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. Certifiably Jonathan
    Winters deserves better.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Super Mario Bros.
    There are plenty of gags, but not one laugh in the whole farrago...There’s nothing original about “Mario,” and the absence of tension or an interesting narrative makes it tedious in the extreme.
  3. Identity Thief
    With Identity Thief, Melissa McCarthy proves she's got what it takes to carry a feature, however meager the underlying material.
  4. Man of the House
    More than passably amusing.
  5. Broken Sky
    Though the bold treatment of homoerotic love in Mexican helmer Julian Hernandez's feature bow Broken Sky is sure to grab attention, it doesn't take long before the picture's torturously slow pace turns an earnest effort into a tedious aesthetic exercise.
  6. Watching TV with the Red Chinese
    Watching TV feels fundamentally old-fashioned in its storytelling. Thesping is solid, particularly by O'Nan, Nam and Jacobs. But the conversations feel artificial, overly concerned with re-creating period detail or interjecting relevant philosophical life concepts.
  7. Deal
    Public fascination with Texas Hold 'em and other poker variations will likely bolster B.O., though more discriminating auds may choose to pass.
  8. Morbius
    Morbius is a movie in which it’s clear that no one ever sent the script back for a rewrite with the instructions, “Please add a script.” As in: Add spice, add dialogue, add something so that the movie plays like more than a barely colored-in diagram.
  9. The Hurricane Heist
    The Hurricane Heist is...a perfect storm of deliriously watchable inanity and ineptitude. It may be a strong early candidate for the worst movie of 2018, but don’t let that deter you – bad movies this fun don’t come along every day.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Revenge
    This far-from-perfect rendering of Jim Harrison's shimmering novella has a romantic sweep and elemental power that ultimately transcend its flaws.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Once Upon a Crime...
    SCTV alum Eugene Levy makes his feature-film directing debut with a film that, ironically, would have provided ample fodder for a Second City spoof as a group of US stars chews its way through Italy and France in search of a movie.
  12. The Turning
    Lacking spine-tingling dread, taut tension, and the deservingly provocative ending needed to make its modern sentiments land, this re-imagining is less than a classic.
  13. The Blue Tooth Virgin
    Simultaneously insightful and idiotic.
  14. Ordinary Sinner
    Its central theme being the struggle between Christianity and homophobia -- though what's onscreen is far too vanilla in both content and execution to spark much enthusiasm.
  15. Megiddo: The Omega Code 2
    Apocalyptic gobbledygook.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Urban Legend
    Before long, however, the suspense becomes repetitious and predictable. In its denouement, the film breaks faith with its audience, violating credibility in an attempt to deliver a surprise villain.
  17. Dreamcatcher
    Overlong and unwieldy grab-bag of vintage monster-movie elements starts intriguingly as a snowbound deep-woods chiller, but gradually dissolves into a mess of other-worldly invasion and military counter-offensive.
  18. New York
    As the industry reshapes itself, this drama by helmer Kabir Khan -- with its bold, righteous, anti-Bush administration bent -- could cut out a new constituency for a genre usually devoted to purely escapist entertainment.
  19. Laredoans Speak: Voices on Immigration
    Some six or seven men (women conspicuously absent), including a mayor, an immigration lawyer, a congressman and a "coyote," offer views on immigration. Unfortunately, they all say the same thing -- and it's nothing new, affecting or articulate.
  20. Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child
    Colburn's focus is so single-mindedly laudatory that the whole collaborative process is reduced to people either helping or hindering the visiting genius.
  21. Arise
    Despite an impressive global scope and admirable ethnic diversity among the interview subjects, the central thesis that women are leading the charge on green issues receives nothing but anecdotal support.
  22. Radio Free Albemuth
    The narrative delivers satisfying intrigue and suspense.
  23. Poker Night
    Flashbacks within flashbacks exhaust viewer patience in this snarky mix of crime, action and sadism.
  24. Everly
    This slickly assembled exploitation-movie wankfest gets some mileage out of its star’s fully committed performance, though not enough to offset the grim, monotonous tenor of the proceedings — or the glib, fetishistic recycling of Asian thriller tropes.
  25. 31
    Rob Zombie truly loves horror movies. But he still hasn’t made a good one, and “31” is a perfect encapsulation of the reasons why: It’s a fanboy’s highlight reel of homages, without any of the credibility or context that made most of the films he’s inspired by so fine.
