Variety's Scores

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For 17,831 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: 9,163 out of 17831
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17831
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17831
17831 movie reviews
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  1. A Family Affair
    Sadly, the film plays more like an artless quickie than a fully fleshed-out romance.
  2. Night School
    Night School has a handful of laughs, but it’s a bloated trifle that, at 111 minutes, overstays its welcome.
  3. Wish I Was Here
    The result is unquestionably an auteur film, but one festooned with so many bad and unnecessary ideas that one can’t help wondering if a more modest, hemmed-in version of the same project might not have proved more effective.
  4. Total Recall (2012)
    Crazy new gadgets, vigorous action sequences and a thorough production-design makeover aren't enough to keep Total Recall from feeling like a near-total redundancy.
  5. Suspended Animation
    A psychological drama cum genteel shocker that's long on ambition and short on delivery.
  6. Riding in Cars with Boys
    The result under Penny Marshall's direction is a film with genuinely serious intentions that falls considerably short of its intentions.
  7. The Last Castle
    A disappointingly pedestrian prison meller that falls between stools artistically and politically.
  8. Hope Floats
    A dreadfully dull, completely conventional story of a young wife's recuperation from being unceremoniously dumped, this is a by-the-numbers bit of emotional calculation without a single fresh, original or offbeat move in its system, apart from a nifty opening sequence.
  9. Paycheck
    Uninspired star turns from Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman suggest something less than full belief in this quickly forgettable thriller.
  10. Kingpin
    Peter and Bobby Farrelly aimed low and grossed millions with "Dumb & Dumber," so it shouldn't be surprising that Kingpin, their latest effort, offers a similar mix of pratfalls, gross-out gags and jokes about bodily functions. This time, however, the humor is darker, edgier and occasionally, even more scatological.
  11. From Other Worlds
    Picture's leaps into the fantastic and rampantly farcical tend to be overextended, but finally don't detract from what is a well-judged, light entertainment.
  12. The War on Kids
    A startling wake-up call about appalling conditions prevailing in American schools, The War on Kids contradicts popular wisdom.
  13. Salt of This Sea
    That the taste of Annemarie Jacir's feature debut should be bitter is completely understandable given the untenable Palestinian situation, but the heavy-handed, excessively didactic script plays like a primer for people only vaguely aware of the issues while overly confirmed in their righteousness.
  14. Phillip the Fossil
    The edge achieved by director-editor-producer-scribe Garth Donovan is jeopardized by overreaching for topical relevance.
  15. The Brass Teapot
    Despite the inherent perversity of the concept, Mosley succeeds in maintaining a certain sweetness throughout. Even more impressively, she makes her low-budget enterprise look as slick as most midrange studio comedies, demonstrating herself a director with both imagination and technical ingenuity.
  16. Bottled Up
    A terminally quirky indie dramedy, Bottled Up risks trivializing prescription drug abuse in service of a trite middle-age romance.
  17. This Is Not a Ball
    Muniz uncovers a raft of intriguing people and stories, with subjects ranging from sports to astrophysics, gender politics, history and developmental psychology, but he never sits still with them long enough to ask any probing questions, and the film never arrives at any real point.
  18. Never Too Late
    While Never Too Late goes for a few too many old-folk chuckles, it also aims to probe the serious.
  19. Hocus Pocus
    With Bette Midler and her onscreen sisters shamelessly hamming things up, it looks as if those involved in making this inoffensive flight of fantasy had more fun than anyone over 12 will have watching it. Still, the blend of witchcraft and comedy should divert kids without driving the patience of their parents to the boiling point, leaving a chance to conjure up a little box office magic among that contingent before the pot tips over.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights is a competent, tasteful, frequently even lovely re-adaption of Emily Bronte's Gothic, mystical love story. But the brooding tension, the electric passion of two lovers compelled to an inevitable tragedy is not generated.
  21. The Wolfman
    The constant repetition of these shock tactics, in lieu of genuine suspense, makes The Wolfman feel cheap, despite the vast amounts obviously spent on Rick Heinrichs' opulent production design, the extensive visual effects, the more-than-effective special makeup effects, Milena Canonero's luxurious costumes, Danny Elfman's insistent score and the tony cast.
  22. Dear John
    Ultimately, the story feels as if it's killing time before throwing the next hurdle at the couple.
  23. Youth Without Youth
    Attempting to harness multiple genres, pic is brought down by ponderous dialogue (much of it dubbed) and an inability to connect with its characters.
  24. 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.
