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. Two Women
    The best that can be said for Robichaud’s film is that her two leads, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman and Laurence Leboeuf, give committed performances
  2. Freeway
    Freeway is roadkill. The directorial debut of screenwriter Matthew Bright ("Gun Crazy") is a sophomoric and morally repellent mix of fractured fairy tale, juvenile social satire, bloody mayhem and overstated B-movie melodrama.
  3. The Island
    This mix of broad humor, survivalist drama and romance opens brightly and ends with a bang but stutters a little in the middle.
  4. Rogue Agent
    As a revenge spy thriller of sorts (the kind that seems tailor-made for a TV miniseries these days), “Rogue Agent” is an engaging affair. Much of it is due to Arterton, whose steely performance firmly anchors the film even during its most improbable twists and turns — especially as it careens toward its inevitable conclusion and its all too pat final image.
  5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    Is it an awful movie? Objectively speaking, no (although it does feature one of the worst endings ever inflicted on an audience). But as a Bond movie, it’s an abomination.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Coming Home
    In general an excellent Hal Ashby film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes on the Vietnam debacle from the standpoint of three participants.
  7. Call Her Ganda
    With access to only one side of its central conflict, and a scattershot approach that skims over key details and points of interest, this well-intentioned documentary leaves audiences feeling like they’re only getting part of a much larger story.
  8. Spoiler Alert
    Throughout, Spoiler Alert shows a maturity toward modern relationships, whether straight or queer, that’s refreshing and instructive. Unfortunately, too much of the movie simply doesn’t work.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    The nice thing is that Crowe and director Amy Heckerling have provided something pleasant to observe in all of these characters though they really are sadly lacking in anything gripping.
  10. Star Maps
    Stays consistently interesting through some risky tonal shifts.
  11. Iluzija
    Superbly modulated yet unrelentingly grim, Mirage builds upon a remarkable performance from young Macedonian newcomer Marko Kovacevic to tell the tragic tale of a talented schoolboy driven to violence through neglect and manipulation.
  12. Quitting
    What gives Quitting its freshness is its setting in a country that often denies it has such problems and the decision to anchor the film strongly within the Chinese family fabric.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stuart Little
    Given what a tricky proposition it is to adapt a classic children's book for the screen, this take on E.B. White's Stuart Little does a more-than-passable job of resurrecting the story for a new generation.
  14. Frida
    Salma Hayek makes the character an icon of female independence, courage and nonconformity, forecasting special appeal for women viewers.
  15. Goya in Bordeaux
    Feverish, elegant movie.
  16. Taking Sides
    Its soul rests in Skarsgard's performance, a powerful mixture of buttoned-down anger and personal disappointment that combines the filmmaker's self-questioning with the real-life character's conflict.
  17. Magic Mike XXL
    Written raggedly enough for the actors to bring their own chemistry to what aspirationally feels like one of Robert Altman’s backstage dramas (a la “Nashville” or “Ready to Wear”), Magic Mike XXL is most fun when it isn’t trying to justify itself, but just kicking back with the guys — or better yet, giving them a fresh excuse to show off their creativity.
  18. Fear Street Part Two: 1978
    Fear Street in general and the 1978 chapter in particular are at their best when forging their own path, which makes it a shame when they’re too reluctant to walk it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rocky II
    Rocky II follows much the same theme as its predecessor – that is fighter Rocky Balboa’s path to a stab at the heavyweight crown. In its boxing and training scenes Rocky II packs much of the punch the original did, complete with an exciting pugilistic finale that’s even better than its predecessor.
  20. Disappearance at Clifton Hill
    Shin’s film gets tangled up in its own web. ... His film leaves a vivid impression without quite leaving a mark.
  21. Black Phone 2
    The movie strives to apply logic, inviting laughs (which are not unwelcome in the tense genre), but ultimately succeeds by devising a formula where two threats — ghosts and serial killers — come calling.
  22. Anastasia
    Lacks the special creative spark needed to lift it to an uncommon imaginative level.
  23. The Hornet's Nest
    Tureaud and Salzberg achieve their potent impact through the straightforward (but clearly admiring) observation of men who band together in battle and, in the film’s emotionally stirring final scenes, mourn their fallen comrades.
