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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    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Dark Crystal
    The Dark Crystal, besides being a dazzling technological and artistic achievement by a band of talented artists and performers, presents a dark side of Muppet creators Jim Henson and Frank Oz that could teach a lesson in morality to youngsters at the same time it is entertaining their parents.
  2. Jackass Number Two
    This stunningly shameless follow-up to the 2002 theatrical sleeper (and homdevid mega-seller) offers more of the same -- a lot more -- while repeatedly upping the ante in terms of offensiveness. Which, of course, should greatly -- and profitably -- please is target aud.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Talk Radio
    Bogosian commands attention in a patented tour-de-force. Supporting performances are all vividly realized, notably Michael Wincott’s drug-crazed Champlain fan invited to the studio for a tete-a-tete with the host.
  4. Margot at the Wedding
    This study of a disastrous reunion of two sisters feels more like a collection of arresting scenes than a fully conceived and developed drama.
  5. Crimson Tide
    While skillfully crafted to maximize visual excitement and dramatic fireworks through the first hour, relentlessly paced pic sports a fancy new package for a rather shopworn doomsday scenario that unravels to increasingly familiar effect as the finale breathlessly approaches.
  6. White Noise
    As a movie, White Noise announces its themes loudly and proudly, but the trouble is that it announces them more than it makes you feel them.
  7. Roofman
    In the end, it’s the through-the-roof chemistry between the two leads that makes the film worthy of repeat viewing.
  8. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
    This frenetic and funny crossbreeding of live action and cartoon is both a reboot and an anti-reboot, a corporate-funded raspberry at corporate IP, and a giddily dumb smart aleck committed to mocking its joke — and making it, too.
  9. Scream
    Though the material is more intelligent than the norm and has an unusual third-act twist, it also employs some very clunky stereotypes.
  10. Fully Realized Humans
    Fully Realized Humans solidifies its central dynamic through alternately jokey and heartfelt dialogue that rings true, and via its leads’ sure-footed performances as committed partners grappling with a crazed stew of issues involving control, doubt and masculinity.
  11. Swan Song
    Spinning a winning, delicate love story would be almost impossible if not for the performances of the leads. Ali and Harris have impeccable chemistry, making us feel the profundity and stakes of their romantic relationship.
  12. Maelstrom
    A film whose charms are odd and indefinable by design.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beautiful Boxer
    Sweetly entertaining but bland biopic.
  14. Kick-Ass
    Equal parts audacious dark comedy, wish-fulfillment fantasy and over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek action-adventure.
  15. Littlerock
    Well-crafted picture has a nice sense of place and rudderless youth, though in the end, simply too little happens for the story to have much resonance.
  16. The Snowtown Murders
    The result is a movie that can be admired in many respects from a distance but is progressively less emotionally engaging.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Jazz Singer
    Undoubtedly the best thing Vitaphone has ever put on the screen.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    King of New York
    Complementing Walken’s bravura turn are equally flamboyant performances by David Caruso as the young Irish cop out to destroy Walken, and Larry Fishburne as Walken’s slightly crazy aide-de-camp.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Liquid Sky
    Liquid Sky is an odd, yet generally pleasing mixture of punk rock, science fiction, and black humor.
  20. The Integrity of Joseph Chambers
    The absurdity would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrifying. Your mileage may vary.
  21. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries
    The filmmakers give new saga a freer, looser form than is usual, allowing a superlative ensemble to develop rich characterizations.
  22. Mean Girls
    This sassy if wildly uneven comedy navigates the treacherous high school jungle that separates cool cliques from wannabes, wading through some nasty behavior before delivering its moral message.
  23. Transamerica
    Laugh-out-loud funny, tartly off-color and ultimately touching.
  24. A Shot at Glory
    Mediocre, dramatically flat picture.
  25. The Tailor of Panama
    Classy, articulate and richly humorous.
  26. Moulin Rouge!
    A tour de force of artifice, a dazzling pastiche of musical and visual elements at the service of a blatantly artificial story.
  27. Philadelphia
    On a scene-by-scene basis, in terms of performance and the grave issues under consideration, the film is quite absorbing.
  28. Ultraman: Rising
    The movie winds up having it both ways once too often, to the extent that Ultraman’s fate and the movie’s message are ultimately unclear.
  29. Dumb Money
    [A] smart, light-fingered, brashly entertaining finance-world docudrama.
