pic's better qualities.
  40. Dancing Across Borders
    Dancing Across Borders, Anne Bass' uneven docu debut, traces the fortunes of Cambodian ballet dancer Sokvannara "Sy" Sar from the time Bass first discovered him performing traditional temple dances at Angkor Wat to his conquests on the world stage.
  41. The Marsh King's Daughter
    The movie is being marketed as a “psychological” thriller, but psychology is what it doesn’t have. It’s more like “Cape Fear” reduced to a “Predator” sequel.
  42. Sonic the Hedgehog
    We all know that your average Hollywood comedy tends to include some on-set improvisation, but in this case the contrast between the leaden pseudo-brashness of the rest of the movie and the ping! of Carrey’s dialogue is so marked that it almost feels like he made up his entire character on the spot. (I’m not declaring that he actually did. I’m just sayin’.)
  43. MI-5
    Bharat Nalluri’s chrome-colored thriller plays less as an organic extension of the series’ universe than an all-purpose genre piece nominally tailored to fit the “Spooks” franchise — not to mention the star quality of previously unaffiliated leading man Kit Harington.
  44. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
    While “The Secrets of Dumbledore” doesn’t exactly embrace simplicity, the screenplay — no longer credited to Rowling alone, but co-written by stalwart “Harry Potter” adapter Steve Kloves — feels far more focused. Happily, the execution proves that much easier to follow.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Regarding Henry
    A subtle emotional journey impeccably orchestrated by director Mike Nichols and acutely well acted, Regarding Henry has a back-to-basics message that’s bound to strike a responsive chord in the troubled aftermath of the 1980s.
  46. A Good Year
    A simple repast consisting of sometimes strained slapsticky comedy, a sweet romance and a life lesson learned, this little picnic doesn't amount to much but goes down easily enough.
  47. The Box
    Kelly's trademark mix of sci-fi, surrealism and suburbia occasionally entertains.
  48. RED 2
    While Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, et al. are still good for a few chuckles as a gang of superannuated government assassins, this globe-trotting action-comedy diversion applies a bigger-is-better philosophy across the board, upping the stakes, the firepower and the travel budget, but keeping real thrills and laughs at a modest trickle.
  49. MIS Human Secret Weapon
    Junichi Suzuki's documentary ratchets up the sentiment when a cooler touch would have sufficed.
  50. Secret Headquarters
    With a solid cast, healthy sense of humor and polished visual effects, the film rises above so many of the sub-cinematic slogs littering the streaming fray. Expecting it to be memorable proves to be a big ask from the filmmakers, despite their hunger for a Marvel-style, Amblin-esque franchise starter. Still, the ease with which we forget its blights might just be the project’s real superpower.
  51. The Whole Nine Yards
    A crudely funny farce that covers no new ground but sees its talented players running some surefire plays.
  52. Railroad Tigers
    You know things are getting bad when an instantly forgettable, nearly impossible-to-follow, Chinese-language action movie manages to score a U.S. release simply because of Chan’s involvement.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Boarding Gate
    Thrills and drama are left standing on the tarmac in Boarding Gate a limp, sleazy inanity by renowned French critic cum erratic helmer Olivier Assayas.
  54. Failure to Launch
    An especially slight romantic comedy whose modest charms are derived largely from its supporting players.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pee-wee's Big Adventure
    Children should love the film and adults will be dismayed by the light brushstrokes with which Paul Reubens (one of three credited screenwriters, but star-billed under his stage name, Pee-wee Herman) suggests touches of Buster Keaton and Eddie Cantor.
  56. Shooting Fish
    Though the script never makes a convincing case for the lads as '90s Robin Hoods, it's restlessly inventive, with a pleasant, rather than rib-cracking, humor and likable touch of naivete.
  57. Hotel
    Though Hotel has brilliant moments, and an energetic first half, it falls away badly in the later stages.
  58. The Girl Next Door
    A tickle-and-tease teen sex comedy that plays like a late-night channel-surf through soft-core sitcoms, "American Pie" wannabes and '80s Brat Pack romances.
  59. Proteus
    Proteus has enough erotic and exotic content to win back some of the arthouse viewers previously beguiled by Greyson's "Lilies." But pic lacks that gem's lush aesthetics and impassioned complexity, ending up a tad remote.
  60. Tales from Earthsea
    This dull and humorless production won't reap the same critical support as the work of Miyazaki Senior.
  61. Angel of Mine
    Oddly, after leaving us aching for the film to go off the rails, when “Angel of Mine” finally does in the final scene, its message is so screwy that the audience might feel as loopy as poor Lizzie.
  62. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    A most enjoyable capper to director Shawn Levy and producer Chris Columbus’ cheerfully silly and sneakily smart family-entertainment juggernaut.
  63. 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.
  64. The Matrix Revolutions
    You can virtually see the mystique peeling away while beholding the turgid melodrama, patchy plotting, windy dialogue and, yes, spectacular combat effects of this grand finale.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love and Bullets
    Director Stuart Rosenberg could have glossed over the plot’s less believable twists with a brisker style and a lot more attack.
  66. In the Land of Women
    A strong cast struggles valiantly to rise above Lifetime material in In the Land of Women, an appealingly scruffy if overly programmatic drama.
  67. In the Heart of the Sea
    In the Heart of the Sea feels stiff and unconvincing, weirdly devoid of texture, and populated by ciphers who speak primarily in the leaden language of exposition.
  68. Jennifer's Body
    This high school horror romp tackles its bad-girl-gone-really-bad premise with eye-rolling obviousness and, fatally, a near-total absence of real scares.
