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. On Deadly Ground
    This is a vanity production parading as a social statement. It nonetheless has enough sound, fury and flash to satisfy the action crowd who have propped up Seagal’s career.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Deathsport
    David Carradine is the quiet good guy and the best thing that can be said about his acting and his part is that he doesn’t say much. Claudia Jennings is his partner good guy, the one who gets to amuse the bad guy in the dark room. The best thing that can be said about her performance is that she gets to take off her clothes, twice.
  3. Sucker Punch
    Like Quentin Tarantino, Snyder is unapologetic about his influences -- the trashier the better -- though he's far less skilled in the art of pastiche.
  4. The Wrong Missy
    The Wrong Missy is a harmless dumb-meets-smart-mouth comedy that doesn’t necessarily feed your appetite for more Netflix throwaways. But it does make you want to see Lauren Lapkus’s next act.
  5. The Baytown Outlaws
    A boisterously Tarantinoesque mash-up of cliches, archetypes and bodacious craziness in the tradition of Southern-fried '60s and '70s drive-in fodder, The Baytown Outlaws is the sort of cartoonishly violent and swaggeringly non-PC concoction that defines guilty pleasure for many genre fans.
  6. There Be Dragons
    Dragons may not be perfect, but it plays to the helmer's strengths, demonstrating an increasingly rare sense of scope and pageantry best served by the bigscreen.
  7. Love Happens
    Excise the love story, and there's a pretty good movie buried within Love Happens struggling to get out, mostly to little avail.
  8. Colonia
    The leads are given the thankless task of maintaining grim poker faces through scene after scene of high contrivance and cliche-ridden dialogue.
  9. Crazy as Hell
    An erratic, psychobabbling jumble of scenes that never builds to any discernible point.
  10. Catch That Kid
    Feels like a prolonged episode of "Power Rangers" minus the colorful costumes. Whatever charm the original had was clearly lost in translation, resulting in a tedious exercise that 6- to 10-year-olds may find mildly diverting.
  11. The Space Between Us
    If romance-seeking audiences know what’s best for them, they’ll put some space between themselves and this movie.
  12. North
    Ultimately, its message is the familiar "there's no place like home." But rather than creating a modern "Wizard of Oz," this noble misfire just barely manages to pull back the curtain and reveal the man manipulating the image.
  13. RV
    RV works up an ingratiating sweetness that partially compensates for its blunt predictability and meager laughs.
  14. Skinwalkers
    Plays more like '70s drive-in fare than a monster mash of recent vintage.
  15. The Last Song
    A soapy meller that transitions the young pop star from the Disney Channel to the bigscreen while giving girls what they'd seem to want and nothing more.
  16. Rites of Spring
    Helmer-writer Padraig Reynolds creates a dizzying pastiche of genre conventions, and he has a terrific actress in Anessa Ramsey, who's that rare thing in horror, a thoroughly convincing victim.
  17. The Young Messiah
    This pious drama is a work of minimal imagination and even less subtlety.
  18. Amnesiac
    Helmer Michael Polish and his spouse-star, Kate Bosworth, were reportedly attracted to the project for the change-of-pace role it afforded her. But even beyond its sketchy screenplay, the pic’s main problem is that Bosworth lacks the villainous authority required to make Mike Le and Amy Kolquist’s tricky if undercooked screenplay work.
  19. Annie
    The film replaces choreography with metronomic editing, while one-note overstatement drowns out character development.
  20. Out of the Dark
    The lead actors are solid as usual, but you can feel them all knocking their heads against the low ceiling of material that’s afraid to take any risks — playing it so safe that the film ends up lacking anything in the way of real personality, scares or plot surprises.
  21. The Amityville Horror
    Begins slavishly faithful to its low-key 1970s predecessor then sledgehammers auds with a numbing succession of shock edits and over-the-top horror effects.
  22. Superhero Movie
    Given the abysmal quality of recent spoof pics, it's saying something that Superhero Movie provides a fairly steady stream of midsized laughs -- and even the 40% or so of gags that just lie there aren't actively painful.
  23. Original Sin
    Lavish and florid, the corny venture falls into so-bad-it's-good territory.
