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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    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Army of Darkness
    Blending almost nonstop violence with humorous parody, Sam Raimi's latest excursion into horror-kitsch seems more like an irreverent "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
  2. All Is True
    The result is a revisionist fiasco, too dense with Shakespeare allusions for casual moviegoers, and too fast and loose with the facts for those who know a thing or two about the man. In short, All Is True takes the English language’s most gifted dramatist and reduces his sunset years to a sloppy soap opera.
  3. Winter Solstice
    Story of a still-grieving widower and his two troubled teenage sons is distinguished by its emotional integrity, sustained mood of aching melancholy and superbly understated performances.
  4. Sleep Dealer
    Despite some clever virtual-reality concepts and projections about the next frontier of globalization, Alex Rivera's ambitious directing debut lacks the vision, or the budget, to pull off its fusion of sci-fi and aspirational saga.
  5. Anywhere But Here
    With half a dozen roles to her credit, Portman is a natural performer who brings rough edges to any role she plays -- the movie is inconceivable without her.
  6. The First Wives Club
    The familiar setup sparkles a little brighter here thanks to the ensemble and their deft delivery of the bitchy dialogue in Robert Harling's adaptation of the Olivia Goldsmith novel.
  7. The Child I Never Was
    Though Pieck is to be admired for the rigorousness in telling this chilling story (on what looks like a near zero budget), the film itself remains resolutely unlikable.
  8. The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez
    Sensitively and methodically tells the story of the first U.S. soldier killed in the 2003 Iraq invasion.
  9. My Afternoons with Margueritte
    French feel-good filmmaking to the max. Yet a heaping pile of cliches doesn't prevent this touchingly simplistic tale -- from exuding a strong and universal emotional appeal.
  10. Magic Magic
    Meticulously acted, gorgeously shot and hilariously insightful about the strange, inarticulable ways people can get on one another’s nerves, this psychological thriller takes its premise to surprising, darkly comic extremes.
  11. Champs
    Director Bert Marcus’ Champs is the moviegoing opposite of a prize fight, a slick but not particularly stylish documentary that actually becomes more focused and energized in the late rounds.
  12. Amnesia
    There are a lot of compelling ideas afloat in “Amnesia” that never fully congeal, but the undeniable sincerity and personal commitment of Schroeder’s vision help to carry the film over its rough patches.
  13. Crooked House
    With such an enticing cast, it’s tougher than one might think trying to divine which of these eccentrics might be responsible for the crime, and “Crooked House” keeps you guessing, right up to its shocking conclusion.
  14. Dragon Ball Super: Broly
    If you’re among the heretofore uninitiated drawn to this new Dragon Ball extravaganza, which has been dubbed into English and booked into 1,440 North American theaters, you may often find yourself experiencing similar frustration as you struggle to make sense of a patchwork plot that seems derived from various strands of the ongoing mythos, and is filled with apparently major characters whose backstories are only fuzzily defined.
  15. Jirga
    As interesting as all this is, and as challenging and perilous it must have been to capture these images, Jirga’s elliptical approach to plot and selective use of subtitles does the finished product no favors.
  16. Judy & Punch
    The core narrative is rather simple, and the political metaphor not especially subtle. But the overall concept, from Foulkes and her trio of story collaborators, has a bracingly original air, from the film’s period anachronisms to its impressive design elements.
  17. Dads
    It’s mostly a vanilla documentary with no real destination, but one with plenty of cuteness to go around.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Battle Beyond the Stars
    Despite the expense involved, the pic appears not to take itself too seriously. Principal characterizations are skin deep.
  19. Green and Gold
    To put it bluntly, Nelson gives this clichéd indie a lot more than it ever gives him.
  20. Europe's New Faces
    What Sam Abbas, as director, cinematographer and editor, does here is to disarmingly present the situation in snippets that give the audience all the details of crossing from Libya to Italy, including elements both harrowing and mundane. In so doing, he engenders empathy and understanding for these displaced people and their struggle, taking a humanist approach rather than an abstract one.
  21. 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.
  22. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    What Erica Rivinoja, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s script lacks in lingering nutritional value, it compensates for with amusing food puns. If nothing else, the pic’s zany tone and manic pace are good for a quick-hit sugar high.
  23. The Djinn
    This lean thriller doesn’t provide much food for thought, but it delivers a compact dose of extreme jeopardy.
  24. Godzilla vs. Kong
    Godzilla vs. Kong is most satisfying when it’s at its most simple, which happens either in quiet bonding scenes between Jia and Kong, or else in those deafening moments when the monsters are duking it out.
