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. The Vow
    The Vow represents that most welcome kind of Valentine's Day offering, focusing on the feelings that bring couples closer.
  2. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
    Detailing the birth, life and death of America's first major urban housing project in St. Louis, Chad Freidrichs' The Pruitt-Igoe Myth combines concise but thoroughgoing sociological-historical analysis and elegant cinematic resources in service of an uncommonly artful example of film journalism.
  3. Private Romeo
    Sticking closely to the written text (with basketballs and barbells supplying incidental props) and wisely not attempting to reimagine the specific circumstances that separate the lovers, a dynamite ensemble cast of young actors invests the Bard's poetry with energetic immediacy.
  4. The Dish & the Spoon
    Gerwig, charmingly unflappable in "Greenberg," lets it all hang out here, unafraid to sacrifice likability to over-the-top hysteria as someone who cannot control herself, despite a lingering sense of her own absurdity. Alexander proves a worthily understated foil, his self-deprecatory whimsy recalling that of a young Johnny Depp.
  5. Crazy Horse
    What's generally missing here though is a sense of the creative process; rather than sweat-and-tears rehearsals breaking the dances into individual movements, the numbers are largely shown nearly complete. Consequently, there's little sense of the discipline involved, or the struggle for perfection that makes dance documentaries so engrossing.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    A fun though rarely funny family adventure whose lively special effects compensate somewhat for actors who largely sleepwalk through their roles.
  7. Windfall
    Variably articulate subjects drone on and on in an 83-minute film that could easily make its TV news-style point in a half-hour or less.
  8. Chico & Rita
    Think of Chico and Rita as a test, one that gauges whether your love of Cuban jazz can exceed your threshold for lousy animation -- a real "good tunes/bad toons" quandary.
  9. In Darkness
    For the film to work, Holland needs audiences to connect as deeply with the trapped Jews as Socha eventually does. With the exception of the group's leader, movie-star handsome Mundek Margulies (German-born, internationally recognized Benno Furmann), the characters are flat as shadows.
  10. The Turin Horse
    Though ripe for metaphorical interpretation, the slender setup, about the fate of a horse seen beaten in the streets, gives arthouse audiences little to cling to, and will provide institutional and fest programmers a test-of-wills head-scratcher for their calendars.
  11. Bad Fever
    Dustin Guy Defa's Bad Fever takes mumblecore to its reductio ad absurdum, featuring a hero whose utterances border on the unintelligible.
  12. Big Miracle
    This family-friendly outing captures the story's human snowball effect with a measure of sly, satirical wit, if also an excess of boilerplate subplots and jokey '80s details.
  13. Splinters
    Surfing meets sociology in Splinters, a compelling documentary about the sport's arrival in the Papua New Guinea village of Vanimo.
  14. Perfect Sense
    Mackenzie's second collaboration with Ewan McGregor (following 2003's "Young Adam") tritely tosses together two indifferently conceived characters against a backdrop of global panic that generates no urgency.
  15. The Woman in Black
    Helmer James Watkins ("Eden Lake") and scripter Jane Goldman judiciously combine moves from the classic scare-'em-ups with new tricks from recent J-horror pictures to retell Susan Hill's oft-adapted Victorian gothic pastiche.
  16. Kill List
    Displaying both a nasty edge and a playful sense of humor -- but thankfully, never at the same time -- Brit import Kill List is several cuts above its fellow midbudget horror brethren.
  17. The Innkeepers
    Slow-burning buildup, lack of explicit mayhem and overall low-tech approach may strike cineastes as amusingly quaint.
  18. One for the Money
    Tedious and tonally inept.
  19. After Fall, Winter
    Uncomfortably confessional or wildly melodramatic plot twists work interestingly in the moment, but wobble in retrospect. Pic's overarching structure is further weakened by Schaeffer's half-hearted attempt to tie together loose ends.
  20. Man on a Ledge
    This cloddishly contrived suspenser is too busy to bore, but too farfetched to thrill, combining routine heist-thriller machinations with dialogue that often thuds like a body hitting asphalt.
