Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. I Love Boosters
    It’s an incendiary prank of a movie that begs our indulgence at times yet also invites us to get high on what a playful provocation it is.
  2. Midwinter Break
    Midwinter Break does nothing earth-shattering (it remains wee), but the movie touchingly colors in how it might be possible for two people to know each other too well and also not well enough.
  3. Holding Liat
    The camera’s non-interventionist nature becomes vital. The visual approach embodies the Beinin family’s loss of control, and the growing uncertainty around them and what they believe.
  4. A Sad and Beautiful World
    For his evocative and wistful romance to yield its intended effect, writer-director Cyril Aris’ biggest ask of the viewer is to surrender to the serendipitous nature of the couple’s connection — a request that is later supported with a concept that expands the film’s magical realist vein. Contrived by design, the premise eventually earns enough goodwill for one to play along.
  5. 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.
  6. I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not
    If you go into the movie wanting to be shocked and appalled, you won’t be disappointed.
  7. I Want Your Sex
    Hoffman and Wilde’s commitment makes the film feel more important than it is. It’s better to think of this either as pure, irreverent escapism or a guiltless pleasure.
  8. Zi
    If the film weren’t so arresting to look at, it could often be absorbed with eyes closed: If its larger message is elusive, Zi advocates for taking the world in at your own sensory pace.
  9. The Wrecking Crew
    What you see in the key art and the first-look impression you get from the teaser and trailers is a clear and accurate indicator of what you’ll get in the film. And for many action movie fans that’ll do just fine.
  10. I Swear
    Written and directed by Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine”), the film wrestles enthusiastically and mostly successfully with the potential pitfalls of making a funny yet respectful project about a condition that sometimes lends itself to laughter, even as it wreaks havoc with Davidson’s life in serious ways.
  11. Saccharine
    Saccharine proves James’ gifts are better served by more independent means, even if it falls short of the emotional and dramatic heft that gave “Relic” equal genre and arthouse appeal.
  12. The Musical
    Like its eminently problematic anti-hero, The Musical says its piece with conviction to spare, and a welcome streak of cat-among-the-pigeons danger rarely found in contemporary American comedy.
  13. Lady
    If her filmmaking style is relatively straightforward, it’s a rich, raw sense of place that gives this Sundance entry — premiering in world dramatic competition — vitality and danger.
  14. Exit 8
    Like the game, which is popular as kind of a one-off without much replayability, Exit 8 is designed to divert for a short time and does so enjoyably, with Kawamura proving a most judicious assessor of just how little backstory, plot explanation and character development he can get away with and still keep us engaged.
  15. Joe's College Road Trip
    In Joe’s College Road Trip, Tyler Perry doesn’t just let his hair down, he isn’t just having down-and-dirty fun — he’s wildly, deliriously profane. The movie is a rude and rollicking lark, which makes it an anomaly in the Perry canon.
  16. Butterfly
    Striking and often unpredictably moving — before an ungainly third act that frays into a profusion of endings — Søimer Guttormsen’s film places a lot of trust in its leads, erstwhile “Worst Person in the World” co-stars Renate Reinsve and Helene Bjørneby, to sell its wild swerves in mood and perspective. Both are up to the task.
  17. For Worse
    For Worse might be a tiny step among its kind, but it still feels like a leap for its thoughtful auteur, ultimately celebrating new beginnings as an ageless milestone.
  18. Marc by Sofia
    Marc by Sofia isn’t particularly penetrating or eye-opening on Jacobs as an artist, businessman or human being, but it is a pleasant and casually glamorous hang.
  19. The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel
    "The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers” is totally worth seeing, but the film feels like an indirect act of contrition, which may be why it turns into an overdone lament.
  20. Kill Me
    There are times when the film can feel weighted down by its clever framework. Externalizing the steps of deeply internal emotional progress Jimmy and Margot make with one another’s help can occasionally seem like a separate pursuit from satisfying genre expectations when it really does appear there’s a killer on the loose. However, the approach proves fresh more often than not.