  25. Terrifier 2
    Terrifier 2 is essentially a series of grotesque homicidal set pieces stitched together into a threadbare narrative of midnight funhouse clichés.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cry Freedom
    Cry Freedom personifies the struggle of South Africa's black population against apartheid in the evolving friendship of martyred black activist Stephen Biko and liberal white newspaper editor Donald Woods. It derives its impact less from epic scope than from the wrenching immediacy of its subject matter and the moral heroism of its appealingly played, idealistic protagonists.
    • Variety
  27. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
    Well-wrought individual scenes and sharply focused acting provide Rebecca Miller's third feature with a measure of gravity, but too much abrupt, even melodramatic behavior and undigested psychological matter leave nagging dissatisfactions.
  28. Go for Sisters
    Like too many of Sayles’ films, Go for Sisters seems bound to slip through the cracks, not quite memorable enough to make a lasting impression.
  29. What's Love Got to Do with It?
    As strenuously as the film professes to give arranged marriages a fair shake, its whole cornball narrative is rigged against the very concept: “Love Contractually” may be the pitch, but “Love Actually” is the preferred outcome.
  30. No Hard Feelings
    When you see No Hard Feelings, you realize that the film’s promise of risky business is little more than a big tease.
  31. Doctor Sleep
    This sequel to “The Shining” may register, in the end, as a long footnote, but it makes you glad that you got to play in that sinister funhouse again.
  32. Cape of Good Hope
    Although by now routine, the intertwining of separate story strands is solidly structured, and the different mini-narratives resolved in unsurprising yet satisfying ways.
  33. The Contender
    The large, talented cast elevates the film above the trappings of its loquacious debates, particularly Allen.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mystic Pizza
    Genuine and moving... Script is remarkably mature in its dealings with teens.
  35. The Princess Blade
    A martial arts fantasy in modern dress, but set in an unidentified country and era, The Princess Blade is a tough toasted sandwich with a soft filling.
  36. Fade to Black
    Smartly directed by Pat Paulson and Michael John Warren and nicely lensed.
  37. The Man Who Bought Mustique
    A memorable portrait of an unbearable personality.
  38. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    David Koepp's script, from the Michael Crichton novel, is schematic and largely predictable. There's an obvious threat and not too many ways to quell it. Underneath the technical virtuosity is a standard chase film, and director Steven Spielberg does little to elevate it dramatically.
  39. Love! Valour! Compassion!
    It is so sharply written and entertaining that in its stage-to-screen transfer the material easily overcomes its theatrical sensibility and the static direction of Joe Mantello, who also staged the Broadway production.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bostonians
    This is a classy adaptation of a Henry James novel.
  41. The Boy Downstairs
    Mamet has a quick, spry reaction time and a gently forlorn focus that holds the screen, and she holds this movie together.
  42. The Rachel Divide
    The portrait it paints is sure to confound and infuriate in equal measure. Far from simply a snapshot of a discussion about race, Brownson’s documentary is a riveting account of self-sabotage, misplaced priorities, and obstinacy run amok.
  43. 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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Streets of Fire
    A pulsing, throbbing orchestration careening around the rescue of a kidnapped young singer. The decor is urban squalor.
  45. Mr. Peabody & Sherman
    The narrative’s time-travel element allows for plenty of fluffy, fleet-footed action.
  46. The Cartel
    A lopsided whine about the state of American public schools, The Cartel is a lesson in dichotomous documaking: Effervescent and tedious, crusading and craven, it's a prime example of that ubiquitous oxymoron: the agenda-driven "expose."
  47. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    The end of the world can't come fast enough in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, a disastrously dull take on the disaster-movie formula.
  48. Alien 3
    A muddled effort that offers little more than visual splendor to recommend it.
  49. Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story
    A very entertaining recap that grows more disturbing as it wades into the dysfunctional behavior that doomed the show.
  50. The Railway Man
    There’s something decidedly old-fashioned — and also dull as ditchwater — about Jonathan Teplitzky’s retelling of events.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pocahontas
    The Disney artists have created a vivid palette for the picture.
  52. Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno
    Another gorgeous three-hour study of young, attractively housed hearts in often turbulent motion, Mektoub is a frequently seductive sensory epic of equivalent ambition, yet despite its woozily pleasurable set pieces, the fraught emotions binding them are less urgent, and the perspective of its protagonist far less immediate.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Follow That Bird
    Simple premise has the slightly goofy yellow, eight-foot fowl Big Bird taken away from Sesame Street by the officious Miss Finch so he can grow up among his own kind, a bird family named the Dodos, in Oceanview, Ill.
  54. Pretty Problems
    The result is a fresh mix of social satire and relationship dissection with a saving dollop of heart.