  21. Underworld: Awakening
    Once again, Beckinsale brings an impressive physicality and subzero cool to her portrayal of Selene.
  22. The Viral Factor
    The helmer's blockbuster ambitions, striving to make every move a money shot, relegate human drama to the backseat.
  23. The Grey
    The picture's dialogue-heavy stretches and ambiguous finale could leave ticketbuyers impatient for less chatter and more chomping.
  24. Watching TV with the Red Chinese
    Watching TV feels fundamentally old-fashioned in its storytelling. Thesping is solid, particularly by O'Nan, Nam and Jacobs. But the conversations feel artificial, overly concerned with re-creating period detail or interjecting relevant philosophical life concepts.
  25. Scalene
    Carefully crafted and impressively thesped, particularly by Margo Martindale, Zack Parker's ambitious, self-styled thriller channels a wide spectrum of high-concept classics, from "Rashomon" to "Memento." But the resolution of its conflicting truths proves so bizarre and idiotically off-the-wall that it mitigates all that precedes it.
  26. Red Tails
    Apart from the occasional thrill provided by CG-enhanced aerial dogfights, this stuffy history lesson about the groundbreaking African-American fighter pilot division never quite takes off, weighed down by wooden characters and leaden screenwriting.
  27. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
    In sartorial terms, the fabric is to die for, but helmer Whitney Sudler-Smith's documentary follows a banal pattern, while the finishing lacks finesse.
  28. Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
    A celebration and a lament -- a celebration of Channing's seven decades as musical comedy star, and a lament that there's really no one like her anymore.
  29. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
    Destined to rank as one of the major achievements in American documentary, the "Paradise Lost" project comes to a presumed end with Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.
  30. Toll Booth
    Slightly surreal psychological portrait keeps things impressively light-footed and heartfelt.
  31. Sing Your Song
    Moving and enlightening as it serves up a crash-course in 20th-century history.
  32. Loosies
    The tale of a pickpocket's redemption through love, plus a vengeance-seeking cop and assorted betrayals, Loosies weakly channels Sam Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" but without the explosive action, iconic thesping and stylistic punch.
  33. Contraband
    This solid if disposable genre exercise maintains a hard-driving line of action and a commitment to one-damned-thing-after-another storytelling that carries it past any number of narrative speedbumps and preposterous detours.
  34. Robinson in Ruins
    Although rich in ideas and always compelling to look at, writer-helmer Patrick Keiller's latest semi-experimental pic Robinson in Ruins reps a minor disappointment after his outstanding, same-veined previous works, "London" and "Robinson in Space."
  35. Lula, the Son of Brazil
    The screenplay by Daniel Tendler, Fernando Bonassi and Lula biographer Parana succumbs to many of the most unfortunate narrative tendencies of biopics, including a proclivity for piling on incident after incident as a substitute for real character insight.
  36. The Divide
    Plodding and repetitive in its efforts to maintain pressure-cooker intensity, The Divide resembles nothing so much as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode as it brings a sci-fi twist to a familiar scenario about stressed characters who bring out the worst in each other while trapped in close quarters.
  37. Albatross
    Brown Findlay, reportedly cast before she filmed "Downton Abbey," is a real find. Germany's Koch suggests astute fishing beyond the obvious casting pools, and Ormond clearly relishes her change-of-pace role as tough, casually profane Joa.
  38. Joyful Noise
    A routinely plotted competition drama in which Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton (playing her first bigscreen lead in 20 years) vie for control of a small-town Georgia church chorus.
  39. Beneath the Darkness
    A malformed, would-be horror shocker with a deliriously deranged performance by Dennis Quaid, who unfortunately seems to be the only one onboard who thinks he's in a comedy.
  40. The Devil Inside
    Despite the palpable air of deja vu that hangs over it like a light fog, The Devil Inside generates a fair amount of suspense during sizable swaths of its familiar but serviceable exorcism-centric scenario.
