Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. Kingsman: The Secret Service
    While seriousness has overtaken the Bond franchise in recent years (hardly a bad thing, mind you), Kingsman runs no such risk. Vaughn welcomes details that might seem silly in another director’s hands, such as a bulletproof umbrella or tiny microchips that can make one’s head explode, presenting everything playfully enough that plausibility isn’t a factor.
  2. The Pod Generation
    The Pod Generation is very much about our flesh, and the forces that are only too happy to take it away from us.
  3. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
    Directing her first studio feature, Cathy Yan keeps it all hurtling along with impeccable ferocity. Her action scenes have a deftly detonating visual spaciousness, capped by crowd-pleasing moments.
  4. Nightmare Cinema
    If there are no outright duds, there’s no real triumph either. But the whole is certainly diverse, lively and reference-packed enough to please horror fans attracted to this kind of enterprise.
  5. The Legend of Molly Johnson
    An exceptionally compelling Outback Western.
  6. Kevin Hart: What Now?
    He leaps so quickly into exaggeration that he bypasses reality, and the result isn’t very funny.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Swing Shift
    With all the heartwarming heroics to choose from on the homefront in World War II, Swing Shift tries instead to twist some consequence out of a tawdry adulterous tryst by a couple of self-centered sneaks. But the writing and acting are too flat for the challenge.
  8. This Boy's Life
    Unfortunately, after a relatively promising warmup, pic actually proceeds to flatten out the characters in the latter sections and to make them less dimensional and interesting than they initially seemed.
  9. Saturday Night
    Now, just one year shy of the pop phenom’s 50th anniversary, director Jason Reitman gives back, turning an oral history of the very first episode into a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage.
  10. Funny People
    Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolute Beginners
    Absolute Beginners is a terrifically inventive original musical for the screen. Daring attempt to portray the birth of teenagedom in London, 1958, almost exclusively through song is based upon Colin MacInnes' cult novel about teen life and pop fashion in the percolating moments just before the youth cultural explosion in the early 1960s.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight Lace
    Director David Miller adds a few pleasant little humorous touches and generally makes the most of an uninspired yarn.
  13. Glastonbury
    While one can appreciate helmer's resistance to a conventional, chronological overview, what emerges is a long, structureless muddle that does justice to neither the stellar acts nor changing countercultural times event has encompassed.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Horn Blows at Midnight
    This one is a lightweight comedy that never seems able to make up its mind whether to be fantasy or broad slapstick. There are some good laughs but generally The Horn Blows at Midnight is not solid.
  15. The Light Between Oceans
    The Light Between Oceans winds up taking one too many self-serious twists and turns. The film earns its darkness, but it might have been even more affecting if it didn’t shrink from the light.
  16. Videocracy
    Rather than presenting a well-argued expose of the disturbing symbiosis that exists between Italo politics and TV, with Prime Minister Berlusconi being only the most obvious connection, the scribe-helmer gets sidetracked by marginal characters while keeping bare facts to a minimum.
  17. The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini
    Director Jesse James Miller’s bio of ‘80s-era World Boxing Council lightweight champ Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini connects on emotional levels in the telling of an up-from-nothing brawler whose colorful career climaxed in tragedy.
  18. The Becomers
    A sort of shaggy dog story whose appeal wanes as one gradually realizes it’s unlikely to go anywhere in particular, The Becomers is equally mild as sci-fi, spoof and sociopolitical satire. It’s off-kilter enough to catch one’s attention, but in the end too underdeveloped to strongly reward it.
  19. Bad Hair
    Costume designer Ceci’s ensembles and Scott Kuzio’s production design are spot-on. Just as impressive is Simien’s steady handle on his serio-comic tone, at once sly, resonant, and horrific.
  20. The Portrait of a Lady
    A literary adaptation of exceeding intelligence, beauty and concentrated artistry, but one that remains emotionally remote and perhaps unavoidably problematic dramatically.
  21. The Man Who Invented Christmas
    In addition to being a rather fine addition to the Christmas-movie canon, the film marks a useful teaching tool — a better option for classroom screenings than any of the previous “Carol” adaptations, once students have finished reading the novella.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    This trashy, gaudy, sound-stage vulgarity about low life among the high life is as funny as a burning orphanage.
  23. Good Neighbors
    A romantic-comedy-cum-serial-killer-movie that bends genre to the point of snapping.
  24. Like Me
    The film’s lack of a traditional narrative will no doubt alienate many, but for the more adventurous, it offers a uniquely weird take on loneliness and lunacy.
