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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    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Into the Night
    The film itself tries sometimes too hard for laughs and at other times strains for shock. Goldblum is nonetheless enjoyable as he constantly tries to figure out just what he’s doing in all of this.
  2. The Limits of Control
    Worst of all, it just feels tired and recycled.
  3. Miller's Girl
    Written, produced and directed by Jade Halley Bartlett, the film is both impressively erudite and unrelentingly self-aware, a combination it bravely attempts but doesn’t quite fully balance.
  4. Crank: High Voltage
    Benefits of the first film's ancillary gross-out will jolt "Voltage" like a speedball shot to the groin, until word of mouth spreads like an STD.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Money Buys Happiness
    Camera compositions are curious, even poorly framed at times, but helmer's gift is in directing actors and building scenes around physical actions, much like silent filmmakers.
  6. The Hebrew Hammer
    Although amusing as often as not, the material remains more comedy-sketch fodder than a fully developed feature.
  7. What Planet Are You From?
    Good for a few lascivious titters but quite lacking in the sort of comic bite and social satire one hopes for in the work of Mike Nichols.
  8. 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.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Supergirl
    Helen Slater is a find: blonde as Supergirl, dark-haired as Linda Lee, she’s an appealing young heroine in either guise. Screenplay is filled with witty lines and enjoyable characters, but Jeannot Szwarc’s direction is rather flat.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dune
    Dune is a huge, hollow, imaginative and cold sci-fi epic. Visually unique and teeming with incident, David Lynch's film holds the interest due to its abundant surface attractions but won't, of its own accord, create the sort of fanaticism which has made Frank Herbert's 1965 novel one of the all-time favorites in its genre.
  11. Death of a Dynasty
    The execution is so amateurish and the script so witless the filmmakers appear to be having a far better time than the audience.
  12. One Eight Seven
    Artistically pretentious, thematically fuzzy and almost sinister in its deterministic view of the human condition, this unusually ambitious and serious-minded major studio release is simply too negative in every possible way to find a receptive audience.
  13. Passengers
    There’s only one place for Passengers to go, and once it gets there, Jon Spaihts’s script runs out of gas. Tyldun handles the dialogue almost as if he were doing a stage play, but he turns out to be a blah director of spectacle; he doesn’t make it dramatic.
  14. The Woman in Cabin 10
    The sleek production design, symphonic score and performances from a killer ensemble act as a life preserver, making the shenanigans at sea a little less choppy.
  15. The Salton Sea
    This extremely plot-thickened tale finally offers little more than the usual genre elements pushed to the kind of extremes that recall the acrid "The Way of the Gun."
    • Variety
  16. Grassroots
    Registers like a quaint display of local color.
  17. The Secret Agent
    A dour study of terrorism, 1880s style, The Secret Agent represents an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's only London-based novel, the fidelity of which to the original text does not yield a terrifically exciting film.
  18. 5 Star Day
    Buday's astrology-themed romantic comedy boasts a promising premise, convincing chemistry between its attractive leads and fine thesping by a defensively edgy Jena Malone. But the uneven script, repetitive tropes and over-indulgence of actorly bits slow the pace, tipping youthful casualness into complacency.
  19. Double Jeopardy
    Despite fine casting...familiarity sets in and lack of surprises directly lessen what could have been emotionally gripping.
  20. Monster Trucks
    Like it sounds, Monster Trucks is a lame kids’ movie reverse-engineered from a worse pun.
  21. House Party
    The film taps into the glitz ethos of the age of social-media envy without necessarily scrutinizing what it all means. Kid ‘n Play had put on a party to remember, but the new movie, much like Kevin and Damon themselves, just goes with the flow of the scam.
  22. Running Scared
    There's no denying that viewers not prepared for the relentless stream of nasty personalities, profane invective and bone-crunching violence are in for a very long sit.
  23. Leave One Day
    It’s a trifle, and not even fully successful on its own small-bauble terms. But oh, is it ever meant to bathe you in a warm retro glow.
  24. Sabotage
    The rest of Sabotage rarely rises to Schwarzenegger’s level, in large measure because the other characters (of which there are far too many) aren’t nearly as sharply drawn by Ayer and co-writer Skip Woods.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    G-Force
    A fur-covered "A-Team" for the kiddies, G-Force is heavy on splashy pyrotechnics and predictably light on plot.
  26. Dancing at the Blue Iguana
    An exercise in improv-derived filmmaking that simply proves once again that there's no substitute for a good script.
