Variety's Scores

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For 17,825 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 2.3 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: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
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  1. What Happened to Monday
    Wirkola’s film is set apart by its almost heroic lack of self-awareness: Not only does it not realize how dumb it is, there’s a real sense that it thinks it’s smart. In fact it’s a whirlygig of inanely convoluted plotting, deeply dubious philosophy and shots of Noomi Rapace sliding glasses across tables to herself. You should probably watch it.
  2. The Ardennes
    The climax quickens the film’s pulse but doesn’t exactly grow organically from what’s proceeded it.
  3. Herbie Fully Loaded
    A pleasingly retro recycling of "The Love Bug."
  4. The Nun II
    In some respects an improvement on its predecessor, in others not, this is finally one more good-enough if unmemorable entry sure to extend the series’ life in lucrative fashion.
  5. The Great Gilly Hopkins
    While uneven in places, The Great Gilly Hopkins works because it boasts an actress tough enough for the title role.
  6. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    The director, Adam Wingard (who made “Godzilla vs. Kong”), knows how to choreograph a beastie battle so that it does maximum damage in a way that appeals to your inner toy-smashing seven-year-old.
  7. The Game of Their Lives
    Picturesque pic, however, lacks even a penalty kick's worth of tension and is paradoxically inert for a movie about guys running up and down the pitch for the glory of the U.S.
  8. Maniac
    This merciless work of anti-entertainment is arguably admirable for being as disturbingly disgusting as it wants to be.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The General's Daughter
    The cinematic equivalent of a disposable airplane read, a hokey, kinky military thriller that's twisty and compelling enough to hook viewers in the mood for a trashy good time.
  10. Open Windows
    A fiendishly inventive thriller built around an audacious if unsustainable gimmick, Open Windows elevates Hitchcockian suspense to jittery new levels of mayhem and paranoia.
  11. A Boy Called Po
    Noble intentions alone do not a great movie make, as evidenced by Po, whose heart is in the right place but whose drama is woefully lacking in momentum.
  12. Common Ground
    This broadness of info only means the Tickells remain surface-level on most topics. Their Common Ground only teases but doesn’t dig deep enough into the intersection of racism and capitalism that brought us to today.
  13. Heaven Is for Real
    Those willing to engage may be pleasantly surprised by some of its understated virtues.
  14. The Giver
    The Giver reaches the screen in a version that captures the essence of Lowry’s affecting allegory but little of its mythic pull.
  15. Wyatt Earp
    If you're going to ask an audience to sit through a three-hour, nine-minute rendition of an oft-told story, it would help to have a strong point of view on your material and an urgent reason to relate it. Such is not the case with Wyatt Earp, a handsome, grandiose gentleman's Western that tries to tell evenhandedly more about the famous Tombstone lawman than has ever before been put onscreen.
  16. Monogamy
    A painfully dull plunge into the suffocating self-absorption that seems to be killing modern romance.
  17. Alice
    The power of the film — and of Palmer’s phenomenal performance — is watching Alice grow into her voice.
  18. The Alto Knights
    If there was any doubt as to De Niro’s greatness, it’s laid to rest in these face-to-face confrontations. No star could’ve held his own quite so effectively against De Niro.
  19. Empire Records
    A soundtrack in search of a movie, Empire Records is one teen-music effort that never finds a groove.
  20. Metropia
    The characters at first seem photorealistic, but their faces barely move. There are good, basic sci-fi ideas in the script, but they're not satisfyingly developed.
  21. Spring Fever
    Overlong and very Euro-flavored.
  22. Dosed
    This is a subject that deserves a rigorous documentary exploration, like Alison Klayman’s must-see psychotropic exposé “Take Your Pills.” But Dosed isn’t that kind of movie.
  23. Blair Witch
    Setting up a number of promising kinks in the now-standard found-footage formula, as the seemingly spooked forest begins to close in its hapless victims, Blair Witch disappointingly casts most of them aside for a finale that does little to advance the series’ existing mythos.
  24. The Skeleton Key
    Stirring up a humid Gothic mood and amassing a gifted roster of actors, The Skeleton Key is unable to ward off the nasty spirits of formula screenwriting.
  25. Hotel Transylvania
    A stale overprotective-dad story set within a location that could easily house a more inspired mix of characters and events.
  26. Rock of Ages
    Absent the infectious live-audience energy of Chris D'Arienzo's legit hit, this affectionate glam-rock-a-thon reps a visually bland staging of frankly insipid material, never tapping into the raucous, go-for-broke energy that would spin the show's cliches into gold, let alone platinum.