  41. It's About You
    Luckily, the music trumps the indifferently shot concert footage and lends shape to the evocatively lensed recording sessions in iconic locations. Nothing, unfortunately, mitigates Markus' sincere but trite and awkward narration.
  42. A Separation
    Tense and narratively complex, formally dense and morally challenging.
  43. Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
    "Sweet, funny, clever comedy seeks crossover" would be the Craigslist come-on for Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, and it may well come true via Madeleine Olnek's wry homage to '50s sci-fi, urban dating and interspecies romance.
  44. Norwegian Wood
    Lovely but listless.
  45. Roadie
    Roadie features some wonderfully evocative music out of its characters' collective past (local legends the Good Rats, for instance) but like Jimmy himself, it takes a bit of a push to get the picture going, which it gets, both emotionally and dramatically, thanks largely to its ensemble.
  46. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    Though its glacial pacing will represent a significant hurdle for many viewers, the film grows steadily more involving as dawn breaks and the men make their way back home, and its unflinching observations of the legal and medical establishment at work frequently rivet. Visually, it's as gorgeous a film as Ceylan has made.
  47. Angels Crest
    Another in the procession of dead children movies that followed Atom Egoyan's magisterial "The Sweet Hereafter," helmer Gaby Dellal's sophomore effort unfolds in a similarly snow-blanketed small town filled with grieving adults, the community divided in apportioning blame. In contrast with Egoyan's labyrinthine structure and complex storylines, Crest cobbles together bits of plot and a motley assortment of half-formed characters.
  48. Don 2
    Though the picture is respectful of the heist-film template -- the gathering of the crew, the readying of props, the planned circumvention of all obstacles -- its main imperative consists of placing Kahn in impossible situations and watching him trick or strongarm his way out.
  49. Pariah
    Vivid photography, true-to-life moments and a wonderful lead performance compensate for some first-timer missteps in debutante writer-director Dee Rees' Pariah.
  50. Miss Minoes
    Though conceived in whimsy, Minoes generally lacks imagination; once the premise is established, familiar plot conventions reign.
  51. The Darkest Hour
    The Darkest Hour turns out to be a modestly inventive and involving variation on a standard-issue sci-fi doomsday scenario.
  52. Albert Nobbs
    It's a career-crowning role for Glenn Close. Too bad the film is such a drag.
  53. Pina
    Offering further proof that the latest 3D technology is good for a lot more than just lunging knives and fantastical storylines, Wim Wenders' dance docu Pina reps multidimensional entertainment that will send culture vultures swooning.
  54. The Flowers of War
    Scene by scene, The Flowers of War is an erratic and ungainly piece of storytelling, full of melodramatic twists and grotesque visual excesses (a bullet pierces first a stained-glass window and then a girl's neck), which are nonetheless delivered with startling conviction.
  55. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    With its re-enactments of that fateful day, Extremely Loud plays a bit too much like one of those perfectly lit, heart-tugging segments TV networks air during the Olympics. It hardly matters that Horn manages to give such a naturalistic, unmannered performance as the young Oskar when everything around him has been so deliberately orchestrated to provoke a specific reaction.
  56. In the Land of Blood and Honey
    Though sufficiently well made to suggest a viable career behind the camera for debutante writer-director Angelina Jolie, In the Land of Blood and Honey seems to spring less from artistic conviction than from an over-earnest humanitarian impulse.
  57. War Horse
    This beautifully composed picture brings a robust physicality to tried-and-true source material, but falls short of the sustained narrative involvement and emotional drive its resolutely old-fashioned storytelling demands.
  58. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
    As impressive as the CG elements are in "Chipwrecked," they're a mixed blessing: The more lifelike the techies make the critters -- Alvin (voiced by Justin Long), Theodore (Jesse McCartney) and Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler) -- the more we're reminded they're rodents.
  59. Addiction Incorporated
    Producer Charles Evans Jr.'s directorial debut finds an engrossing suspense angle in the involvement of Victor DeNoble, an idealistic scientist-turned-whistleblower whose suppressed corporate research became the bombshell catalyst in that struggle.
