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. One True Thing
    As sensitively written, fluidly directed and expertly acted as it is, and as elemental as its dramatic conflicts may be, One True Thing has trouble breaking free of its limitations as a small-scale, modestly aimed family drama.
  2. Songcatcher
    Unfolds at a leisurely but enjoyable pace, its dramatic contrivances never pushed too hard.
  3. Sex Is Comedy
    A not terribly creative movie about the creative process.
  4. Unfaithful
    This refitting of Claude Chabrol's 1968 classic "La Femme Infidele" is less concerned with suspense and dramatic fireworks than is the usual American "erotic thriller," and much more devoted to nuances and the minutiae of how men and women behave, pretend and lie in duplicitous situations.
  5. The Summer of Sangaile
    At its best, The Summer of Sangaile captures the special intensity of those relationships in which everything seems to fade away save for the other person.
  6. Under Our Skin
    Takes a creative, humanistic approach that makes the complex material dramatic and visually interesting.
  7. Mr. Nobody
    Though a lot of it is well written and directed and, quite often, funny or poignant, the individual scenes rarely become part of a larger whole.
  8. Belgica
    Big-picture cliches aside, this truth-blurring but thoroughly convincing portrait makes its case via the details.
  9. Kids
    Disturbing because it is so believable, Kids goes well beyond any previous American film in frankly describing the lives of at least a certain group of modern teenagers.
  10. The Creator
    The emotional core of The Creator rests on the shoulders of a star who has just one gear: angry. The rest wants to be “Blade Runner,” but plays more like a cross between “Elysium” (with its floating futuristic fortress and specious political message) and “The Golden Child” (about an all-powerful Asian kiddo in desperate need of protecting).
  11. Backbeat
    This energetic, dramatically potent look at the band's Hamburg days has quite a bit going for it in the way of cultural and musical history, but lacks a crucial, heightened artistic quality and point of view that would have given it real distinction.
  12. Good Kill
    Just as Niccol’s narrative structure is at once fraught and immaculate in its escalation of ideas and character friction, so his arguments remain ever-so-slightly oblique despite the tidiness of their presentation.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Southern Comfort
    Pic is most exciting as a visual experience, as Walter Hill once again proves himself a consummate filmmaker with a great talent for mood, composition and action choreography.
  14. Don't Come Back from the Moon
    The movie captivates and fascinates as a free-form dream constantly poised on a knife edge between roiling nightmare and reassuring resolution. The surprising yet satisfyingly ambiguous ending allows for either option.
  15. The Parent Trap
    Richardson, who gracefully sways through a memorable drunk scene, and Quaid, whose megawatt smile has never been more dazzling, are disarmingly charming as the parents. And that's important; if the actors were any less engaging, the audience might not be so forgiving of their characters.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Babies
    Babies is refreshing in its methods, impressive in its scope and remarkable in its immediacy. That said, it's also an occasionally frustrating documentary that deprives the viewer of the comforts of exposition and cultural context.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rumble Fish
    Rumble Fish is another Francis Coppola picture that's overwrought and overthought with camera and characters that never quite come together in anything beyond consistently interesting.
  18. Nobody Else But You (Poupoupidou)
    A subversive and strange little film noir.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What's Up, Tiger Lily?
    Take a Toho Films (Japan) crime meller [directed by Senkichi Taniguchi], fashioned in the James Bond tradition for the domestic market there, then turn loose Woody Allen and associates to dub and re-edit in camp-comedy vein, and the result is What’s Up, Tiger Lily? The production has one premise – deliberately mismatched dialog – which is sustained reasonably well through its brief running time.
  20. Don't Talk to Irene
    Even when the film’s eccentricities feel too choreographed, it manages to deliver its preordained uplift with good-humored charm.
  21. Before We Forget
    Ultimately, though, Before We Forget feels much too tidy (didactic, even) in how it unfolds for it to land the emotional gutpunch it so wants to deliver.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Three on a Match
    It amounts to a picture which has tried but failed to photographically decipher four characters. [01 Nov 1932, p.12]
    • Variety
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Omen
    Suspenser starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as the unwitting parents of the Antichrist. Richard Donner's direction is taut. Players all are strong.
    • Variety
  24. Lbs.
    The intimately personal chronicle is more impressive for Famiglietti's disarming self-exposure than for any fully formed cinematic style or consistency of tone, but the modest production has a genuine, warm spirit.
