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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    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Stardom
    The irony is that this film about the superficiality of celebrity-crazed Western society is itself somewhat superficial.
  2. The Thirteenth Floor
    Comes too late, far surpassed by similar and more visually stunning devices in "The Matrix," and even by the mind-bending realities of "eXistenZ."
  3. The Reaping
    Revisiting the book of Exodus in a feverish Southern-gothic context, this lurid, often ludicrously entertaining slab of Biblesploitation builds an earnest case for spirituality in a skeptical age.
  4. Dumb and Dumber To
    Sporadically very funny, mostly very tedious, and sometimes truly vile, this 18-years-too-late sequel nonetheless exhibits a certain puerile purity of purpose.
  5. I Am Number Four
    A flashy, lunkheaded sci-fi extravaganza sure to appeal to teenagers who like their interplanetary warfare bloodless, their high-school soaps squeaky-clean and their numbers countable on one hand.
  6. What Happens in Vegas
    This two-seated star vehicle for top-billed Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz wrings a respectable number of laughs from a formulaic scenario about attracted-opposites who bicker and back-stab their way toward happily-ever-aftering.
  7. The Pink Panther 2
    Serves up enough goofy pranks and fractured wordplay to keep the series purring along.
  8. Striking Distance
    Columbia apparently dragged the river to come up with the script for this Bruce Willis vehicle -- an OK action movie until it sinks under the weight of implausible plotting and over-the-top direction.
  9. Tony N' Tina's Wedding
    A rousing, hilarious Bacchanal of family togetherness, Roger Paradiso's brilliantly cinematic adaptation of the second-longest running play in Off-Broadway history might be the best of the recent rash of wedding pics.
  10. Something Borrowed
    Try as she might, Hudson can't turn Darcy into a three-dimensional character: She's astonishingly easy to dislike, but not nearly amusing enough in what could have been an unforgettable camp performance.
  11. The Kissing Booth 3
    There’s plenty of fan service (including a whole new list for Elle and Lee to exhaust), but also a late-arriving sense of identity that gives this junk-food sequel just enough nutritional value to help its young audiences reconsider how to determine their own post-high school priorities.
  12. The Invisible
    That rare mystery in which auds know everything upfront and the characters, rather than investigating, simply wait for the culprit to turn herself in. Previously adapted as Swedish thriller "Den Osynlige," Mick Davis' script brings out director David S. Goyer's emo side.
  13. Ithaca
    By turns poignant and plodding, affecting and affected, Ithaca is the sort of frustrating movie that’s just good enough to make you wish it were a lot better.
  14. This Revolution
    The street action is vivid, but the dramatics are distinctly not, lending the film an unintended sense of fakery.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rambo III
    The battle scenes in Rambo III are explosive, conflagratory tableaux that make for wrenching, frequently terrifying viewing. Always at ground zero in the chaos is Rambo - gloriously, inhumanly impervious to fear and danger - whose character is inhabited by Stallone with messianic intensity.
  16. A Promise
    Led by a trio of lackluster performances from Alan Rickman, Rebecca Hall and “Game of Thrones” thesp Richard Madden, this awkward, passionless drama conveys neither the sensuality nor the drawn-out sense of longing required by its period tale of a young secretary who falls in love with his employer’s wife.
  17. Father of Invention
    Colorless exposition and a lack of imagination or wit stall Father of Invention at the starting gate.
  18. That Darn Cat
    It's not quite a catastrophe, but the updated remake of That Darn cat is a loud and largely charmless trifle. Very small children may be attracted in sufficient numbers for fair-to-middling opening weekend B.O., but this overbearing comedy isn't likely to pussyfoot very long in theaters before it high-tails to homevideo.
  19. Revenge of the Green Dragons
    This crudely made thriller plays like a stilted Cantonese riff on organized-crime cliches, substituting blood and brutality for novelty or insight.
  20. Stolen Summer
    Plays like an aggressively heart-tugging, exceedingly vanilla Disney telemovie.
  21. The Anarchist Cookbook
    An ill-conceived effort that starts OK but quickly goes off the rails.
  22. No Such Thing
    Deadly dull in stretches, and just plain embarrassing in others.
  23. The Next Karate Kid
    Leisurely and overly familiar pic should appeal to young teen girls, but won't be breaking any B.O. bricks with its bare hands.
  24. Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood
    Neither funny enough nor scary enough to be satisfying as either a shocker or a spoof.