  25. Lost in Space
    A pic that provides one hour's decent, eye-filling ride, then crashes and burns amid some of the worst writing since ... well, since scenarist/co-producer Akiva Goldsman's last effort, "Batman & Robin."
  26. Death by China
    One need not fully subscribe to Peter Navarro's demonization to appreciate his lucid wake-up call to the imminent dangers of the huge U.S.-China trade imbalance and its disastrous impact on the American economy.
  27. Automatons
    An unwieldy mix of self-conscious camp and heavy-handed allegory, Automatons plays like a cheesy '50s no-budget sci-fier with serious delusions of grandeur.
  28. A Dog's Journey
    One wishes the film were a bit more inventive with its dog’s-eye view: the odd ground-level action shot aside, there isn’t much to cinematically suggest how animals see the world differently.
  29. Vita & Virginia
    As Vita & Virginia loses its girlishness, drawn like the tides to the solemn maturity of Debicki’s performance. With her as the lodestar, this is a stranger and more intriguing film than it really has a right to be, one that becomes less about a clandestine courtship between famous women, and more about Woolf’s relationship with her writing, and with the workings of her own beautiful, restless mind.
  30. Women in Trouble
    A wildly uneven but compulsively watchable mix of high camp and grand passions, soap opera and softcore sex. Very much in the deliriously lewd style of Pedro Almodovar.
  31. 360
    With a multilingual cast of mostly unfamiliar faces, plus a few stars, 360 feels too abstract, orchestrating break-ups and hook-ups in a passionless vacuum.
  32. The Three Musketeers
    A handsome but pallid affair aimed squarely at a young Disney audience. Those who have never seen a previous "Musketeers" adaptation or a truly exciting Hollywood adventure in the grand style may be swept along, but the mechanical feel of this outing is too evident to ignore.
  33. The Strangers: Chapter 1
    "Chapter 1” can’t help feeling like an ersatz imitation at times, but it seems the franchise’s well hasn’t run dry just yet.
  34. 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.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Trail of the Pink Panther
    A patchwork of out-takes, reprised clips and new connective footage, Trail of the Pink Panther is a thin, peculiar picture unsupported by the number of laughs one is accustomed to in this series. Stitched together after Peter Sellers' death, this is by a long way the slightest of the six Inspector Clouseau efforts.
  36. Freedomland
    Despite a few raw moments, pic feels like a Lifetime movie with a marquee cast.
  37. Final Destination 3
    In the story's one major stroke of invention, the usual premonitions of death have been replaced with a set of photos.
  38. Where the Crawdads Sing
    Where the Crawdads Sing is at once a mystery, a romance, a back-to-nature reverie full of gnarled trees and hanging moss, and a parable of women’s power and independence in a world crushed under by masculine will.
  39. Based on a True Story
    Although the screenplay contains all the beats needed to generate tension, Assayas’ gift for conveying information between the lines is almost entirely lost on Polanski, who doesn’t give his actresses the opportunity to flesh out the subtext of their most awkward interactions.
  40. Bleeding Steel
    Efficiently directed by Leo Zhang, the film features all the zesty fights, slick effects and goofy slapstick one expects from a Jackie Chan family movie, while glossy production values, a snappy beat and composer Peng Fei’s deafening score mimic that of a Hollywood movie, though the film’s corny cyberpunk pastiche appeals exclusively to kids.
  41. Home Room
    Writer-editor-director Paul F. Ryan makes the mistake of focusing on an ungainly and, finally, unplayable verbal match between two high schoolers.
  42. MVP: Most Valuable Primate
    A lark gone utterly awry.
  43. Dante's Peak
    Physicality of the second half, then, will keep the audience going, but it is not quite sufficient to camouflage the elemental silliness of storyline.
  44. Meet Dave
    Aimed squarely at the same family audiences that flocked to Murphy's "Doctor Dolittle" comedies, this is a lightly amusing and surprisingly sweet Fox release.
  45. Malevolence
    Eventually pic turns into a formula slasher over-indebted to the usual "Texas Chainsaw" and "Halloween" models. But until then, Mena's direction (if not his script) suggest he's ready for bigger-budget assignments.
  46. Needful Things
    Moviegoers aren’t likely to be similarly spellbound, as Heston employs a too-slow buildup to an explosion of mayhem that incorporates gruesome violence with awkward attempts at dark humor.
  47. Violet & Daisy
    Violet & Daisy feels radically disconnected from recognizable human behavior.
  48. Love in the Time of Cholera
    Despite a magnificent performance by Javier Bardem, the film not only falls short of the novel's magic, but fails to generate much of its own.
