Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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 2.4 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Run, Fatboy, Run
    David Schwimmer's first bigscreen directing effort reveals something very different: a thoroughly competent mainstream craftsman who imposes no individual character on formulaic material.
  2. 21
    Picture shrewdly shuffles together attractive young leads, cagey screen vets and a fantasy-fulfillment scenario in a slickly polished package that should appeal to anyone who's ever dreamed of beating the odds.
  3. The Cool School
    What The Cool School does so well, through its color accents and black-and-white photography, through the kinetic music that propels Jeff Bridges' narration by and the unorthodox attitude that reflects the artists themselves, is impart a sense of discovery.
  4. My Brother Is an Only Child
    Scripted by "The Best of Youth" duo who brought the post-WWII years into stark and moving light, pic offers a warm humor that illuminates the defiant vista of hope even when the proceedings turn tragic.
  5. Priceless
    Co-scripter/helmer Pierre Salvadori serves up an enjoyable riff on genuine romance versus the pay-as-you-go variety, in crowd-pleasing, exportable picture.
  6. Shine a Light
    Martin Scorsese’s energetic account of a Stones concert at Gotham’s Beacon Theater in fall 2006 takes full advantage of heavy camera coverage and top-notch sound to create an invigorating musical trip down memory lane, as well as to provoke gentle musings on the wages of aging and the passage of time.
  7. Water Lilies
    The painfully spot-on essence of teen angst meets the spirit of Esther Williams in Water Lilies. First film by gifted scripter-helmer Celine Sciamma nails the aching doubts and offhanded cruelty of 15- and 16-year-old girls.
  8. Prom Night
    A surprisingly effective teen-skewing thriller that soft-pedals graphic violence (in marked contrast to the R-rated 1980 original) while generating a fair degree of suspense.
  9. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
    Segel makes an engaging impression throughout Forgetting Sarah Marshall, gamely making himself the butt of many jokes that involve Peter's non-macho proclivities.
  10. The Tiger's Tail
    Playing dual roles as a rich Irish businessman riding the economic boom and his down-and-out twin, Gleeson animates Boorman's amusing Prince and the Pauper screenplay, which sports a dark social underbelly that puts Ireland's rich-poor divide centerstage
  11. The Take
    An unlikely but entertaining amalgam of "Heat," "Memento" and "Regarding Henry," Brad Furman's streetwise caper drama The Take is elevated by the potent performances of John Leguizamo and Rosie Perez and a momentum that seldom stops.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Plumm Summer
    Montana-set, reality-inspired picture feels like an homage to a bygone era of moviemaking: It takes its time to build character and story, there's hardly a CG effect in sight, and there's nothing high-concept about it.
  13. Baby Mama
    Fey is a delight to watch throughout.
  14. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
    An over-the-top and beyond-PC comedy that sometimes deftly, sometimes slapdashedly infuses party-hearty anarchy with hectoring moral outrage.
  15. Roman de gare
    Picture gets an undeniable boost from the ace performance of the short, beady-eyed Pinon.
  16. Redbelt
    An absorbing and colorful, if not particularly convincing, excursion into a demi-monde of fighters, scammers, promoters and self-styled modern samurai, Redbelt gives the impression of Mamet coyly toying with the idea of making a populist little-man-against-the-system sports melodrama without actually attempting to create a film for the masses.
  17. XXY
    Picture has more in common with standard child-parent conflict dramas than it would probably care to admit, but its sensitive treatment of an equally sensitive theme elevates it into something memorable.
  18. 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.
  19. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
    A spy spoof that -- rarity of rarities -- represents a remake actually worth making. Current comic fave Jean Dujardin plays title character OSS 117 as a kind of James Bond crossed with Maxwell Smart.
  20. Turn the River
    Atmospheric picture positively vibrates with authenticity, and Janssen's intense, febrile performance earned a special jury prize at the Hamptons fest.
  21. Reprise
    Final result, with its peculiar happy ending that may or may not be a further fantasy, may leave some auds feeling more drained than satisfied. It's a bit like spending 105 minutes with a litter of frisky, mischievous puppies.