  55. Sing
    While there are no profound life lessons to be found in these subplots, Jennings and his cast manage to deliver a steady supply of laughs, while respecting one of Illumination’s core principles: It’s OK to be silly.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Deja Vu
    Cinema's natural felicities for time and action have seldom felt as beautifully dovetailed.
  57. Lizzie
    It’s a simple story made to rouse modern hearts, and the performances and cinematography are so good, the film nearly pulls off the trick.
  58. Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    Two's company, three's a crowd and eight is definitely way more than enough in writer-director Daniele Thompson's mismanaged comic ensembler, Change of Plans. Less a crowdpleaser and more a headscratcher than her previous hit, "Avenue Montaigne."
  59. Loudmouth
    The film, at two hours, still feels padded out with recent history. I would have liked, instead, to see some other dimension of Sharpton — who he is away from the protest marches. “Loudmouth” feels highly controlled, almost overly focused on Sharpton’s political identity at the expense of everything else.
  60. Cocaine Cowboys
    A rogues gallery of flamboyant gangsters paint an anecdote-rich portrait of the drug trade, while a steady stream of cops, coroners and crime reporters furnish social commentary.
  61. The Mask
    This showcase for the talents of Jim Carrey is adroitly directed, viscerally and visually dynamic and just plain fun.
  62. The Playroom
    Although Dyer's sophomore feature clearly intends to capture the magical otherness of a child's p.o.v., nothing in her strangely aloof mise-en-scene or her late sister Gretchen's script yields anything more than a group of well-thesped, believable suburban kids upset by their parents' behavior.
  63. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    The technical side isn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds, and there’s only limited interest in watching White navigate the icon’s first serious bout of depression. That is, unless one understands just how much that record represents to the next generations of musicians and why.
  64. Fight or Flight
    Ultimately, it’s extremely doubtful that any of this would work nearly as well as it does without Hartnett at the center of the storm, anchoring the bloody chaos and generating rooting interest with a performance defined by propulsive physicality, industrial-strength enthusiasm and an indefatigable willingness, even eagerness, to repeatedly make himself the butt of the joke.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Creepshow
    George Romero, collaborating with writer Stephen King, again proves his adeptness at combining thrills with tongue-in-cheek humor.
  66. Heartbreaker
    Combining the glamour of "To Catch a Thief" with the ruckus of a Ben Stiller movie, TV vet Pascal Chaumeil's French Riviera-set intrigue stars Romain Duris.
  67. The Lovebirds
    Bits and pieces of the movie are funny.
  68. Mr. Holland's Opus
    An idealized tribute to a charismatic teacher who has devoted his entire life to music appreciation, Mr. Holland’s Opus has the same old-fashioned texture as Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Older audiences will be moved by the story, but the crucial variable is to what extent younger viewers will embrace this schmaltzy, Capraesque saga that’s not only set mainly in the past but also feels as if it were made back when.
  69. On the Basis of Sex
    An RBG biopic shouldn’t be about sizzle and showpersonship, but hard work and determination in the face of rampant, seemingly unremitting sexism, and in that respect, Leder’s film gets its priorities right.
  70. Beyond the Gates
    This fun if unmemorable occult thriller sports — all too faithfully at times — both the typical pleasures and shortcomings of the movies it pays homage to.
  71. Bitter Melon
    The complex tonal, textural and thematic mix here doesn’t always work, but it’s always interesting and often invigorating.
  72. Run All Night
    Even when he’s dealing with this boilerplate material, Collet-Serra brings an understated intensity and a subtle emotional pull to every scene, aided immeasurably by actors who invest their roles, big and small, with just the right degree of conviction.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Black Cauldron
    By any hard measure, the $25 million animated Cauldron is not very original. The characters, though cute and cuddly and sweet and mean and ugly and simply awful, don't really have much to do that would remain of interest to any but the youngest minds.
  74. Matthew Barney: No Restraint
    Whatever audiences might have wanted to know about sculptor-filmmaker Matthew Barney but were too embarrassed to ask is revealed in accessible documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Finian's Rainbow
    Overall, the $4 million film has an ethereal quality: it’s a blend of real elements, such as love, greed, compassion, prejudice, and other aspects of human nature both noble and otherwise; yet it’s also infused with mystical elements of magic, leprechauns, pixies and wishes that come true.
  76. We Own the Night
    Adequately acted and flecked with the required quota of action to satisfy genre fans, pic recalls numerous good police dramas of the 1970s, but mostly in superficial ways that bring nothing new to the table.
  77. I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal
    Since the documentary will likely find its home in the educational market, a more balanced approach might have made it more insightful and educational.
