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. Fist Fight
    A risible excuse for comedy that treats compulsory education as a joke and violence as a reasonable way to solve problems.
  2. An Eye for Beauty
    An almost bizarrely limp, emotionless, blank greeting card of a movie, this purported romantic comedy-drama contains little of the three, at best serving as a sort of extended L.L. Bean advertisement, full of fabulously shot footage of Eastern Canadian vistas and the well-dressed rustic yuppies who live there.
  3. Haven
    A seesaw chronology and generally chaotic approach plagues Haven, an overly ambitious, multicharacter love story-cum-underworld revenge drama set on a fleetingly exotic island.
  4. War, Inc.
    A blackly comic take on the first totally outsourced war? We're too close to being in one right now, which makes this John Cusack vehicle too close for comfort. It's also so close to being funny you can just about taste it -- just about.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mercury Rising
    Mercury Rising won't raise many viewers' temperatures. A somber suspenser with an oddly disconnected assortment of characters and a lack of freshly conceived action, this tale of a maverick FBI agent who takes on malevolent government forces to protect an orphaned autistic child serves up some dramatic moments but never legitimately convinces.
  6. Analyze That
    The novelty value is completely gone the second time around.
  7. A Life Less Ordinary
    Part kooky romance, part screwball comedy, part quirky fantasy and part Roadrunner cartoon, this is a movie that has everything except an involving storyline and characters.
  8. Fun Size
    Of course, questionable propriety would be a moot point if the film were consistently funny, but its hit-to-miss ratio is dire.
  9. Delhi Safari
    The picture all too obviously recycles bits and pieces from "Madagascar," "The Lion King" and other made-in-America toons. Unfortunately, much gets lost in the translation.
  10. When Do We Eat?
    Success depends on the degree to which Jewish auds connect with the broadly drawn stereotypes; gentiles and others are sure to pass over this culturally specific comedy altogether.
  11. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
    A genuinely clever kidpic that should delight moppets, please parents -- and maybe tickle a few tweens.
  12. Dirty Girl
    For those not hip to its smug "out is in" mentality, Dirty Girl's redeeming feature is its cast. Temple is vixen enough to carry the part, but manages to project a real wit burning beneath the layers of makeup and dumb-blonde shtick her character affects around others.
  13. The Kid & I
    It's the weird proximity of fact and fiction that could push this Penelope Spheeris-directed comedy into another cultish realm entirely.
  14. The Samaritan
    If anything, this Canadian production misses a great opportunity to dig into its setting and examine the dark side of seemingly pristine Toronto, even as the script by Elan Mastai and director David Weaver labors over a mostly boilerplate storyline.
  15. Jessabelle
    Jessabelle serves up a murky and underwhelming cauldron of Southern-fried voodoo-horror claptrap.
  16. Shutter
    A blandly cast and crafted remake of the same-titled 2004 Thai pic that itself emulated J-horror norms, which seemed a lot fresher back then.
  17. Love Ranch
    A tawdry look at the early days of Nevada's legalized brothel business that plays more like Lifetime fodder than the Martin Scorsese pictures that serve as its model.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Golden Child
    A strange hybrid of Far Eastern mysticism, treacly sentimentality, diluted reworkings of Eddie Murphy’s patented confrontation scenes across racial and cultural boundaries, and dragged-in ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) special effects monsters, film makes no sense on any level.
  19. Let My People Go!
    Let My People Go! offers an unholy alliance of camp and farce that both celebrates and mocks gay and Jewish stereotypes.
  20. Star Trek: Section 31
    This superficially diverting tangent is too convoluted and tonally wobbly to leave a lasting impression.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Gumball Rally
    The Gumball Rally is a silly forced, one-note and strident comedy about a cross-country auto race by a bunch of formula-kooky characters. Former stunt coordinator Chuck Bail produced and directed but he didn't have much of a plot.
  22. Honey
    With less than five minutes of screen time but with more humor and sassy attitude than the remaining cast combined, Missy Elliott separates hip-hop royalty from riff raff in the otherwise lackluster Honey.
  23. The Nut Job
    The critters look cute, but behave less so, while the competing-heists concept never quite takes off.
  24. Outcome
    A generally brittle, distant affair, Outcome largely saps Reeves of his genial, unaffected charisma, leaving him to play the carapace of a man who’s lost any real sense of who he is when not in character.
