Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Nona
    Nona greatly improves if you view it not as a problematic, lopsided attempt to convey the personal danger and political urgency of current migration trends, but as a small, impressionistic two-character piece that veers earnestly if misguidedly into larger issues in its closing lap.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stay Hungry
    Underneath it all is a lurching and poorly defined film concept.
  3. The Wedding Guest
    What’s lacking is personality from the human characters, which is a serious failing, considering how the film shifts into character mode as Apte slowly emerges as an equal to Patel, while both remain too guarded for audiences to fully appreciate as people.
  4. Jingle All the Way
    Based on an idea similar to the premise of Home Alone, though not nearly as accomplished or entertaining, and produced by that film's director, Chris Columbus, this family comedy-adventure is decidedly not a vintage Schwarzenegger kidpic on the order of Kindergarten Cop.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Farewell, My Lovely
    Farewell, My Lovely is a lethargic, vaguely campy tribute to Hollywood's private eye mellers of the 1940s and to writer Raymond Chandler, whose Phillip Marlowe character has inspired a number of features. Despite an impressive production and some firstrate performances, this third version fails to generate much suspense or excitement.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Basket Case
    Basket Case is an ultra-cheap monster film created by neophyte filmmaker Frank Henenlotter with a tongue-in-cheek approach.
  7. Then Came You
    Since the filmmakers’ hearts are clearly in the right place, it’s a shame its parts couldn’t knit together a bit more seamlessly. The narrative’s lifeblood is the sweet friendship that develops between Calvin and Skye — and the actors’ magnetic chemistry keeps that alive.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lifeguard
    An unsatisfying film, of uncertain focus on a 30-ish guy who doesn't yet seem to know what he wants. Script takes Sam Elliott through another Southern California beach summer as a career lifeguard, encountering the usual string of offbeat characters found in the type of made-for-TV feature which this project resembles.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lifeforce
    Pic [from the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson] descends into subpar Agatha Christie territory.
  10. Swing Kids
    A brash, busy and often bizarre genre mashup from South Korean blockbuster merchant Kang Hyeong-Cheol, this far-fetched tale of an African-American G.I. finding terpsichorean kinship with a group of Asian misfits in a POW camp brings a bit of “Footloose”-style pep to an otherwise bloodily solemn anti-war tragedy.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hard Times
    The production has a very handsome mid-1930s New Orleans period flavour but the cast can’t lick the script.
  12. The Amityville Murders
    The gap between good intentions and effective follow-through is maybe the distinguishing characteristic of this latest “Amityville” movie, which takes itself with admirable seriousness, yet in the end can’t itself be taken very seriously.
  13. Totally F***ed Up
    This ultra-low-budget, Godardian "homo movie" feels like a step backward to his earlier group mopes rather than an advance beyond his provocative last film, The Living End.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rolling Thunder
    Excellent cast performs well, but not well enough and Paul Schrader's story is strong, but not strong enough. In sum, it neither rolls nor thunders.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bride
    While there is deliberate humor at times, most of it successfully produced by a lilting dwarf character who steals the movie (David Rappaport), the intention of the filmmakers is not camp. That’s both the pic’s virtue and, at the conclusion, its downfall.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Midway
    The June 1942 sea-air battle off Midway Island was a turning point in World War II. However, the melee of combat was the usual hysterical jumble of noise, explosion and violent death. Midway tries to combine both aspects but succumbs to the confusion.
  17. Dragon Ball Super: Broly
    If you’re among the heretofore uninitiated drawn to this new Dragon Ball extravaganza, which has been dubbed into English and booked into 1,440 North American theaters, you may often find yourself experiencing similar frustration as you struggle to make sense of a patchwork plot that seems derived from various strands of the ongoing mythos, and is filled with apparently major characters whose backstories are only fuzzily defined.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Honkytonk Man
    Honkytonk Man is one of those well-intentioned efforts that doesn't quite work. It seems that Clint Eastwood took great pains in telling this story of an aging, struggling country singer but he is done in by the predictability of the script [from Clancy Carlile's own novel] and his own limitations as a warbler.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Above the Law
    With a couple dozen stunt persons and an earthy, warm and supportive partner (Pam Grier), Seagal kicks, kills and crushes with his skillful hands one handful after another of street hoods who try and thwart his mission.
