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. 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.
  2. Cosmopolis
    An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, Cosmopolis probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves.
  3. Acts of Worship
    An earnest drama that's never quite as raw or moving as it means to be.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Class Action
    Winning performances by Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and potent direction by Michael Apted pump life into the sturdy courtroom drama formula once again.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dillinger
    Pace is sometimes reduced during events sandwiched in between actual gunfire sequences of Dillinger’s career, but there can be no criticism of Milius’ ability to keep such action sequences at top-heat.
  6. Footloose
    Paramount's Footloose reboot never quite cuts loose enough to distinguish itself from the original.
  7. Jason Bourne
    This explosive reunion between Damon and director Paul Greengrass further reveals key secrets about Bourne’s origins, bringing its lethal protagonist as close as he’s ever likely to get to total recall.
  8. Love Liza
    Todd Louiso's directorial debut emerges at once as compelling and as a bit of a specimen due to the entirely singular nature of the protagonist's behavior.
  9. Swimming Upstream
    Distinguished by some unusually fine performances, but the lack of a satisfactory third act diminishes overall result.
  10. Kansas City
    For Altman, this is a major statement about American hypocrisy and society’s haves and have-nots, in line with many of his films, but issued in a kind of offhand way that delivers only glancing emotional impact.
  11. Disclosure
    Disclosure is polite pulp fiction, a reasonable rendition of potentially risible material. This lavishly appointed screen version of Michael Crichton's page-turner about sexual harassment and corporate power has what it takes to deliver plenty of year-end bounty into Warner Bros.' coffers, although it might have been even more commercial had it been more shamelessly trashy.
  12. Flamin' Hot
    Inspiration and entertainment can make corny bedfellows, but Longoria pulls it off, to the extent that a moment of faith when Richard and Judy pray doesn’t feel preachy, but a reflection of their priorities.
  13. Stan Lee
    Stan Lee is a fan-service documentary released by Disney+ (it drops on June 16), yet it’s very well-made, and watching it you’re confronted with a revelation: that the comic books that Lee began to create in 1961 didn’t just mark a seismic break with the comic books of the past.
  14. Victoria and Abdul
    Victoria & Abdul is a pleasant enough entertainment, and it will bring the inevitable awards chatter Dench’s way (is her acting ever less than pinpoint? Never). But as prestige period pieces go, it’s far from top-drawer (more like second drawer, or even third), because its cozy lack of enlightenment is echoed in the standard but far from scintillating play of its drama.
  15. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
    The script never quite succeeds in making us care about Allan as a character (despite dubbing its quavering narration into English for the ease of American auds), but it finds an interesting balance for a personality who leaves a trail of disaster in his wake.
  16. The Last Shift
    A gut punch with a side of anguish.
  17. Boston Strangler
    A distant cousin to “Zodiac,” with splashes of “Seven” mixed into its homages, this thriller falls short of its influences yet carves out a small space of its own. It makes a searing indictment of the sloppy, sexism-laced police work that might’ve resolved the case, and pays tribute to the two women who broke the investigation wide open.
  18. Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off-screen
    A definitive docu on the elusive Edgar G. Ulmer is a practical impossibility, which is why Michael Palm chooses to highlight questions rather than facts. But Edgar G. Ulmer -- the Man Off-Screen neither fully illuminates the tales nor finely sifts through the evidence to discover the truths behind the myth-making.
  19. Heneral Luna
    Anchored by a charismatic central performance by John Arcilla (“Metro Manila”) and peppered with exciting action sequences, the pic has the all-around energy to overcome the odd moment of bumpy storytelling and prosaic dialogue.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Altered States
    Direction by Ken Russell has energy to spare, with appropriate match-up of his baroque visual style to special effects intensive material.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crimes of the Future
    Cronenberg’s obsession for such matters as bodily mutation and grotesque growths, aberrant medical experiments, massive plagues and futuristic architecture are all here in a convoluted look at a future gone perverse.
  22. La scorta (re-release)
    Ricky Tognazzi's La Scorta topped the Italian box office charts for weeks, thanks to its skill in capturing the country's current political climate in an entertaining action film format. (Review of Original Release)
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Help!
    The simple good spirits that pervaded A Hard Day's Night are now often smothered as if everybody is desperately trying to outsmart themselves and be ultra-clever-clever. Nevertheless, Help! is a good, nimble romp with both giggles and belly-laughs.
  24. No Stone Unturned
    In a strange way, the movie, as doggedly made as it is, remains stubbornly uncompelling. That, I think, is because Gibney’s own connection to the subject, while it charges him with righteous passion, has resulted in a rare loss of perspective.
