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. Spinning Plates
    Little in the way of a unified theme emerges to turn Joseph Levy’s feature into something more than a semi-random survey of restaurant life.
  2. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
    Lacks the passion of previous Marshall Curry films ("Racing Dreams," "Street Fight") -- something mirrored in his principal character, but also something that keeps the documentary from being as sharp as it might have been, or as up-to-date.
  3. Tigertail
    It’s courageous of Yang to share such a tribute to his father, though the most important things remain unspoken.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The War Wagon
    The War Wagon is an entertaining, exciting western drama of revenge, laced with action and humor. Strong scripting, performances and direction are evident, enhanced by terrif exterior production values.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Seduction of Joe Tynan
    Adroitly combining humor and intimate drama, Joe Tynan joins that list of exemplary Washington-set pix, including Advise and Consent and The Best Man.
  6. Black Dynamite
    This film will delight both discriminating fans of the blaxploitation tradition and ordinary lovers of goofy, in-ya-face thrills.
  7. 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Body Snatchers
    An exciting thriller that compares favorably with Don Siegel's classic 1956 original.
  9. ...So Goes the Nation
    Neither newly revelatory nor formally innovative.
  10. Mine 9
    Mensore’s film aims chiefly to highlight the typical plight of an American underclass that rarely gets big-screen attention. That it does with honesty and conviction, if not a great deal of inspiration.
  11. Paddington In Peru
    The result isn’t as formally or tonally characterful as the previous films, just as the script, more than before, feels bound to a well-worn template.
  12. Staying Vertical
    The technical bravura that Guiraudie summoned in “Stranger” — the subtle manipulation of light, weather, shot language, and temporal cunning — now falls by the wayside in a story that lurches from episode to disconnected episode.
  13. Girl on the Third Floor
    What’s ultimately less impressive is Stevens’ script, which to varying degrees draws on the templates of “The Amityville Horror,” “The Shining,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and other conspicuous predecessors, but lacks the original fillip or three that might have turned an enjoyable exercise into something really first rate.
  14. Lemming
    Spooky, intellectually titillating and darkly funny picture is definitely the kind of film where the less you know going in, the better.
  15. Ismael's Ghosts
    In its own weird way, Ismael’s Ghosts has something profound to say about the lingering pain of past relationships and the threat they still pose to the present, but it does so in such a needlessly complicated fashion, we can’t help but be overwhelmed. [Cannes Version]
  16. Stars at Noon
    Trish is the plum part here, and a sensational Qualley — cycling through a ragged thrift-store wardrobe, with a lavish halo of dark curls that can’t help but recall her mother, Andie MacDowell — grabs it with both callused hands.
  17. Before the Fall
    An intermittently gripping story about an idealistic young boxer who becomes disillusioned with the Third Reich during his elite training, Napola is finally KO'd by an overdose of Nazi fetishism.
  18. Ouija: Origin of Evil
    After an hour or so spent establishing characters worth caring about, the narrative starts to devolve, and the more the film circles back to the mythology of “Ouija,” the sillier it gets. Much like the characters at its center, this prequel can’t outrun the ghosts of its past.
  19. Lee Daniels' The Butler
    There’s no denying, though, that Daniels knows how to push an audience’s buttons, and as crudely obvious as The Butler can be...it’s also genuinely rousing. By the end, it’s hard not to feel moved, if also more than a bit manhandled.
  20. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    A visually lush and very Westernized vision of life in a remote Chinese village in the early 1970s.
  21. Life, Above All
    It's an absorbing, vividly inhabited tale nonetheless, never exploiting its horrors but rather treating them as tough local realities.
  22. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
    The script is faithful, the actors are just right, the sets, costumes, makeup and effects match and sometimes exceed anything one could imagine.
  23. 11:14
    A zippy and sardonic feast of bad decision-making under pressure, 11:14 artfully molds the seemingly unrelated misfortunes of 10 characters into a satisfying and consistently entertaining whole.
  24. Eden Lake
    Eden Lake doesn't feel like torture porn so much as a rural-jeopardy thriller in extremis.
  25. The Slaughter Rule
    Strong performances, a few dramatically potent scenes and a vividly specific evocation of locale barely offset hackneyed and muddled elements in a script that plays like a first draft.
  26. The Turandot Project
    A real-life inspirational comedy that should beguile viewers regardless of their operatic taste (or distaste).
  27. Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
    As engaging and stimulating as the man himself.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rain Man
    It's a mature assignment for Cruise and he's at his best in the darker scenes.