  25. Hard Target
    A briskly vigorous, occasionally brilliant actioner.
  26. Flowers
    The three lead actresses, beautifully cast, form just enough of a contrast to each other to create extratextual tension while maintaining a high degree of sympathy.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Romancing the Stone
    Heading for the jungles in her high heels, Turner is like a lot of unwitting screen heroines ahead of her, guaranteed that her drab existence is about to be transformed – probably by a man, preferably handsome and adventurous. Sure enough, Michael Douglas pops out of the jungle. The expected complications are supplied by the kidnappers, Danny DeVito and Zack Norman.
  28. The Annihilation of Fish
    A minnow of a movie. A drear moment in the careers of all concerned.
  29. Dai si gin
    An interesting idea comes over only half-formed in Johnnie To's Breaking News, an effective Hong Kong crimer that partly returns to the realistic style of some of his late '90s dramas, but never properly knits its theme of media manipulation into pic's punchy thriller format.
  30. Bad Posture
    Bad dialogue and bad acting might convince some of the authenticity behind Bad Posture, but there's no getting around the tedious navel-gazing of Malcolm Murray's fiction debut.
  31. Splinters
    Surfing meets sociology in Splinters, a compelling documentary about the sport's arrival in the Papua New Guinea village of Vanimo.
  32. It's Me, It's Me
    Most of the comedy in It’s Me, It’s Me is behavioral, playing off the plausible notion that meeting exact copies of yourself would not be terrifying so much as socially awkward.
  33. Deliver Us
    The documentary wisely avoids questioning beliefs, but it does force audiences to question how those responsible for shepherding the faithful use their influence, for good or bad.
  34. Monster Hunt 2
    Monster Hunt 2 is so perfectly good-natured and so utterly nonsensical that it makes not-thinking-about-it basically an act of self-preservation, for which, bless its bouncing, gurgling, flolloping heart.
  35. The Forest of the Lost Souls
    The Forest of Lost Souls is a nasty and impressive little thriller that goes about its business with ruthless cinematic efficiency.
  36. Snapshots
    Snapshots wallows a little too readily in cliché to be quite as stirring as its story — one drawn from Corran’s own family history — sounds on paper.
  37. Homecoming
    A terrific trio of performances go some way toward making the film’s more neatly schematic plotting feel organically, messily human.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They All Laughed
    Rarely does a film come along featuring such an extensive array of attractive characters with whom it is simply a pleasure to spend two hours.
  39. Waydowntown
    Third outing for prairie auteur Gary Burns is his most ambitious, and most uneven, effort yet.
  40. Wendigo
    A mostly superb bit of modern horror from the writer-director-editor previously responsible for the Frankenstein story "No Telling" and the urban vampire pic "Habit."
  41. Out of Time
    A tasty if wildly far-fetched thriller, Out of Time proves far stronger in its characterizations than in developing genuine suspense.
  42. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    Turns on an intellectual gimmick in the vein of "Memento," weaving down sinister byways, the better to click with satisfying symmetry.
  43. Secretary
    In a very demanding role demanding a vast emotional range from clueless innocent to confident role player and emotional adventurer, Gyllenhaal is outstanding.
  44. The Rage in Placid Lake
    Melds an insightful observational style with some rather clunky satire and the resulting mix is uneven at best.
  45. Drumline
    Brimming with heart and humor -- Drumline is a formulaic crowdpleaser set in the competitive world of university marching bands at predominantly black universities.
  46. The Patriot
    Has some emotional pull and isn't stuffy and dull.
  47. Children of Love
    The daunting logistics and emotional juggling act of child custody and visitation rights post-divorce are examined via spot-on acting and deft helming in docu-styled Children of Love.
  48. Misha and the Wolves
    Much of the lure of Misha and the Wolves is that it’s simply a tricky good yarn spun around the unbelievable things that human beings will do. But the movie also, in its way, taps into the soul of an era when fake reality is threatening to dislodge actual reality.
  49. A Perfect Getaway
    A big-reveal thriller with surprises that really do surprise -- and are worth waiting for through an audaciously long buildup -- A Perfect Getaway finds writer-director David Twohy in popcorn form with a muscularity not seen since 2000's "Pitch Black."
