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. 5 Broken Cameras
    An undeniably powerful record of the Palestinian village of Bil'in's course of civil disobedience from 2005 to the present...the pic is also shamelessly sentimental and manipulative in its construction.
  2. Redlegs
    Filmmaker magazine editor/critic Brandon Harris' debut feature, Redlegs, puts its indebtedness to Cassavetes upfront -- or rather, in back, spelled out clearly amid the closing acknowledgements -- as three protagonists act out a junior version of "Husbands'" epic drunken wake.
  3. A Cat in Paris
    Delightfully old-school on the animation side, but too old-fashioned on the story side, French 2D toon A Cat in Paris is easy enough on the eyes yet never quite justifies feature-length status.
  4. U.N. Me
    Covering a lot of ground in colorful, pacey fashion, the documentary is nonetheless somewhat compromised itself by co-director Ami Horowitz's insistence on playing the Michael Moore/Morgan Spurlock role of onscreen provocateur.
  5. Crooked Arrows
    The story of a ragtag Native American team rediscovering the tribal roots of the game to defeat preppie champions is rife with tired tropes, and lacking in three-dimensional characters or colorful plot-twists. Happily for this Onandaga-financed production and vet director Steve Rash, gifted Native American lacrosse players lend hard-hitting impact to the game scenes.
  6. 6 Month Rule
    Ensemble is sharp, although Adams and Dave Foley (as an obnoxious gallery owner) make more caricatured impressions.
  7. Richard's Wedding
    Turkel constantly undermines the feel-good with the ridiculous and vice versa, vacillating between infantile insults and professions of affection, a duality that ultimately wears thin.
  8. Music from the Big House
    The performances are fun, if musically only adequate -- there are no evident virtuosi languishing within Angola's walls -- and Chiarelli's attempts to frame matters philosophically fall a little flat.
  9. One Day on Earth
    The rush of watching images made in such rare locales as Andorra and Sao Tome quickly wears thin as the montage whips through considerably meaty topics (water issues, climate change, immigration, religious faith) like an impatient Web surfer.
  10. Sexual Chronicles of a French Family
    Offers diverting date-night fare for open-minded heterosexual couples and swingers, though its superiority (artistic or otherwise) to actual porn is debatable.
  11. Dark Horse
    Result is far less abrasive than some of its predecessors, but for that very reason seems unlikely to generate the attention needed to meet Solondz's already modest commercial standards.
  12. V/H/S
    The segments vary in quality and the whole overstays its welcome at nearly two hours.
  13. Soldiers of Fortune
    The script is so thinly written that the main characters are defined almost entirely by the actors playing them. Fortunately, seasoned pros Slater, Rhames and Cromwell are able to flesh out their boilerplate parts.
  14. Walk Away Renee
    Ultimately, "Renee" feels less like a walk away than a retread.
  15. Farewell, My Queen
    A well-observed but emotionally muted costume drama that might well have been titled "My Week With Marie Antoinette."
  16. Alps
    The cumulative force of the screenplay and Yorgos Mavropsaridis' editing is not as hypnotic as in "Dogtooth," perhaps in part because those familiar with Lanthimos' m.o. will know what to expect.
  17. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
    The film is a good start, but such an important artist deserves a more rigorous portrait.
  18. Celeste and Jesse Forever
    Celeste & Jesse Forever earns points for bucking formula, but its fusion of snark and sincerity has a calculated slickness that rings increasingly hollow.
  19. The Green Wave
    Mixed-media approach is eye-catching, and the subject is unquestionably powerful, but the sentimental score and stridently drawn imagery detract from picture's impact.
  20. The Awakening
    Though handsome to look at, so-so supernatural chiller The Awakening recalls "The Others," "The Orphanage" and other haunted-house tales of recent vintage, making an impression more derivative than memorable.
  21. The Lion of Judah
    Ultimately, this is perhaps useful, since "never forget" only applies if you know something in the first place, and in that regard The Lion of Judah serves as a cautionary tale.
  22. The Equalizer
    Ponderously overlong and not even half as much fun as it should have been, The Equalizer still gets a lot of mileage out of Washington’s unassailable star presence.
  23. Mama
    Mama, for all her digital and prosthetic creepiness, is finally a bit of a bore.
  24. Little White Lies
    With its bloated running time and tonal shifts, the story tends to steer off course, though strong performances help keep it in tow.
  25. Teddy Bear
    The low-key drama is well crafted and likable as far as it goes, but there's not enough narrative impetus or depth to maintain more than passing viewer interest.