  29. Closer
    The caustic wit and brute force of Patrick Marber's acclaimed play come across with a softened edge in Mike Nichols' bigscreen version of Closer.
  30. The Decomposition of the Soul
    A thorny subject is handled with care in this meticulous reconstruction of life inside the East German police state, as boiled down to the experiences of just two ex-inmates -- one man and one woman --- of a notorious Stasi prison. Overall effect is poetically thought-provoking, not depressing.
  31. Mundo alas
    "Mundo" saves the full effect for dramatically lit performances at stopovers along the road, climaxing at the jam-packed Luna Park arena in Buenos Aires.
  32. Old Cats
    Less cohesive and accessible than "The Maid" (which the Chilean duo co-scripted and Silva helmed solo), picture nonetheless contains unforgettable scenes.
  33. Dzi Croquettes
    Resembling an all-male late-20th-century version of the Ziegfeld Follies, the cabaret group Dzi Croquettes used an empowering sexuality to counter Brazil's military dictatorship. Dzi Croquettes -- the Documentary is Tatiana Issa and Raphael Alvarez's pleasure-packed exploration of the group's impact.
  34. Talaash
    This thoroughly engrossing, highly anticipated picture boasts assured direction by sophomore helmer Reema Kagti, a well-constructed script by Kagti and fellow femme writer Zoya Akhtar, and strong thesping by familiar Bollywood luminaries Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukerji.
  35. The Dirties
    This sloppy, button-pushing black comedy reveals a crew desperately in need of counseling — less in anger management than in the fundamentals of screenwriting, camerawork and structure.
  36. Charlie Victor Romeo
    The screenwriter/playwrights have processed the characters’ last words in ways that imbue them with as much humanity as possible.
  37. Altina
    Altina makes for loose, exasperating but oddly endearing viewing.
  38. Ants on a Shrimp
    Dutch helmer Maurice Dekkers devotes most of his film to the celebrity chef’s extensive foraging, while his abstemious staff harps on about the onerous pursuit of perfection; one crucial missing ingredient, however, is the joy of eating or cooking.
  39. Swallows and Amazons
    It’s heartening to see Ransome’s fiction taking on a new and more independent form, suggesting an ongoing relevance for a series of books that could easily be viewed as too dated for modern children. As the kids put it: Swallows and Amazons forever.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Revenge of the Pink Panther
    Revenge of the Pink Panther isn't the best of the continuing film series, but Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers on a slow day are still well ahead of most other comedic filmmakers.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shampoo
    All the excellent creative components do not add up to a whole. There are, however, strong elements in the film. Warden’s performance is outstanding. He makes the most of a script and direction which gives his character much more dimension than the prototype cuckold.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
    True to form, John Cassavetes challenges a Hollywood cliche: that technology is so advanced even the worst films usually look good. With ease, he proves that an awful film can look even worse.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Foxes
    Foxes is an ambitious attempt to do a film relating to some of the not-so-acceptable realities among teenagers that ends up delivering far less than it is capable of.
  44. The Boy Behind the Door
    It’s another effective use of a simple premise and modest means to create a nicely nerve-jangling thriller.
  45. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
    Recalling the animated "Superman" shorts of the 1940s, "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" is a baroque, melodramatic tale of good and evil that's a tad too sophisticated for its intended youthful audience. The shrill thriller is a throwback to a bygone time more appealing to adults.
  46. Ex-Husbands
    Ex-Husbands . . . is likable enough in intention, but flounders en route to its destination. Not unlike its befuddled protagonists, who can’t seem to translate meaning well into doing well.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Destination Tokyo
    Destination Tokyo runs two hours and 15 minutes, and that's a lot of film. But none of it is wasted. In its unspooling is crammed enough excitement for possibly a couple of pictures.
  48. In the Valley of Elah
    Too self-serious to work as a straight-ahead whodunit and too lacking in imagination to realize its art-film aspirations.
  49. The Debt
    The remake ups the adrenaline factor, and features strong performances across the board, yet feels bogged down by a weighty love triangle and a subject that merits more than the old-school good vs. evil approach.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Christmas
    Black Christmas, a bloody, senseless kill-for-kicks feature, exploits unnecessary violence in a university sorority house operated by an implausibly alcoholic ex-hoofer.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Rocky Horror Picture Show
    Most of the jokes that might have seemed jolly fun on stage now appear obvious and even flat. The sparkle's gone.
  52. Fishing Without Nets
    Cutter Hodierne makes an accomplished feature debut with this very well-crafted, empathetic hijacking drama.
