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. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    Modestly engaging but mostly unexceptional.
  2. Beautiful Losers
    Full of energy and attitude.
  3. Music and Lyrics
    Grant carries the day as the fortysomething lad still living off his youth and just about getting away with it.
  4. Unfriended
    Simultaneously clever and exasperating, the film puts a novel spin on the genre Roger Ebert dubbed “the Dead Teenager Movie.”
  5. The Trotsky
    Both cartoonish and cerebral, and studded with in-jokes referencing multicultural life in "la belle ville" and classic cinema, the colorful pic stretches its premise a bit thin over nearly two hours.
  6. The Magician
    A talkative Melbourne hit man and his long-suffering marks are engaging company in "The Magician," an Aussie mockumentary cut from the same cloth as 1992 Belgian cult item "Man Bites Dog." Lacking the latter film's graphic violence, this pic opts for straight-on comedy and largely succeeds. [18 July 2005]
    • Variety
      • Posted Aug 4, 2022
  7. Breastmilk
    Ben-Ari seems just as invested, if not more so, in the social and psychological obstacles that can make breastfeeding problematic, and she explores them with impressive rigor, sensitivity and a refreshing lack of judgment, listening intently while prescribing little.
  8. The Automatic Hate
    This arresting seriocomedy deftly walks a tightrope between droll and tense, over a gaping pit of crazy.
  9. A Very Sordid Wedding
    A few of the gags land, most of them don’t, but the overall rhythm is stilted and rudderless, flattened further by d.p. Paul Suderman’s point-and-shoot camerawork.
  10. 1982
    Director Oualid Mouaness’ enriching use of images and sensitivity to narrative balance outweigh his unexceptional dialogue in 1982. Even with such a caveat, his debut feature succeeds in accessing emotional truths that leave a lingering bittersweet melancholy.
  11. Dachra
    Originality may indeed be scarce in writer-director Abdelhamid Bouchnak’s debut narrative feature. Yet this gory goulash of city slickers, creepy yokels, editorial jolts and cannibalism largely transcends its derivative basic elements, thanks to his astute, richly atmospheric handling.
  12. Superior
    Superior feels like a John Dahl movie given a “Twin Peaks” vibe on a Hal Hartley budget, with just the odd dash of Old Hollywood thrown in for good measure, like the deliberately “Rear Window”-aping, flashbulb-popping finale.
  13. Love After Love
    Love After Love goes through the motions of classic, rousing melodrama but not the emotions.
  14. Bono: Stories of Surrender
    While the show is honest and engaging, full of confessions and music and inside-the-band anecdotes and other savory tidbits, it all goes down almost a bit too smoothly, without quite hitting you with the force of revelation, since Bono has always had the loquacious talk-show-friendly slightly oversharing quality of an open book.
  15. The Banker
    You may wish that you were reading about these events in The New Yorker, because the movie is so choked with neutral detail that it’s a little bloodless. It lacks fire.
  16. Sharkwater
    As an eco-political inquiry, the film is compelling even if its grounding in scientific fact could be more solid.
  17. American Swing
    Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart's documentary is just functionally assembled, lacking the style or larger social context that distinguished similar studies like "Inside Deep Throat."
  18. This Is 40
    Judd Apatow's instincts have rarely been sharper, wiser or more relatable than in This Is 40, an acutely perceptive, emotionally generous laffer about the joys and frustrations of marriage and middle age.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Gauntlet
    In a major role reversal, Clint Eastwood stars in The Gauntlet as a person who might be on the receiving end of the violence epitomized in his famed Dirty Harry film series.
  20. Cliffhanger
    But where most rugged he-man films feature a few action sequences scattered throughout, director Renny Harlin keeps the adventure stuff in this reputed $ 65 million production coming at an astonishing pace.
  21. Cruella
    The director, who brought a wicked edge to pop-culture redux “I, Tonya” a few years back, has rescued Cruella from the predictability of the earlier “101 Dalmatians” remakes and created a stylish new franchise of its own in which a one-time villain has been reborn as the unlikeliest of role models.
  22. Nanny McPhee
    Under the surface, the movie has a streak of Roald Dahl-style darkness that dilutes the sugar.
  23. Wimbledon
    A fanciful tennis-themed romance that compounds the old dilemma of "Will he get the girl?" with "Will he get the trophy?" But the answers are too predictable and laughs too scattered for this middling Universal release to generate much in the way of humor or suspense.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strike Up the Band
    Direction by Busby Berkeley deftly carries through the story side, despite script deficiencies, but he is in his element in the staging of the production and musical sequences.