  21. The Fox
    The issue becomes throwing in a little too much, both for the characters and for writer-director Dario Russo, who may have a few too many good story ideas to fully flesh out. Yet, he delivers a promising and imaginative feature debut.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Honky Tonk
    The major power in Honky Tonk is in the love scenes between Clark Gable and Lana Turner.
  23. Apex
    Kormákur’s film doesn’t trade in surprises, but offers more than enough heart-in-mouth action spectacle to compensate.
  24. Faces of Death
    Faces of Death is “ambitious” trash, with the courage of its own gaudy thematic grandiloquence.
  25. Magic Hour
    The unexpected formal execution draws the excitement out of what’s mostly a straightforward narrative.
  26. Swapped
    On the story level, Swapped is simple to a fault, yet there’s a surprise enchantment to it — it’s a woodland fairy tale for seven-year-olds, but on that score it’s visually ravishing and actually rather touching.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Seduction of Joe Tynan
    Adroitly combining humor and intimate drama, Joe Tynan joins that list of exemplary Washington-set pix, including Advise and Consent and The Best Man.
  28. Two Pianos
    The melodrama begins at such a high pitch in Desplechin’s latest, you might think it has nowhere to go but down, yet this earnestly inflamed tale of art, grief, betrayal and all-consuming amour on steroids keeps finding new, hysterical ways to surprise.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    None But the Brave
    Frank Sinatra, who also stars with Clint Walker and produces, makes his directorial bow and is responsible for some good effects in maintaining a suspenseful pace.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    200 Motels
    The film is a series of surrealistic sequences allegedly inspired by the experiences of a rock group on the road. The incidents are often outrageously irreverent. The comedy is fast and furious, both sophisticated and sophomoric.
  31. Another Day
    Another Day tackles a tough topic with profound grace. This kind of cinematic workmanship, so finely effortless that it’s almost invisible, doesn’t come by often.
  32. Hope
    It’s an endless pleasure to see such exceptional, careful, considered filmmaking applied to such a gleefully generic set-up. Even when some of the tricks become apparent, each new repetition somehow delivers more than the last.
  33. Propeller One-Way Night Coach
    If Propeller One-Way Night Coach lets you know anything genuine, it’s that Travolta, at an early age, looked around at his life and thought it was magical. That, in its way, is a gift, one that in movie after movie he has reflected back to his fans.
  34. Legion
    Even when the blood-and-thunder hokiness of the over-the-top plot tilts perilously close to absurdity, the admirably straight-faced performances by well-cast lead players provide just enough counterbalance to sustain audience curiosity and sympathy.
  35. Edge of Darkness
    Campbell's topnotch production team yields predictably polished results, but the director's decision to revisit the late Troy Kennedy Martin's teleplay, finally, feels lacking.
  36. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    Action movies of this scale often start off strong and wind down to forgettable finales, but "Percy Jackson" is the opposite, overcoming a clunky setup to deliver nearly all its thrills in the last half-hour.
  37. The Hurt Locker
    Boal's script stirs a little of everything into the pot, which boils down into seven setpieces divided by brief intervals of camaraderie/conflict among the three protags.
  38. Daybreakers
    The script doesn't wring many surprises or much character involvement from the premise, and the brothers' helming, while slick, is short on scares, action setpieces and humor.
  39. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    But the charm of the film is that it resists turning people into cliches and lets Parker and Grant work their particular magic -- before they get to Wyoming, their performances are as stressed out as their characters, and while it's a dubious conceit that going cowboy is a cure-all, they put the notion across as convincingly as possible.
  40. Where the Wild Things Are
    Director Spike Jonze's sharp instincts and vibrant visual style can't quite compensate for the lack of narrative eventfulness that increasingly bogs down this bright-minded picture.
  41. Law Abiding Citizen
    True torture-porn aficionados will be disappointed, as editor Tariq Anwar cuts away right before blade meets flesh -- a move that feels a tad, well, gutless under the circumstances. But elsewhere, "Citizen" proves startlingly graphic, even by R-rated standards.
  42. The Informant!
    Amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny.
