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. Unveiled
    Several large leaps of faith take some of the dramatic steam out of Unveiled, an otherwise well-acted and accessible lesbian drama that also flirts with issues like loss of identity and anti-Muslim tensions.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Coma
    Coma is an extremely entertaining suspense drama in the Hitchcock tradition. Robin Cook's novel is adapted by Crichton into a smartly paced tale which combines traditional Hitchcock elements with contemporary personal relationships.
    • Variety
  3. Wayne's World 2
    The latest chapter in the saga of Aurora, Ill., twosome Wayne and Garth is a puerile, misguided and loathsome effort ... NOT! The "Saturday Night Live" icons of vapid youth have come up with an exceedingly clever mixture of pure juvenilia and hip, social comedy for Wayne's World 2.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Caddy
    Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis dig a lot of divots among the fairways of The Caddy. It's an amusing romp [from a story by Danny Arnold] that, while not always parring previous M & L successes, comes close enough.
  5. Go for Zucker
    Picture lets loose an experienced cast of vets on a well-honed script that has broad appeal.
  6. A/k/a Tommy Chong
    While the picture's reporting on government repression of alternative cultural ideas and lifestyles is noteworthy more than anything, it's a blatant promo for Chong's career.
  7. Gifted
    Gifted wants to be an “honest” tearjerker, but it’s as plotted out as an equation on a blackboard. It’s the undergirding of formula that roots the movie in the commercial marketplace, but that may ultimately limit its appeal.
  8. Lone Survivor
    Berg’s blunt, pummeling style offers few nuances and makes no apologies, but his broad brushstrokes have clearly found an ideal canvas in this grimly heroic rendering of hell on earth.
  9. Smallfoot
    It’s messy and distressingly unmemorable, which is a shame since there are no shortage of great Looney Tunes-level cartoon gags wasted along the way, including an ingenious rope bridge sequence worthy of golden-age Warner Bros. animation.
  10. Rare Birds
    Hurt is quietly affecting as Dave Purcell, a fine chef but a lousy businessman whose sticksville cafe, the Auk, is named after a rare, possibly extinct kind of duck.
  11. Bandits
    The disparate but highly skilled leading trio of Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett keeps this road movie engaging even when it veers giddily onto the shoulder.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Treasure Planet
    The film's total appeal may be undercut by a script that rarely feels inspired.
  13. Price of Gold
    A scrappy portrait of half a dozen renegade gold-diggers.
  14. House of Gucci
    House of Gucci is an icepick docudrama that has a great deal of fun with its grand roster of ambitious scoundrels, but it’s never less than a straight-faced and nimbly accomplished movie.
  15. Middle Men
    "Boogie Nights" meets "Goodfellas" in Middle Men, a relentlessly sleazy but undeniably intriguing tour of the bottom-feeding netherworld where porn and organized crime do their mutual bump-and-grind.
  16. Being the Ricardos
    The dialogue in Being the Ricardos has the blunt directness, dagger wit, and perfectly cut corners of Sorkinese ­­— a sound that might be described as hardass Talmudic screwball. Beyond that, though, the entire movie is a piece of thrillingly stylized compression. It gets a real head of steam going, a hurtling energy and anxiety that rides on everything Lucy is feeling.
  17. Bad Moms
    Where Bad Moms plunges into zesty new satirical terrain is in capturing the ruthless one-upmanship of the mommy-wars era, when all the progressive thinking of the last 40 years has only ratcheted up the perfectionistic demands on children and parents alike.
  18. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
    “Here We Go Again” is another kitsch patchwork; it’s as if you were watching the CliffsNotes to an old studio weeper that happened to be carried along by some of the most luscious pop songs ever recorded. Yet the feeling comes through, especially at the end — a love poem to the primal bond of mothers and daughters.
  19. Life of Crime
    Flavorful yet brisk like the book, Life of Crime loses some of its source material’s character development as well as a few minor narrative pieces (the dialogue remains nearly all Leonard’s), but the excellent casting fills in any resulting gaps well enough.
  20. Lonely Hearts
    Todd Robinson constructs a riveting thriller.
  21. Nell
    A cocoon of somber self-seriousness envelopes some fine performances and intelligent craftsmanship in Nell.
  22. True Romance
    It doesn't add up to enough, as preposterous plotting and graphic violence ultimately prove an audience turnoff.
  23. Hateship Loveship
    Under Johnson’s patient, observant direction, a relationship that might sound ridiculous on paper lives and breathes with surprising tenderness and plausibility onscreen.
