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. Head in the Clouds
    A lively, plush but unconvincing potboiler cobbled from familiar pieces of better films (and TV miniseries).
  2. Pay It Forward
    An unusual film that intelligently avoids numerous potential pitfalls even if its central earnestness is ultimately inescapable.
  3. Happy Hour
    Fortunately bypassing a re-run of "Days of Wine and Roses" but finding little inspiration to freshen an old concept, this tragedy about a lover and a friend helplessly watching the writer's fade-out comes up short of its potential impact.
  4. Wild Card
    As usual, Statham gets a lot of mileage out of his droll, ever-present scowl, but as in “Heat,” the movie’s disparate narrative strands never really come together, and the climactic showdown feels pretty anticlimactic.
  5. From the Land of the Moon
    Of course, Cotillard is your first call if you want an actress to suffer exquisitely, but the issue is her character Gabrielle is essentially a nightmare of self-involvement, whose emotional torture is very difficult to get invested in since she herself has already bought all the shares.
  6. Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
    Everything leads to a third-act twist that is absurdly shameless, even by Bollywood standards. Unfortunately, Johar doesn’t appear to have intended it as another joke.
  7. Mine
    The Fabios appear to have some talent, but not a lot of common sense. They’ve made a land-mine suspense thriller with a few heart-in-the-throat, hair-trigger moments, but Mine is so eager to be a “metaphor” (it’s a little Beckett, a little Tarantino, a little Lifetime channel) that it’s the film’s pretension that winds up exploding in your face.
  8. Little Women
    This contemporary adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s enduring classic is certainly admirable in its attempt to give the material a modern spin. However, what’s new only serves to frustrate and detract from the reasons why this material has been beloved for generations.
  9. A View to a Kill
    This jokey tone couldn’t be more different from the relative self-seriousness of helmer John Glen’s first 007 directing effort, For Your Eyes Only, and frankly, I yearn for more of that class.
  10. Sandy Wexler
    While the humor mostly misfires, there’s a certain pleasure to be had simply from spotting the celebrity cameos in Sandy Wexler.
  11. 2009: Lost Memories
    More often a noirish action drama, a melancholy meditation on history and nationalism, than the high-tech thriller promised by its hype and artwork.
  12. Petunia
    While the overall feel is a bit derivative and contrived, there are nonetheless plenty of bitingly sharp lines and performance moments to keep this well-cast ensemble piece percolating along.
  13. Highway
    Tracing a journey of self-discovery through six North Indian states without a formal script, Ali’s actors, like his characters, effectively improvise in a meandering present tense, stripped of any viable destination.
  14. Make Your Move
    A slick, disposable soap opera.
  15. Outlaws and Angels
    Outlaws & Angels trades in the lurid character psychology and crude ironies of the spaghetti Western — an idiom whose cynical worst-case-scenario view of humanity seems more acceptable to modern audiences than the good-shall-triumph faith of the traditional Hollywood western.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Toys
    Only a filmmaker with Barry Levinson's clout would have been so indulged to create such a sprawling, seemingly unsupervised mess as Toys, a painful exercise that makes Hudson Hawk look like a modest throwaway.
  17. Cuck
    Cuck is powerful so long as we’re simply trapped observing Ronnie’s all-too-palpable incomprehension and childlike tantrums over his dead-end circumstances. But when those circumstances start to feel rigged, the film’s value as analysis of a hot-button social phenomenon begins to cool.
  18. Jupiter Ascending
    While the Wachowskis have always put their greatest emphasis on aesthetics, they allow the visual impulse to get the best of them here, investing so much attention in creating unique fashions, technology, architecture and design that they’ve blinded themselves to the huge logical gaps in their own story.
  19. Homefront
    What sounds like a veritable B-movie wet dream — with that master of the subzero scowl, Jason Statham, starring in a screenplay written by Sylvester Stallone — turns out to be considerably less than the sum of its parts.
  20. The 355
    The 355” is a vigorous formula action spy flick with an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire plot that mostly holds your attention, periodically revs the senses, and gives its actors just enough to work with to put a basic feminine spin on the genre. I make a point of that because the film does too.
  21. Saw II
    New pic lets the air out by divulging the startling mystery that concluded the original. Add this to problematic juggling of police procedural and group-in-distress storylines, and Lions Gate has what looks like a sequel rushed for Halloween.
  22. Fourth of July
    Fourth of July is a trifle, and a facile, easy-to-watch one. But what it’s offering under the surface feels, in part, like a clandestine defense of Louis C.K.’s transgressions. In about 45 minutes, the family swings from being louts to saints. That’s supposed to be a lesson to us all. It’s not a convincing one.