  53. My Best Friend
    Well-turned adult comedy.
  54. The Client
    The Client is a satisfactory, by-the-numbers child-in-jeopardy thriller that will fill the bill as a very commercial hot weather popcorn picture.
  55. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
    Filmmakers take a shotgun approach to comedy, inundating the viewer with wisecracks that, more often than not, don't go over. But those that do still add up to lotsa laughs, and the sheer weight of them eventually builds an atmosphere of mild lunacy that it's useless to resist.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Land of the Pharaohs
    When the viewing senses begin to dull from the tremendous load of spectacle, the script and Hawks’ direction wisely switch to sex and intrigue.
  57. Liberation Day
    Billed as a “documentary musical,” this potential crowd-pleaser gets considerable comic mileage out of the friction between two very different brands of cultural eccentricity — but it succeeds as more than a diverting novelty, packed as it is with pointed observations on diplomacy and censorship in a country that’s still a mystery to many.
  58. Better Than Something: Jay Reatard
    What elevates the picture above the norm is a series of remarkably candid and eerily prescient interviews.
  59. Father of the Bride
    This remake is loud and exaggerated; it’s more hijinks than heart. (Even the swans that bedeviled Martin have been swapped out for synchronized flamingos.) Audiences looking to shed a tear need not RSVP.
  60. Mr. Malcolm's List
    The deceptions and symmetries are standard, but this is the kind of movie that rises or falls on whether the actors can carry the duplicity — and the innocence — aloft. And the actors here are marvelous: tart, stylish, emotionally vibrant, never more knowing than when they’re being duped.
  61. The Good Lie
    Falardeau actually spent time filming in Sudan for a completely different project back in 1994 before being forced to evacuate by the U.N., but he consciously decides not to rub our noses in tarted-up awfulness, opting for steady-footed lensing and subdued music, then trusting our imaginations to fill in the horrors.
  62. Gay Sex in the 70s
    Magnificent photographs, archival news footage, and location-shot porn add texture and immediacy to Joseph Lovett's fascinating memoir of the sexually explosive 12-year period (1969-1981).
  63. The Great Debaters
    Tailor-made for maximum inspirational, historical and educational impact, The Great Debaters shines a bright spotlight on a remarkable example of black achievement long forgotten in the sorry history of the Jim Crow South.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Other Side of the Street
    A diverting, if unspectacular, Brazilian drama centered on an aging female detective.
  65. Polina
    Polina is vivid as dance but vague as drama.
  66. Shoshana
    In addition to sterling work by the three young principals, Ian Hart gives a standout performance as the British High Commissioner’s ubiquitous righthand man, offering a supercilious, world-weary gravitas that seemingly epitomizes the official British attitude to the Mandate.
  67. Puss in Boots
    However crass the motivation for its existence, Puss' origin story could easily stand on its own -- a testament to clever writing on the part of its creative team and an irresistible central performance by Antonio Banderas.
  68. Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D
    Sound is crystal-clear, and unobtrusive stereoscopic footage looks great throughout the 99-minute feature, though some weird compositional snafus scuttle the desired concert experience, and the set's lack of variety makes it a fans-only proposition.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hot Rock
    Peter Yates’ direction and uniformly good cast partly overcome a William Goldman script [from Donald E. Westlake’s novel] that has many exciting and funny bits, but lacks a clear, unifying thrust.
  70. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    The film is weightless and super-goofy — a blissed-out air balloon of nostalgia. It zips right along, it makes you smile and chortle, it’s a surprisingly sweet-spirited love story.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scarface
    Scarface is a grandiose modern morality play, excessive, broad and operatic at times.
  72. 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.
  73. Beauty and the Dogs
    Ben Hania’s decision to divide the film into 9 chapters, each seemingly orchestrated in a single take, works on a cerebral level, but the form doesn’t serve the story, and while the overall choreography of actors and camerawork is impressive, it never fully satisfies.
  74. The Seagull's Laughter
    A sprightly, enjoyable comedy-drama from veteran Agust Gudmundsson that's buoyed by a raft of excellent distaff performances.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Animal Factory
    In one of his best leading screen turns, Dafoe makes a potentially unlikely construct into a fascinating, full-blooded figure.
  76. Being Julia
    A minor affair, a confection based on dalliances and the way a set of sophisticated theater people handle them, that lacks true distinction.
  77. Manos Sucias
    Although it sports a few fresh moments, the tonally all-over-the-place drama is hampered by script and assembly problems.