  27. Dust
    It's too arty to cut it as a violent action pic and too gore-spattered to appeal to the arthouse crowd.
  28. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
    Johnny Depp's impersonation of the Thompson figure is effective up to a point, but it's hard to imagine any segment of the public embracing this off-putting, unrewarding slog through the depths of the drug culture.
  29. Miss Bala
    Miss Bala no longer serves as a critique of a system that might allow innocent people to get caught in the crossfire of the drug war, but as the kick-ass origin story for a new kind of action hero.
  30. Before I Go to Sleep
    There’s perilously little playfulness to be found either in the script or its otherwise handsomely ashen cinematic treatment.
  31. Bad Boys
    Crucially, the teaming of standup favorite and "Martin" star Lawrence and "Fresh Prince" Smith clicks from the outset, with both right at home handling action and comedy on the bigscreen. Even when it's not particularly funny, their interplay is engaging, and their lively, raucous personalities keep the proceedings punchy and watchable for the slightly overlong running time.
  32. The Chumscrubber
    An insufferable, self-conscious cult movie, The Chumscrubber smugly heaps on half-baked ideas about media violence, the homogeneity of suburbia and the disintegration of the American family.
  33. 13 Cameras
    Zarcoff does a good job building tension.
  34. Four Christmases
    Oddly misanthropic, occasionally amusing but thoroughly cheerless holiday attraction that is in no way a family film.
  35. Super Troopers 2
    Super Troopers 2 is an aggressively lame and slobby comedy full of cardboard characters and in-your-face naughty jokes that feel about as dangerous as old vaudeville routines.
  36. Raze
    Raze is a brutally monotonous fight-to-the-death-contest actioner whose novelty element — all-female competitors — is undermined by lack of imagination on every other level.
  37. The Hollow Point
    There are sporadic compensations for your investment of time: Ian McShane’s robust overplaying of an unapologetically scuzzy small-town lawman, John Leguizamo’s dead-serious villainy as a scarily resilient hit man, evocative lensing by David Jose Montero, and a few modestly inventive twists in the otherwise predictable plot.
  38. Summer Camp
    It’s surely a worthy enough premise for a good time, but one “Summer Camp” squanders through dull jokes, an uninspiring story without any real stakes and an overall phony feeling that the film can’t shake.
  39. Constellation
    Exceptionally strong cast is pictures beating heart.
  40. The Grudge
    The Grudge plods on as if it were something more than formula gunk, cutting back and forth among the thinly written unfortunates who’ve been touched by the curse of that house.
  41. Shelby Oaks
    This mix of found-footage, missing-person, demonic-possession and other stock narrative hooks too often feels like a compendium of ideas from other movies Frankenstein’d together, with too little effort put towards finding a personality of its own.
  42. The Forgiven
    It’s Eric Bana, cast as a fictionalized composite of various white-supremacist apartheid criminals, who comes closest to electrifying proceedings in what’s at heart a one-room two-hander, unconvincingly padded and populated for the big screen.
  43. A Girl and a Gun
    More entertaining than especially revelatory, this timely documentary adds a sprightly note to a somber subject.
  44. Mojave
    Monahan isn’t required to satisfy bloodlust or to pay off conventional plot points, even if his screenplay for “The Departed” displayed an abundant talent for doing so. But he assumes too much in believing that the audience will connect in any way with a sour, prickly narcissist who’s trapped in the gilded cage of wealth and fame.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Nowhere to Run
    Action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme takes a career step backward in Nowhere to Run, a relentlessly corny and shamelessly derivative vehicle.
  46. O'Dessa
    There’s too much passion and creativity on display to declare “O’Dessa” a complete catastrophe, but the committed performances and detailed production design and costumes all come across as the product of bibles’ worth of backstory that couldn’t possibly be carried over with the constraints of time.
  47. Easter Sunday
    Instead of character and chemistry, the film employs a series of running gags meant to support the star’s likability and not compete with his wisecracks.
  48. White Chicks
    As lowbrow comedies go, it pretty much delivers.
  49. The Most Hated Woman in America
    Though he clearly admires the woman, O’Haver doesn’t want to let her off easy, which makes for a more nuanced portrayal than the stock canonization another director might have chosen (it would have been just as easy to paint her as a devil).
  50. Chappie
    Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is one of the major casualties of Chappie, a robot-themed action movie that winds up feeling as clunky and confused as the childlike droid with which it shares its name.
  51. Hop
    Why rock, rather than hip-hop, is anybunny's guess, though either way, the basic overnight-sensation pop-star fantasy will surely appeal to a demographic weaned on "American Idol."