  22. The Foot Fist Way
    The character of Fred Simmons is a Cliff Clavin-esque sensei deluxe in The Foot Fist Way, a low-budget, low-flying farce a la "Napoleon Dynamite" or "Jackass: The Movie."
  23. The Strangers
    It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic. Still, after such a long, creepy, cannily restrained buildup, it must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote.
  24. The Incredible Hulk
    A straightforward actioner that delivers the goods with no unnecessary frills or digressions.
  25. The Unknown Woman
    Brings peaks of violence and suspense to the vivid story of a young East European prostitute-turned-cleaning lady intent on carrying out a mysterious mission in Italy.
  26. Stuck
    Ingeniously nasty and often shockingly funny as it incrementally worsens a very bad situation, then provides a potent payoff with the forced feeding of just desserts.
  27. Journey to the Center of the Earth
    A more unavoidable obstacle here is that there's not much in the way of plot -- the story is in the tour through the labyrinthian intimacies of inner Earth. As such, it's an f/x wizard's dream, and Brevig makes the most of it.
  28. Meet Dave
    Aimed squarely at the same family audiences that flocked to Murphy's "Doctor Dolittle" comedies, this is a lightly amusing and surprisingly sweet Fox release.
  29. Encounters at the End of the World
    Resultant picture -- one of Herzog's best and most purely enjoyable -- may lack the built-in curio factor of "Grizzly Man."
  30. My Winnipeg
    Though it may feel undernourished to the faithful, Winnipeg is an easily digestible meal, for the uninitiated and fans alike.
  31. Brick Lane
    Monica Ali's elegant and critically trumpeted debut novel, Brick Lane, about the travails, conflicting emotions and quiet liberation of a Muslim woman in London, is a far lesser thing in its bigscreen transformation.
  32. Gunnin' for That #1 Spot
    Beastie Boy Adam Yauch proves he can make a comprehensive, state-of-the-art docu of interest to basketball aficionados.
  33. Trumbo
    It will serve as a fine entry point for younger auds interested in learning about the price paid by moviemakers and their families swept up in the 1950s anti-Communist net.
  34. Australia
    Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long.
  35. The Wackness
    The Amerindie annals are over-full of withdrawn male loners hoping to quirk or cathart themselves out of teenage purgatory. But like "Donnie Darko," "Thumbsucker" and a few others, The Wackness treads this familiar terrain with assurance and distinction.
  36. A Very British Gangster
    Noonan talks too much, preens too much and simply loves the camera. And the bald, bullish, real-life mobster will likely place MacIntyre's movie among the more commercial nonfiction films of the year.
  37. Felon
    Stephen Dorff's powerhouse perf as an ordinary Joe trapped behind bars with warring ethnic psychopaths propels Felon well ahead of its expose/exploitation brethren while still avoiding the pious learning curves of Frank Darabont's prestige prison dramas.
  38. Boy A
    Picture inspires respect for its first-rate performances, artful construction and meticulous understatement.
  39. Swing Vote
    Picture's comic smarts and affecting daddy-daughter drama provide a sturdy platform for its heartfelt advocacy of informed voting and responsible citizenship.
  40. Baghead
    Though its scares are scarce, Baghead provides what nine out of 10 dead-teenagers movies lack: specifically, a realistic sense of character that gives moviegoers a reason to identify with the would-be victims.
  41. Bottle Shock
    Wine lovers won't just sip but guzzle a lot of this down, and the same effect that sun-dappled days and sex in California had on "Sideways" operates here.
  42. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
    It's all largely eye candy, especially the men, although this can be forgiven: Women have a long enough history of being superficial in the movies, and a little payback is perfectly understandable.
  43. Beautiful Losers
    Full of energy and attitude.
  44. Red
    Touchy subject matter aside, Red demonstrates real elegance in its commitment to a relatively straightforward story, allowing the characters' emotions to come to a slow boil.
  45. Religulous
    To the film's credit, Maher never engages in Michael Moore-style gotcha tactics, but rather asks questions that raise more questions, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. To believers expecting a blind hatchet job, this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries.
  46. The Rocker
    Wilson makes the most of it in this well-crafted, feel-good satire.