  25. In the Blink of an Eye
    Both as drama and as science fiction, In the Blink of an Eye doesn’t probe these questions, but rather, drops definitive answers like anvils, leaving little room to ruminate, wrestle, or consider.
  26. The Last Sin Eater
    Michael Landon Jr.'s respectfully sincere but only fitfully involving film.
  27. Battle: Los Angeles
    Mostly, this is the cinematic equivalent of a first-person shooter game, one where the Marines possess only slightly more personality than the faceless invaders.
  28. Red Notice
    A fun, fast-paced and frequently amusing divertissement.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Child's Play 2
    Child’s Play 2 is another case of rehashing the few novel elements of an original to the point of utter numbness.
  30. Cold Creek Manor
    A woefully predictable imperiled-yuppie-family-under-siege suspenser that hardly seems worth the attention of its relatively high-profile participants.
  31. Suspect Zero
    A plodding and familiar "cop sees what the killer sees" riff that plays like a poorly inflated "The X-Files" episode.
  32. Last Party 2000
    Insufficiently focused but undeniably intriguing.
  33. Allegiance
    The picture's assorted characters, though credible, feel wearisomely one-dimensional, while the pumped-up action, unfolding in a single day, basically consists of an extended game of hide-and-seek.
  34. 50 to 1
    It’s more of a bawdy buddy movie about the horse’s trainer, Chip Woolley, and owner, Mark Allen (who exec produced), with a bit of slapstick thrown in.
  35. The Bye Bye Man
    Even when it seems to be making things up as it goes along, its slapdash hallucinatory quality is a token gesture toward placing you inside the characters’ heads.
  36. Wetlands
    This soggy stab at neo-noir finds Italian-born writer-director Emanuele Della Valle out of her element in a pretentious meller set on the Jersey shore.
  37. Dilili in Paris
    In its native France, “Dilili” was released in stereoscopic 3D, which may have helped things look less wooden, but it feels as if the director stuck to a style that works well in silhouette — where characters typically appeal in profile, and bend only at elbow, knee and waist. In any case, it hurts the brain, which is clearly the opposite of what Ocelot intended.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mackenna's Gold
    The plot [from Will Henry's novel McKenna's Gold] is good, the acting adequate. But it's the scenery, the vastness of the west, the use of cameras, and of horses, and the special effects which keep the viewer involved and entertained.
  39. Wolves
    There are certainly no fresh ideas risked in this first directorial feature by voice actor-turned-scenarist David Hayter (“X-Men,” “Watchmen”), but Wolves could be worse, being as fast-paced and polished on a “B” budget as it is forgettable.
  40. The Double
    While there's the sense that this old guy/young guy spy angle has been done better by films like "Spy Game" a decade ago, Gere, never looking tougher or handsomer, and Grace, adding some action skills to his relatively cerebral persona, invigorate the proceedings in roles that would seem to benefit the actors' career arcs.
  41. This Time
    The Sweet Inspirations ranked as one of the most important backup singing groups in record-industry history, having performed with Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Dionne Warwick, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, the Drifters, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield and Elvis Presley. Yet, aside from an occasional still photograph, not a single frame of archival footage from their illustrious careers shows up in This Time.
  42. Only God Forgives
    The wallpaper emotes more than Ryan Gosling does in Only God Forgives, an exercise in supreme style and minimal substance.
  43. The Frozen Ground
    [A] solid if unmemorable true-crime drama.
  44. The Country Bears
    Toddlers and pre-teens will be entertained, and parents will be pleasantly surprised, by this more-than-just-bearable musical road movie.
  45. 10 Cent Pistol
    Martin’s screenplay is so tricky in the plot-twist and scrambled-chronology departments, there’s little attention left to limn the character depths that might make us more invested in sussing out so many double- and triple-crosses.
  46. Milton's Secret
    Even a prickly pro like Sutherland can’t do anything to elevate a hokey self-help lecture disguised as family entertainment.
  47. Angel Face
    Filho obviously wants to convey the naive outlook an impressionable young girl would have on her own situation, but there’s far too much manipulation involved to take her selection of scenes seriously.
  48. The Cloverfield Paradox
    The Cloverfield Paradox is a mind-boggling mish-mosh. It squanders whatever stray crumbs were left of the “Cloverfield” mystique by banging together bits and pieces of what must be a dozen genres. The result is a desperate plunge into the abyss of shoddy sci-fi.