  25. Ultimate X: The Movie
    Most impressive in an objective sense, as a technical exercise -- its staccato technique preventing greater involvement.
  26. The Emperor's New Clothes
    Pleasant rather than rollicking entertainment.
  27. Pandaemonium
    Never quite dull, neither does it ever find a viable rhythm, narrative arc or crux of emotional engagement.
  28. Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
    An unexpected departure off the map, flinging together elements of Alpine musical, ghoulish Jan Svankmajer-style claymation and a family portrait so hokey it makes the Brady Bunch look hip.
  29. All These Small Moments
    Though this sweet, subtle, and sentimental work is a smidge too simplistic in narrative design, it wins over any resistance with its quiet refinement and heartrending insight.
  30. No One Will Save You
    The film is most successful when it finds Brynn in survival mode.
  31. The Grab
    The big picture here is so elusive and vast that it helps Cowperthwaite to have a few intrepid investigators to follow, letting their research drive the shape of the film (which, when you unpack it, must have been one hell of a task to structure).
  32. Tab Hunter Confidential
    Drawing on a rich array of archival materials, Tab Hunter Confidential is lively and entertaining.
  33. Dragged Across Concrete
    At a whopping 158 minutes, “Concrete’s” sleek, languorous anatomy of a heist represents the filmmaker’s most extreme exercise yet in painstaking genre deceleration, sparked as ever by the tangy movie-movie vernacular of his writing, the crunchy metal-on-asphalt dynamism of his craftsmanship, and the back-from-the-brink reanimation of his stars.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stay Hungry
    Underneath it all is a lurching and poorly defined film concept.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anchors Aweigh
    Anchors Aweigh is solid musical fare. The production numbers are zingy; the songs are extremely listenable; the color treatment outstanding.
  36. The Lost City
    Even at the movie’s masks-on SXSW Film Festival premiere, The Lost City was a breath of fresh air: the kind of breezy two-hour getaway that doesn’t take itself too seriously, delivering screwball banter between Bullock and Tatum — a guilty-pleasure treasure hunt that pretends to be more progressive than it really is by alternating between who’s saving whom.
  37. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    Benefits from edge-of-your-seat pacing despite a conspicuous lack of action.
  38. The X Files
    Falls somewhere in between standing on its own feet as a real movie worth the price of a ticket and merely being a glorified TV episode refitted for theaters.
  39. Boys on the Side
    Yet even with those slightly different chords, Ross manages to pluck the right heartstrings, in the process delivering a grade-A tear-jerker.
  40. Following
    Climactic triple-cross is a satisfying payoff, though scenarist-helmer Nolan doesn’t really sock across any possible point of emphasis – black humor is soft-pedaled, suspense just middling, and the character writing keeps classic fall guy Bill a bit too blank-slate to incur much sympathy.
  41. The Commune
    For Vinterberg, this uneven but nonetheless absorbing pic at least marks a return to characteristically bristly territory.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cleopatra
    Cleopatra is not only a supercolossal eye-filler (the unprecedented budget shows in the physical opulence throughout), but it is also a remarkably literate cinematic recreation of an historic epoch.
  43. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
    Never completely takes off, yet somewhat overestimates the surrounding zaniness. Still, any opportunity to witness the improvisatory skills of Sarah Silverman, Bonnie Hunt and Amy Sedaris should not be missed.
  44. The Devil's Advocate
    A fairly entertaining supernatural potboiler that finally bubbles over with a nearly operatic sense of absurdity and excess.
  45. SPECTRE
    What’s missing is the unexpected emotional urgency of “Skyfall,” as the film sustains its predecessor’s nostalgia kick with a less sentimental bent.
  46. Femme Fatale
    An extravagant suspense cocktail of wacky and lascivious ingredients that goes down fine.
  47. Quality of Life
    Picture's cliched underlying story of restless youth plays as too naive for an older audience and too provocative for teens.
  48. Alice Neel
    Much like Neel's portraits, the film is marked by audacious understatement, neither whitewashing nor sensationalizing the artist's sterling achievements and messy personal life.
  49. Radiant City
    In the end, helmers have some nifty tricks up their verite sleeves.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Asphalt Zahov
    With its remarkably intimate look at Israeli Bedouin culture, a subject heretofore little treated, Danny Verete's Yellow Asphalt is a deeply affecting and brutally uncompromising anthology of three unrelated stories.
  51. The Strange Case of Señor Computer
    A retro sci-fi tale that takes its time stoking a low-key absurdism to high silliness. Initial slow going pays off in cumulative laughs.
  52. Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
    A calm, rational and utterly devastating point-by-point analysis.