  43. Brothers
    Though it renders a convincing portrait of fractured family life and boasts its share of powerfully acted moments, this schematic tale of two siblings, ripped apart by jealousy, misunderstanding and unshakable trauma, plays like a more polished but less effective twin to the 2005 Danish original.
  44. 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.
  45. Everybody's Fine
    Though a bit too artful to merit the pejorative "tearjerker" label, the film is rigorously streamlined to deliver a good emotional uppercut by the end, and purely on the strength of its craft, it connects.
  46. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    Little seems new compared to the first installment, except that this version is longer, louder, and perhaps "more than your eye can meet" in one sitting.
  47. 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.
  48. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    Suffers in ways typical to such adaptations -- what was fresh and flavorful in anecdotal description becomes more familiar and sitcom broad in literal depiction.
  49. Taken
    Neeson growls his way through the functional dialogue as an unstoppable killing machine in impressive, cold-eyed style.
  50. Astro Boy
    Appropriately for a film about robots, efficiency is the primary virtue of Astro Boy, a well-oiled CG-animated superhero pic that makes up in competence and vitality what it lacks in originality.
  51. The Devil's Rejects
    If you can stomach the violence -- and despite the R rating, that's a big if -- it's hard to deny that Zombie has made exactly the movie he set out to make, guaranteed to satiate his considerable fan base and sicken just about everyone else.
  52. Blood Diamond
    Africa's enduring sorrow is ripe for drama, but Blood Diamond is, finally, a fitting metaphor for the gems: Potentially brilliant from a distance, but upon closer inspection, one likely will see the flaws.
  53. The Notebook
    A determined and often affecting romance that doesn't speak down to audiences.
  54. I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    Perry's latest emotional roller coaster starts with considerable promise and a high-wattage cast, including Taraji P. Henson and singers Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige, before giving way to melodramatic predictability.
  55. Knowing
    Genre fans always looking for something new and awesome may feel like they've seen most of this before, but the conceptual and emotional strength of Summit's Nicolas Cage starrer largely carries the day.
  56. Bronson
    Too smart/arty for the slasher set, and too violent for high-brows, Bronson may have a tough time finding its niche, although it has "cult hit" written all over it.
  57. Che
    If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he's portrayed here.
  58. 300
    A blustery, bombastic, visually arresting account of the Battle of Thermopylae as channeled through the rabid imagination of graphic novelist Frank Miller.
  59. Coco Before Chanel
    More sentimental than chic, Gallic biopic Coco Before Chanel nonetheless knits a convincing portrait of the designer's journey from her humble beginnings as a provincial seamstress to the halls of Parisian haute couture.
  60. Appleseed
    Craft connoisseurs won't be disappointed with the splendidly executed result. However, everyone else is likely to wonder what the fuss about given the plot's dated cyborgs-and-supercomputers hijinks.
  61. She's One of Us
    While the director's penchant for extended silences and stagy character positioning make it all seem rather studied, the drama nonetheless is compellingly unsettling.
  62. Aliens of the Deep
    Documentary's visual wonders and well-pitched enthusiasm happily outstrip its clunkily ingenuous ain't-science-fun narrative.
  63. Emile
    A routine memory piece about long-buried family secrets that bubble back to the surface to wreak havoc.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Because of Winn-Dixie
    Uneven though it is, Because of Winn-Dixie, based on Kate Di Camillo's novel, is tough to dislike.
  65. Man of the House
    More than passably amusing.
  66. Hostage
    What sends this initially tense thriller over the precipice is a plot scheme that never knows when enough is enough.
  67. Fifty-Fifty
    Schizo manages to keep it fresh.
  68. Steamboy
    Dry storytelling and boy's-toys mechanics will stop this from being the next "Spirited Away"-style crossover hit.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    First Love
    While engaging, pic eventually betrays itself as having a trivial attitude to its chosen subject, with a climactic scene that is genuinely, but inappropriately, amusing.
  70. Palindromes
    Like the symmetrical word that supplies its title, the mordant comedy-drama recovers ground to become a boldly intriguing if not entirely satisfying subversion of American family values.
  71. Down and Derby
    A modestly amusing family-friendly comedy about a miniature car race that brings out the worst in overzealous fathers who compete with each other through their children.
