Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Maniac
    This merciless work of anti-entertainment is arguably admirable for being as disturbingly disgusting as it wants to be.
  2. The Call
    There’s little to differentiate this high-pitched screamer from a particularly feverish “Law and Order” rerun.
  3. Evil Dead
    Boasts way better production values than the penny-pinching 1981 original and conceivably could delight genre fans who have never seen the first version or its previous remakes/sequels. But it’s bound to play best with those who catch Alvarez’s many wink-wink allusions to Raimi’s picture.
  4. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    Neatly balancing brightly sentimental comedy with slightly edgier funny business, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone pulls off the impressive trick of generating laughs on a consistent basis while spinning a clever scenario about rival magicians waging a Las Vegas turf war with a wide multi-demographic appeal.
  5. 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.
  6. Emperor
    Emperor’s bloodless presentation fails on a fundamental dramatic level, playing like the fancy version of a junior-high educational filmstrip, down to the false suspense of Alex Heffes’ corny ticking-clock score.
  7. I'm So Excited
    Longtime Pedro Almodovar followers who have secretly been hankering for a return to the broad, transgressive comedy of his early work will be thrilled by I’m So Excited, a hugely entertaining, feelgood celebration of human sexuality that unfolds as a cathartic experience for characters, audiences and helmer alike.
  8. Dead Man Down
    As Scandi directors go, Niels Arden Oplev couldn’t be hotter. After putting his stamp on “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the Dane has what appears to be his pick of projects. So why follow it up with such revenge-fantasy dreck as Dead Man Down, a derivative collection of brazen plot holes and latenight-cable cliches into which he drags “Dragon” star Noomi Rapace?
  9. The Lost Medallion
    With its godly themes confined to an otherwise entirely superfluous framing device, this kiddie action-adventure works up just enough lukewarm swashbuckling energy to pass muster with bored young children and the Sunday school teachers entrusted with their care.
  10. Admission
    The comedy feels forced as Fey works overtime to insert unnecessary zingers at the tail of every scene. If the cast weren’t so endearing, her actions could easily sour an audience on the whole experience, and Admission digs itself a hole only an ensemble this appealing can escape.
  11. The Last Exorcism Part II
    Never mind the inherent titular redundancy: The Last Exorcism Part II is a generally effective sequel to the 2010 sleeper that injected at least a little new life into the heavily taxed found-footage-horror subgenre.
  12. Oz the Great and Powerful
    This elaborate exercise in visual Baum-bast nonetheless gets some mileage out of its game performances, luscious production design and the unfettered enthusiasm director Sam Raimi brings to a thin, simplistic origin story.
  13. 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.
  14. Day of the Falcon
    Helmer/co-scripter Jean-Jacques Annaud's rep for spectacle over screenplay is again borne out in this overblown yet oddly anemic epic of warring Arabian tribes during the nascent oil boom.
  15. 21 and Over
    Promising crude straight-boy humor, but delivering sensitive buddy moments and tons of male nudity, this by-the-numbers gut-buster looks slick, moves fast and packs enough laughs to enliven spring-break receipts and earn its helmers more work.
  16. The Spectacular Now
    Skillfully adapted from Tim Tharp's novel, evocatively lensed in the working-class neighborhoods of Athens, Ga., and tenderly acted by Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, this bittersweet ode to the moment of childhood's end builds quietly to a pitch-perfect finale.
  17. Jack the Giant Slayer
    Jack the Giant Slayer feels, unsurprisingly, like an attempt to cash in on a trend, recycling storybook characters, situations and battle sequences to mechanical and wearyingly predictable effect.
  18. The Way, Way Back
    The story of a teen desperate for a father figure who finds encouragement from a wild-and-crazy water-park employee -- rather than from the guy auditioning to be his stepdad -- can be explosively funny in parts, but overall feels pretty familiar, relying more on its cast than the material to win favor.
  19. Mud
    Mud poses as a mere adolescent adventure tale but explores a rich vein of grown-up concerns, exploring codes of honor, love and family too solid to be shaken by modernizing forces.
  20. Ginger & Rosa
    Potter seems at a loss to communicate the ideas behind her agonizingly elliptical picture, leaving auds to marvel at the gorgeous cinematography and scarlet-red hair of its heroine, earnestly played by Elle Fanning in a project undeserving of her talents.
  21. Phantom
    The potential for screw-tightening suspense gets lost amid the ineffectual dramatics in Phantom, a feeble fictionalization of a crucial but little-known moment when a rogue Soviet submarine brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
  22. Dark Skies
    In the end, a pretty good buildup to OK payoff without any real surprises en route makes Dark Skies feel just enough above average to make one wish it had one memorable spark of conceptual inspiration up its sleeve.