  27. A Teacher
    As first features go, A Teacher demonstrates a willingness to provoke, but doesn’t seem to understand the minimum expectations most audiences place on films in terms of both incident and characterization.
  28. Gunpowder Milkshake
    Men have been gorging on righteous, blood-splattering pulp action rides like this one for decades, and if women are now looking for the equivalent, Gunpowder Milkshake fits the bill. Its message is that there are a lot of Bills to kill.
  29. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    The warming glow of nostalgia only goes so far, with one's level of forgiveness likely dictated by where they reside along the "X-Files" fan continuum.
  30. The Good Guy
    Lacking much of a satirical bite, the pic's quasi-celebration of crude laddishness becomes oppressive.
  31. Like Mike
    The court action contains only a fraction of the hoops energy one would expect from a pic co-produced by NBA Entertainment -- and film suffers from the conspicuous absence of the title's Michael Jordan.
  32. Hollywood Homicide
    An attempt to merge a semi-jokey buddy movie with a more realistic account of cops' messy private lives, Hollywood Homicide falls short on both counts.
  33. U.S. Marshals
    Stuart Baird's new thriller is inferior to the Andrew Davis movie in every respect: script, acting, rhythm and even tech credits.
  34. Cats & Dogs
    This comically intended battle of the species is family entertainment for families that will buy anything.
  35. Big Trouble
    A genially amusing ensemble farce that doesn't quite achieve enough momentum for liftoff.
  36. The Alamo
    Refreshingly revisionist in the sense that it takes a relatively clear-eyed view of the messy lives and equivocal circumstances of many of the key participants.
  37. Marathon
    Marathon constitutes a brilliant but demanding finale to veteran Iranian helmer Amir Naderi's New York trilogy ("Manhattan by Numbers," "ABC Manhattan").
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Son of Dracula
    This is another in the Universal series of Dracula horror features. It's a good entry of its type.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Psycho
    A faithful-unto-slavish remake of the 1960 Hitchcock classic, pic contains nothing to outrage or offend partisans of the original, yet neither does it stand to add much to their appreciation.
  40. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    With just the right dose of magic and no shortage of sentiment, this inspirational parenting tale from writer-director Peter Hedges plays like "Mary Poppins" in reverse.
  41. Semi-Pro
    Very much in the tradition of "Slap Shot," George Roy Hill's raucously funny and foul-mouthed 1977 laffer about the misadventures of a minor-league hockey team, Semi-Pro scores big laughs with the rowdy play-by-play of hard-luck hoopsters struggling for professional survival.
  42. 15: The Movie
    15 is Asian Kid Rebels 101. So predictable it could almost be a parody of the genre -- though that would require a sense of humor above and beyond the self-reflexive comedy on display here.
  43. The Witches
    Anne Hathaway’s performance provides the film with a sick-joke center of gravity, and Zemeckis, sticking to Dahl’s elemental storyline, stages it all with a prankish flair that leaves you buzzed.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Stepmother Is an Alien
    My Stepmother Is an Alien is a failed attempt to mix many of the film genres associated with the 'alien' idea into a sprightly romp.
  45. Lakeview Terrace
    Delivers fairly tense and engrossing drama before succumbing to thriller convention.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Neighbors
    Other than a few laughs the reason for the film is a little puzzling. Ultimately it is Belushi and Aykroyd that make the picture work. When they hit the comedic mark, as they more often than not do here, nothing else seems to matter.
  47. Everybody's Fine
    Though a bit too artful to merit the pejorative "tearjerker" label, the film is rigorously streamlined to deliver a good emotional uppercut by the end, and purely on the strength of its craft, it connects.
  48. Operation Christmas Drop
    An anodyne, friction-free romantic comedy that faintly distinguishes itself from its snow-sprayed genre brethren with enticingly balmy South Pacific scenery. If nothing else, it gives viewers something to daydream about while they keep half an eye on its story.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    National Lampoon's European Vacation
    Story [by John Hughes] of a frenetic, chaotic tour of the Old World, with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo reprising their roles as determined vacationers, is graceless and only intermittently lit up by lunacy and satire.
  50. Dead & Beautiful
    A middling horror-thriller and social satire that opens with an intriguing premise but never probes its cashed-up characters deeply enough to create gripping drama from the heightened hedonism or existential crises they experience after acquiring new powers.
  51. Fuori
    Martone’s repetitive, tediously non-linear film attempts something more impressionistic and expansive, with emotionally muted and sometimes strangely exploitative results.