  24. This Changes Everything
    This Changes Everything is genuinely stirring as it details improbable victories and green-economy opportunities.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bedknobs and Broomsticks
    The magic of Walt Disney lingers magnificently on in Bed knobs and Broomsticks.
  26. Self Reliance
    Johnson delivers a silly and frequently surprising why-we-need-people parable that leans on laughs in lieu of peril.
  27. Clock
    Jacknow’s genuinely disturbing imagery crawls under our skin, lingering long after the tense, bleak finale.
  28. Celeste and Jesse Forever
    Celeste & Jesse Forever earns points for bucking formula, but its fusion of snark and sincerity has a calculated slickness that rings increasingly hollow.
  29. Captive
    Gripping drama.
  30. Metal Lords
    In a film that sings the praises of heavy metal music and reveres those who create it, Metal Lords stumbles in its ability to truly rock.
  31. Under the Same Moon (La misma luna)
    Wrapping the political hot potato of illegal immigration in the sentimental balm of a mother-son reunion drama, this stirring tale will be embraced most enthusiastically by Mexican audiences on both sides of the border.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight Express
    Midnight Express is a sordid and ostensibly true story about a young American busted [in 1970] for smuggling hash in Turkey and his subsequent harsh imprisonment and later escape. Cast, direction and production are all very good, but it’s difficult to sort out the proper empathies from the muddled and moralizing screenplay which, in true Anglo-American fashion, wrings hands over alien cultures as though our civilization is absolutely perfect.
  33. Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
    While the story arc of Hippocrates is not especially remarkable, the film works best in its depiction of life in the bowels of the hospital, which the public never visits.
  34. Standing Tall
    Bercot studiously avoids the sort of catharsis-oriented pop psychology the genre so often peddles.
  35. Killing Ground
    Tasmania-born Damien Power’s impressive first feature, Killing Ground, transcends the cliches even as the film uses plenty of familiar tropes, laying down a solid hour of effective buildup to a duly hair-raising, prolonged climax.
  36. Anthropoid
    The trouble is that for all the narrative intrigue and excitement such an endeavor might suggest, director Sean Ellis’ less-than-dramatic recreation of this daring act of defiance proves surprisingly stiff...barely redeemed by an even more surprisingly intense finale.
  37. Audrey the Trainwreck
    An edgier Richard Linklater for a less privileged generation, mumblecore helmer Frank V. Ross captures his characters' dead-end disaffection not through stasis, but through nervous activity.
  38. Ways to Live Forever
    Lively, entertaining and well made, pic is thankfully neither mawkish nor grueling, though its refusal to confront some of the harsher realities of its dramatic situation does leave it feeling somewhat bland.
  39. Tigers
    It’s a compelling tale, well cast and directed with vivid intensity by Ronnie Sandahl. Still, the somewhat frustratingly limited insight we get into our hero’s addled head may affect export prospects for a film that is more about psychology than athletics.
  40. We Live in Time
    It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories, and the sequence hardly matters.
  41. Heli
    An accomplished but singularly unpleasant immersion in Mexico's vicious cycle of drug-fueled violence.
  42. She's Lost Control
    Marquardt never buries her symbolic subtext very deep, what with a woman who freezes her eggs and a man who ensures that his patients feel nothing.
  43. Sibyl
    Triet’s chic, blackly comic psychodrama piles up bad decisions like so many profiteroles in a croquembouche, admiring the teetering spectacle of its chaos as it goes.
  44. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
    "The Immortal Man” serves as a handsome reminder of what always felt quite cinematic about the series — both in its beefy-but-pulpy storytelling and its robust, well-patinated production values.
  45. Mortal Kombat
    But where others have sunk in the mire of imitation, director Paul Anderson and writer Kevin Droney effect a viable balance between exquisitely choreographed action and ironic visual and verbal counterpoint.
  46. Ping Pong
    Very striking stylistic control is exerted in this absorbing if overlong tale of angst-ridden high school competitors.
  47. Gunnin' for That #1 Spot
    Beastie Boy Adam Yauch proves he can make a comprehensive, state-of-the-art docu of interest to basketball aficionados.
  48. Drift
    Lee crafts actions and situations that are credible without being particularly engrossing -- recognition doesn't necessarily translate into absorbsion.
  49. Fantasia 2000
    Like a light buffet of tasty morsels rather than a full and satisfying meal; all the episodes are more or less agreeable, but as a whole it lacks a knockout punch, one dynamite sequence that will galvanize viewers.
  50. Only the Strong Survive
    Less an historical flashback than a present-tense valentine.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rundown
    Cements the Rock's status as a contempo action hero with a bigscreen future.