  26. 10 Years
    Oddly, 10 years barely qualifies as a comedy; in fact, the one interesting thing about it is the dire melancholy at its core.
  27. Knight Knight
    Everyone's likable, but Katrina is the film's crowning achievement, portrayed by Bucher as if she were an irritable housekeeper on a telenovela.
  28. LUV
    Heartfelt and formulaic in equal measure.
  29. The Collection
    An energetic but utterly weightless exercise in slice-and-dice cinema. This sequel to 2009 chiller "The Collector" is in many ways bigger (more characters, more locations, more carnage), but in no way better than its predecessor.
  30. The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
    The 3D is terrific in Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, but helmer Tsui Hark's costume actioner -- the first Chinese-lingo movie shown in the stereoscopic Imax format -- is let down by two-dimensional characters.
  31. Promised Land
    By manipulating their story to advance the cynical notion that you really can't trust anyone, the filmmakers inadvertently beg the question why their own motives should be so above suspicion.
  32. Detropia
    Among several recent documentaries about Detroit, the elegiac Detropia is perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing, if not the most informative or insightful.
  33. Last Vegas
    A smattering of funny gags and the nostalgia value of the cast — none of whom, curiously, have ever shared the screen before — keeps the whole thing more watchable than it has any right to be.
  34. Backwards
    Passably pleasant but thoroughly predictable.
  35. The Other Son
    An adequate if never surprising effort from French helmer Lorraine Levy.
  36. Doctored
    What starts as an impassioned exploration of the medical establishment's court-proven conspiracy to "contain and eliminate" the chiropractic profession soon turns into a scattershot expose of the entire health care field in Doctored.
  37. Pain & Gain
    Bay can be a master of exuberant chaos, but here the violence mostly lands with a sickening thud, which is fitting, one supposes, but also ultimately numbing.
  38. Admission
    The comedy feels forced as Fey works overtime to insert unnecessary zingers at the tail of every scene. If the cast weren’t so endearing, her actions could easily sour an audience on the whole experience, and Admission digs itself a hole only an ensemble this appealing can escape.
  39. The Place Beyond the Pines
    Two half-stories about fathers and sons on opposite sides of the law do not a full movie make in The Place Beyond the Pines, the overlong and under-conceived reunion between “Blue Valentine” director Derek Cianfrance and lookalike star Ryan Gosling.
  40. Hitchcock
    Hitchcock is a diverting but dramatically insipid account of how the Master of Suspense took his biggest gamble and delivered his greatest success with "Psycho."
  41. Here Comes the Devil
    Promises much in an ominously atmospheric package that nods to 1970s genre stylings. But the payoff is on the meh side.
  42. 186 Dollars to Freedom
    Setting his fact-based tale on the eve of democratic elections in 1980 Peru, Vila tends to err on the side of melodrama whenever possible, and John Robinson's lead performance offers no end of privileged American naivete. But the characters are solid and the action sound.
  43. 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.
  44. Simon & the Oaks
    Though it retains the narrative complexity of the Swedish bestseller on which it's based, WWII saga Simon and the Oaks never creates an emotional or intellectual throughline of its own.
  45. Least Among Saints
    The forced plotting and Lifetime movie-style tearjerking are a chore, and commercial prospects look narrow, but if this is indeed a good-faith effort to preach beyond the choir, it deserves plaudits.
  46. An Affair of the Heart
    While she creates an affectionate portrait of the charismatic musician, helmer Sylvia Caminer is really concerned with the meaning of fandom; anyone harboring an inexplicable or arcane passion could conceivably be interested.
  47. Waiting for Lightning
    A slickly produced, unabashedly celebratory picture about professional skateboarder Danny Way.
  48. Sassy Pants
    Walking a sometimes wobbly line between charming and cloying.
  49. Yogawoman
    Few could dispute the obvious physical and mental benefits derived from the practice of this ancient discipline. One could, however, wish that this endless encomium played less like a PowerPoint sales pitch, illustrated with clip-art imagery, scored with generic music and narrated in mellifluous tones by Annette Bening.
  50. Pusher (2012)
    What's missing cast-wise is an appealing personality in the sidekick role, and Webb is no match for Mads Mikkelsen.
  51. Olympus Has Fallen
    A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen.
  52. Ride Along
    A lazy and listless buddy-cop action-comedy that fades from memory as quickly as its generic title.
  53. California Solo
    A former rock 'n' roller withers on the vine in California Solo, Marshall Lewy's forgettable sophomore effort (after a promising beginning with "Blue State").