  72. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    Colorful, sometimes endearing but highly uneven picture.
  73. Torremolinos 73
    Somewhat wacky tale, based on real events, is kept anchored in reality through attention to detail and by first-rate central perfs.
  74. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Strikingly crafted but rather empty drama.
  75. Fighting Tommy Riley
    The winner by a knockout is Eddie Jones...Without Jones, pic is a standard drama on the sweet science with the usual tropes and a slight tweak on the usual conflicts.
  76. A Hole in One
    This oddball tale of a small-town gangster's troubled girlfriend hovers uncertainly on the edge of an absurdist universe.
  77. Unleashed
    Slick transitions and punchy pace leave just enough time for Hopkins and Freeman to make dopey dialogue sound far smarter than it is. And as both pit bull and puppy dog, Jet Li convinces.
  78. Lost
    Schlocky yet resourceful.
  79. Madagascar
    Pleasant, if mediocre family fare.
  80. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
    Result is hardly a diabolical failure, if not quite a heavenly masterpiece. Schrader's intelligent, quietly subversive pic emphasizes spiritual agony over horror ecstasy, while paying occasional lip-service to the need for scares.
  81. Second Best
    While Second Best is mildly engaging thanks largely to an appealingly self-effacing turn from Joe Pantoliano, writer-director Eric Weber's script could have used an extra polish or two.
  82. 6ixtynin9
    The film goes more and more off-kilter, with its jumble of black comedy and bloodshed and its mild-mannered protagonist embroiled in violent crime making it an unsophisticated foray into Coen brothers territory.
  83. The Fearless Freaks
    Will please devotees without attracting many, if any, new converts.
  84. A Common Thread
    Thoughtful cross-generational portrait is full of familiar building blocks rendered fresh by first time feature helmer Eleonore Faucher.
  85. Apres Vous (After You)
    Elegantly written, well-thesped comedy is too hermetic and bittersweet to be laugh-out-loud funny, but sustains a fairly successful ratio of uncomfortable situations to amusing solutions.
  86. The Deal
    Never entirely convincing yet always watchable.
  87. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    An exhaustingly elaborate romantic fantasy actioner.
  88. High Tension
    Deftly juggles gore and suspense, and punchline holds an intellectual frisson or two for fans of gender-role speculation, but basically this is one more horror pic on the distinguished road already trodden by "Texas Chain Saw Massacre," "Maniac" and the like.
  89. Café Lumière
    Hou fans will find what they're looking for; others will wonder when the action starts.
  90. The Great Water
    Extraordinary perfs by a mostly young cast likely will be cancelled out by the grim subject.
  91. Heights
    An entertaining ensembler marbled with wit and heartache.
  92. Lila Says
    Easy on the eye but light on originality.
  93. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    Stands reasonably well on its own as an urgent, updated genre meditation on nurture vs. nature.
  94. Undead
    Precociously inventive horror pic that combines brain-eating zombies with outer space aliens.
  95. Chronicles
    Starts out bracingly but gradually loses focus. Ecuadorian writer-director Sebastian Cordero's screenplay trades in underdeveloped conflicts and blank characters, hinting far too early at the killer's probable identity.
  96. Wedding Crashers
    Despite flashes of nudity, crudity and mockery of women's raging hormones at the first sight of a trousseau, at its core it's just a big pushover with the heart of a chick flick.
  97. The Island
    Frenetic actioner about refugees from a genetic cloning plant starts off intriguingly, burns up its ideas in the first hour and pads out the rest with joltingly repetitive action sequences.
  98. The Edukators
    Ambling drama shows an exasperating lack of economy and a weakness for diatribe dialogue, but becomes progressively more involving after a laborious start.
  99. The Dukes of Hazzard
    Loud, silly but kind of lame-brained fun with car chases aplenty, "Dukes" faithfully plays like an extended episode of the series, albeit with an additional gallon or so of fuel-injected raunchiness.
  100. Junebug
    Has a washed-out look that may be off-putting to auds who might otherwise enjoy the pic's uncondescending view of Southern characters and customs.
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