  52. The Perfect Storm
    The yarn's emotional undercurrents never take hold, resulting in a picture that leaves one thinking less about the fates of the characters than about how the actors had to spend most of their working days soaking wet.
  53. Life
    [An] engaging, elegiac portrait of a legend in the making.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Private Benjamin
    The trouble may be with the use of too many screenwriters who have been told to always keep their star’s image uppermost in their scribblings. But she’s not so gifted that she can carry a heavy load of indifferent material on her own two little shoulders, without considerable sagging.
  55. Beowulf
    For all its visual sweep and propulsively violent action, this bloodthirsty rendition of the Old English epic can't overcome the disadvantage of being enacted by digital waxworks rather than flesh-and-blood Danes and demons.
  56. The Humbling
    Fronted by a vibrant, deeply committed Al Pacino performance and very fine support from Greta Gerwig, this uneven but captivating film deserves to find its own audience, though doing so will surely prove to be an uphill climb.
  57. See for Me
    Skyler Davenport’s lead turn in director Randall Okita’s no-nonsense thriller (which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last summer) will be worth remembering well after the January doldrums have passed.
  58. White Boy Rick
    Although Demange directs the heck out of it, White Boy Rick ultimately feels like a glorified TV movie, albeit with a better cast and a much hipper score.
  59. Being Maria
    Being Maria is a flawed but fascinating look at the turbulent life of actor Maria Schneider.
  60. The Secret Garden
    In its top-heavy image-driven way, The Secret Garden is trying for some of the atmospheric poetry that was missing from Agnieszka Holland’s 1993 version. Yet if anything, that just makes it fall further away from the novel’s essence. The garden isn’t a supernatural place, but it’s supposed to be a mystical place. In this movie, it comes closer to being a special effect.
  61. The Last Mimzy
    Kids will like Mimzy if for no other reason than it doesn't talk down to them.
  62. Breakfast on Pluto
    Despite numerous surface pleasures, including a beguiling pop soundtrack and presence of rising star Cillian Murphy in the lead role, dramatic shortcomings spell a mixed overall reception.
  63. Yosemite
    Resolutely unshowy, sometimes almost too lower-case in its observations, Yosemite pays off in an authenticity that pervades both individual scene rhythms and performances.
  64. Spider-Man 3
    A sense of strain envelops the proceedings this time around. One can feel the effort required to suit up one more time, come up with fresh variations on a winning formula and inject urgency into a format that basically needs to be repeated and, due to audience expectations, can't be toyed with or deepened very much.
  65. Lousy Carter
    We’ve all seen movies like “Lousy Carter” before, and this one’s adequate, without being particularly insightful or memorable.
  66. Mission: Impossible II
    Even more empty a luxury vehicle than its predecessor, M:I 2 pushes the envelope in terms of just how much flashy packaging an audience will buy when there's absolutely nada inside.
  67. Drew: The Man Behind the Poster
    The director commissioned Struzan to paint the one-sheet for his debut, “Sexina: Popstar P.I.,” and while this sophomore effort is no masterpiece, it’s far more deserving of Struzan’s talent.
  68. Taste
    Lê Bảo’s rich film reaches further back too, beyond the politics of globalization and migration, beyond even culture, into a pre-ethnographic past, to see us as trapped animals, paradoxically dehumanized by the sunless concrete ugliness of human civilization.
  69. Mom and Dad
    Though sure to be distasteful for some viewers even to ponder, this giddy exercise transcends mere bad-taste humor to become one of the great jet-black comedies about suburbia.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Road to Nowhere
    Monte Hellman's first feature film in 21 years is one of his finest and deepest, a twin peak to his 1971 masterpiece, "Two Lane Blacktop."
  71. Unbroken
    A bit embalmed in its own nobility, it’s an extraordinary story told in dutiful, unexceptional terms, the passionate commitment of all involved rarely achieving gut-level impact.
  72. Into the Forest
    Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood are both superb in the lead roles, but Rozema’s emphasis on the primacy of family and nature exposes a deficit of visual and narrative imagination.
  73. Fuze
    The action is entertaining enough in the moment, but not especially memorable.
  74. Seducing Doctor Lewis
    Though harmless and amusing, this Quebecois comedy set in an impoverished fishing village is a bit too festooned with provincial humor and a bit too short on memorable perfs or feel-good climaxes to break out commercially beyond French-speaking Canadian territories.
  75. The Living Daylights
    With a hint of that my-way problem-solving approach, The Living Daylights freshens the Bond series’ cornball formula elements while reprising details that had made director John Glen’s debut, For Your Eyes Only, such a superior outing.
