Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. Best Worst Movie
    Strangely moving, insightful and entertaining documentary.
  2. Horse Girl
    The transgressiveness of Baena and Brie’s strange and sorrowful Horse Girl, is in how it turns the simplistic, inauthentic tweeness of the generic, quirky indie comedy in on itself to produce a rare and piercingly compassionate exploration of the sorts of madness that come from intense loneliness, and the intense loneliness that comes from being regarded as mad.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Kentucky Fried Movie
    The Kentucky Fried Movie boasts excellent production values and some genuine wit, though a few of the sketches are tasteless.
  4. Screen Door Jesus
    Winner of the Golden Starfish fiction competition at the Hamptons fest, pic's gutsy, madly ambiguous unleashing of a mixed bag of religious reactions attests to a genuine sense of regionalism.
  5. The People vs. Fritz Bauer
    Though relatively conservative in its approach, Lars Kraume’s teleplay-style treatment of a still-touchy subject has the nerve to name names.
  6. Enemy
    Ultimately, the enigmatic surface conflict — in which a man must contend with his own carbon copy as rival — proves to be the film’s own worst enemy, for its dark, David Lynchian allure proves almost too compelling, obscuring the material’s deeper themes.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Manhattan Project
    A warm, comedy-laced doomsday story. Using clever one-liners and many humorous situations, Brickman manages successfully to sugarcoat the story’s serious message.
  8. Drawing Restraint 9
    A tapestry of sensuous, striking and sometimes disturbing imagery, Drawing Restraint 9 marks the latest cinematic visit to the wacky world of experimental artist Matthew Barney.
  9. The Hater
    Unlike “Corpus Christi,” which was loosely based on factual events, The Hater parts ways with plausibility early on — and yet, it’s relevant enough to prey on our anxieties.
  10. The Hero
    Haley and Basch have mistaken what the AARP calls “movies for grownups” for a kind of mushy feel-good pablum, throwing together a handful of familiar clichés in the hope that Elliott’s charm will carry the day.
  11. Funny Face
    Oddly, Funny Face feels more like a promising but overreaching debut than any of his earlier films, particularly at the level of its slender script, heavy as it is on banal, minimalist dialogue that doesn’t fuel the flickering chemistry between leads Cosmo Jarvis (“Lady Macbeth”) and appealing newcomer Dela Meskienyar as best it could.
  12. Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!
    It has its amusing (and enlightening) moments, but in many ways it’s just dancing around the meat of the matter.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Vanishing Point
    The action is almost entirely made up of one man driving a car at maximum speed from Denver to, hopefully, San Francisco, against various odds, from the police who try to intercept him, to the oddball individuals he meets along the way.
  14. Night and the City
    Lively performances, pungent New York City atmosphere and an abundance of dramatic incident keep this story of an irrepressible lowlife hustler ripping along.
  15. Unpregnant
    It’s as comforting as a prescription drug commercial, which could send some parents into a conniption. But Unpregnant advocates loudest for allowing young women the space to make their own choices — and that they have friends, longtime or newfound, willing to help when they stumble.
  16. This One's for the Ladies
    The whole affair is vastly entertaining — and far from indecent or intimidating.
  17. Iluminados por el fuego
    A watchable if none-too-penetrating analysis of the traumatizing effects of a war largely forgotten.
  18. Conviction
    Although fiercely committed performances by Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell provide director Tony Goldwyn's film with a core of emotional integrity, a less heavy-handed, more informative approach would have served them and the audience better.
  19. Madrid, 1987
    A perceptive, ultra-wordy stab at catching the zeitgeist at a time of change in Spain, David Trueba's two-hander nonetheless feels like a working-out of social and personal themes that hasn't quite achieved the full leap from page to film.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hammett
    Over polished by too many script rewrites, perhaps emasculated by massive footage scraps and belated re-shoots, project emerges a rather suffocating film taking place in a rickety Chinatown.
    • Variety
  21. Petite Solange
    Ropert’s understanding of how children furtively watch the adults around them, soaking up the friction, is well-observed and the best thing in this otherwise insipid film that perversely discards any shred of naturalism for an outdated and phony ingenuousness. Even the performances are airless, and consequently there’s no emotional investment in a family whose rapport is so clunkily established.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slap Shot
    Like the character played by Paul Newman in Slap Shot, director George Roy Hill is ambivalent on the subject of violence in professional ice hockey. Half the time Hill invites the audience to get off on the mayhem, the other half of the time he decries it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Idolmaker
    Though it's marred by an overly melodramatic and dubious finale, The Idolmaker is an unusally compelling film about the music business in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It shows how teen idols were created, promoted, and discarded by entrepreneurs cynically manipulating the adolescent audience. Ray Sharkey is superb in the title role.