  24. P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
    Lacking the knockout lead perfs or more whimsical tone that might have transcended script's dubious logic, pic comes off as a so-so theatrical stunt delivered via the wrong medium.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uptown Girls
    Light, occasionally charming and reasonably well-crafted.
  26. The Battle of Shaker Heights
    Although Erica Beeney's script beat out more than 7,000 entries, the screen version dulls her potentially distinctive voice with deadly doses of sentimentality.
  27. Impostor
    Imposter is a penny-pinched "Blade Runner," a stubbornly unexciting ride into the near future.
  28. My Brother
    A heavy-handed redemption story.
  29. Hamlet
    A modestly inventive but curiously bloodless version of the Bard’s timeless tragedy.
  30. Mindhunters
    Ridiculous would-be thriller.
  31. My Lucky Star
    Wholesome, effortless entertainment that runs smoothly enough but seldom takes one’s breath away in the romance department.
  32. Fifty Shades Darker
    For all its structural and psychological deficiencies, it’s hard not to enjoy Fifty Shades Darker on its own lusciously limited terms.
  33. Just Go with It
    Manages to misfire in two seemingly incompatible directions. A puerile kiddie-comedy without the anarchic energy, and a schmaltzy romantic comedy without the sweetness.
  34. Hanging Up
    A shamelessly sappy family meller that bears the schmaltzy sensibility of Nora Ephron.
  35. Very Annie Mary
    A half-klutzy, half-engaging eccentric comedy.
  36. Trash Humpers
    Pity the festival-going fool who stumbles unawares into Harmony Korine's patently abrasive, deliberately cruddy-looking mock-documentary Trash Humpers. All others -- that is, those familiar with Korine's anti-bourgeois oeuvre and know what they're in for -- will have a glorious time.
  37. Elite Squad
    A one-note celebration of violence-for-good that plays like a recruitment film for fascist thugs.
  38. Old Guy
    What should be a plucky, whip-smart character-driven actioner about an elderly assassin fighting career obsolescence morphs into a dusty, no-stakes patchwork of clichés that shrugs off any resonance, let alone entertainment value.
  39. Thinner
    There’s really nothing particularly fresh in this routinely crafted, banally scripted and directed effort. Mantegna’s humorously arrogant performance is the pic’s sole distinctive element, and it’s saved for the finale. Still, it’s just not good enough to make up for the rest of the drudgery and put a smile on one’s face leaving the theater.
  40. The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
    Only real payoff is seeing the monstrosity assembled, and though that will surely earn the Dutch writer-director a cult reputation on the genre circuit, "going there" does not a movie make.
  41. Regretting You
    The line between a good soap opera and a bad soap opera can sometimes be razor-thin. Regretting You walks the line for a while but lands on the wrong side of it.
  42. Code Name: The Cleaner
    This is an especially limp star vehicle that delivers a few widely spaced moments of frivolity before what should be a quick mop-up trip to the DVD aisles.
  43. Dear Wendy
    Well made but unlikable and dramatically absurd picture.
  44. After Earth
    Shyamalan is clearly a director-for-hire here, his disinterest palpable from first frame to last. Nowhere in evidence is the gifted "Sixth Sense" director who once brought intricately crafted setpieces and cinematic sleight-of-hand to even the least of his own movies.
  45. Dragon Wars: D-War
    A feast of A-grade f/x married to a Z-grade, irony-free script.
  46. Miss Conception
    Miscast and miscalculated, Miss Conception hopes to collect on Hollywood's recent baby-on-board craze, delivering instead the least credible take on human pregnancy since Arnold Schwarzenegger gave birth in "Junior."
  47. The Haunting in Connecticut
    Long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension.
  48. Big Momma's House
    The sight and sound of Lawrence in fat-lady drag remains engaging throughout; script may often let him down, forcing him to keep things afloat almost single-handedly.
  49. The Wedding Planner
    This tale of mismatched lovebirds begins with considerable charm but eventually loses its winning ways with an excess of ridiculous elements.
  50. The Out-of-Towners
    Lightweight but likable entertainment.
  51. The Caller
    Frank Langella's note-perfect, tour-de-force turn as a man elegantly shaping his own demise is nicely counterpointed by a shambling Elliott Gould as a bird-watching private eye.
