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. Reign of Fire
    An uncommonly satisfying mix of medieval fantasy, high-tech military action and "Mad Max"-style misadventure.
  2. The Intruder
    The Intruder offers few surprises of any sort.
  3. Woodshock
    With the film’s human element so glassy and its storytelling so thin, however, all this elegant formal trickery soon turns more aggravating than intoxicating — by its extremely splintered, impressionistic finale, the film skates perilously close to misery chic.
  4. Mother of the Bride
    While a gentle, light-hearted romp is indeed welcomed in these taxing times, there’s much left to be desired from our journey with these likable but under-developed characters.
  5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
    An amiable, fast-paced entry that should win over fans.
  6. All My Life
    The warmth and touching tenderness of All My Life melts even the coldest of hearts in its quest to deliver happy and sad tears.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Return of Swamp Thing
    The Return of Swamp Thing is scientific hokum without the fun. Second attempt to film the DC Comics character will disappoint all but the youngest critters.
  8. Stage Fright
    Most frustratingly, the film rarely manages to meld its two parent genres at all, with musical-theater pastiche dominating the early going, and straight slasher pastiche taking over around the halfway point, and rarely the twain do meet.
  9. Just Say Goodbye
    This melodrama, released to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Month, lacks the necessary polish to elevate not just its message, but also the actors’ performances.
  10. Impractical Jokers: The Movie
    Impractical Jokers: The Movie is an undistinguished and unnecessary extension of a brand whose primary attributes are likability, authenticity and relative modesty (given the worst impulses of the genre).
  11. My Oxford Year
    What should be a tender, feminist-minded story centered on a young woman rediscovering her dormant childhood dreamer turns into a middling melodrama about being with a cute guy in desperate need of her rescue.
  12. Planet 51
    There's nothing funny, provocative or involving about what "Shrek" co-writer Joe Stillman and the team from Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios do with the notion here.
  13. Skin Trade
    Snapping necks and shooting limbs have rarely been carried out in service of such a principled cause — or been executed with such formulaic tedium.
  14. August
    This middling drama has no glaring faults, but simply lacks the intended urgency.
  15. Underworld: Awakening
    Once again, Beckinsale brings an impressive physicality and subzero cool to her portrayal of Selene.
  16. Don Verdean
    The expected satire of religious gullibility and charlatanism proves toothless; worse, a cast of very funny people is given very little funny to do.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Men's Club
    Film is a distasteful piece of work that displays the worst in men. Leonard Michaels’ screenplay (from his novel) is all warts and no insight, full of self-loathing for the gender. In addition, film making is as tired as the material. Pic plays like a stageplay, so static is Peter Medak’s direction.
  18. Love, Guaranteed
    If likability is a trait you value, Love, Guaranteed delivers the undemanding pleasure of watching two fundamentally decent people tumble into fondness and then love.
  19. Planes
    Diverting in bits and pieces, but absent the heart, soul and ingenuity one associates with the best of Disney animation, the endlessly merchandisable picture could very well soar at the box office, but it won’t stick the landing where word of mouth is concerned.
  20. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    This dank, gloomy essay into the supernatural tries hard to create an intriguing mood in which fate guides the lives of its wounded protagonists, but few will be interested in the outcome.
  21. From Prada to Nada
    Based loosely and playfully on Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," From Prada to Nada is a predictable but pleasant comedy.
  22. The Lucky One
    When a novel gives you soapsuds and washboard abs to work with, what other choice does a director have but to provide the most aesthetically pleasing actors, scenery and sets to disguise the thinness of the underlying material.
  23. One Shot
    One Shot manages to avoid seeming an overly schematic technical stunt. The mayhem depicted isn’t always fully convincing, but it does have a certain live-wire edge.
  24. The Runner
    The Runner doesn’t lack for drama, but the characters are so thinly and predictably drawn, and the movie’s supposed insights into the art of political compromise so banal, that nothing catches fire.
  25. Unbroken: Path to Redemption
    It would be unfair, and not entirely accurate, to dismiss “Path to Redemption” as irredeemably dull and without merit.
  26. Random Acts of Violence
    The result is more flashy and shallow than ingenious, let alone terrifying. Yet it’s also a committed effort, one whose energy and style command some appreciation even when they overwhelm the shaky story gist.
  27. Krystal
    Though Macy is an odd fit to direct (coming at the talky script like it was a madcap piece of theater), the wonky tone is all screenwriter Will Aldis’ invention.