  30. The Good Dinosaur
    Cross-species bonding may have its limits, but it’s hard not to find beauty in a boy-meets-beast saga that, by the end, has made it hard to tell which is which.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Border
    Despite Jack Nicholson's multi-leveled performance, The Border is a surprisingly uninvolving film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Soldier's Story
    A Soldier's Story is a taut, gripping film which features many of the old fashioned virtues of a good Hollywood production - brilliant ensemble acting, excellent production values, a crackling script (adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning A Soldier's Play [1981] by its author, Charles Fuller), fine direction and a liberal political message.
  33. Miami Vice
    Unlike most TV-to-movie transitions, Mann returns to his roots and delivers what amounts to a slightly overblown episode, brimming with style and characteristically short on substance.
  34. Skinamarink
    I found Skinamarink to be terrifying, but it’s a film that asks for (and rewards) patience, and can therefore invite revolt (not to mention abysmal grades from Cinemascore). Yet if you go with it, you may feel that you’ve touched the uncanny
  35. Breaking
    Boyega is the most interesting thing about the movie — specifically, the way he portrays this tragic, psychologically damaged individual fighting for what matters to him — although it’s also noteworthy for featuring Michael Kenneth Williams’ final performance as the hostage negotiator.
  36. Take Me Home
    This is not an autobiography. Take Me Home is instead a deeply felt examination of the challenges so many face when familial love is swamped by economic reality. The director puts a lot on her characters’ shoulders to illustrate how unsupported and isolated illness and disability can be.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paris, je t'aime
    Uneven but quite pleasant as a two-hour experience that acknowledges the idealized Paris people carry in their heads while wisely veering off the beaten track.
  38. Pavarotti
    The genius of Pavarotti’s voice is that it had the power to heal. The movie pays ample testament to how that voice, for 40 years, poured out of him, rapturous and tragic, soaring on wings of pure emotion, at times wracked with a spiritual pain that was surely his own, but always lifting his audience to the mountaintop of beauty, saying, “This is where I live. And you can too.”
  39. Master
    Not all of Diallo’s thematic queries land, and at times, she weakens her ideas by over-explaining them. Nevertheless, her fearless interrogation resonates like a penetrating scream you can’t unhear.
  40. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
    This robust, action-packed adventure benefits from a headier sense of forward momentum and a steady stream of 3D-enhanced thrills.
  41. Another Earth
    Out there, to say the least, but rescued from risibility by its well-matched lead performances and crazy low-budget ambition.
  42. Unmade Beds
    An exquisitely tender tale of two young Euro immigrants trying to find themselves (but not each other) in contempo London, Unmade Beds has a lively, romantic spirit that recalls the playfulness and spontaneity of the French New Wave.
  43. Let the Bullets Fly
    A rollicking, violent, Western-cum-comedy that serves many masters, but adds up to an entertaining hot pot of wry political commentary and general mischief.
  44. Mosquita y Mari
    First-time writer-director Aurora Guerrero beautifully captures the fluctuating dynamics of friendship between 15-year-old girls in Mosquita y Mari.
  45. E-Team
    A dynamic and immersive piece of you-are-there verite.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Road to Rio
    McLeod's direction blends the music and comedy into fast action and sock chuckles that will please followers of the series.
  47. Mid90s
    Mid90s, though made by a Hollywood star, isn’t a nostalgic indie “fable” in gritty skate-punk drag. It’s something smaller and purer: a slice of street life made up of skittery moments that achieve a bone-deep reality.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ich hiess Sabina Spielrein
    Engaging doc should stir psychologists and feminists.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swimming with Sharks
    Within its very limited range, pic has verve, a fine control of tone and a stylish look given its low budget and three-week sked. Spacey dominates, but Whaley makes a convincing transition from goody-goody to icy insider, and Forbes manages well despite being forced to flip-flop on command between sarcastic bitchiness and softer intimacy.
  50. The Amazing Spider-Man
    A mostly slick, entertaining and emotionally involving recombination of fresh and familiar elements.
  51. God Knows Where I Am
    The film gradually thaws out the stark, frozen mystery at its heart, but the warm-blooded, breathing truth of Linda’s life is no less tragic than that of her cold death.
  52. Private Desert
    The film comes alive in its second half, which deepens and complicates the story we thought we were watching, about a disgraced cop trying to run away from the violence that’s set to cost him his job and his reputation. For some, the tender empathy that runs through the film’s latter half may not be enough to offset its choice of sympathetic leading man.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Lion Is in the Streets
    The Adrian Locke Langley novel was a long time coming to the screen since first purchased by the Cagneys for filming. Along the way it lost a lot of the shocker quality and emerges as just an average drama of a man's political ambitions.