  25. We'll Never Have Paris
    A sporadically amusing, more often grating romantic comedy.
  26. Johnny Mnemonic
    Overall, pic’s conception of the future isn’t terribly original or inventive, and viewers not into the head trip of bigscreen computer graphics will want to download a lot sooner than Johnny does.
  27. Tarot
    Set in a world where every door creaks and there isn’t a single well-lit location, Tarot is little more than a clearinghouse of horror clichés.
  28. Saw IV
    Even by the standards of the recent "Saws," which have enjoyed considerably larger budgets than the first pic, the new edition is more frenetically cut (by editors Kevin Greutert and Brett Sullivan), more dimly lit (by lenser David A. Armstrong), sweatier in terms of perfs by the grimly serious cast, more madly packed with micro-incidents and action, and more brazen in requiring suspension of disbelief.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Fly II
    The Fly II is an expectedly gory and gooey but mostly plodding sequel to the 1986 hit that was a remake of the 1958 sci-fier that itself spawned two sequels.
  30. Perfect
    What it means, Alcazar leaves open for interpretation. He’s more a mood maker than a story teller, and the film feels like people watching at a fancy party and inhaling different wafts of perfume.
  31. Stuck
    “Oftentimes these connections are neglected or rejected,” sings Lloyd early on to complete the couplet, “but every now and then the universe succeeds.” So, in its sincere and refreshingly scrappy way, does Stuck.
  32. Lucky Bastard
    A new low for found-footage films, Lucky Bastard uses a porno shoot as the stage for a thriller with little mystery and lots of pointless moralizing.
  33. Kin
    The results are, in artistic terms, a modest success. In commercial terms, it’s a dicier prospect — viewers expecting the kind of bigger-budget spectacle that typically ensues when a screen teenager stumbles into sci-fi situations may be befuddled by what’s primarily a medium-scaled road trip drama with thriller elements … and a very special ray gun.
  34. Rupture
    This is a plot that feels lazily reverse-engineered from a collection of disparate, pre-existing scenes and elements, rather like one of those cooking shows where contestants are given a selection of random ingredients and forced to come up with a meal.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Guardian
    Who knows what possessed director William Friedkin to straight-facedly tell this absurd 'tree bites man' tale, but it's an impulse he should have exorcised.
  36. Blumhouse's Truth or Dare
    The movie isn’t scary, it isn’t gripping, it isn’t fun, and it isn’t fueled by any sort of clever compulsion. It’s just a strangely arduous exercise that feels increasingly frantic and arbitrary as it goes along.
  37. Coffee & Kareem
    Shane Mack’s screenplay is not without laughs, but it is certainly lacking in prudence.
  38. Universal Soldier
    In an equally damning commentary on the acting and Roland Emmerich’s direction, Lundgren and Van Damme are both more realistic as stoic cadavers than they are once their memories start to return.
  39. Contracted: Phase II
    The short running time means there’s nary a dull moment, but also that no new (or even old) ideas get explored in more than drive-by fashion, the occasion pause for gore aside.
  40. Camera Obscura
    “Camera” scores more points for an intriguing premise than for its execution, which grows more muddled conceptually as the horror elements grow more prominent. Still, this is an accomplished effort that holds full attention while you’re watching it, even if it leaves a few too many questions dangling at the end.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Inspector Clouseau
    Film is a lively, entertaining and episodic story of bank robbers. Good scripting, better acting and topnotch direction get the most out of the material.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Oh, God! Book II
    Absence this time of John Denver, his chemistry with lead George Burns, and the original's solid comedy material lead to a bland, unstimulating film.
  43. The Affair
    Despite a fine Continental cast and gleaming production values, Czech helmer Julius Ševčík has made a muddled, maudlin hash of what ought to have been a sure thing.
  44. The Huntsman: Winter's War
    The sheer abundance of on-screen ornamentation isn’t quite enough to make The Huntsman: Winter’s War a beautiful film.... Still, it’s one that has been exhaustively designed by many hands — which only further shows up its inelegant patchwork in the writing department.
  45. Paris Countdown
    This been-there-done-that story marks a pretty banal debut for writer-director Alain Marie, who seems far more interested in aping Refn and early-career Michael Mann than in finding his own style.