  26. The Dog Lover
    It’s a prosaic piece of muckraking, shot in a functional flat visual style, but it grazes a nerve.
  27. The Show
    This Is Your Death deeply misunderstands depression, treating suicide as a convenient device for its pea-brained premise.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Benji
    One of the wonders of the production, told simply and with no pretense of grandiose style, is the manner in which Benji – real name Higgins – performs. In this case, it isn’t a dog performing, but a dog acting, just as humans act. Much of the footage is shot from about 18 inches above the ground, upward from Benji’s point of view, and innovation is fascinating.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Red Sonja
    Red Sonja [based on stories by Robert E. Howard] returns to those olden days when women were women and the menfolk stood around with funny hats on until called forth to be whacked at.
  30. The Amityville Murders
    The gap between good intentions and effective follow-through is maybe the distinguishing characteristic of this latest “Amityville” movie, which takes itself with admirable seriousness, yet in the end can’t itself be taken very seriously.
  31. 200 Cigarettes
    Dismally unfunny...It's clear from the first few minutes that the performers are fighting an uphill battle against lame material, and the situation never improves as pic labors on.
  32. The Expendables 3
    This is the sort of numbskull non-entertainment that considers it worthwhile to fly in a martial-arts superstar like Jet Li and have him sit around firing a machine gun, pausing every so often to deliver the most awkward line readings of his career.
  33. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
    Even under the best of circumstances, it would be late in the day for another bigscreen adventure from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But coming so soon after the well-received reissue of George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, the high-camp cheesiness ofTurbo: A Power Rangers Movie is especially unimpressive.
  34. 20 Dates
    Blurring the lines between cinema verite and fiction, writer-director Myles Berkowitz has created a winning entertainment.
  35. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    While the 1984 film has aged, its now-familiar jolts still pack more punch than this pic's recycled ones, which sometimes register so tepidly as to cause snickers.
  36. Patrick
    Though the narrative tends to be a touch too simplistic for most grown-ups, and lacks enough riotous dog action for the little ones, there’s enough bite to make things worthwhile for those who just want to enjoy a sweet, wholesome dog movie.
  37. The Desperate Hour
    Watts’ commitment holds the movie together. She acts as if that phone were her flesh-and-blood partner. But it’s not. It’s a device impersonating something human. And so is Lakewood.
  38. 102 Dalmatians
    A pale reworking of its predecessor.
  39. The Perfect Score
    Energetic, smarter-than-expected teen comedy.
  40. Stateside
    Partially biographical story of a rich kid's unplanned encounter with the Marines and his even more random romance with a schizophrenic movie starlet is contrived and emotionally incomplete, and strained further by self-consciously cockeyed dialogue.
  41. Loosies
    The tale of a pickpocket's redemption through love, plus a vengeance-seeking cop and assorted betrayals, Loosies weakly channels Sam Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" but without the explosive action, iconic thesping and stylistic punch.
  42. Conversations with God
    More polished and better acted than many "inspirational" biopics.
  43. The Last Exorcism Part II
    Never mind the inherent titular redundancy: The Last Exorcism Part II is a generally effective sequel to the 2010 sleeper that injected at least a little new life into the heavily taxed found-footage-horror subgenre.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cannonball!
    Cannoball will please those who won’t rest until they see every car in creation destroyed and aflame.
  45. Kraven the Hunter
    The action in Kraven the Hunter is fine as far as it goes, but it rarely incites or bedazzles you.
  46. What's Your Number?
    A draggy, generally laugh-free outing that wastes a perfectly good Anna Faris.
  47. Mirrors
    Softcore horror at best, failed allegory at worst, Mirrors reflects little beyond Splat Pack auteur Alexandre Aja's desire to push his genre into less punishing and more profitable territory.
  48. Play the Game
    The comedy's broad perfs, predictable story beats and pro but characterless packaging have a smallscreen feel.
  49. Hitman
    A Eurotrashy vidgame knockoff that misses its target by a mile. Numbingly unthrilling as it lurches from one violent encounter to another, the pic's dark roots in an electronic, non-dramatic medium are plain to see, and unsuspecting gamers lured to theaters will soon wish they were back home participating in the action themselves.
  50. Lullaby
    Much of the early action, with Jonathan telling off his father, feels awkwardly staged, even tortured, a quality exacerbated by Levitas’ weakness with dialogue.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Enter the Ninja
    Enter the Ninja represents an unusual hybrid action film, an Italian Western-type story filmed as a contemporary Japanese martial arts action film in the Philippines. Results are pleasant though unspectacular.