  23. The Benefactor
    The movie ends in a more conventional place than the one where it begins, yet it still marks a surprising and graceful first fiction feature for writer-director Andrew Renzi.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    RoboCop 3
    This latest widget off the RoboCop assembly line is a bit better than the first sequel, which amounts to damnation with faint praise. Limiting the gore, but not the carnage, in pursuit of a PG-13 rating and more youngsters, pic remains a cluttered, nasty exercise that seems principally intent on selling action figures.
  25. Shade
    In the end, under-realized direction and characters deliver less than a full deck.
  26. The Man Who Cried
    Sally Potter, who leapt to critical attention with her 1992 adaptation of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" -- makes a serious misstep with The Man Who Cried.
  27. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
    Sublimely trashy, this conceptual sequel to 1997's surprise hit, "Anaconda," doesn't expect to be taken any more seriously than its schlock predecessor, and keeps its tongue-in-cheek thrills flowing rapidly.
  28. Trouble Every Day
    Over-long, under-written and needlessly obscure instead of genuinely atmospheric.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Poltergeist III
    Director/co-writer Gary Sherman demonstrates absolutely no interest in whether this film ever has a modicum of meaning as he rushes from one special effect to another. Even there, Sherman arrives too late.
  30. Man on a Ledge
    This cloddishly contrived suspenser is too busy to bore, but too farfetched to thrill, combining routine heist-thriller machinations with dialogue that often thuds like a body hitting asphalt.
  31. Passengers
    Cruising somewhere between therapy drama and paranoid thriller, this middlebrow tone poem aims for ambiguity but often veers into soporific, suspending answers (and often, viewer interest) en route to an ending that explains all.
  32. Jack Frost
    Jack Frost is a slickly packaged and engagingly sentimental fantasy-comedy that stands out as one of the season's most pleasant surprises. Pic offers a shrewdly balanced mix of humor, high concept and heart tugging, along with some amusingly impressive special effects.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Kiss Before Dying
    Played with a satirical edge, this update on the pulpy 1956 thriller about a murderous social climber might have been good for a chill and a hoot, but played straight it's a real clunker.
  34. Deep Impact
    The season's first comet-targets-Earth special effects extravaganza is spectacular enough in its cataclysmic scenes of the planet being devastated by an unstoppable fireball, but proves far from thrilling in the down time spent with a largely dull assortment of troubled human beings.
  35. White Men Can't Jump
    Director Calmatic’s 2023 remake not only fails to recapture the energy of the first film but seems to misunderstand the cinematic language of streetball, and is largely uninterested in utilizing stars Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow except as delivery systems for exposition.
  36. Double Dragon
    Even kids won't get much of a kick out of this high-energy, low-IQ futuristic slugfest, which plays down to, and in many ways, below the level of some Saturday-morning cartoons.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Porky's
    If, by chance, Porky's should prove to be Melvin Simon's swan song in the film industry, it will either be perceived as a thunderously rude exit or a titanic raspberry uttered to audiences everywhere.
  38. Wild Wild West
    As impressive as the industrial-style special effects may be, they're both too much and not enough for this mild mild West.
  39. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    This botched remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" seriously dishonors the seriously fine 1951 sci-fi landmark on which it's based.
  40. Casanova, Last Love
    Whatever the truth, there’s nothing in Jacquot’s vision of Charpillon to inspire devotion. There have been other unlikely Casanovas, yet the best of them conveyed not just the man’s charm but a depth of intelligence. Lindon’s downturned eyes have always exuded a world-weariness that fits with his characters, but there’s no spark here, no understanding of the man’s aura.
  41. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
    No, the “Saw” series hasn’t really changed. So depending on whether you’re a fan or not, eat up…or throw up.
  42. Duets
    Lack of much substance or dramatic payoff makes the whole significantly less than sum of its parts.
  43. The Cell
    A slender story that's not particularly suspenseful or involving, resulting in a movie that's a feast to the eye but not much for the intellect.
  44. Ash Wednesday
    Burns' films are invariably better directed and scripted than they are performed, and Ash Wednesday is no exception. Pic's biggest drawback is that the helmer has again cast himself in the leading role.
  45. Sueño
    Brimming with fanciful ideas about life, romance and the rejuvenating power of music, Sueno sings a lovely tune but chokes on its own banal lyrics.
  46. Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
    Juggles three separate time periods -- and is completely formulaic in each one.
