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. Night Across the Street
    The valedictory sentiments at the heart of this mysterious experiment are conveyed with characteristically wry wit and great generosity of spirit.
  2. No
    After "Tony Manero" and "Post Mortem," his devastating portraits of how the Pinochet regime psychologically brutalized the people of Chile from 1973-90, Chilean helmer Pablo Larrain satisfyingly completes the trilogy with an affirmative victory for democracy in No.
  3. Bless Me, Ultima
    Offsetting stiff acting with rich atmosphere, visuals and music, this long-awaited picture hits the novel's key plot points without denying its spiritual soul.
  4. The Underneath
    On its most successful level, the film represents a slashing dramatic essay on the dismaying human tendency not to accept full responsibility for one's actions.
  5. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    A most enjoyable capper to director Shawn Levy and producer Chris Columbus’ cheerfully silly and sneakily smart family-entertainment juggernaut.
  6. Lost in Thailand
    Lost in Thailand is a boisterous, joyously hokey comedy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Die Hard 2
    Die Hard 2 lacks the inventivenes of the original but compensates with relentless action.
  8. The Berlin File
    The Berlin File boasts knockout action setpieces that provide an impressive big-budget showcase for Ryoo Seung-wan's technical smarts.
  9. Gray's Anatomy
    Removing a live audience from the equation, Soderbergh becomes a bold participant in the storytelling. The backdrop keeps changing, from a brick wall to drapes, windows and assorted landscapes. The lighting is in constant flux, often punctuating the text on cue.
  10. The East
    This clever, involving spy drama builds to a terrific level of intrigue before losing some steam in its second half.
  11. The Company You Keep
    Robert Redford’s unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism.
  12. Rubberneck
    Unlike Steven Soderbergh's twisty "Side Effects," Karpovsky's picture seldom surprises, its strengths lying in a leisurely journey toward a clearly predestined denouement.
  13. Greedy Lying Bastards
    Craig Rosebraugh’s docu Greedy, Lying Bastards covers ground well-traveled by environmental exposes from “An Inconvenient Truth” to “The Island President.” Rosebraugh, however, focuses less on the issue of global warming itself and more on the deniers and their big-money backers.
  14. Kiss of the Damned
    Saucily thumbing its nose at the insipid teen love of the "Twilight" franchise, Kiss reimagines its bloodsuckers as horny, supercilious Eurotrash with addiction issues, sucking the life blood from naive American thrill-seekers.
  15. The Sapphires
    Soul music’s alleged redemptive powers are fully at work in this jumbled, sketchily written but vastly appealing true-life musical comedy.
  16. The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek
    With its convincingly antique-looking artifacts and hilarious “re-creations,” the March 1 release should please audiences searching for an intelligent, satiric spin on historical hindsight.
  17. The Kings of Summer
    [The Kings of Summer] is much more interested in the laughs that can be mined from character rather than plot. Galletta’s script, Vogt-Roberts’ direction and the distinctive play of the actors, notably Offerman and Mullally, lets the viewer know who everyone is right away, and the gag lines flow.
  18. The Angels' Share
    An amiable comedy about young Glaswegian roughnecks discovering the world of whisky, The Angels’ Share finds helmer Ken Loach and long-term screenwriting partner Paul Laverty in better, breezier form than their rebarbative prior effort, “Route Irish.”
  19. Populaire
    A colorful and impeccably styled romantic comedy that manages to turn the speed-typing competitions of the 1950s into entertaining cinematic fodder.
  20. I Killed My Mother
    There’s much to praise, especially the oh-so-real dialogue, but true psychological penetration is lacking and Dolan’s hunger to prove his talent results in a superfluity of styles. Still, multigenerational auds worldwide will likely find kinship with the many funny/painful situations, and pic is a genuine crowdpleaser.
  21. Renoir
    There is no major drama here save the encroaching end of one great artist and the birth of another, but Bourdos and his fellow screenwriters have translated something so monumental into a succession of such small domestic tableaux in which the Renoirs are seen as people first and artists second.
  22. Riddick
    An improbable but very enjoyable sequel that recaptures much of the stripped-down intensity of Diesel and director David Twohy’s franchise starter "Pitch Black."
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
    Star Trek III is an emotionally satisfying science fiction adventure. Dovetailing neatly with the previous entry in the popular series, Star Trek II.
    • Variety
  24. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
    As the work of one young man bursting with inspiration, the film is a giddy thing to absorb, allowing complete strangers to witness someone performing open-heart surgery on himself.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
    Latest excursion is warmer, wittier, more socially relevant and truer to its TV origins than prior odysseys.