  53. Lustre
    Uneven but affecting.
  54. Iraqi Odyssey
    The running time of two hours and 43 minutes is unquestionably self-indulgent; thankfully the clan’s charisma keeps attention from lagging too much despite frequent opportunities for trimming.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pink Panther Strikes Again
    The Pink Panther Strikes Again is a hilarious film about the further misadventures of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. Action proceeds smartly through plot-advancing action scenes, interleaved with excellent non-dialog sequences featuring Sellers and underscored superbly by Henry Mancini.
  56. Quincy
    Stretching to more than two hours, Quincy stumbles into some pacing problems as it goes, and considering the sheer number of turns the man’s life took, one wonders if a miniseries might have served him better.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White Lightning
    Joseph Sargent’s direction is particularly effective in the light and auto-chasing sequences, latter a field day for stunt drivers and occasionally incorporating humorous bits of biz. Reynolds is quite up to all the demands of his smashing role.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Shaggy D.A.
    Jones is a pleasant light comedian whose style is perfectly suited to the WASPish world of Disney. As his wife, Suzanne Pleshette has her first film role in five years, and her beauty and intelligence livens a part that might have been dull without her.
  59. Brother and Sister
    Alice and Louis are such artificial, wanly self-absorbed characters, forever speaking in finely turned, therapy-honed aphorisms that never sound anything other than screen-written, that it’s hard even to invest in their conflict at an abstract level.
  60. That Christmas
    Every season brings dozens of new Christmas offerings, most of which prove instantly forgettable. This one’s a keeper.
  61. Transamazonia
    There’s an opacity to this ambitious, conscientious film’s characterization on all fronts that hinders our emotional involvement, even as it holds our interest.
  62. Stitch Head
    Stitch Head, while it remains visually clever, has a bare-bones script that makes it feel like a Pixar movie the writers forgot to add enough jokes to.
  63. Tin Cup
    Amiable and constantly amusing rather than uproarious, this mangy tale of a ne'er-do-well's fitful assault on personal and professional respectability benefits greatly from Kevin Costner's ingratiatingly comic star turn, his most appealing work in years.
  64. Ghostbusters
    While both funnier and scarier than Ivan Reitman’s 1984 original, this otherwise over-familiar remake from “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig doesn’t do nearly enough to innovate on what has come before.
  65. Them
    Romania-set scare-fest deploys the full cinematic vocabulary of creepy sounds and hostile intruders.
  66. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
    Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is a ride, a head trip, a CGI horror jam, a what-is-reality Marvel brainteaser and, at moments, a bit of an ordeal. It’s a somewhat engaging mess, but a mess all the same.
  67. House of Cardin
    Lively as an overview of Cardin’s creative and commercial achievements, House of Cardin is considerably vaguer when it comes to his personal life and legacy.
  68. Freakier Friday
    The bottom line is that none of these characters, after the swap, seem different enough from themselves to allow the comedy to detonate. That said, the double swap lends “Freakier Friday” a juggling-balls-in-the-air quality that gives off a pleasant hum. It’s fun to ride the film’s complications.
  69. Sheriff
    Equal parts colorful character study and real-world procedural, docu by Daniel Kraus retains interest throughout, even if it delivers just partial insight into the man, job and milieu.
  70. Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog
    Puppy appeal nudges past some dramatic deficiencies -- if just by a nose.
  71. All the Streets Are Silent: The Convergence of Hip Hop and Skateboarding (1987-1997)
    Despite its doctoral dissertation-style title, “All the Streets Are Silent” lacks a thesis: less a sociological study of the rapper-skater convergence than a celebration of a very specific type of guy in a very specific fragment of space and time.
  72. Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    Greenaway has wrought an outrageously unconventional and deliriously profane biopic that could take decades to be duly appreciated.
  73. Our Idiot Brother
    Picture needs every ounce of goodwill it can wring from Rudd's likable lead performance to offset a sour, borderline misogynistic streak for which scattered snickers offer only modest compensation.
  74. Son of the South
    Brown’s well-crafted and period-persuasive biopic strikes a dramatically sound and emotionally satisfying balance between the moral awakening of its white protagonist and his relationships with sometimes encouraging, sometimes skeptical Black leaders and foot soldiers.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Great Waldo Pepper
    The Great Waldo Pepper is an uneven and unsatisfying story of anachronistic, pitiable, but misplaced heroism.
  76. +1
    Carefully repeated imagery, in-camera tricks and well-executed fx combine to create a tantalizing visual puzzle that demands full attention, even as the flavorless characters and largely so-so performances risk audience indifference.