  47. Peaceful Warrior
    Mere recitation of homilies for better living -- which is what Nick Nolte's gas station guru imparts to a struggling young gymnast -- and a half-baked account of the athlete's comeback are no substitutes for a complete movie.
  48. Freezer
    Freezer is a mediocre work built on a flimsy, nonsensical premise that squanders its modest potential with a cornucopia of bad plot twists.
  49. Paulette
    Politics aside, however, the movie delivers on the inspiration of its premise, featuring just the sort of laughs one hopes for.
  50. Butter
    Butter might have been a dark comedy; here, the humor is twisted but the world is bright as can be. Conservatives and liberals alike take a licking, and yet the art of butter carving emerges unscathed.
  51. Beastly
    A kiss may cure the monster, but not even campy performances from Mary-Kate Olsen and Neil Patrick Harris can save this ugly snarl of cliches.
  52. Level Up
    As it episodically flirts with absurdism, black comedy, and other offbeat flavors, Level Up seems to be simply trying on different attitudes without owning them.
  53. Coyote Lake
    While the movie doesn’t work, it isn’t idiosyncratic enough even to hold attention as a misfired oddity.
  54. Slumberland
    Slumberland is stronger at conjuring elaborate dream worlds than it is at crafting a satisfying emotional foundation, which is generally true of Lawrence’s past projects as well.
  55. Brick Mansions
    Delamarre knows his way around an action scene and keeps the proceedings moving briskly enough, even if the picture clocks in at about 10 minutes longer than its taut, 81-minute predecessor.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Day of the Dolphin
    Mike Nichols' film of The Day of the Dolphin is a rare and regrettably uneven combination of ideas and action. George C. Scott stars as a marine scientist whose work with dolphins faces corruption by his own sponsors. The story climax strains belief, but Nichols is one of a handful of directors who can get away with occasional improbability.
  57. Leatherface
    This “origin story” is a somewhat mixed bag. But it’s also an earnest and well-crafted attempt at course-correction, straying from stock slasher recyclage to provide a different story that actually connects a few dots in the very tangled cinematic “Chainsaw” universe to date.
  58. Dracula Untold
    Dracula Untold opts for the stately, staid approach, and even at a mere 85 minutes (sans credits) it’s something of a bore — neither scary nor romantic nor exciting in any of the ways it seems to intend.
  59. Aftermath
    As an exercise in sustained claustrophobia, the movie is not without its grisly accomplishments. Its effectiveness lies not in those moments when its characters are struck down without warning, but rather in the lingering sense that death has slowly, quietly taken up residence among them.
  60. My Little Pony: The Movie
    Beat by beat, My Little Pony: The Movie is at once clichéd and exceptional.
  61. Green Lantern
    An attempt to infuse an earnest piece of comicbook lore with an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek sensibility yields decidedly mixed results in Green Lantern.
  62. Confusion of Genders
    Despite a few potholes of ennui along the way, pic has enough entertainment value to cross borders and titillate auds with its plentiful nudity and uninhibited sexual mores.
  63. Angel Eyes
    Darts back and forth from being a psychological thriller to a vaguely metaphysical drama to a fate-driven romance -- it all becomes a blur.
  64. Simon Birch
    Johnson (who scripted "Grumpy Old Men") flattens out any promise so completely that the feature resembles nothing so much as a subpar "Hallmark Hall of Fame" entry.
  65. Inhale
    Icelandic helmer Baltasar Kormakur ("101 Reykjavik," "Jar City") injects notes of hysteria into the script's frenetic pileup of gratuitous cliches, as Dermot Mulroney pushes his square-jawed, desperate hero to near-masochistic extremes.
  66. 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up
    There’s barely enough plot for a half-hour episode of a weekly TV series spinoff. And there’s even less here in terms of acting, writing and filmmaking polish to appeal to anyone over the age of 10.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Exorcist II: The Heretic
    Since any title containing Roman numerals invites comparison, the answer is: No, Exorcist II is not as good as The Exorcist. It isn't even close. Gone now is the simple clash between Good and Evil, replaced by some goofy transcendental spiritualism.
  68. The Change-Up
    If "Freaky Friday" had an impudent, foul-mouthed little brother, it would be The Change-Up, an often needlessly crass, bromance-oriented spin on the body-swap comedy.
  69. 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.
  70. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    An epic showcase for mediocre CGI and slapdash screenwriting.
  71. Swing Kids
    Apart from its appealing young cast and period score, it has precious little to entice audiences into movie theaters.