  54. Save the Date
    The film features a lead performance by Lizzy Caplan, who might be mistaken here for a graduate of the Zooey Deschanel School of Dramatic Arts.
  55. A Dark Truth
    A self-serious eco-thriller assembled with a competent but heavy hand, A Dark Truth decries corporate corruption and Third World oppression in an all-too-obvious manner.
  56. Barrymore
    The material itself has a formulaic solo-bioplay rhythm neither performer nor director can fully elude.
  57. Buffalo Girls
    Considering that many will regard child boxing as inappropriate, at the very least, the documentary invites criticism by choosing not to include any voices of dissent or analysis of the sport within a broader social and cultural context.
  58. Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child
    Colburn's focus is so single-mindedly laudatory that the whole collaborative process is reduced to people either helping or hindering the visiting genius.
  59. What a Man
    The leads jell well but the film overcompensates to justify their union, surrounding them with broadly drawn secondary characters presented in an uncertain, inconsistent comic tone.
  60. Back to 1942
    Shifting between individual suffering (performed, not felt) and extended political and business deliberations, the picture displays its budget but not its heart.
  61. Ex-Girlfriends
    In the central role, first-time feature helmer Alexander Poe may trigger sheepish identification among the neurotic with the protag's vaguely ridiculous reactions. While his character registers as white-bread bland, strong performances from the two "exes" save this indie from a surfeit of self-deprecating charm.
  62. Silent Night
    Trouble is, apart from some modestly inventive carnage and an undeniably humorous hambone turn by Malcolm McDowell, there's really nothing here to make genre fans dash through the snow (or maneuver through traffic) to megaplexes before the low-budget, high-concept Canadian production's Dec. 4 homevid release.
  63. The Purge
    The film’s thudding shocks and predictability dull its edge.
  64. Like Someone in Love
    As it turns out, it's the first, not the last, word of the title that's key to this droll, elegant but faintly trying study in emotional artifice.
  65. The Art of Flight 3D
    Like most of the skiing and surfing documentaries that have come before it, the picture oversells its subject, the virtues of which are obvious. But armchair athletes will get a charge out the pure sensations here.
  66. Yelling to the Sky
    Strong on texture but taxingly light on narrative.
  67. Clandestine Childhood
    Designed to highlight the uneasy coexistence between everyday childhood experiences and the intense pressures of living with parents secretly fighting the junta, the picture has strong moments, but is bogged down by a script that regurgitates standard-issue ideas without finding anything interesting to say.
  68. $ellebrity
    A marketing tie-in with a line of soap wouldn't be the worst idea for $ellebrity, a documentary that's unafraid to get dirty digging into the subject of celebrity journalism, or to leave viewers feeling a little grimy after their immersion in tabloid culture.
  69. The Baytown Outlaws
    A boisterously Tarantinoesque mash-up of cliches, archetypes and bodacious craziness in the tradition of Southern-fried '60s and '70s drive-in fodder, The Baytown Outlaws is the sort of cartoonishly violent and swaggeringly non-PC concoction that defines guilty pleasure for many genre fans.
  70. I Am Not a Hipster
    A deeper glimpse of the San Diego indie-rock scene around him might have made Brook's self-absorbed resentment less overbearing.
  71. Wrong
    A curious tale about a man searching for his missing dog in a suburban bubble where everything is a little askew, has some laughs, but it doesn’t take long for the absurdist humor to pall among a pileup of nonsensical ideas that would be funnier if grounded in a less hazy concept.
  72. Tomorrowland
    The glaring failure of Tomorrowland is that its central premise — children are the future — is almost completely negated by the preachiness of the execution and the clumsiness of the storytelling.
  73. The Call
    There’s little to differentiate this high-pitched screamer from a particularly feverish “Law and Order” rerun.
  74. The End of Love
    Oddly overstuffed with cameos by bigscreen actors playing tongue-in-cheek versions of themselves, Webber's Los Angeles-set, microbudget dramedy delivers some rare and beautiful moments of daddy day-care, but its tone shifts more wildly than a preschooler's disposition and its narrative is stillborn.
  75. Jurassic World
    It’s fun enough while it lasts, but somehow, finally, all too much and not enough. The problem isn’t that dinosaurs have ceased to impress us, but that dinosaurs alone are not enough to sustain us
  76. Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary
    Stephen Vittoria's documentary about Mumia Abu-Jamal -- unrepentant commie cop-killer to some, political martyr to others -- makes no bones about its allegiance.