  52. Romeo & Juliet
    Shorn of eroticism, intensity or purpose... it strikes familiar beats in a manner more strained than inspired.
  53. Britney Vs. Spears
    This shapeless doc feels overlong at just over 90 minutes, because it’s unclear what, exactly, Carr and collaborator Jenny Eliscu want to say about Spears.
  54. Wild Target
    Nearly every element here is wildly off-target, from Jonathan Lynn's ("The Whole Nine Yards") lazy helming and Lucinda Coxon's shambolic script to the embarrassed-looking perfs from usually excellent lead thesps Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt.
  55. The Quiet Ones
    The 1970s setting offers a retro feel that should strike appealing chords for fans of old-school horror, but there’s little here that’s exactly new or fresh.
  56. The Week Of
    While some gags are funny the first time around, practically everything in The Week Of overstays its welcome.
  57. Priest
    Not exactly an unholy mess, but still a rather too pious retread of classic sci-fi/action/horror riffs that lacks originality or pizzazz.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Darling Companion
    It meanders about as much as its eponymous pooch.
  59. House of Wax
    Direly predictable, with candle-drip pacing and a pervasive unpleasantness.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Metro
    Murphy and the filmmakers clearly want to establish Murphy as an action hero in the mold of Stallone and Van Damme (Carter wrote the Stallone starrer “Tango & Cash” and co-scripted the Van Damme feature “Nowhere to Run”), but they lack the courage of their convictions. Pic is bracketed by scenes of Eddie the funny man, just in case anybody forgets the performer’s roots.
  61. Our Day Will Come
    Once it’s evident that there’s hardly a point to all the random mischief — or that the point is precisely that there isn’t one — the idea of watching a pair of grown men inflect violence upon innocent bystanders feels awfully tedious
  62. Illegal Tender
    Too muted to have much lasting impact, and remains modestly diverting only on a scene-to-scene basis. There's no quotable dialogue, no standout action sequence, no flashy supporting performances -- in short, nothing to lift Illegal Tender from the level of competent but inconsequential B-movie.
  63. Spiral
    The film toys with audience expectations and perceptions by playing fast and loose with circumstances and clues, while leading to an almost unavoidable and dismayingly obvious conclusion.
  64. Infamous
    One can always make the argument that it’s not absolutely necessary to have sympathetic protagonists for a drama to enthrall or enlighten. But Infamous pushes way, way too far in the opposite direction: Dean and especially Arielle seem so irredeemably psychotic even before they begin to mount a body count, you actively wish for them to be caught or killed.
  65. Outlander
    Not helped by a wooden perf from Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien who accidentally imports a real alien to eighth-century Earth.
  66. Jakob the Liar
    A markedly better picture than Roberto Benigni's far more sentimental Oscar collector.
  67. The Hunted
    Routine, superficial manhunt stuff.
  68. Some Body
    Has a quasi-verite, improvisational feel that appears truthful. But it doesn't lend much sympathy, or depth, to characters who never seem worth knowing.
  69. Khumba
    The voice ensemble is game, if not especially well matched.
  70. Here Today
    What’s good about the movie is that Crystal, who co-wrote and directed it, has an inside knowledge of the showbiz comedy world (as he demonstrated in 1992 when he directed and starred in the acerbically accomplished “Mr. Saturday Night”), and the prickly vivacity with which he portrays it roots the movie in something real.
  71. America the Beautiful
    Wide-ranging educational documentary attaches itself to the rise and fall of a 12-year-old fashion model, and indeed, its sincere, cautionary tone seems best suited to younger auds and small screen exposure.
  72. The Girl from the Naked Eye
    Gets one's attention but doesn't keep it, due to ill-cued flashbacks, groan-inducing dialogue and wooden performances.
  73. Falling for Christmas
    Its subversive spirit, female-forward smarts and sweet sentimentality remix the formulaic and festive, making all things merry and bright.
  74. Come Away
    As it is, the film feels simultaneously far too heavy and not at all substantial, a long, slow buildup to something wondrous that never comes.
  75. Gangster Squad
    The cops play things as dirty as the crooks in Gangster Squad, an impressively pulpy underworld-plunger that embellishes on a 1949 showdown between a dedicated team of LAPD officers and Mob-connected Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) for control of the city.
  76. Better Living Through Chemistry
    There isn’t a pharmaceutical cocktail powerful enough to improve the dreadful comedy of Better Living Through Chemistry.