  78. The Gutter
    For all its bawdy humor, it’s good clean fun.
  79. Ice Age: The Meltdown
    A tad crasser and pushier than its predecessor, Ice Age: The Meltdown is still an entirely serviceable follow-up to the 2002 hit that will thoroughly amuse kids and get a rise or two out of parents as well.
  80. Lakeboat
    So fractured and so awkwardly staged that end result is an uninvolving film that’s dramatically inert and artistically shapeless.
  81. Intact
    A self-aware, intriguing and technically accomplished fantasy thriller firmly in the Hollywood tradition, Intact has a confidence and expertise not seen from a Spanish tyro since Alejandro Amenabar's "Thesis" (1996).
  82. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
    Script just doesn’t have it in terms of fresh narrative developments or individual gags.
  83. Signs
    All smoke and mirrors. With his third straight excursion into the supernatural, M. Night Shyamalan has begun revealing the hand that works his spooky tricks so much that the lack of substance is plainly seen.
  84. Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead
    High-spirited but hobbled by lame dialogue and sheer overkill, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead marks an instance where too much of a good thing means it just isn’t good anymore.
  85. Simon
    Eddy Terstall's mild brand of humor and predictable throat-catching weepiness works strictly along boob-tube illness-of-the-week lines, with plentiful shots of topless women.
  86. Bridget Jones's Baby
    Despite Zellweger’s appealingly warm, vulnerable performance, the film itself is a mixed bag.
  87. A Very British Gangster
    Noonan talks too much, preens too much and simply loves the camera. And the bald, bullish, real-life mobster will likely place MacIntyre's movie among the more commercial nonfiction films of the year.
  88. Suntan
    Right from the superbly framed opening scene of Kostis on the ferry, the visuals satisfy with their unerring sense of composition.
  89. Elvis & Nixon
    While its sense of humor takes some gettin’ used to, the sheer spaciness of Liza Johnson’s stranger-than-fiction political satire ultimately proves its greatest asset.
  90. Legally Blonde
    The mildly engaging silliness of its premise is never transformed into something more substantial, and the attempt at a fine-tuned "Clueless"-like tone is only sputteringly achieved.
  91. The Final Girls
    The concept carries The Final Girls cheerfully past some dry stretches, and the actors are clearly enjoying themselves, with Farmiga the only representative of humorlessness in what is admittedly the sole sincerity-load-bearing role.
  92. Grigris
    The film is easier to admire than it is to invest in emotionally, though its pulse quickens with a dramatic, and boldly untelegraphed, feminist twist in the rural-set final reel.
  93. The Pact
    This well-dressed midcentury period piece keeps teasing a darker, more perverse take on a familiar story of cross-generational creative mentorship. Yet despite a performance of unnerving severity by Birthe Neumann as the rancorous Blixen, the film remains too polite and light on incident to deliver on that promise.
  94. Cars 3
    Cars 3 is a friendly, rollicking movie made with warmth and dash, and to the extent that it taps our primal affection for this series, it more than gets the job done.
  95. Good Grief
    Levy’s funny-sad contemporary drama acknowledges the supportive dynamic that Marc plays in Thomas and Sophie’s lives, even as it centers the gay best friend for a change — not so different from the one he played in “Happiest Season.” All three characters feel well rounded and real, especially in their imperfections.
  96. Moonlight Mile
    A movie at war with itself -- tuned into its characters' vicissitudes one moment, stumbling with awkward stabs at goofiness the next.
  97. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
    Sometimes bloody good fun is enough. It’s as good a reason as any for making this sunny, silly rallying cry for irresponsibility, and a better one still for watching it.
  98. The Dead Lands
    While the primal you-killed-my-family-now-I-kill-you story smacks of old Westerns (and newer Liam Neeson movies), the pic rises somewhat above formula due in large part to its being acted out in this particular historic cultural context. Depictions of pre-colonialist Maori life are rare enough onscreen, let alone in this kind of muscular genre effort.
  99. Pearl Jam Twenty
    Finding a pulse only in the band's late-reel performance of "Alive," a lusty passage that would've begun a pic intent on making a case for the group's greatness, "Twenty" simply counts the years from 1991 via sludgy backstage and onstage footage whose rarity can't forgive its inclusion. Crowe's critic mentor, the late Lester Bangs, would cringe.
  100. Savages
    Savages never quite captures the novel's diamond-hard sarcasm, it offers other satisfactions in its visceral immediacy, its overriding sense of danger and a clutch of performances that, whatever one's reservations about the characters, can't help but court the viewer's emotional investment.
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