    • Variety
  26. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    Cindy Kleine pays tribute to her famed theater-director hubby in Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner, with thoroughly delightful results.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
    Weighed down by a midsection even flabbier than the long-in-the-tooth cast, director Nicholas Meyer still delivers enough of what Trek auds hunger for to justify the trek to the local multiplex.
    • Variety
  28. Star Trek: Generations
    It may not "boldly go where no one has gone before," but Star Trek Generations has enough verve, imagination and familiarity to satisfy three decades' worth of Trekkers raised on several incarnations of the television skein. [14 Nov. 1994, p.47]
    • Variety
  29. Aftershock
    The script by Roth, Lopez, and Lopez’s frequent collaborator, Guillermo Amoedo, giddily piles crisis upon crisis, with none of the customary mercy reserved for leading characters.
  30. Don Jon
    Gordon-Levitt’s script can be a bit on-the-nose at times, but that’s an indulgence easily forgiven in a debut feature, and this ensemble winningly sells the movie’s tricky tonal mix.
  31. Prince Avalanche
    An unconventional, ultimately rather sweet buddy pic that’s an audiovisual treat.
  32. The Hunt
    Mikkelsen impresses here as a warm-hearted man who finds himself caught up in a situation way beyond his control.
  33. Laurence Anyways
    The clearest achievement of Dolan’s typically self-indulgent eye-popper comes in equating its gender-bending protagonist’s metamorphoses with those in any relationship that lasts for years.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slacker
    Linklater springs these seemingly random encounters together with a fluid, on-the-move style. Basic problem, given the absence of storyline, is that interest quickly rises and falls by virtue of who happens to be on screen.
    • Variety
  35. Herman's House
    A portrait of an invisible man, Herman's House is a raised voice in the constitutional debate over solitary confinement.
  36. Furious 7
    Furious 7 provides both a satisfying chapter in the movies’ preeminent gearhead soap opera and a tactful, touching memorial to Walker.
  37. Tiger Eyes
    For a certain type of contemplative teen girl, its sensitive handling of heavy material will surely prove affecting, though the picture sometimes veers too far to the sleepy end of low-key.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Great Gatsby
    The Francis Coppola script and Jack Clayton's direction paint a savagely genteel portrait of an upper class generation that deserved in spades what it got circa 1929 and after.
    • Variety
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Revenge of the Nerds
    Revenge of the Nerds shows more than enough smarts to deserve a passing grade.
    • Variety
  40. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
    Although the pacing is more laidback than in “Au revoir Taipei,” the humor more rooted in believable (if bizarre) real-life situations than in slapstick shenanigans, the comic timing remains spot-on and the jokes fetchingly offbeat in an utterly Taiwanese way.
  41. Europa Report
    Meticulously crafted by Ecuadorian helmer Sebastian Cordero and his team, this futuristic tale of astronauts searching for signs of life near Jupiter was ostensibly shot using cameras positioned aboard their spacecraft; their video diaries have been cannily reassembled into something coherent and genuinely compelling on their own low-key terms, if a touch over-earnest at times.
  42. Big Hero 6
    After establishing its fresh and relatable origin story, the movie gets bogged down with a relatively generic villain’s power-hungry schemes. Still, there’s enough that’s new and different about Big Hero 6 to get excited about, especially for those still too young for Marvel’s more intense live-action fare.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    More Than Honey
    Most striking in “Honey” are closeups of the bees in their hives, symbiotically working together in creating their new queen: Imhoof rightfully spends time detailing the extraordinary nature of bee social structure.
  44. Lone Survivor
    Berg’s blunt, pummeling style offers few nuances and makes no apologies, but his broad brushstrokes have clearly found an ideal canvas in this grimly heroic rendering of hell on earth.
  45. I Give It a Year
    If the emotional mathematics don’t quite add up, enough diversion is provided by pic’s broader comic setpieces to paper over the cracks.
  46. Elemental
    While written epilogues provide upbeat updates on the subjects’ endeavors, the overall impression is one of a draining uphill struggle for relatively little personal reward given the enormous stakes involved in the planet’s continued ecological destruction.
  47. Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself
    An entertaining profile of the self-avowed participatory journalist and his tumultuous life and times.
  48. The Angry Birds Movie
    A fast, fizzy and frenetically entertaining extension of the manic gaming franchise.
  49. Labor Day
    To the extent that Adele’s hunger for affection resonates with audiences, what emerges is a powerful — if implausible — romance.