  24. Song Sung Blue
    Brewer navigates this terrain like a jukebox Jonathan Demme.
  25. Dreams
    At times, the dramatic tension is so strong, “Dreams” could almost be a thriller.
  26. Before You Know It
    A diverting yet awkward mix of farcical elements and earnest feeliness. The two never quite gel, and it’s hard to care about the nice characters who somewhat improbably put up with wildly insufferable ones. There’s some invention and good humor here, yet the whole feels inorganic.
  27. The Kids Grow Up
    Obsession, compulsion and fear are all part of The Kids Grow Up, which is occasionally a less-than-pleasant reminder of the goofy way we can act even while we think we're being sane.
  28. Brick Lane
    Monica Ali's elegant and critically trumpeted debut novel, Brick Lane, about the travails, conflicting emotions and quiet liberation of a Muslim woman in London, is a far lesser thing in its bigscreen transformation.
  29. Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
    The film picks up more general interest once it moves past the early nobility of the outfit as a band of brothers into the things that cripple the least greatest of groups ... Robertson [is] an articulate and ingratiating tour guide through all this glorious and eventually tortured history.
  30. 10 Years
    Oddly, 10 years barely qualifies as a comedy; in fact, the one interesting thing about it is the dire melancholy at its core.
  31. Avatar: Fire and Ash
    The new movie, for all its inevitable Breathless Technological Advances, doesn’t feel as visually unprecedented as the last one did. If anything, though, it’s a better film — bolder and tighter, with a more dramatically focused story — and it certainly has its share of amazements.
  32. Mail Order Wife
    This black comedy on the making of a documentary about mail-order wives finally breaks down under the weight of its twists and turns, but mostly maintains a creepy fascination with its scuzzy characters.
  33. Willard
    Strictly for the birds.
  34. The Faculty
    Results may not be Nobel Prize material, but they're zesty and cogent.
  35. The Count of Monte Cristo
    A lavishly mounted and appealingly old-fashioned swashbuckler with nary a trace of wink-wink irony or revisionist embellishment.
  36. At War
    The chief value of the impassioned but slightly flavorless At War is that it gives Lindon another opportunity to wear the undersung virtue of ordinary, rough-hewn decency the way a superhero might wear a cape.
  37. The Universal Theory
    An overlong but enjoyable metaphysical thriller that delivers pastiche so meticulous it becomes its own source of supremely cinematic pleasure.
  38. The Informer
    For all The Informer lacks in surface style — shot and scored as it is in functional, straight-to-VOD fashion — it remains a surprisingly well-oiled genre machine.
  39. Reign Over Me
    Sandler (never making a false step while maneuvering though vertiginous mood swings) and Cheadle (deftly commingling instinctive decency with quiet desperation) are individually excellent, and bring out the best in each other. And the picture itself transcends its real but relatively minor flaws to score a satisfyingly potent impact.
  40. Triple Frontier
    There’s a dullness at the core of Triple Frontier.
  41. Somewhere in Queens
    Somewhere in Queens is a low-stakes slice of life for much of its runtime, with most of the actual conflict stemming from a questionable decision Leo makes to ensure his son’s success. That doesn’t necessarily make it feel slight, however, as the film is such an affectionate love letter to the Italian American families who populate the eponymous borough that you don’t mind simply sharing the dinner table with them.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man with Two Brains
    The Man with Two Brains is a fitfully amusing return by Steve Martin to the broad brand of lunacy that made his first feature, "The Jerk" [1979], so successful.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big Country
    Although the story – based on Donald Hamilton’s novel, with Jessamyn West and Robert Wyler credited with the screen adaptation – is dwarfed by the scenic outpourings, The Big Country is nonetheless armed with a serviceable, adult western yarn.
  44. Earwig
    Earwig teeters on the brink of ennui for most of its taxing two-hour running time, asking us to care about characters the film hasn’t really defined.
  45. The Secret Life of Pets
    The formula may be familiar, but the personalities are completely fresh, yielding a menagerie of loveable — if downright ugly — cartoon critters banding together to help these two incompatible roommates from ending up on the streets.
  46. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
    A modestly less quotable but generously funny new adventure for scotch-and-mahogany-loving 1970s newsman Ron Burgundy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Jack City
    Filmmakers pull off a provocative, pulsating update on gangster pics with this action-laden epic about the rise and fall of an inner city crack dealer. Strongest element is the anger and disgust directed squarely at drug dealers.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Jerk
    An artless, non-stop barrage of off-the-wall situations, funny and unfunny jokes, generally effective and sometimes hilarious sight gags and bawdy non sequiturs.