  72. Lethal Weapon 4
    The quintessence of the buddy cop pic, "LW4" is big on action, playful banter and just enough plot to keep our attention from wandering.
  73. Jigsaw
    For 92 minutes, it more or less succeeds in sawing through your boredom, slicing and dicing with a glum explicitness that raises the occasional tingle of gross-out suspense but no longer carries any kick of true shock value.
  74. Dark Places
    As heroines go, it’s refreshing to get one as complex as this: When psychologically scarred female characters do turn up in thrillers, they’re usually little more than shivering victims who set a group of male cops in motion, but here, Libby does her own detective work, while Hendricks lends star power to the flashback scenes.
  75. Fame
    This PG-rated offering thus dances along a fine line -- one that suggests a shelf-life well short of its "I wanna live forever" anthem.
  76. Twist
    Shot on location in subdued colors, Twist offers much less hope for its troubled characters than Dickens did. Its very downbeat vision may turn off auds, which is a pity because the film has a great many qualities, not least the admirable performances of Stahl, Close and Pelletier.
  77. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Superficial but entertaining new pic offers equal parts freshness and kitsch appeal set to a pulsating Latin soundtrack.
  78. Ciao America
    Never less than pleasant and genteel, but rarely more.
  79. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
    A Madea Family Funeral isn’t good, exactly, but it’s Perry good. It combines weaponized comedy and sexualized soap opera in a way that defuses all shame.
  80. Dead Man Down
    As Scandi directors go, Niels Arden Oplev couldn’t be hotter. After putting his stamp on “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the Dane has what appears to be his pick of projects. So why follow it up with such revenge-fantasy dreck as Dead Man Down, a derivative collection of brazen plot holes and latenight-cable cliches into which he drags “Dragon” star Noomi Rapace?
  81. 2067
    The result is a movie that seems unaware just how generic the should-be-distinguishing details of its earnest eco-cautionary tale have turned out.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    An Innocent Man
    This collection of cliches accomplishes the almost unthinkable by bringing the prison genre to a new low.
  83. About My Father
    Maniscalco hasn’t quite proven he can carry a movie that’s not inspired by or “about” him, but this first effort is charming and earnest enough to encourage viewers to meet him where he’s currently at in his career.
  84. Consenting Adults
    Consenting Adults initially seems a little brainier than its brethren but soon gives way to the same cavernous lapses in logic and formula ending, though the cast and clear appeal of the genre could insure a strong opening and modest long-term box office life.
  85. Clash of the Titans
    This "Titans" reboot merely demonstrates that building a more elaborate mousetrap doesn't necessarily produce a more entertaining one.
  86. Irene in Time
    Breezy and indulgent, his is a style that lives or dies on the appeal of his characters and performers, and this time he is mostly let down by both.
  87. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
    The movie simply doesn't deliver -- living hard, selling hard and, before it's over, finally dying hard.
  88. Rodin
    Rodin is a meticulously reverential, handsomely lit and very dull biopic.
  89. Why Him?
    It’s bluntly cheeky, it goes on for too long, but the concept keeps on giving.
  90. Jexi
    Lucas and Moore write some whiplash funny lines, and since the film is just a throwaway, you can enjoy it on a trivial synthetic revenge-of-the-nerd level.
  91. The Green Hornet
    The film is a blast.
  92. Nobody's Fool
    In Nobody’s Fool, Tiffany Haddish is just furious and funny enough to make you wish that the rest of the movie wasn’t a droopy romantic comedy without the comedy.
  93. The Wedding Weekend
    Trite, sententious and generally unfunny.
  94. St. Trinian's
    Mildly amusing result, with plenty of slack in its 100 minutes, should work OK with its target audience of female Brit tweenies, who won't notice the pic's shoddy technical package, sloppy direction and the way the original films' antiestablishment tone has morphed into a celebration of dumbed-down "yoof" culture.
  95. Just a Kiss
    The helming debut of thesp Fisher Stevens, who mixes swell ensemble acting with eye-popping animation for a witch's brew of good sex, bad timing and very funny dialogue.
  96. Bringing Down the House
    There are certainly good laughs to be had. But the contrived script and bland direction prevent the film from ever developing a comic life of its own, leaving what fun there is seeming like the foundation to a rumpus room that's never finished.
  97. Bait
    A B movie in A-grade clothing.
  98. Grace Unplugged
    The makers of Grace Unplugged deserve at least some credit for resisting temptations toward melodramatic excess.
  99. After the Ball
    This basic-cable-quality farce is as unobjectionable as it is unmemorable.
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