Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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 2.3 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Barry Munday
    Uneven but modestly diverting.
  2. Douchebag
    Dickler's acting debut is memorably repellent, even if the movie he's in -- a fitfully engaging story about two estranged brothers on a road trip -- often feels forced and unconvincing, even on its modest, intimately scaled terms
  3. Hatchet II
    Outrageously over-the-top gore doubtless will scare off all but the heartiest genre aficionados.
  4. Ip Man
    Ip Man will be manna for those who like their kung fu straight and wireless, their villains Japanese and their heroes unconflicted Chinese patriots.
  5. Leaving
    Tightly wound and crafted, with robust performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and recurrent Spanish Don Juan Sergi Lopez, the picture offers a rough, no-frills take on a story as old as France itself.
  6. Hot Summer Days (Chuen sing yit luen - yit lat lat)
    Bubbles along with a jaunty but unoriginal blend of the sweet, tart, cute and weepy.
  7. Speed-Dating
    Though it follows the reductive paradigms of men-on-the-make laffers, the low-budget, flatly shot picture rarely turns nastily shrill or swaggeringly stupid in tone; redemption and/or sanity is usually waiting in the wings.
  8. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    Has Gordon Gekko gone soft? The answer is, sort of -- a development that takes some of the bite out of Oliver Stone's shrewdly opportunistic, glibly entertaining sequel, which offers another surface-skimming peek inside the power corridors of global finance.
  9. You Again
    Manages to squander three generations of formidable actresses.
  10. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
    Though visually stunning and blessed with immaculate 3D work, film is fatally bogged down by tackling an essentially ridiculous premise (gladiator-attired owls fight genocide) with stony solemnity, and by subsisting on a note of sustained menace and terror in what is ostensibly a children's film.
  11. Buried
    In purely cinematic terms, Buried, set in late 2006, is an ingenious exercise in sustained tension that would make Alfred Hitchcock turn over in his grave.
  12. Howl
    Intelligent and highly respectful of its central character and his titular landmark poem, HOWL is an admirable if fundamentally academic exploration of the origins, impact, meaning and legacy of Allen Ginsberg's signal work.
  13. Enter the Void
    Not clever enough to be truly pretentious.
  14. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Exhilarating, heartbreaking and righteous, Waiting for Superman is also a kind of high-minded thriller: Can the American education system be cured?
  15. Tibet in Song
    Choephel, who narrates the film in English, is ultimately more musicologist than filmmaker, and yet the docu's very existence is something of a miracle.
  16. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    Fitfully amusing and nearly saved by its distinguished cast.
  17. Jack Goes Boating
    Displaying a girth that will give hope to overweight romantics everywhere, Hoffman knows his character inside and out and invites the viewer close to this limited, good-hearted fellow.
  18. Easy A
    What this high school morality fable really recalls is "Clueless" -- a comedy of very contemporary ill manners drawn from classic literature, an immersion in the young-adult lexicon and a potentially career-making showcase for its lead actress, Emma Stone.
  19. Alpha and Omega
    Not without charm and bearing easy appeal to very young viewers.
  20. Devil
    Devil is nothing very special or original, but it gets the job done briskly and economically.
  21. The Town
    The behind-the-camera talent Ben Affleck displayed so bracingly in "Gone Baby Gone" is confirmed, if not significantly advanced, in The Town. Again proving a fine director of actors (this time with himself in a starring role), Affleck delivers another potent, serious-minded slice of pulp set on Boston's meanest streets, where loyalty among thieves runs thicker than blood.
  22. Catfish
    Though editor Zac Stuart-Pontier assembles the sprawling personal journey into swift and suspenseful shape, it helps immensely that Nev is such a charming screen presence.
  23. The Freebie
    From a performance p.o.v., Aselton and Shepard hold the screen well and are most watchable, and Aselton does a fluid directing job within the limited challenge she set for herself production-wise.
  24. Never Let Me Go
    Never Let Me Go is that rare find, a fragile little four-leaf clover of a movie that's emotionally devastating, yet all too easily trampled by cynics.