  49. The Motel Life
    So full of explanatory flashbacks and animated sequences visualizing the characters’ invented yarns that their real dramas are indeed almost obscured.
  50. Lingua Franca
    Lingua Franca is notable not just for the deftness of its overall assembly and performances, but for its approaching hot-button issues of the moment (the status/rights of both transpersons and undocumented workers) in ways that are insightful without being heavy-handed.
  51. Heart Eyes
    Thoroughly self-aware (perhaps to a fault), stocked with self-reflexive gags and gorily-orchestrated kills, the picture is endearing with its delightfully zippy charms.
  52. After the Storm
    Feels like it was made more for the kids' sake than to communicate their story to outside audiences, who would likely prefer a condensed newsmag-style recap.
  53. The Portuguese Nun
    A tedious slog alleviated only by widescreen shots of the Portuguese capital and terrific fado singing.
  54. El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
    The immaculately crafted documentary doesn't reveal much about Adria the man, other than that he insists on quiet in his kitchen.
  55. Harvest
    A venerable cast of Broadway vets interminably wanders through the clan's Connecticut mansion with no apparent goal, carrying the remains of never fully explained resentments.
  56. The Yes Men Are Revolting
    Another entertaining mix of agitpop, pranksterism and autobiography.
  57. Along for the Ride
    What’s ultimately moving about Along for the Ride is that it communicates how Dennis Hopper, by sticking true to his reckless muse, was an artist who changed things, and maybe changed everything.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Return of the Pink Panther
    All hands seem to be having a ball, especially Schell, whose unabashed amusement at Clouseau’s seduction attempts often matches an audience’s hilarity.
  59. The Man from Mo'Wax
    Weaving together a dizzying array of archival material and previously unseen personal home movies, director Matthew Jones never quite cracks the man behind the music, but he nonetheless offers an appropriately hyperactive snapshot of a colorful era.
  60. Sputnik
    Abramenko maintains the film’s finite appeal throughout, mostly thanks to a familiar aura and a charismatic lead performance by Oksana Akinshina, a fine surrogate for the tough-as-nails heroine Ellen Ripley.
  61. Babylon
    Chazelle has essentially orchestrated a loud, vulgar live-action cartoon of a film, and while it’s exhilarating at times to witness the sheer virtuosity of his staging, the performances are all over the place. Babylon sorely lacks a point of view.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    36 Hours
    Based on Roald Dahl’s Beware of the Dog and a story of Carl K. Hittleman and Luis H. Vance, it provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of high military intelligence at work.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Assassination Bureau
    Fused with the capable talents of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden picture emerges as a somewhat unusual and clever comedy after an over-leisurely opening.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Don't Bother to Knock
    Marilyn Monroe, co-starred with Richard Widmark, gives an excellent account of herself in a strictly dramatic role which commands certain attention, but the story of a psycho baby-sitter lacks interest.
  65. Skincare
    While it’s expected that creative liberties will be taken, especially given its roots as a tabloid-style news story, it’s surprising that the filmmakers chose to leave out details that would have enhanced their portrayal.
  66. Suncoast
    An amiable ensemble effort, with two sturdy lead performances, Suncoast is reminiscent of the minor-key, quirky-charming ’90s dramedies so often discovered by the Sundance Film Festival. This is a fine thing; there are deserved laughs and tears. It is also a slightly awkward thing.
  67. Rush Hour
    A frankly formulaic but raucously entertaining action comedy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Heat
    Schwarzenegger, who when he dons a green suit is dubbed 'Gumby' by Belushi, is right on target with his characterization of the iron-willed soldier, and Belushi proves a quicksilver foil.
  69. Oculus
    Cleverly complex, if not quite as scary or memorable as one might have hoped.
  70. 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    To Be or Not to Be
    Very funny stuff, indeed.
    • Variety
  72. Broken English
    A pitch-perfect lead performance by Parker Posey and debuting feature writer-helmer Zoe Cassavetes' deft, low-key approach raise Broken English a couple notches above the usual run of lonely-single-woman-seeking-romance-in-the-big-city yarns.
  73. Barrymore
    The material itself has a formulaic solo-bioplay rhythm neither performer nor director can fully elude.
  74. The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales
    This engaging economics lesson, bolstered by articulate experts and amusing animated sequences, would be right at home in high school and college classrooms. Heck, it would be a nice addition to Disney Plus, breaking up all the hagiographic puff-pieces on offer there.
  75. Peter Pan & Wendy
    Where “Peter Pan” was a phenomenon, this straight-to-streaming version is but a shadow, scampering off and trying to have fun on its own.
  76. The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
    The feature’s genteel, sweet spirit and radiant lead performances rescue it from forgettable mediocrity and genre familiarity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Romper Stomper
    Romper Stomper is a Clockwork Orange without the intellect.