  25. What Happens Later
    Meg Ryan not only dazzles before the camera in What Happens Later, but behind it as well, as director and co-writer. Through the prism of one former couple’s relationship woes, this effervescent, enlightened romantic comedy explores our innate need for reconciliation within ourselves and with each other.
  26. The Ant Bully
    Lovely to look at but a headache to listen to.
  27. Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here)
    There is an undeniable quirky appeal to the creative world of Daniel Smith, though those who hope a behind-the-scenes look will explain his motivation or personality won't find the enigma resolved here.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The First Saturday in May
    Picture successfully elaborates on the sorts of color pieces that traditionally precede the race on television.
  29. V/H/S/99
    Here, nothing stands out: The best episodes are merely good enough, and the worst just tiresome.
  30. Primate
    The movie is funny as only a bloody disgusting formulaic-but-halfway-clever slasher film can be.
  31. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    Like one of those kitchen machines that can turn nearly any ingredient into ice cream, Lasse Hallstrom has sweetened the satire right out of Paul Torday's side-splitting political sendup Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
  32. Deepsea Challenge 3D
    It’s the trench imagery itself that’s the primary attraction here, and it proves more than worth the wait.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Man of a Thousand Faces
    As Chaney, James Cagney has immersed himself so completely in the role that it is difficult to spot any Cagney mannerisms. Jane Greer, as his second wife, is particularly appealing in her devotion to her ‘difficult’ spouse.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Viva
    Viva...is faithful to those cult-adored obscurities in nearly every detail, including their soporific pace. Here, however, sly in-jokes come often enough to make said pacing funny in itself. Performances are slightly stilted or over-the-top in ways true to the original genre.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scrooge
    Albert Finney's remarkable performance in the title role; executive producer Leslie Bricusse's fluid adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, plus his unobtrusive complementary music and lyrics; and Ronald Neame's delicately controlled direction which conveys, but does not force, all the inherent warmth, humor and sentimentality.
  36. Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor
    Russian-made pic displays pro technique and visual imagination on a par with, if not better than, Hollywood frighteners, but with a distinctive Slavic accent.
  37. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
    “Ready or Not 2” delivers exactly what it promises: a garishly booby-trapped, winkingly clever-dumb good time. If that’s your idea of a good time.
  38. OSS 117 - Lost in Rio
    Jean Dujardin pulls off a charming, Peter Sellers-esque performance as he bumbles his way through retro cloak-and-dagger intrigue, displaying his character's uncanny ability to insult anyone -- and, especially in this episode, women and Jews -- who's not 100% Gallic, male and a diehard Charles de Gaulle fanatic.
  39. Novocaine
    In Novocaine, it’s the romance that keeps us going, more than whatever sadistic delight the co-directors take in poking Nathan full of holes, treating him like some kind of Looney Tunes character.
  40. Where Soldiers Come From
    Covering their lives with intimate access from before boot camp to the difficult return home, Heather Courtney's documentary packs a savage but understated punch.
  41. Complete Unknown
    Luxuriously conversational in structure, it would make an outstanding stage play, and the two stars play it with chamber-piece rigor.
  42. Burial
    Not-quite-horror despite its macabre theme and mood, this sophomore directorial feature for Ben Parker is a handsomely produced period thriller that delivers in terms of action and atmospherics, even if his somewhat convoluted story doesn’t maximally pay off.
  43. Back to Burgundy
    Though not a documentary, this gorgeous French family saga benefits enormously from Klapisch’s natural curiosity, informed by research (he participated in a harvest in order to observe its nuances) and elevated by his insistence that they film over the course of a full year, so as to capture the impact of the seasons on both viticulture and its human stewards.
  44. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    Thanked and vilified from coast to coast, Carter remains steadfast in his belief that Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories are unjust and counterproductive.
  45. The Glorias
    The film is acted with great flair and emotional precision, and it’s been staged by Taymor with vividly detailed historical flavor, yet it tells Steinem’s story in a way that’s more wide than deep.
  46. The Voices
    In tapping Satrapi to interpret this project, the producers have done about as well as one could expect with such material. Still, a bit more consistency in style would have gone a long way.
  47. Free Men
    A satisfying wartime espionage drama focused on little-noted intersections between Arabic emigres and the French Resistance.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Coca-Cola Kid
    The mix of earthy symbolism, offbeat eroticism, the picaresque and the rough-and-tumble social, rather unpolitical satire now seems poured from a bottle that has been left uncapped overnight.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ...and justice for all.
    And Justice for All is a film that attempts to alternate between comedy and drama, handling neither one incompetently, but also not excelling at either task.