  24. Red Knot
    As Red Knot (very) slowly unwinds, Thirlby conveys an impressive range of emotions through the eloquence of her facial expressions and body language. Like Kartheiser, however, she labors under the burden of playing a role that is more a vague concept than a fully developed character.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Project X
    If nothing else, Project X is the ultimate film for monkey lovers. Some quite endearing chimpanzees share center stage with Matthew Broderick for nearly two hours here, and while they, and he, are engaging enough to watch, picture lets its manipulative strings show too clearly.
  26. Fear X
    A supremely elegant, meditative thriller.
  27. In the Pit
    Leo Heiblum's pulsating music and Samuel Larson's dense, fascinating sound editing rewardingly compliment Rulfo's electrifying visuals.
  28. The Wretched
    The film successfully mixes together a lot of things, from the waterfront tourist-town setting of “Jaws” to a general teen fantasy-adventure feel that tempers (without weakening) horror content variably redolent of “It,” “Fright Night” and myriad other predecessors. If originality isn’t a strong suit here, the film’s conviction and polish make that a minor sin.
  29. The Soloist
    Has moments of power and imagination, but the overworked style and heavy socially conscious bent exude an off-putting sense of self-importance, making for a picture that's more of a chore than a pleasure to sit through.
  30. Ladies in Lavender.
    Full of delightful moments that throw into high relief the actors' craft.
  31. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    Lively and quite funny without being obnoxious, this follow-up smoothly mixes the original's New York Zoo escapees with a number of engaging new characters.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Urban Cowboy
    Director James Bridges has ably captured the atmosphere of one of the most famous chip-kicker hangouts of all: Gilley’s Club on the outskirts of Houston.
  33. John and the Hole
    It’s calculated and precise and meticulously constructed in a way that will be of considerable interest to audiences who appreciate stories that unsettle, and those who recognize the precision of Sisto’s approach.
  34. The White Crow
    Lovely, elegant, and curiously opaque ... The film’s many ballet scenes are stunning, to say the least.
  35. Vice
    The movie, though it pretends to reveal how power works, is ultimately content to remain on the outside, sticking its finger in the eye of power.
  36. Paradise: Faith
    The constant juxtaposition of scenes showing the dark and light aspects of the characters endows the pic with a juicy moral complexity that will stimulate post-screening debates.
  37. Last Hijack
    Hulsing’s illustrations suggest a depth to pirate Mohamed Nura that remains hidden in the flesh.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Raggedy Man
    This is standard stuff and hardly worth Spacek’s talents.
  39. Ocean's 8
    The heist is fun and convincing without being dazzling, and some of the most amusing stuff in the film is just character comedy.
  40. Sleeping Beauty
    For those eager to tease out what Leigh’s conceptual exercise is about, the key no doubt lies in Lucy’s relation to her own mortality, with each descent into sleep resembling a death of sorts.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ferris Bueller's Day Off
    Paucity of invention here lays bare the total absence of plot or involving situations.
  42. As They Made Us
    Despite an eager-to-please ending that tries too hard to redeem the elderly Frays, Bialik’s movie still offers up hope, humor and above all, keen observations on grief in the wake of those who’ve damaged us in ways both tangible and veiled.
  43. The Weather Man
    Aiming for an Alexander Payne-style synthesis of wry comedy and unflinching character study, pic has been made with the utmost sincerity, but the frankly lugubrious material and barely compensating spasms of humor are all but impossible to warm to.
  44. Dead for A Dollar
    Hill wants to “do justice” to each of these people, but the result is that Dead for a Dollar doesn’t have a dramatic core. It has actors we like to watch, doing what they do well (like Waltz playing a civilized badass), but it isn’t structured so that any of their fates gets a rise out of us.
  45. Respect
    Though Respect can feel a little soft in the drama department, it delivers the added pleasure of hearing Hudson re-create Franklin’s key songs, from the early jazz standards she covered for Columbia to her reinvention of the Otis Redding single that lends the film its name.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hot Shots!
    Jim Abrahams tries to tap the zany Airplane! vein with this Top Gun spoof but bats far too low a percentage with the usual rapid-fire assault of numbingly stupid gags.
  47. Blackthorn
    Shepard delivers in spades, his character weary but just crackpot enough to survive.
  48. Addams Family Values
    It’s the kind of wickedly delicious comedy one can savor without adding the proviso of guilty pleasure.
  49. Traitor
    Brandishes physical verisimilitude and intelligent seriousness but proves unable to really get inside its chameleon-like central character.