  23. The End of Love
    Oddly overstuffed with cameos by bigscreen actors playing tongue-in-cheek versions of themselves, Webber's Los Angeles-set, microbudget dramedy delivers some rare and beautiful moments of daddy day-care, but its tone shifts more wildly than a preschooler's disposition and its narrative is stillborn.
  24. A Place at the Table
    A useful, engaging and enraging movie that will enlist supporters for its cause.
  25. War Witch
    Along with the moral lesson, Nguyen remembers to give auds some pleasures, including the exquisitely chosen soundtrack of African folk and pop music, Nicolas Bolduc's cinematography and the very artful use of sound throughout.
  26. Leviathan
    Picture's title comes from the sea creature mentioned in the book of Job, which is briefly quoted at the film's opening. Cast list cheekily includes not only the names of the men aboard the vessel where the documentary was filmed, but also the Latin names of the species caught.
  27. Red Flag
    There's a reason creepy character actors seldom play lead, and Karpovsky's amusingly off-kilter quality is better suited to the background, while Prediger (as the stranger he desperately wants to ditch, lest his ex-g.f. discover his infidelity) has the makings of an indie star.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. Beyond the Hills
    Observing the situation at an icy remove, Beyond the Hills never builds the palpable menace and pressure-cooker anxiety of "4 Months," and its dramatic progression feels obvious, even predictable, by comparison.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tristana (re-release)
    Those seeking the Bunuel touches of black humor, digs at Church and Establishment, irreverence and criticism, and an overall condemnation of Spanish mores and hypocrisy, will find a modicum of scenes here to titillate their palates. Yet Bunuel, despite occasional digs, has remained more or less respectful.
  32. Future Weather
    Centered around a quietly spectacular performance by young Perla Haney-Jardine, Future Weather integrates a green message into a striking and emotional drama about intergenerational female conflict.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Frances Ha
    Baumbach pushes beyond sincerity in search of truth, drawing from such stylistic forebears as the French New Wave, Woody Allen and Andy Warhol's Factory films to capture a reality that has eluded him on his more polished dramedies.
  34. Spring Breakers
    Just about every charge of social negligence leveled at Spring Breakers can be countered with an arch claim of intent, which makes it at once playful and wearying; enjoyment is contingent on how little you're willing to fight it.
  35. Escape from Planet Earth
    A lightweight, warp-speed, brightly colored trifle.
  36. The Berlin File
    The Berlin File boasts knockout action setpieces that provide an impressive big-budget showcase for Ryoo Seung-wan's technical smarts.
  37. 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.
  38. Snitch
    It's nice to have actors of Sarandon and Pepper's caliber onboard for the office-bound wheeler-dealer scenes, but mostly, it's the prospect of witnessing Johnson at the helm of an 18-wheeler as he rams his way through machine-gun fire that excites.
  39. Would You Rather
    Results are simple-minded at best, contemptible at worst; most audiences would rather watch anything else.
  40. Saving Lincoln
    The script, while largely historically accurate, is undermined by stilted dialogue, and the picture is laced with ill-fitting parts that wind up literally all over the matte. The result is a film better suited to classrooms than theaters.
  41. Safe Haven
    Safe Haven offers an unsurprising but not unsatisfying tour through recognizable Sparkville terrain.
  42. A Good Day to Die Hard
    Willis still packs that rapscallion charm, balancing his wisecracking, reluctant-hero shtick with the unstoppable, all-American quality that earned the original film its title. But the chemistry between him and Courtney is nonexistent, with the younger thesp, who makes co-star Cole Hauser look expressive, adding so little to the equation, one can only hope the studio doesn't plan to pass the franchise on to him.
  43. Beautiful Creatures
    Fortunately, writer-director Richard LaGravenese has jettisoned most of the novel and refashioned its core mythology and characters into a feverishly enjoyable guilty pleasure.
  44. Lost in Thailand
    Lost in Thailand is a boisterous, joyously hokey comedy.
  45. Simon Killer
    Considering how graphic Campos is willing to be, "restrained" may not the right word for his approach, and yet Simon Killer withholds so much that some amount of frustration is sure to follow.
  46. Room 237
    Handsomely produced and never less than hugely entertaining, Ascher's film is catnip for Kubrickians and critics both professional and otherwise.
  47. The Grandmaster
    Venturing into fresh creative terrain without relinquishing his familiar themes and stylistic flourishes, Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai exceeds expectations with The Grandmaster, fashioning a 1930s action saga into a refined piece of commercial filmmaking.
  48. Before Midnight
    Honoring all that was memorable about its forebears while taking the story to new depths of catharsis, Before Midnight stands as a unique and uniquely satisfying entry in what has shaped up to be an outstanding screen trilogy
  49. Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation
    A most enjoyable flashback. Laura Archibald's documentary about Ground Zero for the 1960s folk explosion -- and its enormous influence on the shape of rock music to come -- isn't assembled in a particularly distinctive manner, but the materials and voices culled offer more than enough reward in themselves.