  52. Safer at Home
    Will Wernick’s film not only fails to use that format in clever or suspenseful ways, it blows the basics of maintaining plausibility and viewer interest.
  53. Primeval
    It's not exactly good, but it's not bad, and far from boring.
  54. Scream 7
    Simply put, Scream 7 isn’t very scary, and it isn’t very inventively gory (which some of the sequels have been).
  55. Happy Tears
    A contradictory creature, both insightful and dumb, sometimes innovative and sometimes just plain inept. Dreamy, funny but also weirdly disjointed, it’s as if the very film itself were stoned, just like its two pot-smoking sister protags.
  56. Proud Mary
    Henson is the right actress to play a contract killer grown weary, but as a thriller Proud Mary doesn’t quite do her justice. It’s a connect-the-dots underworld trifle, watchable and minimal...though Henson holds it together and, at moments, comes close to convincing you that you’re watching a better movie.
  57. The Last Thing He Wanted
    The human dimension that gives the film brief jolts of energy never takes root. Instead, audiences are left grappling with a stuffy maze, albeit one presented with handsome production values and a filmmaker’s striking visual touch.
  58. Returning Mickey Stern
    Undone by an idea capable of hanging together for 30 minutes at best.
  59. Loser
    This tepid comedy-drama is, lamentably, aptly titled.
  60. Friday After Next
    Surely one of the most frantic, virulent and foul-natured Christmas season pic ever delivered by a Hollywood studio.
  61. Ghost Rider
    Though the superhero's fans have long awaited his close-up, the Devil's bounty hunter -- complete with a burning skull for a head and a killer motorcycle in flames --materializes in a movie that never measures up to his infernal potential.
  62. Paradise
    Cody shows promise as a director, paving over the bumpy patches with clever song choices, but needs to mix things up if she hopes to continue.
  63. Who Killed Nancy?
    Despite the presence of Glen Matlock, Steve Dior and a handful of other punk rockers, plus a slew of oblique eyewitness who lurked around before and after the fact, the documentary soon bogs down in tiresome minutiae.
  64. Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV
    Like many a poorly-plotted video game, “Kingsglaive” manages to skate by for a while on the sheer splendor of its visuals.
  65. Yogi Bear
    A bland and innocuous small-fry outing that retains a measure of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon's charm, though scarcely enough to justify the time, expense and visual-effects trickery it must have taken to inflate an endearing 2D cartoon into a dopey 3D extravaganza.
  66. Sphere
    An empty shell.
  67. Greater
    An insistent, clunky sermon about triumph through faith, David Hunt’s film is so determined to turn its subject into a Christ-like saint that it loses any sense of him as an actual flesh-and-blood man, the result being a third-string sports saga only apt to play to its devout target audience.
  68. Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver
    Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver is a storytelling mediocrity, but as spectacle it has tumult and rhythm.
  69. The Three Musketeers
    A very 2011 take on Alexandre Dumas' classic that feels weirdly dated already. Although adequately entertaining thanks to lavish production values and game supporting perfs, this anodyne adaptation lacks a killer hook that would help it cross over to a demographic beyond action buffs and fanboys.
  70. Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back!
    Girls -- a big part of the Pokemon crowd and what makes it such a humongous commercial success -- will feel left out in the cold.
  71. I Spy
    It's precisely the lineup of familiar past work that makes I Spy pretty dull goods, invigorated mainly by the sharp interplay between Murphy and Wilson, both of whom shine best when they have a sidekick to work with.
  72. Diablo
    On the surface, Diablo would seem to have all of the proper ingredients for a rollicking retro Western, yet its sights are set a bit higher, which inspires both admiration for its moxie and disappointment that its script and direction aren’t up to the challenge.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Fine Mess
    Blake Edward’s obsession with the slapstick comedy genre has produced some all-time comedy classics and some best-forgotten clinkers. A Fine Mess belongs in the latter category.
  74. Choose Love
    These filmmakers have trouble finessing their shenanigan-laced setups into anything but frequently frustrating, unsatisfactory conclusions. This title urges us to choose love, but audiences should choose to not play along.
  75. The Wedding Ringer
    A well-cast but clumsily assembled buddy-for-hire comedy that increasingly smacks of desperation as it approaches its big-day climax.