  52. Run the Tide
    Lautner’s earnest turn, as well as those of familiar TV faces Johnson (“Bates Motel,” “The Shield”) and Zimmer (“Entourage,” “UnReal”), are hamstrung by writing that demands a certain emotional urgency while providing the performers little opportunity for surprise or nuance.
  53. Phoenix Forgotten
    After 40 or so minutes of teasing hints that its makers may have hit upon a fresh approach to found-footage thrillers, “Phoenix Forgotten” indicates the genre may be having its last gasp on life support as the movie devolves into yet another threadbare patchwork of mounting hysteria, faux cinéma vérité, and shaky-cam visual clichés.
  54. The Divine Fury
    Kim’s film is a slick concoction that affords moderate guilty-pleasure fun for a while, though it goes on too long to diminishing effect.
  55. The Tiger Rising
    Designed for maximum corniness, The Tiger Rising peppers its action with enough references to God, upturned-to-the-heavens gazes and warm enveloping light to make clear its function as a homily.
  56. Mea Culpa
    Perry knows what he’s doing. He can’t possibly think any of this is believable for one second. But it could be fun to discuss its outlandishness over a few glasses of wine.
  57. Very Bad Things
    Basically a very conventional movie gussied up with a few jaw-dropping moments. Unlike genuinely amoral pics such as "Heathers" or "Shallow Grave," it never seems really comfortable with its characters' actions.
  58. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
    A ludicrous, borderline-nonsensical supernatural concoction with a slightly redeeming sense of its own silliness.
  59. The Man
    Functional if thoroughly uninspired movie. Because it clings to the comedy-action template of "48 Hrs.," pic feels like it could have been made 15 years ago.
  60. The Dukes of Hazzard
    Loud, silly but kind of lame-brained fun with car chases aplenty, "Dukes" faithfully plays like an extended episode of the series, albeit with an additional gallon or so of fuel-injected raunchiness.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jade
    A muddled mix of sex, political corruption and murder, Jade is a jigsaw puzzle that never puts all the pieces together.
  62. Haunt
    Following on the coattails of “The Conjuring” and “Insidious,” Haunt is a classical haunted-house thriller with perhaps little that’s out of the ordinary for the genre, but occasionally inventive execution.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Desperate Hours
    Desperate Hours is a coldly mechanical and uninvolving remake of the 1955 Bogart pic The Desperate Hours, with Mickey Rourke as the hood terrorizing a suburban family.
  64. The 5th Wave
    Enough of Yancey’s ambitious narrative has made the final cut to reflect an arrestingly original spin on trendy genre tropes.
  65. Sunset Strip
    Interesting structure provides pic with plenty of opportunities for social satire, human comedy and chance encounters, but few setups are ever dramatically fulfilled.
  66. I Dreamed of Africa
    Visually gratifying but dramatically weak, the film falls short of its aspiration to be a sweeping romantic epic.
  67. 54
    Director Mark Christopher gives the picture a brisk pace and a colorful, party-like mood that makes the experience painless and sporadically even enjoyable.
  68. Soul Plane
    Begins as a high-spirited romp before running out of gas and ideas about halfway up the tarmac.
  69. Sleepover
    A frenetic, featherweight trifle aimed at tweener femmes.
  70. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
    Minimally funny comedy feels like a Disney Channel pic that got boosted to theatrical after Lohan scored a hit opposite Jamie Lee Curtis in the "Freaky Friday" remake.
  71. New York Minute
    After a string of direct-to-video excursions, this latest film remains an off-putting assault of too-screwball comedy with glints of pathos.
  72. Jenny's Wedding
    While the fine cast teases out glimmers of nuance here and there, Mary Agnes Donoghue’s film plays like a series of hand-holding growth exercises for closed-minded conservatives, and relies too heavily on its tying-the-knot finale for both dramatic momentum and emotional closure.
  73. Being Human
    Being Human never comes alive. This stillborn series of little fables is so flat and ill-conceived that it could convince the uninitiated that neither Robin Williams nor the highly idiosyncratic Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth had any talent.
  74. Cat Run
    If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with genre baloney -- and enough shoplifted visual trickery to fill Quentin Tarantino's kitchen sink.
  75. The Longest Ride
    Appealing performances by a trio of second- and third-generation Hollywood kids keep this three-hankie twaddle more bearable than it deserves.