  54. Premium Rush
    The lovably ridiculous bike-messenger thriller Premium Rush is a welcome throwback.
  55. Catfight
    That it succeeds more often than not is due in no small part to Heche and Oh, who are wonderfully unafraid to make their characters deplorable people, and also able to invest their downfalls with sincere pathos, complicating any schadenfreude one might be expecting to find.
  56. The Convert
    There’s just enough of an interesting theme and strong production value (it’s impossible not to succumb to the breathtakingly imposing landscapes) to earn The Convert some grace.
  57. Lowlife
    Prows and company don’t simply play the often outrageous (and occasionally grisly) content for tasteless sensationalism, comic or otherwise. They treat it with an interesting, empathic yet slightly detached tone somewhere between the respectful and the droll.
  58. Stake Land
    A highly satisfying low-budget horror-thriller from helmer/co-writer Jim Mickle.
  59. Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America
    Stylish and substantial enough to prompt even a couch potato to action, Kelly Duane's Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America delivers a stirring and visually dense account of the life and times of Brower.
  60. Tommaso
    A movie that’s a loosely structured ramble can work, and about half of “Tommaso” feels more vital than anything Ferrara has made in a while. But the film should have been shapelier and 20 minutes shorter, with a more focused dramatic psychology.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
    Action dwells upon the misadventures of the pair as they pursue the outlaw trail, but more importantly, packs the type of fast movement the title indicates.
  62. Marshall
    By approaching Marshall as an idealistic young trial lawyer, the film stands on its own as a compelling courtroom drama, complete with surprising revelations — and while we hope things will go his way, this case could just as easily prove the one that motivated his future crusade.
  63. Splice
    Vincenzo Natali's outlandish sci-fier sustains a grotesque and funny fascination throughout its slightly protracted runtime.
  64. Thirteen Lives
    The movie works, but there has to be a more original way in to the Thai cave rescue story, other than through the main entrance, high-fiving its heroes at every step. For starters, it might have spent a little more time on the “Thirteen Lives” on the line.
  65. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    The moments of inspired originality are all too infrequent. There's enough eye candy and marvels on screen, however.
  66. Heist
    While staccato dialogue and edgy confrontations have always been the wordsmith's forte, the precision-tooled mechanics of an elaborate crime caper have not, and the physical direction here could use some muscle.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Barbershop
    A rousing celebration of the family-run small business, this Ice Cube-topped ensemble comedy, without offering anything especially new or exciting, provides a springboard for high-voltage comic exchanges that double as wisecrack-coated lessons in community relations.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bridget Jones's Diary
    Misses its mark, failing to capitalize on the staccato rhythms and sardonic wit of Bridget's inner life.
  69. We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists
    A cumulative feeling of urgency and you-are-there world-beating are key to the picture's seductive appeal, though lack of informed dissenting opinions reps an unfortunate editorial choice.
  70. Under the Influence
    Under the Influence is a very absorbing, very disquieting, very meaningful-for-our-time documentary.
  71. The Survival of Kindness
    Man’s enormous inhumanity to man is reproduced in precise, characterful miniature, with a pared-back artistry that somehow earns de Heer the right to be thematically blunt, and deeply pessimistic.
  72. Story Ave
    [An] affecting debut feature.
  73. Mothering Sunday
    Telling a story that advocates living boldly over not living at all, Husson has followed suit, opening up exciting new possibilities for her career in the process.
  74. Moebius
    A gloriously off-the-charts study in perversity.
  75. Elf
    Will Ferrell graduates to his first solo leading role with flying colors in Elf, a disarming holiday comedy about a clueless innocent who saves Christmas and fosters a renewed sense of family in his reluctant father.
  76. The Way Back
    This arduous travelogue focuses on the macro (stunning, David Lean-like landscapes) and the micro (countless closeups of blistered flesh) to the virtual exclusion of compelling characters.
  77. Shadow in the Cloud
    Hardly a minute of the movie registers as “realistic,” but that hardly matters, since Liang so fully commits to its over-the-top sensibility that you’ll be clutching the armrest and grinning with glee for most of the ride.
  78. Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
    A pleasant if fairly pedestrian viewing experience, one that more or less gets the job done in terms of balancing the requisite ooh-ahh moments with another unsurprising reminder of man’s capacity for selfishness and destruction.
  79. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    Chris Browne's sense of humor captures perfectly the contradictions, absurdities and drama at the intersection of class, media, money and sports without dissing any of his player/subjects.