  25. Wolf Totem
    Despite its magnificent natural vistas and some pulse-pounding action in stunning 3D, Wolf Totem boils down to a familiar environmentalist allegory that doesn’t move or provoke too deeply.
  26. The Model
    The screenplay by Matthiessen and co-writers Martin Pieter Zandvliet and Anders Frithiof August is compelling up until the melodramatic, credulity-straining final act, although the characters, apart from Emma, feel underdeveloped.
  27. Pirate Radio
    Picture generally stays afloat on the strength of its characters but sometimes threatens to sink under its overlong running time and vignettish structure.
  28. The Reader
    Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Year of the Dragon
    Unquestionably, Cimino’s eye for detail and insistence thereon has paid off in his impressive recreation of Chinatown at producer Dino De Laurentiis’ studios in North Carolina. Crammed with an array of interesting characters, including the extras in the background, Dragon brims with authenticity.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cleopatra Jones
    Cleopatra Jones is a good programmer with the offbeat twist of having a sexy woman detective as the lead character. The script incorporates a slew of action set pieces, capably directed by Jack Starrett.
  31. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
    Ultimately, pic feels very much like a romanticized, outsider's view of the South that willfully seeks out the culture's strangest, most weirdo aspects for other outsiders' gleeful delectation.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fortune
    The Fortune is an occasionally enjoyable comedy trifle, starring Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty as bumbling kidnappers of heiress Stockard Channing, who is excellent in her first major screen role. Very classy 1920s production values often merit more attention than the plot.
  33. Freaky Tales
    Freaky Tales takes nearly 40 minutes to find its footing, but once it kicks in, there’s roughly an hour of grindhouse glory ahead (assuming streaming audiences make it that far).
  34. Life Is Beautiful
    Sluggish, uneven and lacking in rhythm, it nonetheless has enough pathos and winning humor.
  35. Defamation
    End result is at once intelligent, wry and -- there's no way around it -- quintessentially Jewish, in the best sense.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Child's Play
    Child's Play is a near-miss at providing horrific thrills in a tale of a doll come to murderous life, told with a knowing tongue-in-cheek attitude. Fun withers in stretching the thin material to feature length.
  37. The Firm
    Rebounding from his biggest career flopflop with "Havana," Sydney Pollack has done an ultra-pro job in giving spit and polish to this star-driven, sure-fire commercial project.
  38. Stoker
    A splendidly demented gumbo of Hitchcock thriller, American Gothic fairy tale and a contemporary kink all Park's own.
  39. The King
    The story of a veritable devil who comes to test and destroy a family of faith, The King is a noxious film morally and an aggravating one dramatically.
  40. Love & Air Sex
    This more broadly appealing project feels daringly frank on the subject of sex. But as is frequently the case with the most saturnalian comedies, it’s actually quite conservative when it comes to allowing its characters to follow through on their uninhibited talk.
  41. Trouble with the Curve
    A defiantly analog rejoinder to last year's tech-savvy baseball drama, "Moneyball," Robert Lorenz's square but sturdy directing debut rests on the wonderfully spiky chemistry between Eastwood and Amy Adams.
  42. Hard Candy
    A spectacular performance by teenage thesp Ellen Page elevates this disturbing slice of designer shocksploitation into a film that's impossible to dismiss on principle.
  43. Go Further
    Unquestioning agitprop for vegetarianism, hemp fiber, solar energy, sustainable organic living and other causes espoused by actor-activist Woody Harrelson.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Object of Beauty
    The Object of Beauty is a throwback to the romantic comedies of Swinging London cinema, but lacks the punch of the best of that late 1960s genre. Mildly diverting but empty picture.
    • Variety
  45. Defiance
    A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
  46. Under Siege
    Under Siege is an immensely slick, if also old-fashioned and formulaic, entertainment. Steven Seagal fans and action buffs should eat up this taut suspenser, which is set entirely on board a battleship.
  47. Nerve
    Nerve is a comic-book vision of how the Internet has become a gladiatorial arena of voyeurism. But the movie, like the game it’s about, is hard to stop watching, even when you know it’s playing you.
  48. Eternity
    Eternity should have been 90 minutes long, with more energy and more crackpot invention than it has at nearly two hours. It’s a bauble that tries to stretch itself into a boutique dream.
  49. The Keeping Room
    A potentially gripping story of empowerment through armed resistance is almost totally undermined by studied, self-conscious storytelling.
  50. The Highwaymen
    Commands attention less as historical counterpoint than as a sturdy showcase for the neatly balanced lead performances of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.
  51. An American Pickle
    Of course, the essence of the fish-out-of-water comedy is that it’s never been a realistic genre — it’s pure Hollywood fantasy. Yet An American Pickle, in its ethnically satirical and scattered way, lacks the integrity of its own ridiculousness. It’s pungent but flavorless: an unkosher dill.
