Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Underworld: Awakening
    Once again, Beckinsale brings an impressive physicality and subzero cool to her portrayal of Selene.
  4. The Viral Factor
    The helmer's blockbuster ambitions, striving to make every move a money shot, relegate human drama to the backseat.
  5. The Grey
    The picture's dialogue-heavy stretches and ambiguous finale could leave ticketbuyers impatient for less chatter and more chomping.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. Toll Booth
    Slightly surreal psychological portrait keeps things impressively light-footed and heartfelt.
  13. Sing Your Song
    Moving and enlightening as it serves up a crash-course in 20th-century history.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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."
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. A Separation
    Tense and narratively complex, formally dense and morally challenging.
  25. 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.
  26. Norwegian Wood
    Lovely but listless.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
  31. 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.
  32. Miss Minoes
    Though conceived in whimsy, Minoes generally lacks imagination; once the premise is established, familiar plot conventions reign.
  33. The Darkest Hour
    The Darkest Hour turns out to be a modestly inventive and involving variation on a standard-issue sci-fi doomsday scenario.
  34. Albert Nobbs
    It's a career-crowning role for Glenn Close. Too bad the film is such a drag.
  35. 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.
  36. 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.
  37. 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.
  38. 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.
  39. 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.
  40. 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.
  41. 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.
  42. 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.
  43. 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.
  44. 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.
  45. 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.
  46. 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.
  47. The Sitter
    This ostensibly wild-and-crazy romp plays things too close to the book to feel genuinely wild or crazy.
  48. 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.
  49. 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.
  50. New Year's Eve
    Few of the plot strands connect to one another, much less resolve themselves with any degree of wit or daring.
  51. 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.
  52. 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.
  53. Young Adult
    Reteaming pop-savvy scribe Diablo Cody with "Juno" director Jason Reitman, Young Adult revels in breaking the rules of safe Hollywood storytelling.
  54. 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.
  55. Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
    The late Chogyam Trungpa's very colorful life makes for a most engaging narrative here.
  56. 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.
  57. 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.
  58. Lads & Jockeys
    A must for the equine-inclined, and a candid look at fearful ambition.
  59. 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.
  60. 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.
  61. 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."
  62. 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.
  63. 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.
  64. 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.
  65. We Bought a Zoo
    We Bought a Zoo is an odd bird, warm-blooded but largely lifeless.
  66. 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.
  67. 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.
  68. Romantics Anonymous
    A delicious comedy-romance with a sweet-toothed twist from Gallic director Jean-Pierre Ameris ("Lightweight").
  69. 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.
  70. 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.
  71. The Muppets
    An unexpected treat. Bright and perky, cheeky but never mean-spirited.
  72. 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.
  74. 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.
  75. 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.
  76. 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.
  77. 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.
  78. 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.
  79. 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.
  80. 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.
  81. Dragonslayer
    The film observes a guy verging on poverty or riches with a bounty of beautiful imagery and fresh angles on skateboarding culture.
  82. 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.
  83. A Novel Romance
    Grotesquely straining to ridicule and validate its hero simultaneously, A Novel Romance will disappoint even Guttenberg diehards.
  84. God's Fiddler: Jascha Heifetz
    Once Heifetz becomes a household name, Rosen struggles mightily to milk drama not from his musical genius, but from his relatively unremarkable personal life.
  85. The Greening of Whitney Brown
    This simplistic story of bucolic redemption has few pretensions to depth, ambiguity or realism, relying on its name cast, sprightly lead and a helluva horse to attract family audiences.
  86. The Love We Make
    The former Beatle, a longtime Maysles friend, could have found no better documentarian.
  87. Jack and Jill
    Yet the picture's general stupidity, careless direction and reliance on a single-joke premise that was never really funny to begin with are only the most obvious of its problems.
  88. Arthur Christmas
    Arthur Christmas embraces this unconditional faith and rewards it with creative explanations and a brisk computer-animated adventure clever enough to become essential yuletide viewing.
  89. Immortals
    Navigating the film's mounting erotic bloodlust proves tedious, until the show-stopping final battle between gods and Titans in one chamber, Theseus and Hyperion in another, at which point logic melts away completely and the pic's raison d'etre emerges -- namely, to justify staging a fight scene for the ages.
  90. Barbershop Punk
    Topolski and his story are so engaging that the resulting discord of voices and agendas can't drown out the voice of the little guy questioning the system.
  91. Dog Sweat
    Great for ADD-style viewing but not for advancing Iranian cinema's currently challenged profile.
  92. Letters from the Big Man
    Surely the least excitable beauty-meets-Bigfoot film ever made.
  93. Shame
    A mesmerizing companion piece to his 2008 debut, "Hunger," this more approachable but equally uncompromising drama likewise fixes its gaze on the uses and abuses of the human body, as Michael Fassbender again strips himself down, in every way an actor can, for McQueen's rigorous but humane interrogation.
  94. Haywire
    Paring down narrative and character concerns in favor of a breathtaking application of pure thriller technique, Soderbergh's latest picture is a lean, efficient exercise tossed off with his customary sangfroid and wickedly dry sense of humor.
  95. London Boulevard
    The result is a superficially handsome crime thriller that doesn't tick, although it's got a pretty, jeweled face, and some clever scripting by William Monahan (scribe of "The Departed"), making his directorial debut here.
  96. Into the Abyss
    These days, true-crime docs are a dime a dozen, and yet, returning to the "In Cold Blood" analogy, Into the Abyss dares to plumb the dark hole in America's soul. Herzog's investigation may not work as an anti-death-penalty editorial, but its findings are undeniably profound.
  97. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    When this "Enemy Within" settles into key action sequences, such as a stunning nighttime ambush or a daytime battle against Fabio, it becomes wildly entertaining.
  98. Cook County
    Despite a few continuity problems, this rough-edged, low-budget drama impresses with spot-on performances, perfect-pitch dialogue and an overall sense that something bad might happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.
  99. The Conquest
    Picture takes genre helmer Xavier Durringer ("Chok-Dee") back to his theater roots, with most of the narrative mayhem and laughs coming from the picture's sharp dialogue and strong work by seasoned thesps, who just manage to avoid caricature.
  100. J. Edgar
    Any movie in which the longtime FBI honcho features as the central character must supply some insight into what made him tick, or suffer from the reality that the Bureau's exploits were far more interesting than the bureaucrat who ran it -- a dilemma J. Edgar never rises above.
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