  69. The M Word
    The lively but wildly erratic result will surely please Jaglom’s winnowing fan base, while baffling most others and doing little to deter Jaglom himself.
  70. Closer to the Moon
    If Caranfil’s mix of comedy and tragedy seems too scattershot to fully achieve catharsis, it does boast a rather Jewish sense of humor, itself a curious testimonial to the past.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Convoy
    Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy starts out as Smokey and the Bandit, segues into either Moby Dick or Les Miserables, and ends in the usual script confusion and disarray, the whole stew peppered with the vulgar excess of random truck crashes and miscellaneous destruction.
  72. The Tunnel
    Solidly crafted if a bit uninspired, Pål Øie’s thriller is like a horizontal, colder, sootier “Towering Inferno” minus the all-star-cast, though their soap-operatics are intact.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sunburn
    Grodin works overtime to carry the picture and does so marvelously, displaying a savvy low-key comedy style.
  74. Bad Teacher
    What's singularly lacking here is any sense of how to use the underage characters, who, apart from one or two, are a barely distinguishable gaggle.
  75. The Little Traitor
    Sentimental and a bit too cute in evoking a child's-eye view, the picture, nevertheless will please its target Jewish auds.
  76. Jimpa
    The acting feels genuine across the board, with Lithgow (who wrestles an impossible-to-geolocate accent) emerging as the most fearless in an all-around daring ensemble.
  77. Fat Girls
    Wins no points for delicacy. Still, it does score some laughs.
  78. Superpower
    Too often, the film’s well-meaning reportage is muddled with needless vanity sequences of the actor-director as an on-the-ground trailblazer, as the film fashions the impression that Penn himself — as much as any news agency — is a vital courier of the horrific events around him to Western audiences.
  79. Lions for Lambs
    Amounts to a giant cry of "Americans, get engaged!" wrapped in a star-heavy discourse that uses a lot of words to say nothing new.
  80. Tape
    “Bombshell” aside, Tape is one of the very first dramas of the #MeToo era to confront, head-on, what harassment looks like and how it really works. Yet even as the film feels up-to-the-minute, it’s been made with a certain threadbare, streets-of-New-York punk feminist mythologizing that may remind you, at times, of the films of Beth B.
  81. Dog Days
    Unfortunately, the behaviors on display have virtually nothing to do with real life, serving as empty escapism for the dog lover in all of us.
  82. Lies
    Has nothing much to say.
  83. Bittersweet Motel
    Well-made if not particularly insightful docu should be catnip to Phishheads, while the previously unconverted are likely to stay that way.
  84. By Hook or by Crook
    No movie like this about friendship between two young lesbians and their various adventures, punctuated with laissez-faire jump-cutting, should be this boring.
  85. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    The script here just doesn't have sufficient smarts to pull off Elle's political triumph. But Witherspoon again makes a valiant show of selling it.
  86. Heartbreakers
    Overstays its welcome by at least a half-hour after never getting very high off the ground in the first place.
  87. Flight of the Phoenix
    Shows both how far Hollywood's tech departments have advanced in 40 years and how shallow the pool of solid action thesps has become.
  88. Ladder 49
    It plays, rather, like an old-fashioned, by-the-numbers drama that solidly connects with most of its well-worn cliches.
  89. Burlesque
    An overwrought, underwritten hootchy-kootchy tuner that desperately wants to be "Cabaret," but lacks the edge and historical context to pull it off.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Mirror Crack'd
    Taylor has an uproarious good time as she trades bitchy insults with Kim Novak. Adroit supporting performances are given by Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson as Taylor’s husband and director, and Geraldine Chaplin.
  91. A Cure for Wellness
    The movie deprives us of either a tragic villain or a sympathetic lead, hoping that its grab bag of squirm-inducing details — dental drills, stillborn livestock, flesh-eating eels — will suffice, when in fact, they reveal how a shorter, tighter treatment ought to have done the trick.
  92. Restless
    At once delicate and clumsy, tender and twee, Restless wraps the pain of grief and impending mortality in the balm of a teenage love story.
  93. AGGRO DR1FT
    Because Korine’s never been one to subscribe to traditional narrative tropes, there’s an insidious sort of suspense running beneath the otherwise-thin plot, like some kind of high-voltage electric current.
  94. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    Zwick barely manages to tickle our adrenaline, waiting till the climactic showdown amid a New Orleans Halloween parade to deliver a sequence that could legitimately register as memorable.
  95. Flyboys
    Lovingly and knowledgeably made by director Tony Bill, who got his pilot's license as a teenager, pic nonetheless has a lightweight, airbrushed feel; despite the brutal dogfights and inevitable deaths, there's little gravity or resonance.
  96. The Dressmaker
    Given the sheer number of threads that Moorhouse (who adapted the novel with her writer-director husband, P.J. Hogan) keeps in play, it’s surprising how well The Dressmaker coheres, albeit more along narrative lines than tonal ones.
  97. Monster Hunter
    Very little of Monster Hunter makes sense, but it’s visually interesting at least and not un-fun to stream at home with a friend, asking questions and cracking jokes along the way.
  98. Young Ones
    The sophomore effort from Jake Paltrow (“The Good Night”) gets so bogged down in its primal tale of murder and revenge that the most intriguing elements become little more than futuristic window dressing.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Razor's Edge
    Tonally inconsistent and structurally awkward, film does develop some dramatic interest in the second half, but inherent power of the material is never realized.
  100. Pushing Tin
    Unfortunately, story's tension climaxes a half-hour before the film is over, and thereafter dissipates much of the charge and good will generated up to that point.
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