  52. Slipstream
    Apparently needing to release some private thoughts, musings and images to the world, Anthony Hopkins takes a leap into stunning self-indulgence with his directorial debut, Slipstream.
  53. Gypsy 83
    Couldn't be less involving and more sentimentalized.
  54. Kate
    Winstead makes you believe, however improbably, that if a woman like Kate actually existed outside a screenwriter’s imagination, she wouldn’t be far off from this portrayal: isolated, mule-headed and ready for a change.
  55. I Trapped the Devil
    Doesn’t ultimately provide quite enough reward for a slow buildup. But it proves Lobo an able helmer (if one who could probably use a co-writer next time), eking decent atmospherics and good performances within a potentially claustrophobic premise.
  56. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
    The origin story was the charm, but the sequel is hobbled by a less buoyant hero and bland villains.
  57. Until Dawn
    It’s monotonous and derivative and numbing. It’s a grab bag that traps you in a version of hell, though the problem isn’t that the movie is like a video game. It’s that it’s like a video game that’s got no game.
  58. Interior. Leather Bar.
    A partly authentic, partly scripted behind-the-scenes featurette that never quite conveys the star’s “high/curious” interest in all things taboo.
  59. 44 Inch Chest
    On the debit side, and it's a doozy, the picture's narrative trajectory fails to deliver a third act that takes the story anywhere of note except into a silly realm of cut-rate surrealism. Final reel ends not with the expected bang but with an almost inaudible whimper.
  60. Drones
    Drones is a middling real-time thriller.
  61. A Brighter Tomorrow
    Giovanni may be the main character of A Brighter Tomorrow — a conceit shamelessly lifted from Fellini’s “8 1/2” — but Moretti pokes fun at himself, privileging other characters’ points of view as well.
  62. Just Like Heaven
    As uneven as the topography of its San Francisco locales, but the amiable peaks mostly offset the flat stretches and valleys. A variation on a very old meet-cute theme with a touch of otherworldly romance.
  63. Before I Disappear
    Piling on the misery-laden subplots in scene after angry, overamped scene, Before I Disappear is the sort of movie that can’t stop reminding you how cruel the world is and how messed up its people are, to the point where its bludgeoning cynicism feels no more authentic or lived-in than the glimmer of hope that suddenly breaks on the horizon.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pink Floyd: The Wall
    An eye-popping dramatization of an audio storyline. Being a visual translation of a so-called 'concept' album, pic works extremely well in carrying over the somber tone of the LP.
  65. Love Potion #9
    Inspired by the 1959 hit song, Dale Launer’s Love Potion No. 9 is a light-hearted one-joke romantic comedy that tries too hard to be cute. Glib humor and emphasis on “feel good” values aim squarely at the dating crowd and twentysomething couples. But lack of real wit and comic vitality, absence of star names and sluggish pace make pic less appealing than it might have been.
  66. The Mission
    There’s nothing terribly wrong with Anderson’s documentary — save that after 96 minutes, any viewer could well obliviously walk right past its principal subjects on the street, so fleeting an impression do they make in this surface-level portrait.
  67. Mr. Jones
    A high-energy performance by Richard Gere and an intensely brooding one from Lena Olin engage attentive viewer interest, but the stars are forced to overcompensate for a rather slow pace and lack of plot.
  68. The A-Team
    Best enjoyed (a la the "Mission: Impossible" franchise) by simply admiring the explosions and silliness without dwelling too much on the skeletal plot.
  69. The Passion of the Christ
    If an age produces the renditions of classic stories that reflect those times, then The Passion of the Christ, which is violent, contentious, emotional, extreme and highly proficient, must be the Jesus movie for this era.
  70. Just Friends
    A surprisingly shrewd and energetic romantic comedy.
  71. 24 Hours on Craigslist
    Picture is a colorful human mosaic.
  72. The Disappearance of Finbar
    Brit filmmaker Sue Clayton's muddled feature bow is full of intriguing ideas and incidental charms that fail to come together into a cohesive whole.
  73. Phyllis and Harold
    Evocatively fleshed out with surprisingly iconic homemovies, passionate love letters and well-chosen pop tunes, Kleine's homegrown Jewish "Madame Bovary" escapes the navel-gazing boundaries of the personal-diary docu by the sheer force of its evocation of bygone sensuality.