  20. Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
    Bogosian provides some much-needed comic relief to the slogging tale. He turns in solid work, as does Everett McGill as his head strongman, but they and others are saddled with pedestrian dialogue and motivation.
  21. On Deadly Ground
    This is a vanity production parading as a social statement. It nonetheless has enough sound, fury and flash to satisfy the action crowd who have propped up Seagal’s career.
  22. Fire Down Below
    Typical action fare for martial arts star Steven Seagal and, in his limited oeuvre, one of the more entertaining efforts. But the genre is pedestrian, and Seagal makes no new moves here in terms of screen personality or acting skill. What fun there is lies in the villains, some nifty stunts and a bouncy musical score rife with regional sounds.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rio Lobo
    Rio Lobo is the sort of western that John Wayne and producer-director Howard Hawks do in their sleep. But by no stretch of nostalgia does it match such previous Wayne-Hawks epics as Red River or Rio Bravo.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cocoon: The Return
    Not altogether charmless, Cocoon: The Return still is far less enjoyable a senior folks' fantasy than Cocoon. An overdose of bathos weighs down the sprightliness of the characters, resulting in a more maudlin than magic effort.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cactus Flower
    Cactus Flower drags, which is probably the worst thing that can be said of a light comedy. It's due to sloppy direction by Gene Saks and the miscasting of Walter Matthau opposite Ingrid Bergman.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Flyers
    American Flyers is most entertaining when it rolls along unencumbered by big statements. Unfortunately, overblown production just pumps hot air in too many directions and comes up limp.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
    With more than a third of the footage devoted to spectacular chases and collisions deftly staged by stunt coordinator Al Wyatt, there’s little time left to hint at the reasons for Fonda’s increasingly unappetizing monomania.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    True Confessions
    Comes off as relatively mild fare which fails to pack a dramatic or emotional wallop.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fort Apache the Bronx
    Driving relentlessly to make points that are almost pointless, Fort Apache The Bronx is a very patchy picture, strong on dialog and acting and exceedingly weak on story.
  30. Abominable
    The journey is wondrous for the characters, less compelling for the audience.
  31. Ma
    You can’t take Ma seriously. It’s a squalid formula picture that’s too busy connecting dots, hitting beats, engineering situations designed to make you squirm. But you will squirm.
  32. Piranhas
    To watch young people fall into old patterns is still to watch those old patterns, and the film cannot escape the familiarity of its archetypal, rise-to-power, fall-from-grace narrative.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cutter's Way
    Cutter's Way suffers from a terminal case of creative indecision. With any number of initially intriguing plot lines, director Ivan Passer and scripter Jeffrey Alan Fiskin never come close to shedding light on what, if anything, this picture is really about. Jeff Bridges, John Heard and Lisa Eichhorn all deliver exceptionally fine topline performances, but their efforts seem wasted in such a weak vehicle.
  34. Finding Steve McQueen
    Finding Steve McQueen is a ramshackle indie heist drama that has a little bit (but not much) to do with Steve McQueen.
  35. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
    The movie, with all that combat, is staged on an impressively grand scale by the returning director, James Wan, but at the same time there’s something glumly standard about it.
  36. The Cannibal Club
    Guto Parente’s eighth feature is a mixed bag: a diverting, stylish, but ultimately rather trite satire whose social critique and grand guignol aspects never quite come to a full boil.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Straw Dogs
    Director Sam Peckinpah indulges himself in an orgy of unparalleled violence and nastiness with undertones of sexual repression in this production.
  38. Go Back to China
    The capable cast and brisk pacing keep attention held toward a happy ending that pleases even if it is a bit pat, not to mention inevitable.
  39. Porno
    Unfortunately, Porno gets more uneven as it goes on, with a somewhat slack midsection and a mix of earnestness, broad comedy, titillation, and moralizing that neither fully gels, nor makes something unpredictably wild out of those clashing elements.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Charly
    Considering the innumerable stumbling blocks, cast does well. Cliff Robertson seems to overdo the external manifestations of retardation, but he is excellent in the post-operative scenes. With more help from the script he could have been a movingly tragic figure.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blow-Up
    As a commentary on a sordid, confused side of humanity in this modern age it's a bust.