  25. Kings of Pastry
    Given what seems like unprecedented access to the very masculine world of the French patissier, Pennebaker and Hegedus get their subjects to reveal a few trade secrets as well as personal aspirations. As their calm camera glides over the chefs' almost-too-beautiful-to-eat creations, viewers share their awe.
  26. Bran Nue Dae
    Offering blandly stereotypical characters in a trite road-trip narrative, it's genial but too silly for most grownups, and likely to impress few "High School Musical"-indoctrinated kids.
  27. Lovely, Still
    The surprise twist brutally defies the opening narration and plot logic that preceded it, alienating viewers who willingly suspended disbelief.
  28. The Virginity Hit
    Those with the stomach for 90 slapdash minutes of nonstop crudity and cruelty will be tickled, while their elders will likely despair at these youngsters' lack of a moral center or ability to hold a camera steady.
  29. Ahead of Time
    Wisely letting his lively, articulate nonagenarian subject narrate her life story through interviews and lectures, debuting director Bob Richman (a noted indie cameraman) compellingly blends a plethora of choice archival materials and contempo footage.
  30. 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.
  31. I'm Still Here
    An utterly fascinating experiment that apparently blends real and faked material to examine notions of celebrity, mental stability and friendship.
  32. Resident Evil: Afterlife
    Director Paul W.S. Anderson (who also directed the original) can hardly manage a hint of suspense or excitement. And excitement is exactly what the film ought to have in excess.
  33. The Romantics
    While in some ways an improvement on the book, this seriocomedy toplining Katie Holmes remains short on truly involving characters or situations, and is likely to spark unflattering comparisons to such vaguely similar, more distinctive films as "Rachel Getting Married" and "Margot at the Wedding."
  34. Sequestro: A Story of Kidnapping
    Audiences might feel they've been taken hostage during certain parts of Sequestro (Kidnapping), but Brazilian helmer Jorge W. Atalla's documentary is ultimately electrifying, both in what it reveals and how it reveals it. .
  35. Going the Distance
    This uneven effort saddles its likable leads, Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, with the kind of verbally exaggerated sexual humor that not only comes off as embarrassingly strained and calculated, but also compromises what the picture genuinely wants to be.
  36. Machete
    Wildly uneven as it doggedly strives (sometimes with obvious strain) to sustain a free-wheeling, anything-goes air of exuberant junkiness.
  37. Last Train Home
    The picture laudably adopts an intimate, personal approach to a subject -- hardworking Chinese garment workers -- that's been covered in more hectoring fashion elsewhere.
  38. The Winning Season
    With an invaluable assist from Sam Rockwell, hilarious and wounding as a deadbeat dad who lands a high school coaching gig, it's the rare inspirational movie with more than just winning or losing on its mind.
  39. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    Western audiences familiar with "Blood Simple" will get a kick out of the reinventions.
  40. Prince of Broadway
    Streetwise, kinetic and solidly dramatic, Prince of Broadway is a convincingly character-driven tale set in a clandestine universe -- the realm of stolen and/or counterfeit fashions that exists in the no man's land of Manhattan's West 20s.
  41. White Wedding
    A highly engaging picture with a post-apartheid edge (certain scenes play like a farcical "Invictus").
  42. Max Manus
    This engaging second feature from "Bandidas" duo Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning combines artistic ambition and commercial appeal with a well-paced action-adventure approach.
  43. Takers
    A respectable but watered-down heist movie that, given the Los Angeles setting, either owes a debt to director Michael Mann or suggests an unusually violent and action-packed episode of "Entourage."
  44. The Last Exorcism
    The Last Exorcism makes first-rate use of religious doubt and religious extremism to concoct a novel horror-thriller clever enough to seduce unbelievers while satisfying the bloodlust of its congregation/fanbase.
  45. Centurion
    "Doomsday," horror-trained British helmer Neil Marshall flexes strong action muscles and carves copious flesh here, creating the sort of broadsword-based bedlam that will thrill fans of ancient martial movies.
  46. 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."
  47. Daniel and Ana
    The screenplay leaves it to the audience to map the psychological terrain, which will frustrate some but thrill others who prefer oblique storytelling.