  60. The Pill
    Deftly avoiding both the haphazardness of mumblecore and the fakery of studio romantic comedies, Khoury deploys a light directorial touch marked by assured thesping and a genuine appreciation for neurotic angst.
  61. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    As classy a film as could be made from Stieg Larsson's sordid page-turner, David Fincher's much-anticipated return to serial-killer territory is a fastidiously grim pulp entertainment that plays like a first-class train ride through progressively bleaker circles of hell.
  62. Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl
    A comic routine that quickly grows stale as the film devolves into a soppy romance sustained solely by the actors' chemistry.
  63. Red Hook Black
    The characters are wearisomely one-dimensional and their situations and motives almost indecipherable due to poor exposition, weirdly pretentious dialogue and amateurish thesping.
  64. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    While director Guy Ritchie's excesses and modern concessions -- among them a lot of explosions -- remain intact, the parts of this second "Sherlock Holmes" are considerably more rewarding.
  65. The Sitter
    This ostensibly wild-and-crazy romp plays things too close to the book to feel genuinely wild or crazy.
  66. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    Pixar wizard Brad Bird's live-action debut serves up sights and setpieces of often jaw-dropping ingenuity and visual flair, but it's a movie of dazzling individual parts that don't come together to fully satisfying effect in the final stretch.
  67. Fanny, Annie & Danny
    The more difficult characters here (all female) and resulting character dynamics are so consistently shrill that the picture feels a bit too one-dimensional and cruel to leave the small-tragedy aftertaste it could have.
  68. New Year's Eve
    Few of the plot strands connect to one another, much less resolve themselves with any degree of wit or daring.
  69. I Melt with You
    A weekend romp for four middle-aged buddies devolves into a drug-fueled, suicidal hell in Mark Pellington's ill-conceived and executed I Melt With You, a work of extreme self-indulgence.
  70. I Am Singh
    Helmer Puneet Issar's righteous indignation is certainly well placed, but his cartoonish portrayals of police, racists and white Americans in general will prove off-putting, as will the generally inept construction of what might have been (say, eight or nine years ago) a very potent political story.
  71. Young Adult
    Reteaming pop-savvy scribe Diablo Cody with "Juno" director Jason Reitman, Young Adult revels in breaking the rules of safe Hollywood storytelling.
  72. The Yellow Sea
    Gushing more blood and possessing more stamina than any number of Hollywood hack-'em-ups, writer-director Na Hong-jin's pulse-pounding, mordantly funny genre piece is at times messily convoluted, yet serious and full-bodied enough to achieve a genuinely tragic dimension.
  73. Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
    The late Chogyam Trungpa's very colorful life makes for a most engaging narrative here.
  74. A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    Part personal quest, part testimonial and part fund-raiser, A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps fulfills disparate agendas for helmer Dina Rosenmeier, a mildly resentful daughter wondering why her humanitarian mother prioritized orphaned Indian children over her own offspring.
  75. Answers to Nothing
    Stitching together a quilt of stories involving disparate Angelenos in the mode of "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts" and myriad other crisscrossers, this somber drama is well crafted and watchable but lacks the distinctive story content, style and standout performances to become more than a serviceable reboot of familiar ideas.
  76. Lads & Jockeys
    A must for the equine-inclined, and a candid look at fearful ambition.
  77. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    An inventive, meaty distillation of Le Carre's 1974 novel, picture turns hero George Smiley's hunt for a mole within Blighty's MI6 into an incisive examination of Cold War ethics, rich in both contempo resonance and elegiac melancholy.
  78. W.E.
    Burdened with risible dialogue and weak performances, picture doesn't have much going for it apart from lavish production design and terrific, well-researched costumes -- and it's in focus, which is more than can be said for the script.
  79. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    An exquisitely realized adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel. In a rigorously subtle performance as a woman coping with the horrific damage wrought by her psychopathic son, Tilda Swinton anchors the dialogue-light film with an expressiveness that matches her star turn in "I Am Love."