  50. The Playroom
    Although Dyer's sophomore feature clearly intends to capture the magical otherness of a child's p.o.v., nothing in her strangely aloof mise-en-scene or her late sister Gretchen's script yields anything more than a group of well-thesped, believable suburban kids upset by their parents' behavior.
  51. 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.
  52. Identity Thief
    With Identity Thief, Melissa McCarthy proves she's got what it takes to carry a feature, however meager the underlying material.
  53. The Sorcerer and the White Snake
    Overblown saga of shape-shifting demons, butt-kicking clerics and the perils of interspecies romance occasionally dazzles but finally frazzles with its relentless visual assault, embedding Jet Li and his capable castmates in one screensaver-ready fantasy backdrop after another.
  54. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    Swan is more of a doodle than a fully formed idea, though not necessarily less enjoyable for it, since it was clearly intended to be an undisciplined, anything-goes kinda story.
  55. Upstream Color
    This is a warmer, less foreboding picture than "Primer," not moving in any conventional sense, but suffused with emotion all the same.
  56. Stoker
    A splendidly demented gumbo of Hitchcock thriller, American Gothic fairy tale and a contemporary kink all Park's own.
  57. 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.
  58. Porfirio
    Porfirio's view of physical disability often mesmerizes despite its glacial progress and stingy way with narrative information.
  59. Koch
    Barsky wisely includes just enough dissenting voices and admissions of grievous error by Koch himself to prevent the picture from seeming like a 100% feel-good puff piece.
  60. The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia
    The helmer generates suspense with shrewd pacing, deft emotional manipulation and efficient use of familiar tricks -- jittery editing, flickering lights and unsettling sounds -- common to haunted-house pictures.
  61. Somebody Up There Likes Me
    If nonchalance were an Olympic sport, Max would be a gold medalist, and watching Somebody Up There Likes Me is about as much fun as being a spectator at that event might sound.
  62. Lore
    Lore offers a fresh, intimate and mostly successful perspective on Germany's traumatic transition from conqueror nation to occupied state.
  63. Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary
    Stephen Vittoria's documentary about Mumia Abu-Jamal -- unrepentant commie cop-killer to some, political martyr to others -- makes no bones about its allegiance.
  64. As Luck Would Have It
    Though it slickly offers up drama, black comedy and enjoyable performances in due measure, the picture never develops much bite, though it does bare its fangs.
  65. Warm Bodies
    Hoping to do for flesh-eaters what "The Twilight Saga" did for vampires, albeit on a smaller scale, writer-director Jonathan Levine spins Isaac Marion's novel into a broadly appealing date movie about a zombified Romeo and his lively Juliet.
  66. Movie 43
    An appalling misfire that tries and fails to evoke the anything-goes spirit of such '70s sketch-comedy concoctions as "The Groove Tube" and "Kentucky Fried Movie."
  67. Side Effects
    Steven Soderbergh's elegantly coiled puzzler spins a tale of clinical depression and psychiatric malpractice into an absorbing, cunningly unpredictable entertainment that, like much of his recent work, closely observes how a particular subset of American society operates in a needy, greedy, paranoid and duplicitous age.
  68. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    While the film rarely provokes any strenuous eye-rolling, it also can't drum up even the slightest interest in the fate of its characters, let alone suspense.
  69. Parker
    Crisp and efficient, with the occasional clunky moments, Parker also shows off Jennifer Lopez (literally) to good effect, while mostly squandering the rest of its first-rate cast.
  70. The Taste of Money
    A trite and tangled potboiler that, despite its polemical pretensions, is just a glorified Korean domestic drama with classier couture and shapelier champagne flutes.
  71. The Pirogue
    Toure crafts a handsome work that makes up in skill and honesty what it lacks in originality.
  72. Like Someone in Love
    As it turns out, it's the first, not the last, word of the title that's key to this droll, elegant but faintly trying study in emotional artifice.
  73. Bullet to the Head
    To claim the dialogue is written to comfort the narratively challenged would be mere quibbling, as the picture's chief pleasure lies in its store of funny lines, which Stallone tosses off with genuine brio.
  74. Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives
    Warm, spirited and occasionally slathered in goo, Birth Story is a celebratory tribute to the endangered art of midwifery and its most influential practitioner, Ina May Gaskin.
  75. Broken City
    Competent but juiceless New York melodrama, an unpersuasive marriage of head-slamming action and middling civic intrigue that treats issues like gay rights and public housing as red herrings rather than actual talking points.
  76. Birders: The Central Park Effect
    Director Kimball's sharply focused, serenely ravishing nature photography provides reason enough to go armchair birding.