  80. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    Mixes satisfying dollops of fun, tears, travel, romance and lesson-learning in a handsome package whose two hours pass faster than many a grownup entertainment.
  81. The Sugar Curtain
    Those on both sides of the great Cuba divide should find food for thought in these sober, realistic reflections.
  82. Unsettled
    Hootnick seems determined to make everyone likable, no matter how vapid, objectionable or ill-articulated their views are. The emphasis on personality over politics or serious debate makes the pic feel lightweight, ill-suited to theatrical exposure.
  83. One Hundred Mornings
    Though never intended to match "The Road" for gruesome veracity or Michael Haneke's "Time of the Wolf" for full-on mysterious dread, this Irish production doesn't cut much of its own niche in an overworked genre.
  84. Cold Fish
    Like most Sono pictures, too long. But its gleeful humor and dare-you-to-watch aesthetic will help it rack up kills at specialty fests.
  85. The One I Love
    Boasting spectacular performances from Duplass and Elisabeth Moss as a husband and wife on the brink of separation, this incredibly assured directorial debut of Charlie McDowell essentially turns the idea of a two-hander upside down and inside out.
  86. One Floor Below
    Like a pot set to bubble only every few seconds, the drama is tightly measured to ensure a controlled level of tension that remains discreetly constant, nicely melding with Muntean’s skilled construction of three-dimensional bourgeois life.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beguiled
    Marking a distinct change of pace for both director Don Siegel and star Clint Eastwood, The Beguiled doesn’t come off, and cues laughter in all the wrong places.
  88. Kangaroo
    Kangaroo deserves credit for presenting a wealth of informed opinions and impressing the need for a change of thinking if solutions are ever to be found.
  89. The Price of Free
    The film’s edge, if not its worthiness, is slightly dulled by an over-slick approach that in the end makes it feel less like reportage than a first-class fundraising video.
  90. Young Ahmed
    Instantly recognizable as a Dardenne film, Young Ahmed has that same deceptively “rough” quality as the directors’ earlier work, a carryover from their documentary background. And yet, they are astonishingly efficient storytellers, weaving the necessary clues audiences need to evaluate — and at times entirely reconsider — their characters with the expertise of veteran detective novelists.
  91. Harriet
    Harriet is a conscientiously uplifting, devoted, rock-solid version of her story. Yet when it comes to putting the audience in touch with what’s extraordinary about Harriet Tubman — not just illustrating what she did but letting us connect with that quest, and with her, on a moment-to-moment level — Harriet is a conventional and rather prosaic piece of filmmaking.
  92. Scare Me
    Scare Me would work even better onstage. On screen, it feels like an experiment in minimalism. The film is heavy-handed only in Fred’s fear of emasculation and Fanny’s digs at “desperate white dudes,” troweled on for socially relevant heft.
  93. Guidance
    The modest pic’s laughs get bigger as it goes along, and so does its surprising warmth.
  94. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    Though the movie is too long, I was more gratified than not to sink into its relatively old-fashioned dramatic restraint.
  95. Blood Father
    Blood Father is trash, but it does capture what an accomplished and winning actor Mel Gibson can be. Just because he lost his bearings, and his career, doesn’t mean that he lost his talent.
  96. The Unthinkable
    Despite some strikingly accomplished elements, the awkward whole never quite gels, sewn-together parts from “Red Dawn,” “Independence Day,” et al., failing to cohere amid major logic gaps, not to mention lead characters more off-putting than interesting.
  97. Cobb
    Audiences will be confused by what the picture is not. It’s not really about Cobb or baseball or a bygone era. It’s neither character study nor historic drama. It’s ambitious but oblique and unfocused, and only the most generous of viewers will forgive its numerous lapses and vagaries. The film’s prospects of breaking out of a specialized niche are remote.
  98. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    Maintaining Yates as director lends a consistency to the project, and yet, it would have been refreshing to get a completely new take on Rowling’s world with this series, especially considering how murky and self-serious they got in the final chapters. Still, Yates knows this world as well as anyone, and he excels at finding visual solutions for challenging ideas.
  99. Black Butterflies
    The uncompromising power of Ingrid Jonker's poetry runs like a pulsing vein through Black Butterflies.
  100. Beloved Sisters
    An enthralling, gorgeously mounted depiction of the complicated relationship between the post-Enlightenment writer and philosopher Friedrich Schiller and the sisters Charlotte von Lengefeld (who would become his wife) and Caroline von Beulwitz (his eventual biographer).
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