  50. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    This vulgar romp is a generally harmless, heartwarming affair, a cinematic Christmas cookie almost sweet and flaky enough to cover the fact that it's laced with hash, cocaine and assorted bodily fluids, blood included.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jabberwocky (re-release)
    Long on jabber but short on yocks.
  52. The Backyard
    This underground scene makes other "extreme sports" look as harmless as tiddlywinks.
  53. Laurel Canyon
    The dramatic trajectory is frightfully obvious, the characters tediously one-dimensional, the dialogue banal.
  54. Welcome to Collinwood
    Anthony and Joe Russo place too much faith in the ability of their talented thesps to carry the day over precariously thin material.
  55. Blue Gate Crossing
    High on charm but extremely low on content, Blue Gate Crossing is a half-hour short stretched to feature length.
  56. Blue Crush
    All the trappings of an energetic, extreme-sports adventure, but ends up more of a creaky "Pretty Woman" retread, with the emphasis on self-empowering schmaltz and with the big-wave surfing that gives pic its title seemingly an afterthought.
  57. Beijing Bicycle
    Overplays its slim hand by a good two reels.
  58. Rumble in the Bronx
    Though Chan wins his usual stripes for death-defying... the movie ends on a dramatically unsatisfying note.
  59. Sunlight Jr.
    Incandescent performances by Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon and an unerring grasp of strip-mall-dominated Florida distinguish Sunlight Jr.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Sword in the Stone
    It emerges as a tasty confection.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Eagle Has Landed
    Most performances [in this adaptation of the Jack Higgins’ novel] are first rate with Sutherland exuding great credibility as the Irishman, and Caine thoroughly convincing as the Nazi commander. Pleasence gives a standout lifelike interpretation of Himmler.
  62. Capitalism: A Love Story
    Whether Capitalism matches "Fahrenheit 9/11" or underperforms like "Sicko" will depend on how much workers of the world are ready to unite behind the message.
  63. Secretariat
    Conventional but rousingly effective picture.
  64. Day Night Day Night
    Context and psychological insight are the major casualties of Day Night Day Night, a dramatically limited but strangely powerful portrait of a young would-be terrorist.
  65. She's So Lovely
    Writer John Cassavetes wants to show that there’s nothing like the purity of first love, but he doesn’t provide his triangle sufficient psychological motivation to ground their otherwise erratic behavior. The script feels incomplete, and is further marred by a missing third act and a lack of discernible point of view.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Angel Heart
    Even if it may be a specious work at its core, Angel Heart still proves a mightily absorbing mystery, a highly exotic telling of a small-time detective's descent into hell, with Faustian theme, heavy bloodletting and pervasive grimness.
  67. Speer Goes to Hollywood
    A rather pedestrian presentation of a potentially fascinating story, Vanessa Lapa’s Speer Goes to Hollywood expands on a little-known footnote to the Hydra-headed history of the post-war fates of top Nazi lieutenants.
  68. Nymphomaniac: Volume II
    It’s one thing to declare sex a fact of life and insist that audiences confront their unease at seeing it depicted (or, equally constructive, their intense excitation at its mere mention), but quite another to fashion a fictional woman’s life around nothing but sex. As courageously depicted by Gainsbourg, Jo is ultimately a tragic character.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Topaz
    Topaz tends to move more solidly and less infectiously than many of Alfred Hitchcock's best remembered pix. Yet Hitchcock brings in a full quota of twists and tingling moments.
  70. At Work
    It bristles with testy economic politics, though they largely itch beneath the surface of an unassuming, intimately observed character portrait.
  71. A Taste of Hunger
    The result certainly isn’t fast food, but neither is it fine dining.
  72. Wah-Wah
    Flavorsome performances by a seasoned cast, held in check by Grant's traditional but well-crafted, always cinematic direction.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lilies of the Field
    Made on a modest budget and filmed entirely on location in Arizona, Lilies reveals Sidney Poitier as an actor with a sharp sense of humor.
  74. Wall
    Helmer -- an Arab Jew who has lived on both sides of Jerusalem and is comfortable speaking idiomatic Arabic and Hebrew -- is particularly well qualified to tackle her subject.