  46. Grudge Match
    Essentially recasting “Grumpy Old Men” with the senescent specters of Rocky Balboa and Jake LaMotta, the result is sporadically amusing, with some chucklesome sight gags and crowdpleasing supporting turns from Alan Arkin and Kevin Hart, yet it’s all so overcooked that it defeats its own purpose.
  47. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    Cleverly titled but noxious British comedy.
  48. Shield of Straw
    Even the hackiest of Hollywood writers would have known how to fix its considerable script problems.
  49. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
    This threequel is surprisingly lifeless and almost laugh-less.
  50. Resident Evil
    Despite a promising setup, pic never really goes anywhere, instead immersing viewers in a kinetic onslaught of flesh (namely, that of Milla Jovovich) and flesh-eaters (most of the rest of the cast).
  51. Mute
    What is Jones trying to say with Mute? One would hardly guess this over-congested generic exercise came from the same mind as the elegant, almost minimalistic “Moon,” which made far better use of all that went unsaid.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Masters of the Universe
    All elements are of epic proportions in this Conan-Star Wars hybrid ripoff, based on the best-selling line of children’s toys. Epitome of Good takes on Epitome of Evil for nothing less than the future of the Universe, and the result is a colossal bore.
  53. Inner Demons
    The goofiness is redeemed somewhat by a wickedly violent climax — the exclamation point at the end of a rather simple sentence.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Heroes
    A poorly-written melodrama.
    • Variety
  55. Genie
    The funny moments in Genie, and there are a handful of them, emerge mostly from McCarthy just tossing off lines with her dislocating insouciance.
  56. Teaching Mrs. Tingle
    A pat, hollow exercises with few tricks (or treats) up its sleeve.
  57. Awake
    Awake is bonkers in a fun way from time to time . . . but gives the distinct impression that the most interesting crises are happening off screen.
  58. Stealth
    Aiming to join the Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay school of American movie war games, Stealth is just too dumb to make the grade.
  59. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
    This isn't the Star Wars we've always known and at least sometimes loved.
  60. Smokers Only
    A walk on the "dark side" that moves far more slowly than limited character insight requires.
  61. A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky
    Handsome but dramatically static drama.
  62. Americatown
    Strictly for fans of free-form, DIY hit-or-miss humor (and those who prefer a miss to a hit), pic complacently parades its alienated amateurism in the mistaken belief that half a gag is better than none.
  63. For Greater Glory
    Despite enough good intentions to pave a four-lane highway, the ardently sincere but dramatically unfocused For Greater Glory plays like a multipart miniseries that has been hacked down to feature length.
  64. Venom
    Venom is a textbook case of a comic-book film that’s unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura.
  65. Dream House
    Impressive as the combination may seem on paper, having Sheridan direct this sort of genre fare reps a clear miscasting of helmer and subject, as he displays no particular feel for the material and is unable to overcome the story's generic approach, lack of striking psychological ideas, and literal-minded denouement.
  66. Jumper
    Director Doug Liman churns out a serviceable sci-fi thriller/videogame template that plays like "The Matrix Lite" and, finally, isn't nearly as cool as its trailer.
  67. Rumor Has It...
    As muddled in most respects as its title, Rumor Has It... begins with an intriguing premise...but it devolves into a bland romance spiced with too little comedy.
  68. Argylle
    While common sense and good taste may be inclined to resist Vaughn’s garishly over-the-top style at first, the movie eventually finds its groove.
  69. The Hustle
    The Hustle, fun as some of it is, is a tall fizzy drink in which the fizz never completely rises to the top of the glass.
  70. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    Little seems new compared to the first installment, except that this version is longer, louder, and perhaps "more than your eye can meet" in one sitting.
  71. Two Can Play That Game
    Few recent movies have conceived their central female character more contemptuously -- a fanatic for a lifestyle that appears to have come from the bestselling "The Rules."
  72. Bollywood/Hollywood
    Depressingly parochial.
  73. Scooby-Doo
    Just fast, frenetic and funny enough to amuse both new fans and longtime devotees of the characters who have inspired more than 30 years worth of animated TV episodes and made-for-video features.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pet Sematary II
    Pet Sematary Two is about 50% better than its predecessor, which is to say it's not very good at all. The latest incarnation relies more on gore than genuine chills and is sorely lacking in subtlety.
  75. Dirt Music
    Centered on characters who act without much in the way of logic, with much of its dialogue confined to clipped bursts of unsatisfying Hemingwayisms, “Dirt Music” is a fine-looking romance that never finds the right key.