  52. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
    The film has a knowingly conflicted engagement with millennial-generation feminism that freshens its outlook even as it unevenly rejigs many of its predecessor’s gags. Still, while a subtly clawed Chloë Grace Moretz proves a worthy new foil, it’s Zac Efron’s tragicomic anatomy of a dudebro that remains this series’ sharpest asset.
  53. The Bridge
    Compelling result is handled with enough dignified artistry to quell most fears of exploitation.
  54. Brown Sugar
    As eye and ear candy, pic has its modest pleasures, beginning with the attractive Diggs and Lathan.
  55. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    There's something perversely fascinating about helmer John Hyams' freewheeling yet deliberately paced mashup of noirish mystery, splatter-movie intensity, first-person-shooter vidgame and "Apocalypse Now"-style surrealism.
  56. Gayby
    Although it traffics freely in stereotypes and sitcom-style one-liners, Gayby is never less than likable.
  57. Orchestra of Exiles
    Despite lively commentaries by a pantheon of master musicians and magnificently performed classical pieces, "Exiles" only distantly echoes Huberman's visionary adventure.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rocketeer
    Newcomer Campbell exhibits the requisite grit and all-American know-how, but the lead role is written with virtually no humor or subtext. Those around him come off to better advantage, notably Dalton as the deliciously smooth, insidious Sinclair; Sorvino and Alan Arkin, with the latter as the Rocketeer’s mentor; Terry O’Quinn as Hughes; and the lovely, voluptuous Connelly.
  59. Wheeler
    The term “vanity project” doesn’t come close to adequately describing the hubristic folly that is Wheeler, an excruciatingly dull and self-indulgent faux documentary
  60. In Bed With Victoria
    If anything, what Triet has done is demonstrate that people are allowed to be complicated — and at times contradictory. And the tidy Hollywood ending betrays the fact that Victoria’s problems have less to do with sorting out who’s in her bed than what’s in her head.
  61. Duck Butter
    There’s dialogue, but very little interchange. The movie makes your average mumblecore mumblefest sound like Preston Sturges.
  62. Outrage Coda
    It’s a testament to Kitano’s effortlessly sleek, inherently watchable filmmaking (he reteams with regular DP Katsumi Yanagijima and uses the atonal descending motif of composer Keiichi Suzuki’s score to good effect) that you’re just about kept in your seat throughout all the speechifying.
  63. The Motive
    Whatever attracted Cuenca (“Cannibal”) to this material is seldom evident in his handling of it. Yet the material itself still lends the film its genuine if all-too-modest pleasures.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crimes of the Heart
    Thoughtfully cast, superbly acted and masterfully written and directed, Crimes of the Heart is a winner.
  65. Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
    It is engrossing stuff, as a cautionary tale as well as a taste of the spirit that leads people into explorations more bold than wise. The lure of the ocean’s mysteries (and the Titanic’s enduring romance) are vividly conveyed.
  66. The Mule
    There’s nothing inherently wrong with presenting bigoted people onscreen, since heaven knows they exist in real life, but the trouble with The Mule is that it invites audiences to laugh along with Earl’s ignorance.
  67. Shrek Forever After
    The reputed swan song for the series and its first entry in 3D, pic contains a respectable number of laughs, but also borrows its storyline from the oft-recycled "It's a Wonderful Life," and if that's all its creators can do, it's best to put Far Far Away far far away.
  68. Apex
    Kormákur’s film doesn’t trade in surprises, but offers more than enough heart-in-mouth action spectacle to compensate.
  69. The Oath
    Here’s a project that had the nerve to address these tensions in a megaplex environment, only to squander them on a standoff it pretends could be so glibly resolved.
  70. Turbo
    Here, the laughs come not from the silly voices but a blend of snappy editing and clever character bits, including a recurring joke about an inappropriately named sidekick who calls himself White Shadow (Michael Patrick Bell).
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    TRON
    Tron is loaded with visual delights but falls way short of the mark in story and viewer involvement. Steven Lisberger has adequately marshalled a huge force of technicians to deliver the dazzle, but even kids (and specifically computer game freaks) will have a difficult time getting hooked on the situations.
    • Variety
  72. Beloved
    At nearly three hours, however, it rather overstays its welcome, trying the patience even as it sustains intrigue regarding its final revelations.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Psycho III
    A few amusing little notions are streched to the point of diminishing returns in Psycho III.
  74. Bottom of the 9th
    Director Raymond De Felitta steps back up to the plate with Bottom of the 9th, another dramatically solid and emotionally satisfying drama that pivots on a long-shot attempt to fulfill long-delayed dreams.
