Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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 2.3 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. The Prey
    Gallic helmer Eric Valette (“State Affairs”) invests this giddily implausible crime yarn with a propulsive sense of energy.
  2. Monsters University
    Even when the story mechanics feel more than a bit secondhand, the exquisite interplay of vibrant pastel hues and almost photorealist textures (smoothly but not crucially enhanced in 3D) makes the film a continual pleasure to behold.
  3. Rapture-Palooza
    More irrelevant than irreverent, the unworthy script from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s” Chris Matheson might play to apocalyptically stoned college kids, but offers nothing in the way of broader social satire, suggesting the waste of a perfectly good Reckoning — not to mention the talents of a cast far funnier than the doom-and-gloom results suggest.
  4. 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.
  5. Fame High
    Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy (“The Garden”) favors formulaic uplift over investigation, failing to offer a p.o.v. on whether young creative people should be driven as mercilessly as these. Lackluster videography further dulls the pic, which culminates in frustratingly fleeting glimpses of the students’ year-end performances.
  6. World War Z
    Emerges as a surprisingly smart, gripping and imaginative addition to the zombie-movie canon, owing as much to scientific disaster movies like “The China Syndrome” and “Contagion” as it does to undead ur-texts like the collected works of George Romero.
  7. The Purge
    The film’s thudding shocks and predictability dull its edge.
  8. Blackfish
    Righteous, captivating and entirely successful as single-issue-focused documentaries go, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s film draws on startling video footage and testimonies from former orca trainers, building an authoritative argument on behalf of this majestic species.
  9. The Rambler
    Bursting with cheap f/x, the pic is often tedious when not repugnant, but it’s hard to dislike.
  10. This Is the End
    This directing debut for co-writers Rogen and Evan Goldberg offsets its slightly smug premise with a clever sense of self-parody and near-cataclysmic levels of vulgarity.
  11. 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.
  12. The Internship
    This big-hearted underdog comedy from director Shawn Levy is, much like its two leads, exceedingly affable and good-natured despite being undeniably long in the tooth.
  13. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
    Though Resnais’ gamble seems to have failed, it’s encouraging to see a director on the brink of 90 still willing to experiment in a way most helmers half his age wouldn’t dare.
  14. 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.
  15. Now You See Me
    Thanks to some accomplished hocus pocus and an appealing cast, this would-be “Ocean’s Eleven” of the magic world remains watchable throughout, even as it plods along without ever quite fulfilling its potential.
  16. 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.
  17. Call Me Kuchu
    While a local filmmaker’s perspective may have brought more dimensions, the coverage of events here is impressive and on the mark.
  18. After Earth
    Shyamalan is clearly a director-for-hire here, his disinterest palpable from first frame to last. Nowhere in evidence is the gifted "Sixth Sense" director who once brought intricately crafted setpieces and cinematic sleight-of-hand to even the least of his own movies.
  19. La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus
    The film wrings an almost bizarre amount of political, humanistic and spiritual substance out of this limited frame. Kendall’s eye for untold stories, as well as his instinct for catching evocatively framed images on the fly, mark him as a name to watch.
  20. I Do
    A romantic-comedy melodrama that’s too gentle by half.
  21. Student
    There’s much to admire in the film’s elegantly classical tempo and the way Omirbayev achieves so much with so little.
  22. American Mary
    This tale of a violently disillusioned medical student’s wade into the weird world of extreme body modification doesn’t develop all its narrative and thematic ideas to the fullest. But the polished pic is still outre and entertaining enough to please most jaded horror fans.
  23. The Wall
    Though complementary, the pic’s images and voiceover never quite fuse into a single whole.
  24. 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.
  25. Young & Beautiful
    A nuanced, emotionally temperate study of a precocious youth.
  26. 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.
  27. A Touch of Sin
    There’s a certain pleasure to be had in seeing a revered auteur go off the disreputable deep end, and there’s no denying A Touch of Sin packs a visceral wallop.