  75. El Angel
    Ortega shows more interest in the how than the why. He mines the scenes of violence for black comedy, rendering the bloodletting anticlimactic and the victims largely irrelevant, and Ferro’s baby-faced, bright eyed disingenuity suits that agenda perfectly.
  76. 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.
  77. Lilting
    While the characters’ background details (including their occupations) are kept to a minimum, the emotions the story touches are vivid and accessible.
  78. This Must Be the Place
    Quirky, hilarious and moving, Sorrentino's first English-lingo production is a road trip of stunning scope yet deep intimacy, featuring an aged rock star-turned-Nazi hunter played by Sean Penn at his transformative best.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You Only Live Twice
    Donald Pleasence makes a suitably menacing German heavy who appears in film’s final scenes.
  80. Muppets Most Wanted
    Muppets Most Wanted looks and sounds eager to please but immediately feels like a more slapdash, aimless affair, trying — and mostly failing — to turn its stalled creativity into some sort of self-referential joke.
  81. Onward
    By the end of Onward, you’ll have chuckled and maybe choked up, and enjoyed a conventional ride.
  82. This Is Me…Now: A Love Story
    To be fair, it feels like a person who’s generated her level of fame and success and attention will never truly be “knowable” to an ordinary person. But This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is the closest that they’ll likely come, and it’s a testament to Lopez’s talent that she’s able to take pop-star wisdom and make it seem like a window into her soul.
  83. Ransom
    Although the story is built around the automatically emotional situation of an imperiled kid, scripters Richard Price (who appears briefly as an uncomfortably handcuffed victim of Sinise in the early going) and Alexander Ignon and director Ron Howard largely steer clear of milking the easy melodrama.
  84. Port Authority
    So maybe “Port Authority” isn’t the most elegant queer romance audiences will see this year, but it’s propelled by a pair of terrific performances, and Lessowitz captures the spirit and energy of the vibrant ball world in a totally fresh way.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Under Capricorn
    Under Capricorn is overlong and talky, with scant measure of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller tricks.
  86. Three Kilometres to the End of the World
    For all its cool, compelling proficiency, there’s little about the film that feels idiosyncratic, either stylistically or in its surface-level human portraiture.
  87. 13 Tzameti
    Shot like the grunge version of a '50s noir thriller from France (or Soviet Georgia), the black-and-white 13 (Tzameti) turns into a shocker of Tarantino proportions in protracted sequences of explosive violence that leave viewers quaking.
  88. The Rehearsal
    The Rehearsal is engrossing, but it’s not a major vision.
  89. Extract
    The picture's attempts at comic portraiture feel sketchy at best, more or less assigning each character a single, belabored trait.
  90. Abominable
    The journey is wondrous for the characters, less compelling for the audience.
  91. Role Models
    Laden with more than enough profane humor to warrant its R rating, this is nonetheless a formulaic crowd-pleaser.
  92. Hamlet
    With director Aneil Karia’s interpretation, we get the great Riz Ahmed in the role, which is reason enough for the film to exist — but it’s perhaps the only one in a remake that might better have chosen not to be.
  93. Giuliani Time
    Chock-a-block with incisive commentaries both pro and con, pic's sole drawback is its quick finish on that fateful September day without updating Rudy's subsequent rise and fall.
  94. The Kite Runner
    While the largely unknown cast and subtitled dialogue may present a marketing challenge, they also create a feeling of authenticity in this poignant, intimate epic, which should attract a strong following among discerning audiences.
  95. Criminal
    More a tribute than a remake, Steven Soderbergh-approved take on Argentine hit "Nine Queens" isn't quite as sharp or surprising as the original, one of the best scam pics of the past decade.
  96. Elton John: Never Too Late
    The portrait of Sir Elton today — the astonishingly gracious gentleman he is, the family life he found — is revealing and moving.
  97. Red
    Touchy subject matter aside, Red demonstrates real elegance in its commitment to a relatively straightforward story, allowing the characters' emotions to come to a slow boil.
  98. The Green Mile
    An intermittently powerful and meticulously crafted drama that falls short of its full potential due to considerable over-length and some shopworn, simplistic notions at its center.
  99. The Jane Austen Book Club
    Cast is first-rate all around, unafraid to play up the annoying, insensitive or self-pitying aspects of their nonetheless likeable characters.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lenny
    Bob Fosse's remarkable film version of Julian Barry's legit play, Lenny, stars Dustin Hoffman in an outstanding performance.
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