  75. Sisters
    Beneath the film’s entertainingly crude hijinks, there are actual human stakes here, as the two sisters recognize in each other the growing up they themselves need to do — though Pell’s script keeps the hugging and learning to a reasonable minimum.
  76. 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.
  77. The Dictator
    Typically, political correctness couldn't be farther from the filmmakers' mind, and yet, what the picture most sorely lacks is the sort of humanist appeal Chaplin delivered at the close of "The Great Dictator."
  78. Quantum of Solace
    Stripped of "Royale's" humor, elegance and reinvented old-school stylishness, Quantum has little left except its plot, which is rudimentary and slightly barmy, in the line of the Roger Moore pics of the '70s and '80s.
  79. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
    It leaves us with a character you won’t soon forget, but you wish that the movie were as haunting as he is.
  80. Blossoms of Fire
    Results at times seem as much p.c. travelogue as serious docu inquiry.
  81. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
    Both evocative and faithful in its depiction of the famed French singer's lascivious life, "Gainsbourg (vie heroique)" offers up a feast of memorable chansons and an almost endless parade of drop-dead-gorgeous muses.
  82. I Declare War
    The concept is thought-provoking but the execution is flat-footed.
  83. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    Repetitive and needlessly prolonged tale does build to an inspired final scene, but it's too little, too late.
  84. Danny Collins
    Beneath the sitcom cutesiness and boldfaced sentimentality, the film manages to keep just enough reality coursing through to stay grounded.
  85. Uncle Frank
    Uncle Frank recalls plenty of prior coming-out (and coming-of-age) sagas, but revisits their familiar terrain with a confident and skilled mix of humor and character-dynamic shorthand.
  86. Come Play
    Even though the kid is the hero we should clearly be rooting for, the filmmaker conjures equal amounts of empathy and compassion for the monster. That serves to add complexity to the characterizations, but balancing both sides muddles the poignancy of the climax.
  87. Rise of the Guardians
    Even tots may emerge feeling slightly browbeaten by this colorful, strenuous and hyperactive fantasy, which has moments of charm and beauty but often resembles an exploding toy factory rather than a work of honest enchantment.
  88. Freaked
    Loud and flamboyant, pic takes a few shots at societal sacred cows but more often misses the target. The effort comes off much in the prankish manner of a student film. “Freaked” thumbs its nose at the status quo, but few will find themselves on the filmmakers’ side when the last laughs are counted.
  89. The Midnight Sky
    Some viewers will surely be moved. To me, though, The Midnight Sky just proves that a movie that reaches for the stars can still come up empty-handed.
  90. Snakes on a Plane
    Snakes on a Plane is exactly the sort of tasteless, utterly depraved, no-nonsense sluts-and-guts extravaganza it was meant to be.
  91. L'Attesa (The Wait)
    Benefiting enormously from its evocative Sicilian setting, this widescreen experience makes bewitching use of space, time and sound, creating an almost meditative atmosphere in which patient-minded auds might respond to its themes.
  92. El carro
    Winning, consistently funny comedy, with lively script by veteran Colombian producer/scribe Dago Garcia ("Maximum Penalty"), The Car is driven by unusually sharp helming from newcomer Luis Orjuela, and a dynamite ensemble cast.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When a Stranger Calls
    More than anything else, When a Stranger Calls resembles a good, old-fashioned grade B thriller.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lean on Me
    Morgan Freeman's inspired performance as Joe Clark, the New Jersey principal who uses controversial methods to clean up a drug- and crime-ridden high school, makes it easier to forgive John Avildsen's rather glossy and simplistic treatment of a serious dilemma in the public school system.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Blob
    Neither the acting nor direction is particularly creditable.
  96. Hounds
    As its central crisis deepens and darkens, Lazraq’s script keeps teasing a gear-shift into mordant farce to which it never quite commits, leaving both the characters and the drama a bit stymied. Still, this is a notably punchy debut, both visceral and confidently cavalier in its depiction of everyday underworld brutality, with a sharp, streetlit sense of place.
  97. Ferdinand
    In what’s been an underwhelming year for big-studio animation, it’s the best of the bunch: sincere, likable, surprisingly funny, and overall true to its source material.
  98. Easy Virtue
    An effervescent entertainment that marks a welcome return for "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" director Stephan Elliott after a nine-year absence.
  99. K-19: The Widowmaker
    Obediently follows the verities of the submarine movie and its true story origins but without the imagination needed to refresh the genre.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hunt for Red October
    The Industrial Light & Magic special visual effects unit does yeoman work in staging the action with cliffhanger intensity.
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