  80. The Big Fix
    Alternately gutsy and preachy, specific and scattered, the righteously angry pic risks alienating those who could be galvanized by its proof of Big Oil's corrupting omnipotence.
  81. Outrage
    Focusing on the absurdly ultraviolent tit-for-tat tussles among a trio of Tokyo crime families, the film is a beautifully staged marvel that confidently reasserts Kitano's considerable cinematic gifts.
  82. The Lady
    This handsomely mounted picture is, at nearly 2 1/2 hours, far too long and indigestible for a film whose protagonist spends most of her screen time under house arrest.
  83. We Bought a Zoo
    We Bought a Zoo is an odd bird, warm-blooded but largely lifeless.
  84. The Iron Lady
    Fuzzy-headed biopic, which glosses over the former British prime minister's politics in favor of a glib, breakneck whirl around her career and marriage.
  85. Knuckle
    As anthropology lessons go, Knuckle is strong stuff, and it's easy to accept Palmer's conclusion that the problem he's showing us may well have no solution.
  86. Romantics Anonymous
    A delicious comedy-romance with a sweet-toothed twist from Gallic director Jean-Pierre Ameris ("Lightweight").
  87. The Artist
    A love letter to silent cinema sealed with a smirk, The Artist reteams director Michel Hazanavicius with dapper "OSS 117" star Jean Dujardin for another high-concept homage, delivering a heartfelt, old-school romance without the aid of spoken dialogue or sound.
  88. Hugo
    In attempting to make his first film for all ages, Martin Scorsese has fashioned one for the ages. Simultaneously classical and modern, populist but also unapologetically personal, Hugo flagrantly defies the mind-numbing quality of most contempo kidpics.
  89. The Muppets
    An unexpected treat. Bright and perky, cheeky but never mean-spirited.
  90. Dzi Croquettes
    Resembling an all-male late-20th-century version of the Ziegfeld Follies, the cabaret group Dzi Croquettes used an empowering sexuality to counter Brazil's military dictatorship. Dzi Croquettes -- the Documentary is Tatiana Issa and Raphael Alvarez's pleasure-packed exploration of the group's impact.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Lie
    Thinly amusing tale with not-especially-appealing characters.
  92. In Heaven Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery
    Her (Wauer) attempt to relieve uncomfortable events with happy stories makes for a disturbing superficiality, and a "make your own Jewish grave" student project is plain offensive. Score is omnipresent and insufferable.
  93. The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch
    Euro-financed production throws large chunks of change at a corporate espionage saga spanning several continents, yet most of the money seems to have landed in locations, with too little allocated to the script and stunt departments.
  94. Eames: The Architect & The Painter
    Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey's sprightly documentary weighs its subjects' unique accomplishments and widespread influence while probing a relationship more complex than its sunny public face indicated.
  95. Happy Feet Two
    Though it retains the buoyant musical stylings and splendid visuals that made its predecessor so distinctive, this chatterbox of a sequel loses its way with a raft of annoying side characters for which the slender narrative framework provides far too indulgent a showcase.
  96. Rampart
    While the film is drenched in atmosphere and packs a verbal and visceral punch, its relentless downward spiral makes for an overdetermined, not entirely satisfying character study.
  97. A Dangerous Method
    This complex story from the early days of psychoanalysis engrosses and even amuses as it unfolds through a series of conversations, treatment sessions and exchanged letters.
  98. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    All the more disappointing, then, that a story so pregnant with dramatic possibilities should wind up feeling like such an unconsummated opportunity. Drawn from Stephenie Meyer's polarizing, weirdly compelling fourth novel, the film is rich in surface pleasures but lacks any palpable sense of darkness or danger.
  99. Dragonslayer
    The film observes a guy verging on poverty or riches with a bounty of beautiful imagery and fresh angles on skateboarding culture.
  100. 11-11-11
    One and one (and one and one and one and one) never quite add up to two in Darren Lynn Bousman's 11-11-11, a rather anemic entry in the biblical-prophecy horror subgenre.
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