  28. The Dirt
    It’s just a thinly written (by Rich Wilkes and Amanda Adelson), generically staged (by Jeff Tremaine, director of the “Jackass” films) VH1-style sketchbook of a movie — which is to say, it’s a Netflix film, with zero atmosphere, overly blunt lighting, and a threadbare post-psychological telegraphed quality that gives you nothing to read between the lines.
  29. Young People Fucking
    Uneven but not unpleasant.
  30. Dressed
    Tracks the race-to-the-deadline scramble of a personable young designer preparing an underfunded fashion show, but offers few threads that were not already more solidly and stylishly woven into "Unzipped," "Seamless" or "11 Hours."
  31. Snowmen
    Picture narrowly avoids outright bathos, thanks largely to first-rate perfs by its child thesps and by Ray Liotta. But by self-righteously rejecting facile solutions, then employing them anyway in the tradition of "no ending left behind," the result conforms to parents' old-fashioned notions of kid movies rather than demonstrating true kid appeal.
  32. Bonsai People: The Vision of Muhammad Yunus
    Unfortunately, the documentary's impact is mitigated the benefactor's constant presence and paternalistic, infomercial-like exposition.
  33. The Kill Hole
    No aspect asserts itself strongly enough for the whole to satisfy, and at times the pic’s humorless approach to cliches unintentionally borders on “MacGruber” territory.
  34. Tai Chi Hero
    A sporadically engaging martial-arts extravaganza that looks even better compared with its predecessor, last year’s borderline-insufferable “Tai Chi Zero.”
  35. How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town
    How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town emerges as surprisingly tame fluff, a modestly amusing trifle scarcely saucier than those wink-wink naughty farces that were staples of the ’70s dinner-theater circuit.
  36. Ava
    There’s a stranger, spikier, more unnerving film to be pulled from the sleek genre carapace of Ava, a film less interested in what makes a contract killer tick than in the superhuman Swiss-watch regularity of her ticking in the first place.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sheena: Queen of the Jungle
    There are plenty of laughs to be had in Sheena, but it's quite impossible to tell how many of them were intentional. Attempt to install this 1930s jungle heroine in the pantheon of the contempo adventure icons fails to find a consistent tone.
  38. Joshua
    Emerges as a curiously mild-mannered if not downright tepid drama.
  39. Intoxicating
    After a long, glum slide, pic becomes an unconvincing story of redemption.
  40. After the Sunset
    While After the Sunset is never exactly dull and is smartly cut to a brief running time, it never quickens the pulse.
  41. April's Shower
    The joys of farce are fumbled in April's Shower, star-director-writer Trish Doolan's arch and undernourished comedy about a bridal shower turned on its head by the bride's lesbian past.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Two Moon Junction
    Two Moon Junction is a bad hick version of Last Tango in Paris down to the poor imitative scoring by Jonathan Elias. Sexual obsession might be the aim, but the result is anything but hot.
  43. Pinocchio
    Roping a game Tom Hanks into the fold as the kindly woodworker Geppetto, and employing countless digital artisans to recreate the iconic character design of the protagonist to eerily lifeless effect, “Pinocchio” is a lavish yet hollow retread that will surely give the original a boost when it arrives on Disney+ this weekend.
  44. Goodbye Momo
    Nocturnal settings and musical interludes create their own kind of allure, but picture feels like an art film imitation, not an authentic art film itself.
  45. Spell
    This is a decently stylish thriller with occult elements that should satisfy viewers’ genre requirements, though few will demand a second watch (or sequel).
  46. The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes
    This is dark, squalid, squinting-through-the-keyhole stuff, and it can make a film like The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe sound like a guilty-pleasure piece of true-crime trash, one of those glorified tabloid-TV exposés with a patina of investigative credibility. In fact, it’s a very good film.
  47. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
    Lacks the charm and buoyancy that made the first "Act" a mass-appeal hit
  48. Incoming
    As a standalone, Incoming hits its marks, but its cast amounts to a collection of tics, while its appetite for raunch seems unfulfilled.
  49. Kettle of Fish
    Pic contains its share of viable gags and stars generate a certain degree of convincing chemistry. But eventually, the seams in personality design and artificially stitched-together script construction begin to show.
  50. Him
    Tipping embraces the self-indulgent label of “elevated horror,” crafting a tense, trippy, ultra-stylized movie that’s so surreal at times, it might feel like you’re watching an extension of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle.”