  77. Night Falls on Manhattan
    Lumet never tires of exploring moral quandaries. But what separates his films from the pack is his appreciation for all perspectives.
  78. 9
    Design aspects are arresting and the filmmaker's abilities are obvious, but the basic survival story remains slight, just as the general setting, no matter how artfully imagined, is by now pretty familiar.
  79. Turbo Kid
    There’s a good-naturedness to the whole enterprise that makes it pleasing despite its lack of truly inspired moments.
  80. The Guys
    An adept if necessarily limited translation of uncinematic material, The Guys retains the potency of its stage original as a poignant, ingeniously simple tribute to firefighters lost in the World Trade Center disaster.
  81. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    Respectably crafted to avoid lurid excess, feature is nonetheless a bit potboilerish in its pileup of sexy, violent, duplicitous circumstances that plague the consciences of latter-day clergymen.
  82. Overnight
    There's a stunning rags-to-rags morality tale hidden in this two-hour mess of a movie.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Eat This New York
    The docu, serving up interesting insights into the unique restaurant culture of NYC, should prove appetizing in urban venues.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jagged Edge
    A well-crafted, hardboiled mystery by Joe Eszterhas, with sharp performances by murder suspect Jeff Bridges and tough-but- smitten defense attorney Glenn Close.
  85. See How They Run
    See How They Run is a retro homage that surprises audiences with giggles and suspense.
  86. The Cake Eaters
    A vibrant, unpretentious small-town tale.
  87. The Delta
    Sachs commits a major error by deciding to center on Lincoln’s character, for John is a far more interesting, complex and disturbing personality.
  88. Kill the Messenger
    The film taps into far deeper, richer veins of material than it has the time to properly mine. It’s nonetheless a flinty, brainy, continually engrossing work that straddles the lines between biopic, political thriller and journalistic cautionary tale, driven by Jeremy Renner’s most complete performance since The Hurt Locker.
  89. Jeff Who Lives at Home
    Graced with Susan Sarandon's radiant turn as Jeff's all-patient mother-enabler, this sweet but slight effort could modestly expand their audience beyond the slacker set to include middle-aged women.
  90. Breathe In
    While the plot — too low-key to be called a thriller — points toward obvious extramarital cliches, delicate changes in the overall mood reveal deeper truths.
  91. Actor Martinez
    Narrative and reality clash, tussle, and are eventually rendered indistinguishable in a witty, tortured puzzle picture — one in a growing subgenre of hybrid inquiries into the nature and limits of performance, which is not to say there’s anything quite like it out there.
  92. Dave Made a Maze
    The idiosyncrasy and resourcefulness are impressive, even inspiring to a point. But at 80-odd minutes, the self-conscious novelty begins to seem stretched, enough so that you notice this clever conceit is never particularly funny or meaningful — just cute.
  93. Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer
    If anyone out there thinks the National Enquirer is merely harmless entertainment, “Scandalous” give them no shortage of alarming reasons to reconsider.
  94. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
    Desperately uncertain in tone and able to generate only sporadic laughs, pic decks out its meager story of revenge and comeuppance with a vulgar, flashy shimmer that will no doubt attract teenage girls, or the core "Clueless" audience.
  95. Streets of Legend
    Due to digital image manipulation that pushes the picture to the boundary between narrative and avant-garde filmmaking, slightly overlong effort is full of striking, fresh visual interludes showing cars, speed and the sensations surrounding the scene.
  96. Young Rebels
    In striving simultaneously to cover the transplanted rap scene, sample a wide range of groups, and give an unbiased picture of Cuban society, helmers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who have hitherto worked in short-form, blur the overall shape of their picture.
  97. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
    Richly layered picture dramatizes a landmark doctor/patient showdown, chronicles a classic case of transgenderism and reveals how aspects of Schreber's story prefigured Nazism.
  98. Hinterland
    As impressive as Homefront is in the way it envisions a distorted world, its fully-realized digital design is all exterior display, whereas Expressionism at its best transforms disturbed psychological states into a nightmarish reality.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big Bad Mama
    Big Bad Mama is mostly rehashed Bonnie and Clyde, with a bit more blood and Angie Dickinson taking off her clothes for sex scenes with the crooks in her life.
  100. Sisi & I
    There’s a elastic, enjoyable restlessness to all this behind-closed-court-doors bustle and bitchery, recalling less the sparse, close-up character interrogation of “Corsage” than the snippy gamesmanship of “The Favourite,” buoyed by the itchy friction between Hüller’s anxious, aspirational energy and Wolff’s cool, complacent hauteur.
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