  49. Gardens of the Night
    Well-meaning but underachieving drama.
  50. The Mindfulness Movement
    An earnest, over-stuffed infomercial for the potential and benefits of practicing mindfulness.
  51. Berlin Alexanderplatz
    Although promising a deep-cut dash of contemporary topicality by reimagining the main character as an undocumented African immigrant, there is the sense that the unimpeachable craft and performances — especially from rivetingly charismatic lead Welket Bungué — ultimately add up to just too slick a package.
  52. Meet Joe Black
    What might have been an effective fantasy if handled with sophistication and insouciance is instead weighed down by ponderous pacing, overstuffed production values and an instance of miscasting.
  53. The Final Season
    There's not quite as much corn in The Final Season as there is in the Iowa farm fields that run through it, but it's close.
  54. The Young Unknowns
    A strident, painfully repetitive and hopelessly stage-bound drama about self-indulgent twentysomethings on the fringes of the L.A. film scene.
  55. For Love of the Game
    Costner is as uneven as the storytelling itself, stone cold at moments, shimmeringly real in others.
  56. Twentynine Palms
    Fails to captivate or intrigue at the most basic level.
  57. American Wedding
    The funny stuff continues for a quite satisfying conclusion during the wedding prep and ceremonies, which Stifler single-handedly transforms into his own personal gross-out comedy masterpiece.
  58. Master of the Game
    There's a provocative premise at the heart of Master of the Game, but uneven acting, indifferent direction and melodramatic dialogue blunt pointed ironies.
  59. Frozen
    Don't be surprised if the movie's most wince-inducing moments come not from the "disturbing images" (as the MPAA describes the sight of a leg bone sticking six inches out of one character's ski pants) but rather of the bad acting and worse dialogue.
  60. The Man with the Golden Gun
    Enjoyment requires denying the increasingly problematic truth about Bond: As heroes go, 007 represents a bygone notion of the privileged white man taking what’s his and leaving destruction in his wake.
  61. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    The Vampire's Assistant is too busy making impossible claims about just how spectacular its sequels will be to serve up a self-contained story with a satisfying finale.
  62. The Uninvited
    Weak even by the standard of uninspired recent Asian-horror remakes, The Uninvited is more likely to induce snickers and yawns than shudders and yelps.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Basic Instinct
    Grade-A pulp fiction. This erotically charged thriller about the search for an ice-pick murderer in San Francisco rivets attention through its sleek style, attractive cast doing and thinking kinky things, and story, which is as weirdly implausible as it is intensely visceral.
  64. The Aftermath
    The result is attractive and diverting, as any well-appointed film starring these actors in mouthwatering period finery could hardly fail to be — though for a story about people rebuilding their lives through grievous personal loss and moral torment, it’s hard not to wonder if its vast reserves of enviable knitwear are counting for more than they should.
  65. Bad Fever
    Dustin Guy Defa's Bad Fever takes mumblecore to its reductio ad absurdum, featuring a hero whose utterances border on the unintelligible.
  66. Vincent N Roxxy
    Genre clichés catch up with Schultz just as surely as the past catches up with his characters and the sweet, redemptive possibilities of their relationship gets washed away in the tide of gratuitous bloodshed.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unaccompanied Minors
    It's a crowdpleaser -- at least for crowds aged about 6 to 12.
  68. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
    The film’s tonal inconsistencies hurt its impossibly talented co-leads considerably.
  69. Clover
    Despite a capable cast and reasonably energetic execution from director Jon Abrahams, this violent caper lacks any real wit or novelty.
  70. Steal Me
    A classic case of overreaching, Steal Me boasts unorthodox camera angles, dramatic shifts in its palette and a generally adventurous visual style. What it lacks is believable dialogue, credible relationships and a serious foundation for its overripe psychology.
  71. The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
    Lofty ambitions and unaffected sincerity are not quite enough to sustain The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam, a reverentially pokey drama that plays less like a conventional movie than a lengthy series of hagiographic historical tableaux.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skin Deep
    Revenge is sweet and Ritter gets his due in any number of silly and embarrassing situations which he handles with nearly perfect comic timing.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    True Colors
    True Colors represents a cloyingly schematic attempt to portray the political and moral bankruptcy of the 1980s in a neat little package. Pic condemns but doesn't begin to analyze the corrupted values of the Reagan years, leaving one feeling soiled but unenlightened.
  74. Wonderland
    Has absolutely nothing to say about its characters and their lamentable actions.