  50. The Triumph of Love
    Light, thoroughly entertaining comedy;
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pipe Dream
    Pic, which may be too cutesy for some tastes, is lacking in substance in some areas but it has a wonderfully nuanced, constantly surprising perf by Mary-Louise Parker, who elevates the intermittently charming insider spoof.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Sister Maria
    A tender, achingly poignant portrait of the Austrian actress Maria Schell, My Sister Maria is a valentine from her younger brother Maximilian.
  53. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
    Surprisingly, the large format and three-dimensional technology do little to heighten the excitement of the races. In the end, docu is less a film with real behind-the-scenes insight and more a serviceable, if routine, promo package for the (very) bigscreen.
  54. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    It’s like watching the lamest Indiana Jones sequel ever imagined, minus Indiana Jones.
  55. God Help the Girl
    It will be up to viewers to decide whether God Help the Girl is ingratiatingly naive art, gratingly inept art, or a bit of both.
  56. The Fast and the Furious
    A gritty and gratifying cheap thrill, Rob Cohen's high-octane hot-car meller is a true rarity these days, a really good exploitationer, the sort of thing that would rule at drive-ins if they still existed.
  57. Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise
    Helmer Bruce David Klein's near-reverential treatment is a nice contrast to the rough-and-tumble of tour life.
  58. Brian Banks
    So, where do Shadyac and Atchison expect audiences to direct their frustration at such a miscarriage of justice? Well, that’s what makes “Brian Banks” special: It is not an angry film, but one that preaches forgiveness in the face of such adversity.
  59. Norwegian Wood
    Lovely but listless.
  60. Baskin
    Baskin becomes something of a monotonous dirge. Diverting to an extent, the film’s horrors aren’t shocking or distinctive enough, its surreal atmospherics not quite strong enough to cover for the sketchy script.
  61. To the Wonder
    Never before has Malick explored sexuality so openly onscreen, and while the nudity is fairly discreet, the eroticism of flesh cradling flesh, even the gesture of a hand touching a shoulder, turns out to be a natural subject for Lubezki’s exquisitely graceful camerawork.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fame
    Alan Parker has come up with an exposure for some of the most talented youngsters seen on screen in years. There isn't a bad performance in the lot. The great strength of the film is in the school scenes -- when it wanders away from the scholastic side as it does with increasing frequency as the overlong feature moves along, it loses dramatic intensity and slows the pace.
    • Variety
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lady Sings the Blues
    The film serves as a very good screen debut vehicle for Diana Ross, supported strongly by excellent casting, handsome 1930s physical values, and a script which is far better in dialog than structure.
  64. Steep
    Like its sister films in the surfing-movie genre, the extreme-skiing movie Steep is less a documentary than a sales pitch -- not for a product or a place, but for a sport, one its practitioners feel requires pugnacious self-promotion.
  65. A Kid Like Jake
    The movie doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere until it explodes, and the dazzling fireworks don’t quite offset its long, seemingly aimless fuse.
  66. The Accountant 2
    The Accountant 2 is an agreeably loopy hyperviolent good time.
  67. Hitch
    Considerably heavier on romance than comedy, Hitch stitches together relatively few laughs but generates enough goodwill and energy.
  68. Samoan Wedding
    The big, burly Samoan Wedding is a shrewdly written, impeccably timed and audaciously played romantic comedy.
  69. The Midnight Meat Train
    Film isn't scary, per se, but it's mostly effective nonetheless, with Cooper capably steering his character from charming young artist to nervous wreck, evoking Ralph Fiennes' more unhinged turns along the way.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Enforcer
    The spitball script [from a story by Gail Morgan Hickman and S.W. Schurr] lurches along, stopping periodically for the blood-lettings and assorted running and jumping and chasing stuff.
  71. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
    On the level of pure popcorn entertainment, there’s not a thing one can fault the 3D megabuster for.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ffolkes
    The biggest attraction is the banter between Roger Moore and the various types with whom he comes in conflict during his preparations to save a hijacked supply ship.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shivers
    A silly but moderately effective chiller about creeping parasites that systematically (and comically) 'infect' an entire highrise population with nothing less than sexual hysteria.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lover Come Back
    This is a funny, most-of-the-time engaging, smartly produced show. Farce has Rock Hudson as would-be conqueror of Doris Day, who as the victim of a who's-who deception plays brinkmanship with surrender.
  75. Ruth: Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words
    It’s curiously difficult to stay engaged with Mock’s film that merely puts forth a paint-by-numbers assembly of the wealth of material it has at its disposal.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sunday in New York
    Norman Krasna's screenplay, from his Broadway legiter, doesn't really get rolling until it has virtually marked time for almost an hour, but once it gets up this head of steam the entire complexion of the picture seems to change.