  76. Like a Boss
    Its economic message might be fuzzy. Its feminism, too. But best-friend comedy Like a Boss rides Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrnes’s frisky and believable chemistry to laughs — some worn, some crude, but more than a few delivered deftly and consistently enough to keep audiences smiling if not doubled over.
  77. Red Roses and Petrol
    It all rings particularly hollow in light of several recent pics ("Last Orders" and "The Barbarian Invasions" chief among them) that have explored similar terrain with much greater emotion and intelligence.
  78. God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness
    This one, taken on its own terms, isn’t bad in a TV-movie-fodder-as-parable way.
  79. Leap Year
    Pleasant enough overall, if also somewhat gratingly old-fashioned.
  80. Fatal Instinct
    Director Carl Reiner and writer David O’Malley simply cast their nets too far and wide in this grating sendup, which proves crude without being clever or, for that matter, even remotely funny.
  81. Rennie's Landing
    The more Marc Fusco and co-writer Michael Garrity's script aims for cleverness, the more it unravels.
  82. The Punisher
    Fires blanks. Thoroughly routine, pic plays like a paint-by-numbers pilot for bygone basic-cable teleseries.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    High School High
    Like a student who studies hard but just doesn't have the smarts, this joyless send-up of the "Dangerous Minds," "Stand and Deliver," idealistic-teacher-in-a-ghetto-school genre plods along earnestly with barely passing grades.
  84. Garmento
    Michele Maher's Garmento appears more shocked at the fashion industry's cynical side than moviegoers are likely to be, making its drama of corruption a preordained snooze.
  85. Loners
    Dryly funny and benevolently shrewd.
  86. Chlorine
    The results don’t feel disjointed so much as oddly undernourished and a bit toothless for what’s intended as a bold (mostly) comic expose.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The January Man
    Kevin Kline as an unorthodox but indispensable detective tracking a serial strangler infuses this improbable Gotham-set romantic policier with personality.
  88. The Shack
    The strangest thing about The Shack, and the reason it’s finally a so-so movie, is that all the rage and terror and dark-side vengeance that Mack has to learn to transcend is something we’re told about, but we never actually see him mired in it.
  89. New World Order
    Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel's New World Order is less about an international cabal seeking world enslavement than about those who fervently believe such conspiracies exist and who crusade to defeat them.
  90. Euphoria
    The catharsis feels fake and unearned. Moreover, the film lacks the warmth and respect for all of of its characters displayed in Langseth’s previous work.
  91. The Wedding Date
    An intriguingly racy premise -- plays out to listless, unsatisfying effect.
  92. The Brothers Solomon
    If "Hot Rod" and "The Ex" couldn't attract an audience, this full-blown comedy miscarriage stands no chance.
  93. The Undefeated
    Slickly produced and blatantly manipulative, Bannon's hagiographic tribute is a celebratory cavalcade of career highlights and glowing testimonials that doubtless will please Palin's devoted followers, appall her fiercest critics -- and, perhaps, occasionally surprise the undecided.
  94. The Ex
    A half-baked comedy torn between sincere emotion and over-the-top outrageousness.
  95. Every Thing Will Be Fine
    While Wenders has argued intelligently in interviews for the merits of realizing character-driven drama in three dimensions, this isn’t the most helpful case-maker — not least because Norwegian writer Bjorn Olaf Johannessen’s screenplay has barely been rendered in two.
  96. October Baby
    Newcomer Rachel Hendrix grabs attention and sustains sympathy as a lovely yet troubled 19-year-old student determined to unlock the secrets of her past after learning the circumstances of her birth.
  97. Regression
    Though performed with some perspiring conviction by Emma Watson and Ethan Hawke — as a confessed victim of cult abuse and the agnostic cop investigating her case — the pic is neither disquieting enough to take seriously, nor lurid enough for fright-night indulgence.
  98. Kill by Inches
    The atmosphere is properly bizarre and in moments even scary, but there's no involving story or characters to sustain the feature-length narrative.
  99. Not Another Teen Movie
    A nail in the coffin if not the heart of teen comedies.
  100. The Sweetest Thing
    A comedy that starts the date in a frisky mood but sours before it's time to kiss goodnight.
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