  50. Like Father, Like Son
    The director retains his controlled style even as he moves toward a more traditional narrative mode.
  51. Borgman
    A sly, insidious and intermittently hilarious domestic thriller.
  52. Jimmy P.
    Jimmy P. is never better than when its two leads share the screen, a relationship all the more resonant and moving for Desplechin’s refusal to make it cutesy or contrived.
  53. Venus in Fur
    A delightfully intricate battle of wits and wills in which the question of who’s directing/seducing/torturing whom remains constantly shifting open to interpretation.
  54. The History of Future Folk
    Close encounters of the charming kind infuse The History of Future Folk, which will likely be remembered as the first neo-hipster Brooklyn sci-fi movie.
  55. Student
    There’s much to admire in the film’s elegantly classical tempo and the way Omirbayev achieves so much with so little.
  56. Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
    Helmers Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin... don’t quite get to the issues behind the trio’s infamous performance at the historic Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow last year, but the young women’s vulnerability and defiance make for stirring viewing.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Always
    Always is a relatively small scale, engagingly casual, somewhat silly, but always entertaining fantasy.
  58. Dirty Wars
    It takes pains to make the political personal, forging the viewer’s identification with Scahill by making persistent use of his voiceover narration and keeping him oncamera throughout.
  59. The Prey
    Gallic helmer Eric Valette (“State Affairs”) invests this giddily implausible crime yarn with a propulsive sense of energy.
  60. Wish You Were Here
    Despite its dubious inhabitants, the film consistently entertains by throwing the kinds of curves one should see coming but doesn’t.
  61. Career Girls
    Mike Leigh has made one of his most modest pictures, although one that offers quite a few laughs and other quirky pleasures.
  62. Chungking Express
    Overall, Wong’s movie doesn’t leave as big a wash behind it as the more ambitious “Days” and his “Mean Streets”-like debut, “As Tears Go By,” but it’s an enjoyable cruise.
  63. Dallas Buyers Club
    The film manages to educate without ever feeling didactic, and to entertain in the face of what would, to any other character, seem like a grim life sentence.
  64. Kill Your Darlings
    Directed with an assured sense of style that pushes against the narrow confines of its admittedly fascinating story, John Krokidas’ first feature feels adventurous yet somewhat hemmed-in.
  65. The Book of Life
    The Book of Life is undoubtedly stuffed with more business than its fleet, kid-friendly running time can properly handle. Yet Gutierrez’s confident delivery of the material remains so buoyant and passionately felt throughout that he almost gets away with it.
  66. The Gardener
    A stimulating and highly accessible cinematic conversation.
  67. Pandora's Promise
    Some parts of the film are drily academic, but much of it is quite beautiful and artfully put together by the director.
  68. Aliyah
    [An] intimate and dexterous debut feature.
  69. Petunia
    While the overall feel is a bit derivative and contrived, there are nonetheless plenty of bitingly sharp lines and performance moments to keep this well-cast ensemble piece percolating along.
  70. Some Girl(s)
    Each member of the ensemble offers a vividly detailed performance resounding with emotional truth, delivering lengthy swaths of LaBute’s sometimes savagely furious, sometimes shocking funny dialogue with pitch-perfect degrees of intensity.
  71. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
    Steven Spielberg's film climaxes in final 35 minutes with an almost ethereal confrontation with life forms from another world; the first 100 minutes, however, are somewhat redundant in exposition and irritating in tone.
  72. Chef
    The final destination is entirely predictable — right down to the deus ex machina reappearance of an erstwhile antagonist — but the trip itself is never less than pleasant, and often extremely funny.
  73. My Best Day
    Witty, wacky, multicharacter comedy My Best Day features a rural milieu that’s authentically American.
  74. Into the Woods
    Marshall hasn’t made one of the great movie musicals here, but he hasn’t bungled it either — far from it.
  75. The Look of Love
    Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan's fourth feature collaboration is a vivid period whirlwind that impressively showcases the comic thesp's more dramatic side.
  76. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    Goldman’s frequently amusing script is the secret ingredient that makes “Miss Peregrine” such an appropriate fit for Burton’s peculiar sensibility, allowing the director to revisit and expand motifs and themes from his earlier work.
  77. Dolphin Tale 2
    Blissfully swimming against the hyperactive kidpic tide, Dolphin Tale 2 gently peddles inspirational life lessons while respecting both its characters and its audience.
  78. The Book Thief
    The Book Thief has been brought to the screen with quiet effectiveness and scrupulous taste by director Brian Percival and writer Michael Petroni.