  47. The House Bunny
    A blissfully broad comedy that should catapult Anna Faris into a singular kind of stardom.
  48. Mister Foe
    Tip-top performances, led by young British thesp Jamie Bell, and a deftly handled tone reflecting all the title teen's confused emotions make Hallam Foe a viewing delight.
  49. Ping Pong Playa
    A good, clean, fun comedy that uses a table tennis championship to crack inside jokes about Los Angeles' Chinese-American community.
  50. The Family That Preys
    Bates and Woodard strike up a real dynamic, and picture gives the duo room to improvise, leading to one raucous scene after another as they Thelma-and-Louise it in a top-down convertible.
  51. My Best Friend's Girl
    Manages to distract auds from the predictability of the plot with fusillades of profanely funny dialogue and some playfully sexy chemistry generated by Cook and Hudson.
  52. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Mike Leigh's mellowest work yet, and his most purely entertaining.
  53. Frontrunners
    Ultimately, picture's fascination lies with the personalities and strategies of the candidates themselves.
  54. Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
    A documentary constructed from re-enactments, talking heads and no actual footage of the story it tells, but that still packs a knock-out punch.
  55. Eden Lake
    Eden Lake doesn't feel like torture porn so much as a rural-jeopardy thriller in extremis.
  56. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    It would be too much to say that what Smith has come up with here is inspired, but it is pretty funny and very energetic.
  57. JCVD
    A French-language meta-movie parody par excellence, constitutes the headiest stretch of the beefy star's career since, well, ever.
  58. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    Lively and quite funny without being obnoxious, this follow-up smoothly mixes the original's New York Zoo escapees with a number of engaging new characters.
  59. Soul Men
    There's a nice chemistry between Mac and Samuel L. Jackson in this latest variant of the road movie, which contains comedic elements but actually works better as a drama.
  60. The Betrayal - Nerakhoon
    Though an admirable attempt to allow the characters to tell their own story in their own voices, docu may be a bit too freely associative, as it becomes difficult at times to identify individual characters... Picture's second half, which proceeds in a more linear fashion, is resolutely gripping.
  61. Timecrimes
    Timecrimes welds a B-movie plotline to precision-engineered writing and a down-to-earth style; add an engagingly sloppy, nonplussed hero, who remains unfazed by the time-bending scrape in which he finds himself, and the result is memorably offbeat.
  62. Bolt
    Bears some telltale signs of Pixar's trademark smarts, but still looks like a mutt compared to the younger company's customary purebreds.
  63. Nothing Like the Holidays
    So "The Family Stone" becomes "The Family Rodriguez," and to their credit, the able performers wring as much mileage as they can from such familiar material.
  64. Where God Left His Shoes
    Piles the pathos high as if to see how many hard-luck cliches its pugilist hero can fend off without succumbing to schmaltz. Given John Leguizamo's knockout perf, sentimentality never dares raise its head, and the improbably stacked deck from which his character is dealt gives the pic's would-be "neo-realist" premise a peculiar edge.
  65. Nothing But the Truth
    Competently constructed and nicely acted by Kate Beckinsale and Vera Farmiga.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bedtime Stories
    With Bedtime Stories, Sandler has delivered on his promise to make a movie his kids can enjoy. What's more, he's managed to do so without alienating his core audience.
  67. Last Chance Harvey
    Stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson (reunited after 2006's "Stranger Than Fiction") are so disarmingly charming that even the most treacly moments work an emotional magic.
  68. Valkyrie
    Has visual splendor galore, but is a cold work lacking in the requisite tension and suspense.
  69. Just Another Love Story
    Contrived excess is rarely as entertaining as it is in the ironically titled Just Another Love Story, a furiously overheated romantic thriller from Danish writer-helmer Ole Bornedal.
  70. Cherry Blossoms
    A successful novelist whose films bear the expansive plotting and telling character detail of the page, Doerrie never seems in any particular hurry to tell her tales, preferring the journey to the destination.
  71. Notorious
    A rock-solid biopic with a foolproof rise-and-fall storyline and a warmly nuanced performance by Jamal Woolard.