  51. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
    The full warmth and idiosyncrasy of Chabon's original is missed in an adaptation that feels more impersonally observed. But Lawson's pic, (with the director making a left turn from prior feature "Dodgeball," which he says was a money gig undertaken to hasten this dream project) is entertaining and involving enough on its own terms.
  52. The Flintstones
    After lightly going through the motions of a plot, it all ends up in the quarry, where assorted machinery provides the excuse for a parade of slapstick gags and amusement park-like predicaments that seem mostly lumbering.
  53. Bubble & Squeak
    Not all movies need to serve up profound insights into the human condition, but the ones that don’t should at least be entertaining, and Twohy’s particular strain of absurdism is not just contrived, but deeply unfunny.
  54. Mile 22
    Berg, when he wants to be, is a surgical craftsman of chaos. Yet Mile 22 has little weight or resonance.
  55. The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
    It's a crackpot of a soap opera, ornamented by a great deal of sexual humor, sexual innuendo and sex. Lead Daniel Letterle is a charmingly boyish actor, and the other featured players -- particularly veteran actress Meredith Baxter as Ethan's gay-wedding-planner mother -- are excellent.
  56. Senseless
    Created as a comic vehicle for the lead actor, pic depends entirely too much on Wayans to carry the day, but at this point he is far more eager and willing than he is funny.
  57. Our Family Wedding
    This broad ethnic farce serves up a full-on culture collision, but -- thanks to a handful of diverting performers -- stops just short of becoming a train wreck.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Pet Sematary
    Pet Sematary marks the first time Stephen King has adapted his own book for the screen, and the result is undead schlock dulled by a slasher-film mentality – squandering its chilling and fertile source material.
  59. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
    Initially promising, but quickly disappointing.
  60. Taking Lives
    A somber, absorbing thriller that treads familiar psycho serial killer terrain with style. Elegantly made and comparatively restrained in cramming sick and grisly stuff down the audience's throat.
  61. The Chronicles of Riddick
    May not quite gain entry to the hallowed pantheon of interstellar cheese of a "Battlefield Earth," but it's not far behind.
  62. Angels Crest
    Another in the procession of dead children movies that followed Atom Egoyan's magisterial "The Sweet Hereafter," helmer Gaby Dellal's sophomore effort unfolds in a similarly snow-blanketed small town filled with grieving adults, the community divided in apportioning blame. In contrast with Egoyan's labyrinthine structure and complex storylines, Crest cobbles together bits of plot and a motley assortment of half-formed characters.
  63. Michael
    John Travolta's charismatic screen presence is the only element that propels Michael over its rough narrative spots and scattered direction.
  64. Sweetwater
    Fancy-sounding dialogue and handsome widescreen lensing goes only so far to disguise the shallowness of the underlying material.
  65. Submergence
    There are moments when the film has the ability to absorb us, however fleetingly.
  66. Entourage
    Sometimes funny, often dumb, with equal doses of inside-baseball references and broad bro-ish boorishness, Entourage will be loved by fans and despised by detractors, possibly for the same reasons.
  67. City with No Mercy
    Plainly disappointing as a well-sustained kick-butt thriller, and politically toxic.
  68. Terminator Genisys
    For all its initial playfulness, the script never rises to the level of surreal, cortex-tickling pleasure it seems to be aiming for, and for all its self-awareness it’s weirdly devoid of humor.
  69. Facing the Giants
    For those who felt insufficiently uplifted by "Invincible" and "Gridiron Gang," here comes Facing the Giants, an aggressively inspirational drama about a born-again high school football coach.
  70. Gemini Man
    Gemini Man is a case in which an awful lot of effort has gone into making an awfully lazy action movie.
  71. Eragon
    Appropriating all the external trappings of big-budget fantasy but none of the requisite soul, this leaden epic never soars like the CG-rendered fire-breather at the core of its derivative mythology.
  72. Standing Still
    Surfing the crowd in Altman-lite style, pic skims the surface entertainingly but goes limp in its stabs at seriousness, especially in the final scenes, which all but drown in emotional confrontations and hasty happy endings.
  73. Empire
    Choreographer-turned-filmmaker Franc. Reyes covers familiar ground without stumbling or dazzling.
  74. Blow Dry
    Limp comedy-drama.
  75. The Jungle Book 2
    The feel of a direct-to-video title that's been upgraded to theatrical status in the hopes of wringing a few extra bucks out of it and improving its not-too-distant homevid marketability.