  28. The Selfish Giant
    The film’s turn toward the tragic is hardly untelegraphed, but its emotional blows still land with crushing precision.
  29. The Past
    An indelible tapestry of carefully engineered revelations and deeper human truths.
  30. Only Lovers Left Alive
    A sweet but slight love story about world-weary hipster bloodsuckers.
  31. The Immigrant
    This rich, beautifully rendered film boasts an arrestingly soulful performance from Marion Cotillard.
  32. Grigris
    The film is easier to admire than it is to invest in emotionally, though its pulse quickens with a dramatic, and boldly untelegraphed, feminist twist in the rural-set final reel.
  33. A Screaming Man
    Haroun’s tender but unsentimental regard for his characters allows his storytelling a natural gravitas thoroughly suited to the simultaneously unfolding private and national tragedies.
  34. The Great Beauty
    Sorrentino continues to tackle major topics using an extraordinary combination of broad brushstrokes and minute detail. Passion via the intellect has become his trademark, well suited to this dissection of empty diversions, indulged in by latter-day Neros fiddling while Rome burns.
  35. Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
    Kleist’s direct language and straightforward storytelling are nowhere in evidence in Pallieres’ narratively challenged adaptation, featuring a French-speaking Mads Mikkelsen in one of his least impressive characterizations.
  36. 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.
  37. A Castle in Italy
    Bruni Tedeschi holds all of pic’s myriad tangents in a delicate balance, no single one ever rising to the fore, no pressure felt to wrap everything — or anything — up in a tidy package at the end.
  38. Borgman
    A sly, insidious and intermittently hilarious domestic thriller.
  39. Blood Ties
    The tension rarely rises above a low boil.
  40. As I Lay Dying
    Franco offers up a competently acted, technically adequate Cliff Notes take on Faulkner’s narratively refracted tale of dirt-poor Mississippi folk in mourning.
  41. All Is Lost
    A virtually wordless film that speaks with grave eloquence and simplicity about the human condition. Nothing here feels fancy or extraneous, least of all Redford’s superb performance.
  42. Stolen Seas
    Assembled from three years’ worth of visits to one of the world’s most volatile hot zones, the format of Stolen Seas is as every bit as exciting as its content, raising beguiling questions about how the team managed to acquire the footage so stunningly interwoven by editor Garret Price.
  43. Vampire
    Abundantly goofy, but atmospheric only in spots, this flat-affect screwballer has its moments, and may attract a minor cult.
  44. Nancy, Please
    For Semans’ conceit of an obsessively narrow world to really work, he needed to have established an initially more expansive milieu.
  45. Nebraska
    Throughout, Payne gently infuses the film’s comic tone with strains of longing and regret, always careful to avoid the maudlin or cheaply sentimental.
  46. Shield of Straw
    Even the hackiest of Hollywood writers would have known how to fix its considerable script problems.
  47. Like Father, Like Son
    The director retains his controlled style even as he moves toward a more traditional narrative mode.
  48. Heli
    An accomplished but singularly unpleasant immersion in Mexico's vicious cycle of drug-fueled violence.
  49. Epic
    A reasonably entertaining, adeptly crafted kidpic whose biggest crime is its near pathological reliance on overfamiliar tropes and trappings.
  50. The Congress
    Apart from its general knock against ageism in Hollywood, The Congress doesn’t have much insight to offer on the subject.
  51. Only God Forgives
    The wallpaper emotes more than Ryan Gosling does in Only God Forgives, an exercise in supreme style and minimal substance.
  52. The Hangover Part III
    Ditching the hangovers, the backward structure, the fleshed-out characters and any sense of debauchery or fun, this installment instead just thrusts its long-suffering protagonists into a rote chase narrative, periodically pausing to trot out fan favorites for a curtain call.
  53. In the Fog
    In the Fog explores the moralities of wartime with restraint and exacting execution.