  42. The Last
    Compared with “Us,” also in theaters now, the movie feels benign, almost polite — which can’t possibly be what Lipsky had in mind. No, he seems determined to shock, but his films are like those proverbial trees, falling noisily in empty forests. That’s not to say Lipsky should stop making movies — one hopes The Last won’t be his last — but that it might be a good time to take a serious look at what he’s trying to achieve, if hardly anyone’s paying attention.
  43. The Dead Don't Die
    The Dead Don’t Die fancies itself a cutting-edge macabre comedy, but the truth is that it’s behind the curve of pop culture. That’s why it’s a disappointing trifle.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Undefeated
    Film has a basic storyline, character elements and dialog for what might have been a superior drama and possibly a great western. But Andrew McLaglen's direction, seems to consist of splicing together cliches, static camera work and Central Casting of the bit parts.
  45. Mia and the White Lion
    Despite a heartfelt sentiment that one person has the power to uproot societal structure and inspire change, and the filmmakers’ desire to raise awareness about an abhorrent practice, packaging it in a family-friendly narrative proves to be wildly problematic.
  46. William
    Tim Disney’s film strikes a bland compromise between science-fantasy, suspense-melodrama and family entertainment, developing no element to a level that generates more than mild interest. It’s a polished but dull enterprise that leaves one wondering just what the filmmakers had in mind.
  47. Kalank
    Despite the preponderance of sets and costumes spectacular enough to make Baz Luhrmann weep with envy, and a handful of thrillingly choreographed production numbers that sporadically quicken the movie’s pulse and boost its eye-candy quotient, the attractive yet underwhelming lead players are too hampered by the lethargic narrative to sufficiently distract viewers from their awareness of time passing and interest diminishing.
  48. 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.
  49. Murder Mystery
    Murder Mystery feels as shamelessly gaudy as paste jewelry — a trinket for nights that aspire to nothing more exotic than a pizza — but Aniston sparkles like the real deal.
  50. Bolden
    Pritzker and Rothschild’s script feels like such a composite of jazz biopics that its only in the performance sequences, parceled out stingily amid the misery, in which Bolden really comes alive.
  51. American Woman
    American Woman isn’t dull, but the narrative feels more over-stuffed than surprising, and the packaging busy rather than evocative. There’s no unifying directorial tone or stylistic tact to lend the film the symphonic grandeur it sometimes appears to be aiming for.
  52. My Son
    Themes of parental guilt and the effects of broken families on children are hinted at early but discarded in favor of genre pleasures, which Carion provides to increasingly formulaic effect.
  53. XY Chelsea
    While it’s hardly Hawkins’ error that his documentary feels unfinished — the self-defined activist’s dramatic saga is still unfolding as we speak — you can’t help but feel his unprecedented access to Manning should have emanated a portrait a lot more enlightening.
  54. Oh Mercy!
    Although Desplechin claims his main interest is to get inside the two women’s characters, pushing away moral absolutes about guilt and innocence (yes, “Crime and Punishment” is a key influence), the couple come off as the least interesting people on screen.
  55. On a Magical Night
    On a Magical Night is whimsically cute, provocative in a coy way, and more than a little in love with itself.
  56. The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily
    Yet given the opportunity for misinterpretation, it’s a shame the filmmakers didn’t find a way of reworking the story to ensure the taint of anti-immigration rhetoric couldn’t be applied to what’s designed as a children’s tale.
  57. Papicha
    The screenplay’s seams show so glaringly, and the finish is so tonally mismatched, that notwithstanding audience identification and the inevitable “loosely inspired by real events” tagline, Papicha feels conspicuously manipulative.
  58. Chicuarotes
    As a film, Chicuarotes is intermittently impressive and as a director, García Bernal clearly has real heart — it’s just that here, he puts it in the wrong place.
  59. 21 Bridges
    Boseman’s role doesn’t offer nearly as much complexity as the screenwriters seem to think — which is why the movie needs an actor like him to distract us from its many plot holes and paradoxes.
  60. After Midnight
    It’s not enough just to be offbeat. Defy whatever rules it might, a movie has to find its own beat, and After Midnight still seems to be weighing its options when the final credits roll.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Quartet
    Director James Ivory takes his usual aloofly observant distance and the film's love triangle loses some drastic impetus.