  76. Bad Boys II
    As overblown as it is overlong, Bad Boys II is an enervating case of more is less.
  77. The Green Inferno
    Empty cynicism isn’t a substitute for well-reasoned critique, and Roth winds up looking more clueless than the so-called “social justice warriors” he’s trying to satirize.
  78. An American Haunting
    A well-made, good-looking movie it is, but between the non-stop tumult and the sense of deliberateness about its period authenticity, An American Haunting produces a lot of screaming, crying and cruelty, but not much drama.
  79. Dark Streets
    As a dancing chanteuse, Bijou Phillips gives it her all, which isn't enough, and a wooden Mann doesn't help, although Izabella Miko brings a modicum of unaffected charm to her role as the Other Woman.
  80. Mechanic: Resurrection
    In “Mechanic,” [Statham's] a mechanic of murder, of escape, of ingenuity, of combat. He’s too good (and too badass) to be true, but that’s why we like him. It would be nice to see Statham make a movie one day that’s accomplished enough to raise his game. Until that happens, Mechanic: Resurrection will do.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    An American Tail
    Every character and every situation presented herein have been seen a thousand times before.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Capricorn One
    Capricorn One begins with a workable, if cynical cinematic premise: the first manned space flight to Mars was a hoax and the American public was fooled through Hollywood gimmickry into believing that the phony landing happened. But after establishing the concept, Peter Hyams' script asks another audience - the one in the theatre - to accept something far more illogical, the uncovering of the hoax by reporter Elliott Gould...In general, it is a script of conveniences.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Champ
    Even those unfamiliar with the 1931 pic will feel resonances in the current Champ and in this edition Schroder projects a comparable emotional range and depth.
  84. Men in Black: International
    The connection between Tessa Thompson and Hemsworth is what saves the day, not anything their characters do onscreen.
  85. The Enforcer
    Reaching for the grandiose, it never grasps anything beyond the generic.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Sleepwalkers
    Stephen King's Sleepwalkers is an idiotic horror potboiler.
    • Variety
  87. All Eyez on Me
    Comprehensive but sketchy, richly atmospheric but often under-dramatized, it is not, in the end, a very good movie.... Yet it’s highly worth seeing, because in its volatility and hunger, and the desperation of its violence, it captures something about the space in which Tupac Shakur lived.
  88. Balls of Fury
    Relentlessly silly in spoofing martial-arts movie conventions, Balls of Fury has roughly enough laughs for a first-class trailer but wheezes, gasps and finally goes flat through much of its 90 minutes.
  89. Burning Annie
    Pic relies on nerdy world-weary irony to carry the day, but doesn't convincingly draw its characters.
  90. The Life Before Her Eyes
    A femme-centric drama about the aftermath of a high school massacre, profoundly confusing "In Bloom" arrives at some very tenuous moral conclusions that might alienate much of its supposed target audience.
  91. Just Visiting
    A one-joke comedy that is good for more than a few good laughs.
  92. Radio
    "Inspired by a true story" it may be, but inspired it's not.
  93. Never Die Alone
    Largely overcomes key cast weaknesses to deliver a jazzy, darkly textured rendering of the ghetto pulp of late African-American ex-con author Donald Goines.
  94. Ouch
    Delightful comedy of manners.
  95. The Remaining
    La Scala is able to maintain interest and sustain narrative momentum throughout his fantastical narrative, even while he covers overly familiar territory. In this, he gets immeasurable aid from the sincere performances by his game cast.
  96. The Vatican Tapes
    Silly, screechy and eminently watchable.
  97. Ouija
    This silly but straight-faced supernatural thriller manages to elicit an occasional shudder in between cheap jolts and false scares, emerging as a feat of competent direction (by debuting helmer Stiles White) over derivative scripting (by White and writing partner Juliet Snowden).
  98. No Escape
    Grittily propulsive filmmaking and solid performances from Owen Wilson and Lake Bell aside, there’s no escaping the movie’s hand-wringing manipulations and pandering sense of privilege.
  99. The Last Time
    Although this "Sopranos" writing vet delivers several flashes of that show's dark humor and irony, the pic leaves a hollow feeling at the end.
  100. Confessions of a Shopaholic
    As a young lady who can't say no to a beautiful dress or accessory, Isla Fisher is not to be denied, and her irrepressible comic personality overcomes a number of the film's impediments.
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