  76. The Shallows
    At times, it’s hard to tell whether The Shallows is trying to sell a tropical vacation, that Sony Xperia phone or a fantasy date with Lively herself, but in any case, the film looks virtually indistinguishable from a slick, high-end commercial.
  77. The Experiment
    A solid slice of entertainment without reaching the psychological depths promised by the subject matter.
  78. The Clovehitch Killer
    This atypical serial-killer thriller distinguishes itself in resisting thrills — let alone any actual violence — till well past its halfway point, instead maximizing the quiet discomfort in a son’s rising suspicion that his outwardly Dagwood-type dad could be a notorious murderer.
  79. Make Believe
    A charming, affectionate and often elegantly executed study of teenage magicians, their craft and the social shadows they step out of when they do their stuff.
  80. Torn
    Performances and presentation are solid enough, but the pic feels a bit undernourished, particularly once it closes on a note that’s well intentioned but provides no real resolution.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Obsession
    Robertson’s low-key performance is as crucial to the manifold surprise impact as Bujold’s versatile, sensual and effervescent charisma.
  82. A Home at the End of the World
    Driven by soulful performances and by a genuine sense of wonder for the unpredictable permutations of love and family.
  83. The Best Man Holiday
    The cluttered, overlong narrative never really finds its footing.
  84. Copying Beethoven
    Helmer Agnieszka Holland's Copying Beethoven joins 1994's "Immortal Beloved" in the ranks of mediocre dramatic interpretations of Beethoven's biography.
  85. Restless City
    Picture's visual elegance makes a limited arthouse life possible, although Nigerian-born fashion photog-turned-helmer Andrew Dosunmu is far more interested in aesthetics than narrative in erecting his visually poetic "City."
  86. Outlaw King
    Whatever its value as rabble-rousing historical reenactment, Outlaw King never quite compares to the many films it’s so keen to imitate, and in some cases outright quote.
  87. Biosphere
    Ultimately the performers are winning enough, and the ideas in the ambiguous story intriguing enough, to achieve an end result of successful middleweight charm and substance.
  88. Shakespeare High
    Alex Rotaru's very busy documentary focuses more on the kids' stories than on their work; considering how sensational some of them are, it's probably a strategic advantage.
  89. A Land Imagined
    "Land” will feel overly familiar to those looking for more than well-intentioned musings on the horrendous treatment of guest workers.
  90. Nights and Weekends
    Some may find the result boring or unpolished, but there's poetry -- not to mention a fair dose of comedy -- in the mix.
  91. Better Than Chocolate
    A terrifically entertaining romantic comedy, Better Than Chocolate tackles the age-old theme of the universal need for love with exuberance and gusto.
  92. Advantageous
    Advantageous presents an offbeat, intimate dystopian vision that is strongly intriguing for a while. But just when it should shift from a focus on ideas to emotional involvement, the pic instead grows slower and less engaging.
  93. Lemon
    Lemon is a comedy of miserablism that keeps poking you in the ribs — and, quite often, fails to hit the rib it’s aiming for. Yet it’s a watchable curio, because beneath it all the director, the Panamanian-born Janicza Bravo, has a more conventional sensibility than she lets on.
  94. I Smile Back
    What propels the film forcefully along is Silverman, who pulls us down so deeply inside Laney’s sickness that everything else seems to fade away (much as it does in the character’s own life).
  95. Little Monsters
    The paradox of "Little Monsters" is that it’s so guileless in its story and execution, it could have been made for kids, except for the disembowelings. Still, Nyong’o not only survives the film with her dignity intact, the audience might exit admiring her more.
  96. Tower Heist
    During the heist itself, the suspense is palpable, if only because Christophe Beck's funky score blares its horns so insistently, one can't help but feel anxious. But the laughs don't follow.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Untamed Heart
    Appealing lead performances elevate this modestly scaled romantic tearjerker, from a first script by Tom Sierchio.
  98. Sarah's Key
    Working in a classical style and genre that rep a far cry from his previous work ("Pretty Things," "Gomez and Tavares, "UV"), Pacquet-Brenner's direction is always respectful if never entirely subtle.
  99. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    If none of the Hobbit films resonate with "Rings'" mythic grandeur, it’s hard not to marvel at Jackson’s facility with these characters and this world, which he seems to know as well as John Ford knew his Monument Valley, and to which he here bids an elegiac adieu.
  100. Blueback
    The film adopts a somewhat more grownup, realistic, less parabolic tenor, though its ecology-minded narrative remains a bit sketchy for feature treatment — resulting in a pleasant, very handsome-looking movie rather short on dramatic impact.
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