  50. Bloodthirsty
    Within its modest boundaries, Bloodthirsty does a creditable enough job balancing supernatural suspense with the drama of a young artist’s insecurities at a key early career juncture.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fortune Cookie
    Generally amusing (often wildly so) but overlong.
  52. Love Crime
    Picture initially suggests a sort of Gallic "Damages," with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier in the Glenn Close and Rose Byrne roles, but the corporate catfight soon gives way to a cleverly designed whodunit.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Bridge Too Far
    Futility and frustration are the overriding emotional elements in A Bridge Too Far, Joseph E. Levine's sprawling Second World War production [from the novel by Cornelius Ryan] about a 1944 military operation botched by both Allied and German troops.
  54. Native Son
    Native Son, after its promising first half, leaves you dispirited, because it’s a movie where hope gets snuffed by a stacked deck.
  55. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    Strums the genre for considerable laughs, with John C. Reilly playing the title balladeer from teen to senior citizen, generating enough goodwill to offset the flat sections and a decidedly juvenile streak.
  56. Planet B-Boy
    Often exhilarating docu charts several breakdancing crews' path to the Battle of the Year, which hosts national winners from 18 countries -- not excluding Israel, Belgium or Latvia -- in dazzling competitive displays.
  57. Unlocking the Cage
    Wise is plenty eloquent on the complex legal issue, but remains vague about how the status he seeks will practically impact animals (could animal weddings be far behind?) or why he’s the “person” best qualified to represent them in court.
  58. The Guilty
    Gyllenhaal’s impressive, but The Guilty almost certainly would have been more effective if he’d dialed down the intensity a bit.
  59. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Scripted by “Chicken Run” alums Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, along with newcomer Rachel Tunnard, the sequel doesn’t offer many surprises plotwise, but is consistently amusing in its dad-jokey kind of way.
  60. Reel Injun
    The tone of Reel Injun is respectfully serious, though well short of angry, while focusing on how the stereotypical depictions of marauding redskins affected the self-images of Native Americans.
  61. The Dead Center
    There’s a lot of excellent atmospherics here that are more unsettling than the actual violence, which in turn is all the more effective for largely being kept just off-screen.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Peyton Place
    Under Mark Robson’s direction, every one of the performers delivers a topnotch portrayal.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Irma la Douce
    Two hours and 23 minutes is an awfully long haul for a frivolous farce.
  64. Hold the Dark
    Boasting the sort of shocking brutality and unnerving menace that has become Saulnier’s signature, Hold the Dark is also a strangely seductive film, and one that understands the difference between simple plot resolution and catharsis, leading us on a journey into Alaska’s frigid heart of darkness that poses more questions than it answers.
  65. My Cousin Rachel
    It’s pure pleasure to watch Weisz as Rachel, who is also an actress of sorts, adapting to suit the needs and desires of whoever she’s seducing. Her manipulations feel more intuitive than conniving and need not be explicitly sexual per se.
  66. The Lincoln Lawyer
    It's easy enough to just soak up star Matthew McConaughey's good-ol'-boy appeal and overlook the film's stilted dialogue, bizarre directorial indulgences, excessive running time and boilerplate "Law and Order"-style narrative.
  67. Young & Beautiful
    A nuanced, emotionally temperate study of a precocious youth.
  68. Piece By Piece
    Paradoxically, the Lego approach gives the film a far more imaginative visual range than traditional documentaries, even as it robs us of the thing we most want to see: human faces.
  69. The Merchant of Venice
    Despite a series of disclaimers about the treatment of Jews in the 16th century, there's even less disguising onscreen than onstage that this is an uncomfortably anti-Semitic play and somewhat problematic for contempo audiences.
  70. Nyad
    Audiences want to see Diana Nyad succeed, but the pleasure of the experience comes from watching actors become these characters. No matter how tricky such feats must have been to re-create, you get the impression that everyone involved was having a blast.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Star 80
    An engrossing, unsentimental and unavoidably depressing account of the short life and ghastly death of Playmate-actress Dorothy Stratten.
  72. Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets
    As celebrated in Habicht’s warmly human documentary, Pulp has always been defiantly different.
  73. Kingdom of Heaven
    Genuinely spectacular and historically quite respectable, Ridley Scott's latest epic is at its strongest in conveying the savagery spawned by fanaticism.
  74. Ash
    The movie’s razor-sharp visuals leave scratch marks on the back of your eyeballs, liable to burst back into your consciousness in subsequent dreams.