  74. At the Devil's Door
    At the Devil’s Door (which premiered at SXSW last spring under the title “Home”) ends up too tentative and underdeveloped, playing like an attenuated prologue for a bigger film.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    History of the World: Part I
    The one interlude which really brings down the house has Brooks working as a waiter at the Last Supper and asking the assembled group. ‘Are you all together or is it separate checks?’..As the old ad line said, there’s something here to offend everybody, particularly the devout of all persuasions and homosexuals.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Manitou
    This bout between good and Satan includes some scares, camp and better than average credits.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bobby Deerfield
    Bobby Deerfield is a brilliantly unusual love story, told in a European fashion which makes the Sydney Pollack film at first irritating, then intriguing, finally most rewarding and emotionally satisfying.
  78. Secret Society
    Charmingly eccentric light comedy.
  79. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    Has surprising hipness and good humor to spare, all put across with a funky, low-tech vibe.
  80. The Other Side of the Bed
    A nicely contempo mood, engaging characters energized by solid perfs from a good-looking, high-profile young cast, and genuinely witty scripting are let down only by over-length and some generally turgid tunes.
  81. Anything But Love
    A low-budget musical so steeped in nostalgia that accusing it of being too old-fashioned is like accusing "Gone With the Wind" of being too Southern, (Standard Time-as this film was once titled) wears its heart, intentions and limitations on its sleeve.
  82. Treading Water
    Emitting the unpleasant stench of over-affectation, Treading Water slaps together its particular peculiarities with such randomness, it’s as if the film were conceived from blindly throwing disparate elements at the wall.
  83. Nostalgia
    Though lent a degree of executional grace by helmer Mark Pellington, Nostalgia nonetheless emerges an inorganic experiment that might’ve seemed more at home developed for the stage or as a novella.
  84. In Secret
    Serviceable but uninspired, this latest version of Emile Zola’s much-adapted 1867 novel “Therese Raquin” sends its characters to their doom on schedule without stirring much sense of tragedy or emotional involvement.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Predator 2
    While the film doesn’t achieve the same thrills of the final 45 minutes of Predator in terms of overall excitement, it outdoes its first safari in start-to-finish hysteria. The real star is the pic’s design. Writers don’t waste much time on character development.
  86. Black Rock
    Straining to be a distaff “Deliverance,” indie thriller Black Rock is unable to shock, much less convince.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Perfect
    Set in the world of journalism, pic is guilty of the sins it condemns - superficiality, manipulation and smugness.
  88. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
    The studio has simply re-made the first movie, only with bigger pratfalls.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    For the Love of Benji
    Only a heart of steel can resist this pooch...The tale itself is slim, and while the plot is a bit contrived, and all of the loose ends tied up a bit too neatly in the film’s last five minutes, it should be remembered that For the Love of Benji is merely a star vehicle. The idea is to watch the dog act.
  90. The Tenants
    Keeps grimly glued to its one-note premise, relieved by nary a glimmer of humor, surprise or personality.
  91. Alien Abduction
    A sci-fi thriller as generic as its title, Alien Abduction generates only low-voltage shocks.
  92. Forces of Nature
    An extremely enjoyable neo-screwball comedy about attractive opposites on the road.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thing Called Love
    Perhaps there's not much new to say about the dues and disappointments involved in breaking into the country music scene, but the scenes are fresh and the emotions real in Peter Bogdanovich's tune-laden, mixed-mood drama.
  94. Around the Bend
    Self-consciously mannered yet fitfully interesting, Around the Bend gets the most mileage it can from the eccentric, low-key charisma of Christopher Walken.
  95. Autumn
    Francophile film buffs and obsessive deconstructionists might be amused, but less indulgent auds will find derivative pic artificial and mannered.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Newsies
    Newsies was made with care and affection by choreographer-turned-director Kenny Ortega. But the writers have created cardboard cutouts instead of flesh-and-blood characters.
  97. The Dilemma
    Not a particularly funny movie. Indeed, the true dilemma of this misguided seriocomedy lies in the filmmakers' confusion as to whether they're making a side-splitting bromance (nope) or an unsparing, warts-and-all look at screwed-up relationships (sort of).
  98. Gringo
    There’s an old-school, B-movie snap to much of the proceedings, which Nash Edgerton modernizes without imposing too flashy a style upon the material. It’s pulp, plain and simple, delivering on the chance to watch depraved characters navigate unseemly situations.
  99. Wonder Wheel
    It’s got movement and flow, it’s got a vibrant sunset look of honky-tonk nostalgia, and it’s got a bittersweet mood of lyrical despair that the film stays true to right up until the final note. It’s also strikingly acted.
  100. Now You See Me 2
    Now You See Me 2 is more like a giddy piece of cheese from the ’80s, a chance to spend two more hours with characters we like, doing variations on the things that made us like them in the first place. The revisit, in this case, is well-earned.
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