  62. Between Two Ferns: The Movie
    Between Two Ferns: The Movie has some laughs, but it’s essentially the tossed-together version of a hangout movie. It’s a roast served at room temperature.
  63. Alice and the Mayor
    A movie so enamored by its self-perception of cleverness that even policy wonks will find it hard to muster enthusiasm.
  64. Our Mothers
    Notwithstanding a few genuinely affecting moments, Our Mothers never breaks free from being a standard social-issue movie mostly invested in preaching the cause.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hustler
    Unfoldment of the screenplay, based on novel by Walter S. Tevis, is far overlength, and despite the excellence of Newman’s portrayal of the boozing pool hustler the sordid aspects of overall picture are strictly downbeat.
  66. Bennett's War
    While “War” may be a duly formulaic feel-gooder at heart, it also soft-pedals the more potentially heavy-handed emotional beats to pleasing effect.
  67. Astronaut
    In the end, only a fraction of McLeod’s ambitions sticks a landing. But Astronaut stays afloat with sweetness, thanks to a measured performance from Dreyfuss.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Man Who Would Be King
    Whether it was the intention of John Huston or not, the tale of action and adventure is a too-broad comedy, mostly due to the poor performance of Michael Caine.
  69. Cold Blood
    Jean Reno, whose reputation will only suffer the slightest ding after this lackluster outing quickly fades from memory, should ponder and deliberate a little harder the next time he’s asked to play an aging hitman.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    She's Having a Baby
    She's Having a Baby is an oddly uneven and quasi-serious look into the angst of the early years of a contemporary marriage that parallels TV's thirtysomething. There are many comedic setups which, if they were with less architypically drawn characters, might have delivered the laughs with the refreshingly innocent joy that has been the hallmark of other John Hughes pics.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crossroads
    Seneca acquits himself very nicely, while director Walter Hill pulls of the expected professional mob, but he pushes so hard for pace that he skates right over the opportunities for thought that the subject calls for.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tuff Turf
    This modestly budgeted youth pic is a poor man's and partially musicalized Rebel without a Cause with a touch of The Warriors thrown in.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Force of Evil
    Force of Evil fails to develop the excitement hinted at in the title. Makers apparently couldn't decide on the best way to present an expose of the numbers racket, winding up with neither fish nor fowl as far as hard-hitting racketeer meller is concerned. A poetic, almost allegorical, interpretation keeps intruding on the tougher elements of the plot. This factor adds no distinction and only makes the going tougher.
  74. Black and Blue
    Black and Blue feels imbalanced and overlong, favoring fast and repetitive chase scenes over well-calibrated tension.
  75. The Great Hack
    Privacy issues aside (and I’m second to none in my concern about them), the movie, in its ham-fisted fashion, is trying to come up with some way to regulate what it despises.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bedroom Window
    Curtis Hanson’s screenplay [from the novel The Witnesses by Anne Holden] involves several ingenious plot twists. Huppert carries the first half of the film, replaced by McGovern in importance in the final reels and both actresses are alluring and mysterious in keeping the piece suspenseful. Unfortunately, a lot of coincidences and just plain stupid actions by Guttenberg are relied upon to keep the pot boiling.
  77. See You Soon
    Steamier and sleeker than a Hallmark Channel movie, but with just as many idealized scenarios, it’s “so bad, it’s good” escapism at its finest.
  78. Trespassers
    The result falls short of being especially credible, let alone memorable. Still, this is a polished genre exercise that provides a decent night’s home entertainment.
  79. The Jesus Rolls
    In the end, the project doesn’t really work. The Coen brothers have a touch for the absurd, and a gift for dialogue, that’s lacking here, and without those two qualities, Jesus wears out his welcome relatively early in the journey.
  80. Above the Shadows
    This magical-realist fairy tale, about a young woman feeling so isolated and insignificant after a tragic loss that she’s literally invisible to everyone except one other struggling soul, is certainly imaginative and intelligent in its ideas. However, the savvy smarts within don’t quite sustain the running time and, much like its protagonist, the film becomes transparent in its motives and sentimentality.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Way We Were
    A distended, talky, redundant and moody melodrama, combining young love, relentless 1930s and 1940s nostalgia, and spiced artifically with Hollywood Red-hunt pellets. The major positive achievement is Barbra Streisand's superior dramatic versatility, but Robert Redford has too little to work with in the script.