  77. The Taste of Money
    A trite and tangled potboiler that, despite its polemical pretensions, is just a glorified Korean domestic drama with classier couture and shapelier champagne flutes.
  78. Jobs
    Ultimately, Jobs is a prosaic but not unaffecting tribute to the virtues of defiance, nonconformity, artistry, beauty, craftsmanship, imagination and innovation, qualities it only intermittently reflects as a piece of filmmaking.
  79. The Fifth Estate
    Both the kindest and most damning thing you can say about The Fifth Estate is that it primarily hobbles itself by trying to cram in more context-needy material than any single drama should have to bear.
  80. The Sorcerer and the White Snake
    Overblown saga of shape-shifting demons, butt-kicking clerics and the perils of interspecies romance occasionally dazzles but finally frazzles with its relentless visual assault, embedding Jet Li and his capable castmates in one screensaver-ready fantasy backdrop after another.
  81. The Lords of Salem
    The helmer’s narrative dead end here registers not as a lack of nerve so much as a lack of imagination.
  82. The Lost Medallion
    With its godly themes confined to an otherwise entirely superfluous framing device, this kiddie action-adventure works up just enough lukewarm swashbuckling energy to pass muster with bored young children and the Sunday school teachers entrusted with their care.
  83. The Boxtrolls
    The meticulously crafted world is stunning to behold, imagined to the minutest detail and photographed with the sort of dramatic lighting and dynamic camera movement rarely seen in stop-motion. Trouble is, it’s not a place most folks would care to spend any time.
  84. My Amityville Horror
    This documentary plays like an extended episode of “Unsolved Mysteries,” deficient as it is in stylistic zeal, investigative spirit and plain old scares.
  85. Disconnect
    Well-meaning but dated and frequently risible issue-drama.
  86. Fruitvale Station
    Even if every word of Coogler’s account of the last day in Grant’s life held up under close scrutiny, the film would still ring false in its relentlessly positive portrayal of its subject.
  87. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    For all its failings, there is one thing about “Long Walk to Freedom” that can’t be denied: Idris Elba gives a towering performance, a Mandela for the ages.
  88. 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.
  89. The Other Side of the Ice
    With its striking Arctic scenery, “Ice” is a gorgeous if overexplained armchair adventure.
  90. Rapture-Palooza
    More irrelevant than irreverent, the unworthy script from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s” Chris Matheson might play to apocalyptically stoned college kids, but offers nothing in the way of broader social satire, suggesting the waste of a perfectly good Reckoning — not to mention the talents of a cast far funnier than the doom-and-gloom results suggest.
  91. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain
    Once you get past an incredibly self-indulgent intro — an uncomfortably long mash-up of comedy sketch and road-trip-with-entourage doc that seems simultaneously apologetic and arrogant — you can enjoy approximately an hour of boisterously freewheeling and unabashedly raunchy funny stuff in Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain.
  92. The Kill Hole
    No aspect asserts itself strongly enough for the whole to satisfy, and at times the pic’s humorless approach to cliches unintentionally borders on “MacGruber” territory.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beverly Hills Cop
    Beverly Hills Cop is more cop show than comedy riot. Expectations that Eddie Murphy's street brand of rebelliousness would devastate staid and glittery Beverly Hills are not entirely met in a film that grows increasingly dramatic.
    • Variety
  94. Leonie
    Played with a strong spine and a resolute lack of charm by Emily Mortimer, Gilmour is a perfect vehicle for Matsui’s agenda, which is clearly a feminist/revisionist celebration of the life of a major artist.
  95. Love Is All You Need
    Corny as a vat of polenta, but still rib-sticking enough to satisfy those who like lightly seasoned, easily digestible cinematic starch, Italy-set Love Is All You Need offers a romantic comedy for middle-aged palettes.
  96. Detour
    A moderately tense but also somewhat monotonous and overstretched exercise in claustrophobic suspense that doesn’t compare well to similar efforts like “Buried” and “127 Hours.”
  97. Midnight's Children
    It’s a vibrant journey, but not a terribly illuminating one.
  98. Tai Chi Hero
    A sporadically engaging martial-arts extravaganza that looks even better compared with its predecessor, last year’s borderline-insufferable “Tai Chi Zero.”
  99. Greetings from Tim Buckley
    The result is at once skillfully observed and a bit so-what.
  100. Austenland
    Austenland doesn’t really satirize Austen’s world (or fans) so much as use them as a pretext for a mixture of middling burlesque and routine romantic comedy.
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