  75. Good Deeds
    Good Deeds is relentlessly unsurprising in its plotting and borderline comical in its melodramatic flourishes.
  76. In Dubious Battle
    The movie gives us bits and pieces of drama, but in a larger way it doesn’t invite us in.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Still of the Night
    It comes as almost a shock to see a modern suspense picture that's as literate, well acted and beautifully made as Still Of The Night. Despite its many virtues, however, Robert Benton's film [from a story by him and David Newman] has its share of serious flaws, mainly in the area of plotting.
  78. Death Race
    As hard as metal and just as dumb, Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race couldn't be further from producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's goofy, bloody 1975 original, "Death Race 2000."
  79. Machine Gun Preacher
    While the result is yet another story of African suffering told from a white do-gooder's perspective, this particular do-gooder is intrinsically fascinating enough to warrant attention, albeit more nuanced attention than he receives here.
  80. Segunda piel
    Starts out slow but ends up engaging both heart and mind, despite occasional slips into straight melodrama.
  81. Hey, Happy!
    Despite occasional bad-taste outrageousness, overall tone is surprisingly sweet, even lyrical and romantic at times.
  82. The Forgotten
    A spare, streamlined thriller for the conspiracy-minded, Area 51 crowd, The Forgotten perhaps wisely leaves more questions than it answers and for the most part manages to maintain its suspense.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Missing in Action
    Writer James Bruner and director Joseph Zito have marshalled a formula pic with a particularly jingoistic slant: even though the war is long over, the Commies in Vietnam still deserve the smack of a bullet.
  84. Retribution
    The film’s 90 minutes whiz by.
  85. Mother/Android
    Tomlin’s screenplay deserves credit for mixing things up, introducing new characters and narrative turnabouts. But nothing is again as bluntly compelling as the early going, and despite hardworking principal performances, these characters and their movie lack the emotional depth to pull off an earnestly teary, draggy finale.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    This Ain't No Heartland
    Given Horvath's multi-tasking, pic is unsurprisingly rough. Nonetheless, for a professional photographer, his DV lensing is disappointing.
  87. Back to Black
    At its best, Back to Black, the forthright and compelling movie that’s been made of Winehouse’s life, takes that light/dark balance and digs into the drama of it, making it sing.
  88. Eternal
    A handsome package whose atmospherics outclass merely serviceable plot and character elements.
  89. The Romantics
    While in some ways an improvement on the book, this seriocomedy toplining Katie Holmes remains short on truly involving characters or situations, and is likely to spark unflattering comparisons to such vaguely similar, more distinctive films as "Rachel Getting Married" and "Margot at the Wedding."
  90. The Takedown
    Leterrier manages a few modestly exciting chase scenes, including one that begins in a laser tag course, continues through a bowling alley and a go-kart track, and ends in a crowded supermarket. And his two leads are agreeably amusing and for the most part engaging throughout the film.
  91. Miss Meadows
    An eventual retreat into conventional thriller terrain isn’t managed with much panache or tension, and a limp happily-ever-after sequence underlines the pic’s failure to make very much of the twisted-fairy-tale aspect that is its most distinctive element.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Conan the Barbarian
    Director John Milius does a nice job of setting up the initial story.... But for whatever reasons, [Schwarzenegger] has a minimum of dialog and fails to convey much about the character through his actions.
  93. Trust the Man
    For those who appreciate the Woody Allen view of New York but would prefer fewer neurotics, Trust the Man provides a loving take on bourgeois Manhattan contentment that's usually only found in episodes of "Will & Grace."
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monte Carlo
    A frothy, innocuous smorgasbord of girlhood wish fulfillment that scores a direct hit with its target demo.
  95. Love N' Dancing
    Bland as its title, Love N' Dancing extends the cliches of the dance-and-romance genre -- so overplayed that it's targeted for a Wayans brothers spoof later this month -- to the world of West Coast Swing.
  96. 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.
  97. Down and Dangerous
    Relying on a synthesized score, over-saturated cinematography and frustratingly cliched dialogue, this is an extremely generic, truly empty tale of a drug smuggler involved with cops and criminals alike.
  98. The Players
    The Players is an odd beast that, like all omnibus films, is only as strong as its weakest link.
  99. Dark Phoenix
    Turner’s damaged conviction holds Dark Phoenix together, giving it a treacherous life force.
  100. Spread
    With "Shampoo" and "American Gigolo" now distant memories, the time evidently seemed ripe for another Hollywood stud movie. Despite Ashton Kutcher’s believability as an older woman’s kept boy, Spread isn’t a patch on those previous films.
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