  82. Paradise Hills
    If you’ve ever wanted a mashup of Disney princess movies and “The Stepford Wives” or imagined “The Handmaid’s Tale” as a swoony YA fantasy, Paradise Hills is absolutely the movie for you.
  83. Jirga
    As interesting as all this is, and as challenging and perilous it must have been to capture these images, Jirga’s elliptical approach to plot and selective use of subtitles does the finished product no favors.
  84. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
    Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is a ride, a head trip, a CGI horror jam, a what-is-reality Marvel brainteaser and, at moments, a bit of an ordeal. It’s a somewhat engaging mess, but a mess all the same.
  85. Endings, Beginnings
    The movie may be a self-help exercise of sorts — for those who seldom recognize themselves on screen, and who don’t measure up to the expectations set by rom-coms and princess movies — but it’s disguised as a shaggy character study.
  86. Greed
    The emperor is naked, Greed wants us to realize, but unless we agree to radically rethink our own wardrobes, does it make any difference?
  87. I Am Woman
    The film doesn’t contextualize Reddy within the musical personalities of her era (beyond saying she sure wasn’t cock-rockers Deep Purple, another Wald client), so newbies may well come away with no idea why she had a unique niche in the ’70s entertainment landscape.
  88. While at War
    This is a worthy enterprise that errs on the side of caution, carrying the slightly stale whiff of awards-bait cinema in which greatness is frequently signaled but inspiration somehow lacking.
  89. Don't Let Go
    With any luck, Relive will get a reboot down the road, in which someone takes better advantage of the basic idea.
  90. Before You Know It
    A diverting yet awkward mix of farcical elements and earnest feeliness. The two never quite gel, and it’s hard to care about the nice characters who somewhat improbably put up with wildly insufferable ones. There’s some invention and good humor here, yet the whole feels inorganic.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hospital
    The heavily sprayed-on sociological angle is that hospitals today treat patients like baggage.
  92. Zombieland: Double Tap
    Humor turns every kill into a sick punchline, and while the writers do a fine job of making them funny, like macabre cartoons in which Wile E. Coyote can rebound from unthinkable injuries, the movie’s tone negates a fundamental respect for human life.
  93. Seberg
    Every time it threatens to truly pierce the psyche of its subject, played with typically intriguing, elusory intelligence by Kristen Stewart, the more ordinary mechanics of the movie she’s serving get in the way.
  94. Girls with Balls
    Lavant’s performance as a wordless, deranged, bloodthirsty cult leader is the one note of genuine eccentricity and menace in a film that’s mostly devoted to slapstick comedy and decapitation.
  95. The Burnt Orange Heresy
    Watching The Burnt Orange Heresy, you may find yourself wishing one of two things: that Claes Bang and Elizabeth Debicki had been around to make elegant little mystery capers with Alfred Hitchcock in his prime, or that Hitch were around today to direct this one, a marble-cool art-fraud thriller that begins lithely and sexily before, somewhat mystifyingly, it takes a terminal turn for the dour.
  96. The Perfect Candidate
    At every step, Al Mansour feeds the audience exactly what she thinks will make them feel good about positive change in Saudi Arabia, setting up conflict and resolution with all the nuance of a by-the-numbers construction kit.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Long Goodbye
    Robert Altman's film version of Raymond Chandler's novel is an uneven mixture of insider satire on the gumshow film genre, gratuitous brutality, and sledgehammer whimsy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Funhouse
    Devotees of director Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will be particularly disappointed with the almost total lack of shocks and mayhem.
  99. Burn
    The problem is that writer-director Mike Gan’s first feature, though competently handled in most departments, doesn’t commit enough to any approach to fulfill its potential.
  100. The Way Back
    I’d love to see Affleck star in a film about an addict with nothing to explain his addiction but his own flawed, desperate, hungry soul. That’s a movie that could speak to us — the way that Ben Affleck’s real story already does — far more than this modestly well-made Sunday-school lesson.
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