  49. The Girl King
    It’s hectic, unsubtle, borderline cartoonish.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Lipstick
    Lipstick has pretensions of being an intelligent treatment of the tragedy of female rape. But by the time it's over, the film has shown its true colors as just another cynical violence exploitationer.
  51. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
    It’s a mad jumble, an eager product-tie-in mess.
  52. The Story of Us
    The stylistic devices used, which recall early Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky, get increasingly tedious, disrupting not only the sequence of events but also squelching audience sympathy for the protagonists.
  53. Crush
    Some fine screen chemistry between its leads and a spikey, offhandedly comic script by young writer-director John McKay put spice into Crush.
  54. Ted Bundy
    Looks set to unsettle as many conservative auds as it will delight nihilistic film buffs.
  55. You Got Served
    A serviceable youth pic that's marginally less dumb than November's urban quasi-musical "Honey."
  56. Cutthroat Island
    What seemed like a dubious proposition on paper plays even more dubiously onscreen, as Cutthroat Island strenuously but vainly attempts to revive the thrills of old-fashioned pirate pictures. Giving most of the swashbuckling opportunities to star Geena Davis, pic does little with its reversal of gender expectations and features a seriously mismatched romantic duo in Davis and Matthew Modine.
  57. The Possession of Hannah Grace
    Viewers hooked on the spectacle of demonic possession tend to like their satanic tropes served neat. The Possession of Hannah Grace serves them sloppy, if not without a certain random soupçon of grisly style.
  58. Speed Racer
    Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers' return behind the camera for the first time since the "Matrix" trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. In every other respect, it's pure cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist.
  59. W.E.
    Burdened with risible dialogue and weak performances, picture doesn't have much going for it apart from lavish production design and terrific, well-researched costumes -- and it's in focus, which is more than can be said for the script.
  60. The Out-Laws
    A by-the-books comedy, “The Out-Laws” misses its target. It doesn’t make its audience laugh, and it wastes its cast by putting them in the most obvious situations and giving them forgettable jokes.
  61. Demonic
    At one point, a character in a coma is referred to as having Locked-In Syndrome, which means that she’s still aware of her surroundings but is totally unable to move. By the end of Demonic, you’ll know just how she feels.
  62. Seven Pounds
    An endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head. Intricately constructed so as to infuriate anyone predominantly guided by rationality and intellect.
  63. Ex Drummer
    Signaling a new low in post-modern smug superiority, Ex Drummer tries to pass off contempt as comedy and slanted lensing as creativity.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Night Flier
    A creepy vampire tale that also offers some clever commentary on bloodthirsty tabloid journalists. While not the most memorable of King adaptations, it’s far from the worst of them.
  65. Amanda & Jack Go Glamping
    A thin, sparkless romantic comedy that takes satirical aim at a host of current hipster-culture targets, before concluding that merely identifying them is droll enough.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hotel New Hampshire
    While it is decidedly not to all tastes, The Hotel New Hampshire is a fascinating, largely successful adaptation of John Irving’s 1981 novel. Writer-director Tony Richardson has pulled off a remarkable stylistic tight-rope act, establishing a bizarre tone of morbid whimsicality at the outset and sustaining it throughout.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Airport '77
    The story’s formula banality is credible most of the time and there’s some good actual US Navy search and rescue procedure interjected in the plot.
  68. Baby Invasion
    Though little more than a gimmick, the baby angle gives Korine a hook for an experiment that’s only intermittently engaging for much of its running time.
  69. Mainstream
    A brittle, exasperated satire on social media celebrity, her sophomore film, like the tacky messiah it creates in Andrew Garfield’s YouTube sensation, soon becomes the very thing it sets out to expose: a glittery, jangly image machine that manufactures little of actual substance, except the conclusion that social media = bad.
  70. Three to Tango
    A smart and sassy comedy with a playful sensibility and subtle sensitivity.
  71. Friends and Family
    Unusually slick, mini-budgeted and broad piece of slapstick that liberally borrows from Neil Simon and "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight'' with the twist that gay hit men are the romantic heroes.
  72. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle
    Scarcely seems worth the expenditure of time, money and talent.
  73. Poolhall Junkies
    Callahan mostly overcomes its grungy technical quality with entertaining dialogue, nervy confrontation scenes, decent thesping and some truly spectacular shooting on the green velvet.