  76. Escape from Planet Earth
    A lightweight, warp-speed, brightly colored trifle.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    Starts with an enjoyable, if crude, black comedy situation promised by the title, but then it turns into an incredibly dumb teenage girl's fantasy of making it in the business world.
  78. Diana
    While mostly swerving past the pitfall of tastelessness, this sincerely intended account of the last two years of Princess Diana’s life risks an even more perilous roadblock: dullness.
  79. The Binge
    If the premise sounds more fun than the execution, that’s because The Binge doesn’t seem to recognize how or why people indulge in such substances to begin with, treating intoxication as the punchline rather than the setup for what should have been a more subversive satire.
  80. Hannibal Rising
    This upmarket slasher is a well-produced but slow-moving thriller that never quite roars to life.
  81. Self/less
    Even the resourceful, likable Reynolds is at a loss to elevate this rather dreary piece of would-be escapism, which calls out for the wry, pulpy touch of a John Carpenter (or his acolyte David Twohy) and instead gets the strained self-seriousness of director Tarsem Singh.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Screwballs
    A poor man's "Porky's". This compendium of horny high school jokes set in 1965 is full of youthful exuberance and proves utterly painless to watch, but it is so close in premise and tone to its model that negative comparisons can't help but be drawn.
  83. Best. Christmas. Ever.
    Lambert and screenwriters Todd Calgi Gallicano and Charles Shyer turn in a multi-faceted tale that blessedly never devolves into a one-dimensional story about two competitive, smart women sniping at each other while their clueless families watch from the sidelines.
  84. Balls Up
    A mostly pretty innocuous affair — give or take some par-for-the-course ethnic stereotyping and at least one close-up involving a prosthetic glans — it’s neither good nor bad to any memorable degree, not as riotous as it could have been but not devoid of low-hanging laughs either.
  85. Red Planet
    As dull and arid as a hike through the desert.
  86. The Glass House
    There's nothing in genredom quite so unhinged as the badly made psycho-thriller, and long before it's over, The Glass House collapses from wretched design and execution.
  87. Mission to Mars
    In outer space, no one can hear you scream -- of boredom.
  88. Wake
    Though the characters are not particularly interesting in themselves, their dynamic remains consistently engrossing.
  89. The Reflektor Tapes
    Joseph winds up with an disorganized mishmash of visual gimmicks, empty exoticism, and soundbites worthy of “This is Spinal Tap.” Great music and some dynamic, up-close concert footage gives it the occasional life, but The Reflektor Tapes will appeal to Arcade Fire devotees only and even their patience might be tested.
  90. Bewitched
    Nora Ephron's attempt to reconceive the standard TV-to-bigscreen adaptation goes bizarrely haywire here, spinning out of control like a runaway broomstick.
  91. The Back-up Plan
    This tepid romantic comedy falls somewhere between a weak sitcom pilot and a second-tier Hallmark movie.
  92. Harold and the Purple Crayon
    The film ends with an overly spelled-out plea for the value of “imagination,” but about the only thing the filmmakers are drawing with their purple crayon is algorithms.
  93. The Assignment
    Nobody — not even viewers willing to settle for good, unclean B-movie fun — is done any favors by something as crude as (re)Assignment, which gracelessly mashes together hardboiled crime-melodrama cliches and an unintentionally funny “Oh no! I’m a chick now!!” gender-change narrative hook.
  94. Keeping Up with the Joneses
    An amiable time-killer of an espionage comedy.
  95. A Long Way Down
    It’s worse than tacky, trivializing depression for a handful of easy laughs and pop-psychology platitudes.
  96. Slow Burn
    What begins as a moderately interesting set of interconnected mysteries involving race and identity soon grows eye-rollingly laborious, not to mention increasingly derivative of Christopher McQuarrie's "Usual Suspects" script.
  97. The Messengers
    Though the Pangs prove culturally adaptive on a visual level, they seem completely clueless as to the tonal modalities of Mark Wheaton's admittedly undercooked, all-American script.
  98. A Fall from Grace
    A Fall From Grace isn’t consequential moviemaking. This won’t come as a surprise to plenty of Perry’s detractors and maybe Perry doesn’t have to aim for that.
  99. The Forest
    First-time director Jason Zada does generate an intermittently spooky sense of mystery that not even the muddled scripting can fully demolish.
  100. Bitter Harvest
    While Bitter Harvest will undoubtedly serve to raise awareness, there can be no doubt that the events deserve a more compelling and responsible treatment than this.
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