  77. Mama
    Mama, for all her digital and prosthetic creepiness, is finally a bit of a bore.
  78. Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola
    Agreeably amusing but unduly extended, Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola suggests what might have resulted had Rodgers and Hammerstein lived long enough to attempt a Broadway musical about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
  79. Our School
    Exercising admirable restraint in its expose of ingrained racism in the Romanian educational system, absorbing docu Our School follows the sad yet resilient journey of three Roma children over four years as they grapple with prejudice and stereotyping.
  80. Aquí y Allá (Here and There)
    A quietly devastating exploration of the cruel paradox that, in order to feed their loved ones, emigrants have to leave them behind.
  81. The Last Stand
    [The Director] is especially good at integrating his New Mexico locations into the action, from a key combat scene on a bridge to a car chase that unfolds, with limited visibility, in a cornfield...Kim's handling of his first English-speaking cast isn't quite as assured, although everyone more or less gets by
  82. A Haunted House
    The hit-to-miss ratio is less than impressive throughout A Haunted House, a frenetic and freewheeling satirical comedy that only sporadically scores a bull's-eye while aiming at easy targets.
  83. Let My People Go!
    Let My People Go! offers an unholy alliance of camp and farce that both celebrates and mocks gay and Jewish stereotypes.
  84. The Baytown Outlaws
    A boisterously Tarantinoesque mash-up of cliches, archetypes and bodacious craziness in the tradition of Southern-fried '60s and '70s drive-in fodder, The Baytown Outlaws is the sort of cartoonishly violent and swaggeringly non-PC concoction that defines guilty pleasure for many genre fans.
  85. Fairhaven
    While there's something undeniably fascinating about the way Fairhaven repeatedly avoids predictable payoffs for portentous dramatic setups, narrative momentum is conspicuous by its absence.
  86. My Best Enemy
    Entertaining, though conventionally told war story.
  87. Uprising (2013)
    Amid the flood of documentaries about the Arab Spring in general and the Egyptian Revolution in particular, Uprising takes a clear, cohesive approach to the spontaneous events at its center.
  88. John Dies at the End
    Give or take the titular disclosure, John Dies at the End is a thoroughly unpredictable horror-comedy -- and an immensely entertaining one, too.
  89. I Am Not a Hipster
    A deeper glimpse of the San Diego indie-rock scene around him might have made Brook's self-absorbed resentment less overbearing.
  90. $ellebrity
    A marketing tie-in with a line of soap wouldn't be the worst idea for $ellebrity, a documentary that's unafraid to get dirty digging into the subject of celebrity journalism, or to leave viewers feeling a little grimy after their immersion in tabloid culture.
  91. Gangster Squad
    The cops play things as dirty as the crooks in Gangster Squad, an impressively pulpy underworld-plunger that embellishes on a 1949 showdown between a dedicated team of LAPD officers and Mob-connected Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) for control of the city.
  92. Clandestine Childhood
    Designed to highlight the uneasy coexistence between everyday childhood experiences and the intense pressures of living with parents secretly fighting the junta, the picture has strong moments, but is bogged down by a script that regurgitates standard-issue ideas without finding anything interesting to say.
  93. A Dark Truth
    A self-serious eco-thriller assembled with a competent but heavy hand, A Dark Truth decries corporate corruption and Third World oppression in an all-too-obvious manner.
  94. Texas Chainsaw 3D
    Helmer John Luessenhop ("Takers") and a small army of scripters go back to the bloody roots of the long-running franchise to concoct a better-than-average horror-thriller that relies more on potent suspense than graphic savagery or stereoscopic tricks.
  95. 56 Up
    Certain moments in the film resemble nothing so much as attending a school reunion, being buttonholed by an old acquaintance and shown snapshots of the grandkids. A complacently conservative acceptance sometimes seems to blanket all of 56 Up, as if maturity entails a serene blessing of the status quo.
  96. My Brooklyn
    Filled with colorful, articulate neighborhood champions, this absorbing picture eschews militant outrage for a quietly devastating look at social commodification.
  97. Allegiance
    The picture's assorted characters, though credible, feel wearisomely one-dimensional, while the pumped-up action, unfolding in a single day, basically consists of an extended game of hide-and-seek.
  98. Parental Guidance
    The execution, alas, prevents this from being a genuine crowdpleaser, with the better moments (mostly of the schmaltzy variety) more than offset by the irritating and tedious ones.
  99. The Gatekeepers
    While no film from the narrow perspective of Israeli intelligence could purport to offer a thorough view of the conflict, what makes The Gatekeepers ultimately so compelling is its pervasive sense of moral ambiguity.
  100. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
    A bona fide high-wire act, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away delivers towering thrills through its candy-colored 3D ode to the titular outfit's astounding acrobatics.
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