  74. Steal This Movie
    A valiant but seriously flawed attempt to belie the notion that if you remember what you did in the '60s, you weren't there.
  75. Little Black Book
    Lacks so much as a single fresh idea; it lacks an entertaining way of presenting its stale ideas, too.
  76. He's All That
    While it’s possible to make the formulaic and familiar resound fantastically, that concept has evaded these filmmakers here. Neither bland regurgitation nor innovative retelling, the remake falls somewhere in between, suffering greatly by not establishing a more distinctive identity.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy
    Audiences get an eyeful of flesh, served with sadistic, spasmodic laughs.
  78. Big Significant Things
    It’s as hard for us to get invested in his journey as it is for the film to find a narrative foothold.
  79. Paris-Manhattan
    This update-cum-ripoff might be aiming for witty and romantic, but it’s mostly a hollow, rambling effort leavened with some stargazing.
  80. Rebound
    Scores a few chuckles while following a familiar game plan.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Turner & Hooch
    Until its grossly miscalculated bummer of an ending, Turner & Hooch is a routine but amiable cop-and-dog comedy enlivened by the charm of Tom Hanks and his homely-as-sin canine partner.
  82. After.Life
    The potent imagery never meshes with narrative logic in Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's first feature, promising more than it can deliver.
  83. Color of Night
    Color of Night is a knuckleheaded thriller that means to get a rise out of audiences, but will merely make them see red. It's confounding and sad that director Richard Rush waited 14 years to make another film after his striking "The Stunt Man," only to choose a script as dismal as this.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tooth Fairy
    Scores a goal for kids and adults alike.
  85. Æon Flux
    The future looks alternately grim and hysterical in Aeon Flux, a spectacularly silly sci-fier that plays like "The Matrix" crossed with "The Island" and reinterpreted as a long-lost Michael Jackson video.
  86. Smother
    Diane Keaton can still sink her actorly teeth into a wacked-out character, and Vince Di Meglio's screwball comedy provides her with one of her best purely comedic roles since "Annie Hall."
  87. Arthur
    Even the Brit-wit chemistry of Russell Brand and Helen Mirren can't offset the self-conscious degree to which this tame, calculated effort sticks to its source.
  88. Against the Ropes
    Think of Against the Ropes as a "Rocky" story -- if, that is, the vintage is somewhere between "Rocky IV" and "V," and the action centered around the Burgess Meredith character as played by Meg Ryan wearing "Barbarella" outfits.
  89. The Royal Treatment
    Takes expected genre trappings and infuses them with unexpected delights, creating an enlightened, enchanting and entertaining feature.
  90. Biker Boyz
    Never really busts out of second gear.
  91. Abandon
    Passably interesting psychological study of emotionally wounded characters until it commits dramatic suicide by showing its true colors as a tricked-up "Fatal Attraction" wannabe.
  92. Inspector Gadget
    A new standard for wretched excess is established by Inspector Gadget, a joyless and charmless disaster in which state-of-the-art special effects are squandered on pain-in-the-backside folly.
  93. Returner
    Kaneshiro is all long flowing locks and smoldering disdain, the visual F/X are only so-so, and pacing is almost brisk enough to hide the plot holes.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jeepers Creepers II
    Substantially better than its predecessor, even while staying strictly within the genre's well-defined boundaries.
  95. A Man Apart
    Diesel makes a violent bid to align himself with the Clint Eastwood-Charles Bronson-Steve McQueen tradition, but he lacks the charisma, emotional strength and humor to do so.
  96. Last Love
    Last Love sticks to a flaccid middle ground lacking any real drama or pathos.
  97. Damascus Cover
    Unfortunately, Berk’s movie is too plodding and predictable to generate anything more than a modest level of suspense; worse, it lacks enough excitement to qualify even as instantly forgettable popcorn entertainment.
  98. Shanghai
    This derivative, ploddingly plotted WWII-set thriller goes through all the motions of an old-school wartime spy pic with plenty of technical competence but zero panache.
  99. War
    Quickly devolves into a standard-issue crime drama laced with routine martial artistry.
  100. Trigger Warning
    Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s well-crafted first English-language feature is too formulaically contrived to qualify as “elevated genre” or to boast the personal stamp of her prior work. Still, it’s an entertaining, pacey action melodrama.
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