  54. Inside Llewyn Davis
    Inside Llewyn Davis is a revelatory showcase for Isaac, who sings with an angelic voice and turns a potentially unlikable character into a consistently relatable, unmistakably human presence — a reminder that humility and genius rarely make for comfortable bedfellows.
  55. Twixt
    This disarmingly cheeky, intermittently gorgeous trifle would create the perfect bookend to a career begun almost 50 years ago.
  56. Hating Breitbart
    Not so much a probing examination as a fulsome celebration.
  57. Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself
    An entertaining profile of the self-avowed participatory journalist and his tumultuous life and times.
  58. V/H/S/2
    This one is shorter and has fewer segments, but also earns a much higher batting average. In fact, there’s nary a dud among the four main tales (not including the titled bookends), which each whip elements of terror, macabre humor and the fantastical into a giddy frenzy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Valentino's Ghost
    The burning topic of Muslim (mis)representation in U.S. media is not well served by Michael Singh’s amateurish and ill-defined docu Valentino’s Ghost.
  60. The Bling Ring
    The Bling Ring traces an intriguing feedback loop of which it is knowingly a part: a movie that affords its subjects the very immortality they so aggressively sought.
  61. Old Dog
    A spare but stealthily powerful tale.
  62. Fast & Furious 6
    Though high-octane stunts have always been the primary selling point here, Lin and veteran “Fast” screenwriter Chris Morgan have labored to add depth, dimensionality and inner conflict to the now-sprawling cast of recurring characters — so much so that, at times, “Furious 6” plays like a glossy gearhead melodrama.
  63. 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.
  64. This Is Martin Bonner
    A mood piece, a character study and an exercise in poetic gesture possessed of a sort of evanescent, secular spirituality.
  65. Hannah Arendt
    Von Trotta’s Arendt biopic feels like a movie stuck in another era, stolid and rote, more of an outline for a dramatic treatment than the real thing.
  66. Augustine
    Anchored by two intense, intertwined perfs by veteran Vincent Lindon and relative newcomer Soko, a musician who also composed the pic’s growling, atmospheric score, this period drama offers a coolly febrile study of madness, Victorian sexual politics and power.
  67. Berberian Sound Studio
    Icily disquieting rather than scary, the film is less an exercise in narrative than in tonal mastery.
  68. And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
    Plop plop. Fizz fizz. Oh, what a missed opportunity it is! In the well-cast but seldom funny satire And Now a Word From Our Sponsor.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Three Sisters
    An unquestionably eye-opening, deeply human, strikingly lensed look at an impoverished family whose rudimentary living conditions are a sharp riposte to the illusion of China’s economic boom.
  70. The Painting (Le Tableau)
    Jean-Francois Laguionie’s consistently enjoyable, inventive and beautifully crafted tale is a color riot suitable for all ages.
  71. The World Before Her
    While much of The World Before Her speaks to global womanhood, other aspects are more specific to India, but that’s what gives the film much of its life and spark.
  72. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's
    This scattershot documentary — an undiluted advertisement for this temple of high-end consumerism — jumps skittishly from subject to subject, disjointed and repetitive for all but dyed-in-the-wool fashionistas.
  73. You Will Be My Son
    There are no big surprises in store in terms of where this setup is headed...But the pic’s pleasures are nonetheless numerous, starting with its talented cast.
  74. Peeples
    Peeples may appropriate its entire premise and plot structure from “Meet the Parents,” but its heart is suffused with French cinema.
  75. The Great Gatsby
    More often, Gatsby feels like a well-rehearsed classic in which the actors say their lines ably, but with no discernible feeling behind them.
  76. Stories We Tell
    The alternately playful and elegiac Stories We Tell is wholly of a piece with her fiction work, and just as rewarding.
  77. Violet & Daisy
    Violet & Daisy feels radically disconnected from recognizable human behavior.