  78. Unknown Pleasures
    As lethargic as the characters it portrays, the film requires greater staying power than many audiences will possess.
  79. Matchstick Men
    Odd mixture of ultra-sleek visuals, psychological probing, "Paper Moon"-like father-daughter swindling, self-improvement efforts and abrupt tough-guy stuff keeps the picture percolating, even if it seems too artificial to genuinely convince on an emotional or dramatic level.
  80. White Oleander
    Never rising above routine episodic storytelling, White Oleander nonetheless retains something of its source novel's ravaged emotional surface and cool, observant manner.
  81. I'll Sing for You
    Educational value aside, pic is exciting for its extended performance sequences, with the most notable finding Traore and Farke strolling with guitars through the acoustically amazing atrium of an abandoned mud schoolhouse.
  82. Elephant
    The herd’s endless quest to find water becomes a repetitive (and rather dry) theme. And to the extent that super-square anthropomorphic Disney filmmaking isn’t merely a form but a skill, I never felt overwhelmingly close to Gaia or Shanti or Jomo. The Disney nature films have always had a certain hermetic quality, but this one feels more sealed-off than usual.
  83. Prince of Broadway
    Streetwise, kinetic and solidly dramatic, Prince of Broadway is a convincingly character-driven tale set in a clandestine universe -- the realm of stolen and/or counterfeit fashions that exists in the no man's land of Manhattan's West 20s.
  84. The Divide
    The characters can be so grating, watching The Divide feels like sticking your head in the garbage disposal. But as unwieldy as the multi-tentacled narrative can be — just think of the logistics required to stage it! — the experience adds up to something unshakeable.
  85. The To Do List
    This rare femme-centric addition to the loss-of-virginity canon (dominated by the likes of “Porky’s,” “Risky Business” and “American Pie”) hits its fair share of outrageously funny highs amid lots of so-so filler, but stays buoyant and likable throughout thanks to the winning presence of “Parks and Recreation” star Aubrey Plaza in the lead.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tightrope
    Action is well-handled, as Tuggle demonstrates ample storytelling talent and draws a multitude of nuances from his cast.
  87. The Bubble
    Eytan Fox delivers another involving tale in The Bubble.
  88. Dust to Glory
    With its exceptional multicamera coverage and dynamic editing, pic provides an amazing ride across the dusty roads and stunningly varied terrain of what could be the world's most demanding vehicle race.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Candyman
    Candyman is an upper-register horror item that delivers the requisite shocks and gore but doesn't cheat or cop out.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hero
    Third-act heroics help but can't rescue filmmaker Stephen Frears' most concerted mainstream push. Muddled effort cleverly skewering media and societal fascination with heroes doesn't create compelling characters for its big-name leads.
  91. Trucker
    Playing a negligent mother isn't usually the way to get ahead in the acting biz, but the elfin Michelle Monaghan must have seen Trucker as her vehicle out of the ingenue parking lot of sidekicks and potential hostages.
  92. Generation Iron
    Those with just a casual interest will find it colorful if a bit undercooked in the human-interest department, with limited insight into what makes its subjects tick, and the occasional rivalries between them.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eye of the Needle
    It’s a good yarn, remindful of some of Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang’s wartime mellers as well as Michael Powell’s 1939 tale of a World War I German agent in Scotland, The Spy in Black.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
    It appears that the idea here is to expose and debunk the Buffalo Bill legend, revealing it for the promotional distortion which, in some ways, it most certainly has to have been.
  95. Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie
    “Rise” is a serviceable — if also forgettable — entry in the cowabunga canon.
  96. The Last Rodeo
    This thoroughly predictable but undeniably engaging faith-based drama is an inoffensively old-fashioned entertainment that, with only minor tweaking, could pass for a Walt Disney Studios release of yore.
  97. The Sense of an Ending
    In places, The Sense of an Ending seems almost frustratingly uninterested in establishing, much less solving, the riddles at its core, when in fact, it’s merely uninterested in pandering to those who lack the patience to appreciate its nuances.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cat People
    Paul Schrader’s reworking of the 1942 Val Lewton-Jacques Tourneur Cat People is a super-chic erotic horror story of mixed impact. Kinski was essential to the film as conceived, and she’s endlessly watchable.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Karate Kid
    John G. Avildsen is back in the Rocky ring with The Karate Kid. More precisely, it is a Rocky for kids. Morita is simply terrific, bringing the appropriate authority and wisdom to the part.
  100. Dog
    Dog is a lowbrow but by no means lazy crowd-pleaser, one where the fun Tatum and company took in making it translates directly to the pleasure we take in watching.
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