  79. Les Coquillettes
    Les Coquillettes never comes off as an elaborate in-joke; instead it feels like a sincere attempt to convey what the very particular rush of a film festival, rarely seen onscreen, can feel like from inside the bubble.
  80. Filth
    Powered by a vigorous, image-shedding lead turn from James McAvoy as a coked-up Edinburgh detective on the fast track to either promotion or self-implosion, this descent into Scotch-marinated madness begins as ugly comedy, segues almost imperceptibly into farcical tragedy, and inevitably — perhaps intentionally — loses control in the process.
  81. The Canyons
    The major exception is Lohan, who gives one of those performances, like Marlon Brando’s in “Last Tango in Paris,” that comes across as some uncanny conflagration of drama and autobiography. Lohan may not go as deep or as far as Brando, but with her puffy skin, gaudy hoop earrings and thick eye makeup, there’s a little-girl-lost quality to the onetime Disney teen princess that’s very affecting.
  82. SPECTRE
    What’s missing is the unexpected emotional urgency of “Skyfall,” as the film sustains its predecessor’s nostalgia kick with a less sentimental bent.
  83. Jug Face
    The brisk, brief feature appears more atmospheric than terrifying, but its bare-bones tale gets under the skin.
  84. Pusher II: With Blood On My Hands
    Along with the continual build-up of tension and threatened (more than shown) violence, pic is notable for its brutal depiction of the sex industry.
  85. Ways to Live Forever
    Lively, entertaining and well made, pic is thankfully neither mawkish nor grueling, though its refusal to confront some of the harsher realities of its dramatic situation does leave it feeling somewhat bland.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Servant
    The Servant is for the most part strong dramatic fare, though the atmosphere and tension is not fully sustained to the end.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Our Nixon
    A brisk, eye-opening documentary about the Nixon White House as seen from the inside, this triumph of editing is composed of home movies shot by the president’s staff, accompanied by later TV interviews and priceless audio from the secret tapes, making it a must-see for anyone interested in Americana.
  88. Enough Said
    Enough Said may be her cleanest, most polished and broadly funny effort to date; its emotional generosity is undeniable, but so is its tendency to smooth over some of the hard, brittle edges that have been the more interesting hallmarks of Holofcener’s work.
  89. Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers
    Marking does an admirable job of ceding centerstage to the Panthers without letting the film turn soft or letting her subjects turn themselves into latter-day Robin Hoods.
  90. The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
    Those already well-versed in Georgia’s recent history will get the most from a series of real-life character sketches occasionally cryptic for their lack of contextualizing explanation. But the docu’s ample human interest and handsome lensing, despite much visual evidence of a struggling economy, will hold interest for most viewers.
  91. Dom Hemingway
    Shepard balances a livelier-than-life script with striking, super-saturated images, which makes the film feel bigger than it is.
  92. Belle
    That the film still works as well as it does is due to not only its polished craftsmanship and disarming comedy-of-manners approach, but also its fascinating insights into the conflicted mindset of British society
  93. Linsanity
    Evan Jackson Leong’s film makes the most of its superior access and exciting basketball footage, overcoming repetitive stretches by sheer dint of a tremendous underdog story.
  94. Una Noche
    Writer-director Lucy Mulloy’s sexy, pulsing debut feature has an undercurrent of ribald comedy that doesn’t entirely prepare the viewer for the harrowing turn it eventually takes, but it nonetheless amounts to a bracing snapshot of desperate youths putting their immigrant dreams into action.
  95. A.K.A. Doc Pomus
    [A] deft assemblage of homemovies, work tapes and interviews is further invigorated by 1980s interviews with Pomus and a dynamite soundtrack of his rock ‘n’ roll perennials.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    National Lampoon's Vacation
    National Lampoon’s Vacation is an enjoyable trip through familiar comedy landscapes.
  97. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
    Even at its low ebb, the movie effuses an infectious, mischief-making joy.
  98. Shuddh Desi Romance
    A beautifully made rocky-road-to-love comedy in which many obstacles intrude before the right people finally get together, although not in quite the way you might expect.
  99. Herb & Dorothy 50X50
    Much like a work of art, the film invites a range of reactions, though it’s far easier to process than the daubs, doodles and other weird works that now hang all over the country.
  100. Neighbors
    Lewder, weirder, louder, leaner, meaner and more winningly stupid than anything its director Nicholas Stoller and star Seth Rogen have ever been involved with before, frat comedy Neighbors boasts an almost oppressive volume of outrageous gags.
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