  78. Star Trek Into Darkness
    Markedly grander in scale, although never at the expense of its richly human (and half-human) characters, “Into Darkness” may not boldly go where no “Trek” adventure has gone before, but getting there is such a well-crafted, immensely pleasurable ride that it would be positively Vulcan to nitpick.
  79. Generation Um...
    This scrappy, draggy study in soul-crushing failure and disappointment is noteworthy primarily as a showcase for its lead actor’s most quintessentially Keanu performance in years.
  80. Dead Man's Burden
    The unknown cast is aces, and Moshe inscribes his loquacious film in the Western tradition without overdoing the references to the classics.
  81. Memories Look at Me
    A gossamer debut feature that compensates for its lo-fi look with glimpses of profound humanism.
  82. Tai Chi Hero
    A sporadically engaging martial-arts extravaganza that looks even better compared with its predecessor, last year’s borderline-insufferable “Tai Chi Zero.”
  83. Wuss
    An impressively crafted drama laced with darkly comic humor.
  84. Graceland
    While some of the sting goes out of the movie’s hitherto well-executed crime-thriller mechanics, the resolution and aftermath of the hostage crisis still pack a huge emotional wallop.
  85. The Numbers Station
    Sentencing a sad-looking John Cusack and a hard-working Malin Akerman to roughly 90 minutes of solitary confinement in a poorly lit underground bunker, this glum, juiceless spy thriller is a by-the-numbers affair indeed, unlikely to find an audience on any frequency.
  86. 1st Night
    Many of the actors give performances in line with their low profile here.
  87. 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.
  88. G-Dog
    [Mock] has made a movie that vitally captures an extraordinary character in extraordinary circumstances.
  89. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    Mira Nair’s latest immigrant saga saddles itself with a laborious narrative structure and half-baked thriller elements in a misguided attempt to open up what should be an intimate, introspective story.
  90. The East
    This clever, involving spy drama builds to a terrific level of intrigue before losing some steam in its second half.
  91. The Big Wedding
    The film isn’t so much funny as it is merely amusing — a laundry list of inappropriate and potentially embarrassing moments that strive mightily, but never quite manage to land the laugh.
  92. What Richard Did
    In the end, the material feels a bit attenuated, like a short that’s been stretched to feature length, even if the characters are enjoyable, sympathetic enough company for the pic’s 84-minute running time.
  93. Iron Man 3
    Iron Man 3 is more perfunctory and workmanlike than its two predecessors, but this solid production still delivers more than enough of what fans expect.
  94. Sun Don't Shine
    Seimetz takes advantage of the eccentric cultural/natural landscape of central Florida to vivid effect, gets impressive if seldom endearing work from her actors, and seems very much in charge of an assertive if not always explicable presentation.
  95. In a World...
    To call Lake Bell a magnetic, intelligent, blithely screwball leading lady in the Carole Lombard tradition might be selling her short. With In a World… , a rollicking laffer about the cutthroat voiceover biz in Los Angeles, she proves herself a comedy screenwriter to be reckoned with.
  96. Lovelace
    Reducing an immensely disturbing, politically byzantine tale to a series of cartoonish vignettes, this celeb-studded biopic squanders a gutsy performance by Amanda Seyfried.
  97. Drinking Buddies
    Relative to the major brands, the intimate, handcrafted approach should yield more flavor. Instead, Drinking Buddies offers mostly froth.
  98. Passion
    Clearly, Passion means to be a hoot, a wet-dream thriller for cinephiles. But by the time it reaches its overwrought final act, the picture has generated neither the tension of its forebears nor the audacity that would allow it to transcend its silliness.
  99. Paradise: Love
    Repulsive and sublimely beautiful, arguably celebratory and damning of its characters, it’s hideous and masterful all at once, “Salo” with sunburn.
  100. Pain & Gain
    Bay can be a master of exuberant chaos, but here the violence mostly lands with a sickening thud, which is fitting, one supposes, but also ultimately numbing.
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