  77. Fatman
    This, in other words, is not your father’s grungy one-joke yuletide action comedy. It’s “The Santa Clause” meets “Magnum Claus,” and it’s pitched to the Gibson faithful with the idea that they’ll follow him anywhere (which they probably will).
  78. Lethal Weapon 3
    Lethal Weapon 3 is all about chases and comedy schtick, and in this case the sum of the parts really adds up to more than the whole.
  79. Anna
    It’s nowhere near the embarrassment of Brian De Palma’s “Domino,” or any number of recent studio tentpoles. Nor is it fresh enough to pretend that audiences had missed out on something special if it had been buried altogether — except perhaps for Luss, who’s bound to get another shot.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Halloween II
    There are incredibly almost never any really terrific scares in 92 minutes - just multiple shots of violence and gore that are more gruesome than anything else.
  81. Psychopathia Sexualis
    Psychopathia Sexualis exists in the gray area between ponderous stylization and campy affectation.
  82. Beer League
    Sloppy but unconcerned about it, pic offers a trip back in time to a pre-PC and feminist era when men were sexist Neanderthals, women supported them from the sidelines and the guy with the biggest mouth scored.
  83. The Far Side of Jericho
    Far too aggressively seamy (and ferociously foul-mouthed) to please diehard fans of traditional sagebrush sagas, this misfire offers nothing in the way of wit, innovation or even marquee allure to interest auds accustomed to edgier revisionist oaters.
  84. Vantage Point
    A 23-minute movie dragged out, via some narrative gimmickry, to a punishing hour and a half.
  85. Lana's Rain
    It ends up a grinding, ludicrous depiction of a thuggish Bosnian's abuse of his sister.
  86. Evolution
    A consistently amusing action romp.
  87. Orange Winter
    The documentary works best when it simply offers a concise and cogent account of epochal events.
  88. Paranormal Activity 4
    Less reliant on slow-burn suspense and larded with fake-out jump scares, this is the first sequel in the series that fails to advance the overall mythology in any meaningful way.
  89. The Perfect Family
    Watching a consummate pro like Turner navigate an uneven script, veering from farcical determination, her cheeks puffed like those of a demented chipmunk, to utter devastation, can be immensely entertaining, particularly when she's backed by an able cast, as she is here.
  90. Coming Up Roses
    Standout perfs by Bernadette Peters as an aging diva and Rachel Brosnahan as her solicitous 15-year-old daughter are the only reasons to see Lisa Albright's Coming Up Roses, a tired '80s-set meller hobbled by lackluster helming and an unconvincing script.
  91. Tiny Times 2.0
    Though this sequel is just as glossy and shallow as its predecessor, the story gets juicier as the four femme friends transform from kittens to lynxes in the wake of boy troubles and corporate takeovers.
  92. Standing Up
    Director D.J. Caruso offers a practical solution to the issue of adolescent bullying, as its two young protags respond to a case of vicious hazing not with despair or retaliation, but through teamwork and character-building.
  93. Flu
    The story flatlines as the crisis escalates, falling prey to pedestrian human drama and improbable conspiracy subplots.
  94. The Last Day of August
    Decently crafted but with not quite enough up its narrative sleeve to make a memorable impact, writer-director Craig DiFolco’s debut feature leaves one waiting for explosive revelations that never arrive.
  95. Return to Nuke 'Em High Volume 1
    The term “freewheeling” does not begin to describe the slapdash, anything-goes quality of the screenplay co-written by Troma mogul Kaufman.
  96. Dark Was the Night
    Solid performances help the dramatic aspects achieve at least some of the gravity aimed for, which in turn helps elevate the proceedings a notch above standard horror suspense until the final reel’s requisite violent payoff.
  97. The Story of My Wife
    Divided into seven quirkily titled chapters which are only useful as a kind of interminable countdown, “Story” falls into every trap of the over-reverential adaptation: individual scenes go on too long, there are far too many of them, and everyone sounds like they’re reading when they speak.
  98. First Time Female Director
    Though its loose, improvisatory feel is suited to the material, most of its humor feels like the first draft of a better film — as though the entire movie consists of what should have been deleted scenes.
  99. Table 19
    Almost everything that happens in this movie rings cloyingly false. It wants to make you laugh and cry, but you may be too busy cringing.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Power of One
    On the one hand a captivating and inspiring tale of a boy's journey to courage amid searing injustice, pic often gives way to scenes of intense violence that are likely to bludgeon the very sensibilities it seeks to awaken.
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