  72. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
    First-time helmer Patrick Tatopoulos (who designed creatures for all three pics) offers a satisfyingly exciting monster rally that often plays like a period swashbuckler.
  73. The Velveteen Rabbit
    A low-key charmer that's bound to enchant small children and amuse their parents during many hours of repeat viewings.
  74. Examined Life
    Stimulating film, enlivened by creative location shooting.
  75. Sherman's Way
    An agreeable tone and cast make Sherman’s Way go down easy.
  76. The Cake Eaters
    A vibrant, unpretentious small-town tale.
  77. Race to Witch Mountain
    Strikes a deft balance of chase-movie suspense and wisecracking humor, with a few slam-bang action setpieces that would shame the makers of more allegedly grown-up genre fare.
  78. Tokyo Sonata
    Though there's nothing here that hasn’t been dealt with in other Japanese movies, picture benefits considerably from its pitch-perfect performances.
  79. The Great Buck Howard
    Behind-the-curtains comedy reps an amusing showcase for John Malkovich's diva-like theatrics in the title role.
  80. Monsters vs Aliens
    A film of chuckles, smiles and light amusement rather than big laughs, galvanizing excitement and original invention.
  81. Frost/Nixon
    Frank Langella's meticulous performance will generate the sort of attention that will attract serious filmgoers.
  82. Alien Trespass
    Good silly fun, Alien Trespass is a dead-on spoof of cheapo '50s sci-fi programmers done with plenty of self-deprecating humor.
  83. Bart Got a Room
    A light, funny coming-of-ager set in the endearingly un-hip retirement community of Hollywood, Fla.
  84. The Song of Sparrows
    Beautifully crafted, often sentimental, sometimes humorous.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hannah Montana: The Movie
    A goofily endearing romp that might even lasso a few new fans.
  86. 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.
  87. Observe and Report
    Ronnie is more complex, and much scarier, than the kind of self-deluding boob auds usually encounter in comedies of this sort. With the invaluable aid of Rogen, who's never been better, Hill sustains an impressive degree of tension between seemingly contradictory elements.
  88. American Violet
    Dee is an engaging, admirable lead character, and the striking, petite Beharie, in only her second screen role, is a real winner, bringing energy and fortitude to a woman who easily could have joined the ranks of society's victims and losers.
  89. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    What adds heart, and humor, is the interplay between the legendary couturier and Giancarlo Giammetti, his longtime partner in business and life.
  90. Throw Down Your Heart
    Sascha Paladino's overlong but engaging doc about banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck's harmonious journey through four African countries.
  91. A Wink and a Smile
    An old-fashioned postmodern hoot.
  92. Battle for Terra
    As original and convincing a feature as the better Japanese animes of recent years --"Tekkonkinkreet" comes to mind, along with the slightly older "Metropolis."
  93. The Merry Gentleman
    Despite its shortcomings as a plausible, compelling story, The Merry Gentleman, Michael Keaton's directorial debut, exhibits genuine promise behind the camera.
  94. Three Monkeys
    But gripping as the film often is, its unrelenting doom and gloom offers fewer lasting rewards.
  95. Adoration
    This ambitious think-piece ultimately smothers its good intentions in didactic revelations, earnest pleading and incessant violin music. Engrossing nonetheless, the story of a high schooler troubled by his parents' legacy reps one of the Canadian writer-director's most accessible efforts.
  96. Outrage
    An exploding bathroom stall of a movie, Outrage makes an excellent ipso facto case for itself: If closeted gay politicians vote against equal rights for gays to protect their own secrets, outing them is for the common good.
  97. Rudo y Cursi
    Picture scores a solid goal for its national cinema and the cause of comedy.
  98. Management
    Picture benefits greatly from appealing performances by Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn, who deftly apply darker emotional shadings to their characters when necessary, and equally fine work from a small ensemble of solid supporting players.
  99. Not Forgotten
    Despite teasing hints of supernatural influences throughout much of the storyline, Not Forgotten satisfies as a solidly crafted and persuasively acted thriller that relies more on dark secrets than black magic.
  100. Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land
    Has some style as well as compelling content.
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