  77. Operation Finale
    The last thing you want a movie like this one to feel like is a slick Hollywood suspense drama with famous historical names plugged in. Operation Finale doesn’t feel like that, yet taken on its own here’s how it really happened terms, the movie is at once plausible and sketchy, intriguing and not fully satisfying.
  78. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Even more than in "Far From Heaven," Moore's housebound wife is a study in pent-up brilliance, with extraordinary devotion to her family.
  79. Before I Fall
    While the story easily could have fallen into a broken-record rut, “Nobody Walks” director Russo-Young finds ways of making the day in question feel fresh each time Sam lives it, while giving the overall presentation a look, feel, and voice that’s distinct from the vast swatch of YA movies.
  80. Dolphin Tale 2
    Blissfully swimming against the hyperactive kidpic tide, Dolphin Tale 2 gently peddles inspirational life lessons while respecting both its characters and its audience.
  81. August: Osage County
    This two-ton prestige pic won’t win the hearts of highbrow critics or those averse to door-slamming, plate-smashing, top-of-the-lungs histrionics, but as a faithful filmed record of Letts’ play, one could have scarcely hoped for better.
  82. It: Chapter Two
    It: Chapter Two is much longer than it needs to be, but it builds to something significant — and a lot of that filler feels justifiable in terms of how audiences’ consumption patterns are changing.
  83. Spin Me Round
    Is this supposed to be some kind of sitcom? A thriller? A provocative #MeToo statement on sexual dynamics in the workplace? Yes, all of the above, it turns out.
  84. Stray Dolls
    The downbeat, disenfranchised “dark side of the American dream” thing has been done to death in a thousand noirs, but Stray Dolls elbows just enough room for itself in that crowded category, especially for how it honors the American cinematic tradition of the last-chance motel: a place designed for passing through that somehow never lets you leave.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Twice in a Lifetime
    The pic is loaded with jock humor and incidental comments that allow the characters’ frustrations to seep out. Audiences will love Burstyn’s warm wrinkles and visit with her daughters to a male strip joint, as well as Hackman’s workmanlike heroism.
  86. The Wisdom of Crocodiles
    Starts intriguingly but ends up thrashing around as a toothless wonder.
  87. Hats Off
    Despite intimate, prolonged access to her subject, director Jyll Johnstone seems to have missed the most interesting wrinkles of Weddell's story in favor of fuzzy life's-a-stage affirmations.
  88. Tokyo Tribe
    The latest from the culty maker of “Suicide Club,” “Love Exposure” and last year’s TIFF Midnight Madness audience-award winner, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” is so insistently over-the-top from the start that the results are just fairly amusing when they ought to be exhilarating.
  89. It Happened in L.A.
    First-time writer-director (and also star) Michelle Morgan brings just enough specificity, and a surprisingly sharp eye, to make the film an interesting calling card for future work.
  90. The Mist
    Much nastier and less genteel than his best-known Stephen King adaptations ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile"), Frank Darabont's screw-loose doomsday thriller works better as a gross-out B-movie than as a psychological portrait of mankind under siege, marred by one-note characterizations and a tone that veers wildly between snarky and hysterical.
  91. Troop Zero
    Neither reinvents the wheel nor even attempts to redesign it all that much, but at least it gets where it wants to go, thanks in no small part to the work of Allison Janney, Viola Davis, and young actor Mckenna Grace.
  92. Jug Face
    The brisk, brief feature appears more atmospheric than terrifying, but its bare-bones tale gets under the skin.
  93. F9: The Fast Saga
    Considering that F9 is Lin’s fifth “F and F” film and his first one in eight years, it goes through the motions with more energy than intoxication.
  94. X-Men: The Last Stand
    The result, though it delivers only in fits and starts, is still sharper and more inventive than most comicbook-adapted fare, and eventually gets the job done as far as action buffs are concerned.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    You've Got Mail
    The most successful version yet of this familiar premise.
  96. Adam Resurrected
    Largely set in two of the least appetizing locations imaginable, a concentration camp and an insane asylum, this is a rigorously made film that does almost nothing to invite the viewer into its world.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Videodrome
    Film is dotted with video jargon and ideology which proves more fascinating than distancing. And Cronenberg amplifies the freaky situation with a series of stunning visual effects. (Review of Original Release)
  98. Lads & Jockeys
    A must for the equine-inclined, and a candid look at fearful ambition.
  99. Jarhead
    Part absurdist drama, part personal observational commentary and part hormonal explosion, all seen through the filter of previous war pics, Sam Mendes' third feature has numerous arresting moments but never achieves a confident, consistent or sufficiently audacious tone.
  100. Cosmopolis
    An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, Cosmopolis probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves.
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