  76. Emmanuelle
    Saying something freshly substantive about female desire while honoring the film’s defining spirit of vapid, diaphanous horniness is a tricky, potentially unworkable brief; Audrey Diwan‘s inert, frequently frigid new film opts to do neither.
  77. Hide and Seek
    A routine haunted child psychothriller gussied up with A-list casting.
  78. Very Good Girls
    The screenplay is so vapid and cliched, and the casting so terrible, that viewers may wind up entertaining themselves with other thoughts.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mrs. Winterbourne
    As calculated as the cries of 'Go Ricki!' on its star's talkshow, Mrs Winterbourne is a sappy, old-fashioned and predictable vehicle for actress-turned-talk maven-turned-actress-again Ricki Lake that delivers requisite warmth but few laughs. Lake's ebullient charm and solid performances by Shirley MacLaine, Brendan Fraser and Miguel Sandoval provide some highlights.
  80. Stardust
    The movie gives us only a small taste of it, but it’s enough to whet your appetite: for a Bowie biopic that captures this cracked actor in all his funhouse-mirror rock ‘n’ roll glory.
  81. Bride of the Wind
    An odd case of filmmaking with a crystal-clear subject but no guiding dramatic premise.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Gone in Sixty Seconds
    Perfectly dreadful in every respect.
  83. A Walk to Remember
    A glossy teen-weepie romance that often plays like an inspirational indie skewed toward Christian niche market.
  84. Drift
    Manages to get a fair bit right about early 1970s surf culture when it isn’t trafficking in the hoariest of David-vs.-Goliath cliches.
  85. Marguerite & Julien
    The film is a painfully silly, laughably naive Romance with a capital “R.”
  86. The Host
    Extravagantly silly but undeniably entertaining sci-fi soap opera.
  87. My Mother
    Director Christophe Honore's respectable, tightly coiled, but ultimately unrewarding adaptation of Georges Bataille's posthumous novel.
  88. Halloween II (2009)
    Repellent not only in content but in visual style, writer-director Rob Zombie’s hatchet job on the series he revived so artfully two years ago plays like a violent act of euthanasia upon the huge, brain-dead body of work inspired by the 30-year-old “Halloween.”
  89. Event Horizon
    Despite game efforts from a first-rate cast and acres of impressive production values, Event Horizon remains a muddled and curiously uninvolving sci-fi horror show.
  90. Can You Keep a Secret?
    Its candy-floss-lite sentiments and strong lead performances carry the picture beyond the genre’s limitations. That said, it lacks a sense of uniqueness to set it apart from other female-centric book-to-screen adaptations.
  91. The Kitchen
    We see, in Melissa McCarthy’s increasingly fierce performance, a hint of what the movie might have been: the tale of a new kind of feminine mystique — a methodical fury that weds the imperatives of a mother to the style of a gangster. But that movie needed a better script.
  92. Post Grad
    As fiction characters go, Ryden seems as dull as they come, making it hard to muster much sympathy for her plight.
  93. Van Helsing
    The sense of evil overkill is entirely representative of the picture itself, which repeatedly looks ready to blow all its fuses due to sensory overload.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    St. Elmo's Fire
    Beyond occasional mutterings of words like ‘love’ and ‘beer,’ there’s never any explanation in the dialog that would hint at motivation.
  95. The Forsaken
    Chalk it up as a middling B-pic that, with a bit more wit and style, could have been at least a cult item.
  96. Rape Me
    This hard-core pic is a half-baked, punk-inflected porn odyssey masquerading as a movie worth seeing and talking about.
  97. Ghosts of Mars
    This deliberately pre-'90s slice of rock 'n' roll-tinged sci-fi horror, decorated with anything but the latest in special effects, seems particularly grungy and marginal.
  98. A Rumor of Angels
    Despite good acting from the entire cast, yarn is a bit dull and predictable, straining too hard to convey its spiritual message.
  99. The Babysitters
    It ultimately fails to deliver on the audacity of its premise. Neither truly original nor a guilty-pleasure genre spin, the picture lacks a hook for general audiences who may find the subject matter distasteful as presented.
  100. Multiple Sarcasms
    Timothy Hutton's fine, loose-limbed perf as a man adrift lifts Multiple Sarcasms, frosh scribe-helmer Brooks Branch's male menopause apologia, out of cliche-ridden territory -- at least temporarily.
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