  75. A Common Thread
    Thoughtful cross-generational portrait is full of familiar building blocks rendered fresh by first time feature helmer Eleonore Faucher.
  76. On Swift Horses
    There’s a current of tragedy running beneath all of the couples here, as the characters create obstacles to their own happiness. It can feel a bit diagrammatic, as if the novelist were setting up impossible loves and then watching them fail. But there’s hope too, and however contrived the last scene may feel, there’s poetry in watching someone betting their future on yet another horse.
  77. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
    Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic showcases the comic-actress in her familiar on-stage persona as a blithely self-involved Jewish American Princess whose penchant for perky vulgarity can be explosively funny or unnervingly shocking.
  78. Bombón: El Perro
    A natural crowd-pleaser.
  79. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    Whether one considers said work to be worthy of a feature-length movie is almost entirely beside the point, since Stephenson and Sharpe have unearthed so much else that’s engaging about Wain’s story.
  80. Chronicles
    Starts out bracingly but gradually loses focus. Ecuadorian writer-director Sebastian Cordero's screenplay trades in underdeveloped conflicts and blank characters, hinting far too early at the killer's probable identity.
  81. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    More smile-inducing than laugh-aloud funny.
  82. A Cat in Paris
    Delightfully old-school on the animation side, but too old-fashioned on the story side, French 2D toon A Cat in Paris is easy enough on the eyes yet never quite justifies feature-length status.
  83. Denial
    For all the powerful relevance of its subject, Denial, directed by Mick Jackson from a script by David Hare, never finds its grip. It’s a curiously awkward and slipshod movie that winds up being about nothing so much as the perverse, confounding eccentricities of the British legal system.
  84. The Other Son
    An adequate if never surprising effort from French helmer Lorraine Levy.
  85. Dandelion
    A perceptive character drama both delicate and tragic.
  86. The Dark Hours
    The Dark Hours surmounts some of the problems of its weak dialogue through a commanding performance by lead Kate Greenhouse and some grisly, genre-style violence.
  87. Gaza Strip
    Takes the viewer deep into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the powerful immediacy of raw images, some of them very hard to look at.
  88. The Way Home
    Utterly unsentimental but profoundly moving,The Way Home" is a tiny gem from South Korea.
  89. Dahmer
    Jacobson produces a remarkably creepy piece of cinema that disturbs by suggestion, nuance and ambiguity.
  90. Presumed Guilty: Tales of the Public Defenders
    At first a little tabloid in tenor and editorial style, pic soon distances itself from the myriad court TV shows with a fine balance of everyday detail and verite drama.
  91. The Blonds
    Treads a delicate line between documentary and fiction to reconstruct the kidnapping and murder of director Albertina Carri's parents during the military dictatorship.
  92. The Youth
    Well worth a look, despite its flaws.
  93. Ticket to Jerusalem
    Attempts to meld reality and artifice but to uninspiring results.
  94. Out of the Furnace
    Cooper seems to make actors feel safe and willing to expose themselves in ways they ordinarily might not, and time and again he takes scenes to places of unexpected emotional power.
  95. Cheap Thrills
    The performances are perfectly attuned to the material, with Koechner dominating his every scene as a kind of demented ringmaster, and Healy adroitly demonstrating the potential for both humor and horror in a character with nothing left to lose.
  96. Buster's Mal Heart
    An unusual movie like Buster’s Mal Heart demands an unusual star, and Rami Malek proves an ideal fit for Sarah Adina Smith’s sophomore feature.
  97. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
    In “The Covenant,” Guy Ritchie tells a story of two men, but he’s really giving this war that never succeeded a kind of closure. He uses the power of movies to coax out the heart that fueled our actions, and that made our loss so hard to bear.
  98. Pitch Perfect 2
    Kay Cannon’s script is even lighter on narrative than its predecessor, but fills any resulting void with a concentrated supply of riotous gags, and a renewed emphasis on the virtues of female collaboration and independence.
  99. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    Writer-director Adamma Ebo’s indie comedy (produced by sister Adanne) should tickle those who share her skepticism of organized religion — especially the profit-oriented variety — but doesn’t go much deeper than the 15-minute short film on which it’s based.
  100. Downton Abbey: A New Era
    Fellowes gives us an affectionate group hug, which is effectively what these encore visits amount to.
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