  78. American Made
    A sweat-slicked, exhausting but glibly entertaining escapade on its own terms, American Made is more interesting as a showcase for the dateless elasticity of Cruise’s star power. It feels, for better or worse, like a film he could have made at almost any point in the last 30 years.
  79. The Boy and the Beast
    Though it piles all sorts of emotional baggage onto a series of already-tired believe-in-yourself cliches, Hosoda’s over-complicated script has the virtue of expressing itself less via words than it does through truly spectacular set pieces.
  80. Hearts Beat Loud
    Clemons has been a luminous presence who could bloom into a great grown-up actress. Hearts Beat Loud proves she’s the real deal. As for the film around her, Haley’s 21-drum solo salute to the passage of time is, like Frank, merely fine. But he admirably keeps his characters’ victories small and their losses familiar, making his movie a ballad everyone can hum to.
  81. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
    Over-production-designed as the film is, Bening and Bell manage to hold their own within it.
  82. The End of the Affair
    A faithful adaptation that captures the haunting spirit and religious nature of the 1951 novel.
  83. Sex Positive
    Daryl Wein's engrossing portrait of Richard Berkowitz is freshly engaging largely due to the subject himself.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    La Femme Nikita
    [Parillaud] remains a totally uninteresting figment of Besson's blinkered movieland imagination, especially when she's in the company of Karyo and Anglade, who provide balance to her overacting.
  85. Axolotl Overkill
    Hegemann deserves considerable praise for avoiding the standard pitfalls of both the neophyte director and the writer-turned-filmmaker: Her movie is not overly wordy, and is anything but over-explained.
  86. Plainclothes
    Plainclothes builds to an intense and ultimately cathartic climax, but there’s something retrograde about the shame Lucas feels. Emmi wants us to experience his protagonist’s sense of suffocation, when looking back from the present, we just want to shout: “It gets better!”
  87. Jindabyne
    Never obtains the full impact of its potentially powerful inner core.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Compromising Positions
    Falling midway between a campy send-up of suburban wives soap operas and a legitimate thriller, Compromising Positions, from the 1978 novel by Susan Isaacs, emerges as a silly little whodunnit that's a mild embarrassment to all involved.
  89. Last Flag Flying
    The central reason that Last Flag Flying fails to take wing is that its characters don’t ring true. Not really. You never feel, in your bones, that you’re watching battle-scarred veterans.
  90. God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty
    This is a baleful and unfortunate tale; one feels for Granda, who describes his suicidal ideation at one point. But director Billy Corben’s attempts to connect his collision with the boomer-generation Falwells to the broader story of evangelicals in the United States seems at times like a stretch.
  91. Throw Down Your Heart
    Sascha Paladino's overlong but engaging doc about banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck's harmonious journey through four African countries.
  92. I See You
    An eerie suspense exercise that starts out looking like a supernatural tale — one of several viewer presumptions this cleverly engineered narrative eventually pulls the rug out from under.
  93. Kill the Jockey
    Awash with kooky gags and bolstered by the strange, soulful presence of leading man Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, it’s fun but flighty, liable to throw some viewers from the saddle.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Noises Off...
    Bogdanovich has judged his approach to the material astutely, resisting impulses toward comic overkill or transferring focus away from the stage. He takes his cue from the actors, and the camera is always in the right place.
  95. Mr. Untouchable
    Alternately seduced and repelled by its subject, the garish and power-hungry Harlem gangster and '70s cocaine kingpin Nicky Barnes, Mr. Untouchable is one seriously confused documentary.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
    Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a somewhat sordid, quite sexy and very violent murder-kidnap-theft meller which includes elements of rape, lesbianism and sadism, clothed in faddish leather and boots and equipped with sports cars. Some good performances emerge from a one-note script via very good Russ Meyer direction and his outstanding editing.
  97. Rounding
    While many movies these days feel stretched too thin to sustain their few real ideas, Rounding emerges in the end as a project that ought to have shed some surplus ideas to better focus on a few. Either that, or the compact pacing should’ve been eased to allow them all more breathing space.
  98. Crater
    It’s sci-fi informed by a Gen-Z sensibility, with a particular focus on those Zoomers who can’t imagine a bright future on the planet they actually inhabit — an ever-expanding demographic, one imagines.
  99. The Conjuring 2
    Wan has a gift that most slam-bang horror directors today do not: a sense of the audience — of their rhythm and pulse, of how to manipulate a moment so that he’s practically controlling your breathing.
  100. Velvet Goldmine
    A constantly imaginative, stylistically lively but dramatically inert chronicle of cultural and sexual rebellion.
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