  48. The Milk of Sorrow
    At first, the picture seems a slow-moving, particularly well-framed ethnographic study of life in the big city in Peru; it only gradually becomes clear that Llosa's second feature perfectly aligns form and content.
  49. Make-Out with Violence
    Directed by the pseudonymous Deagol Brothers, the film invests in spacey horror tropes one moment, plunges into absurdist adolescent angst the next and begs questions every step of the way, but just about holds together with its strong compositional sense, killer atmospheric lighting and wall-to-wall music track.
  50. Louis
    This cinematic anomaly falls flat as a stand-alone.
  51. Baghdad Texas
    David H. Hickey's Lone Star comedy never really develops, stalling this culture-clash clambake at the merely likable stage.
  52. Piranha 3-D
    The 32-year-old carnivorous fish franchise has lost none of its bite, serving up a fresh batch of spring-break revelers for the fearsome creatures to attack.
  53. Lottery Ticket
    The script is never nearly as clever as the premise ought to allow, and the madcap fun is far too frequently derailed by tonal inconsistencies.
  54. Mao's Last Dancer
    The story lights up when world-class performer Chi Cao leaps about as the adult Li, but is marred by lumpy melodrama when the music stops.
  55. The Switch
    An unfunny, manipulative romance about two unlikable people and their prop of a son, the pic mangles the premise of its source material ("Baster," a 1996 short story by Pulitzer-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides) in ways that ought to baffle viewers of all sociopolitical stripes.
  56. The Tillman Story
    A riveting account of how a soldier's death in Afghanistan was spun into a web of public lies.
  57. The Army of Crime
    Guediguian's lengthy period yarn features a wide array of characters filmed with his habitual simpatico eye, but loses the dramatic thread in too many plots, too little action and not enough originality.
  58. A Film Unfinished
    It stands as a unique film-within-a-film, of significance for the historical value of the raw images, the memories they spur and internal evidence of how the Nazis staged scenes long assumed to be real.
  59. Vampires Suck
    The lame mediocrity of Vampires Suck undeniably reps an advance for writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. By just about any other standard, however, this instantly forgettable trifle is fairly close to worthless.
  60. Eat Pray Love
    Director Ryan Murphy's superficial take on Elizabeth Gilbert's phenomenally successful memoir is an exotic junk-food buffet that offers few lasting pleasures or surprises, let alone epiphanies.
  61. The Expendables
    A nearly incoherent all-stars-on-deck actioner that plays like "Grown Ups" on nitro or a brutish, blue-collar "Ocean's Eleven."
  62. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
    With Michael Cera in the title role, twentysomethings and under will swiftly embrace this original romancer.
  63. Peepli Live
    Debuting writer-director Anusha Rizvi manages to wrest a lively feature out of a gravely serious issue, capturing the desperation of India's village farmers, as well as the nation's shift from agriculture to industrialization, without losing sight of the entertainment principle.
  64. Tales from Earthsea
    This dull and humorless production won't reap the same critical support as the work of Miyazaki Senior.
  65. Salt of This Sea
    That the taste of Annemarie Jacir's feature debut should be bitter is completely understandable given the untenable Palestinian situation, but the heavy-handed, excessively didactic script plays like a primer for people only vaguely aware of the issues while overly confirmed in their righteousness.
  66. They Came to Play
    A delightful, well-crafted documentary.
  67. La Soga (The Butcher's Son)
    Made mainly by Yanks and New York-based Dominicans, the vibrant film bursts with local color and trades in very specific aspects of criminality, island-style.
  68. The People I've Slept With
    A little too well behaved at times, but zips along nicely when its raunchier elements kick in.
  69. Step Up 3-D
    This vapid street-dance soap opera boasts the series' flashiest moves and klutziest script yet, like a brilliant acrobat with a speech impediment; it's also one of the few 3D releases since "Avatar" to make compelling use of the format.
  70. The Other Guys
    The laughs ultimately take a backseat to a convoluted white-collar crime story.
  71. Cairo Time
    The fourth feature from Canadian writer-helmer Ruba Nadda ("Sabah") has a slightly breathless, old-fashioned feel, calling to mind the cliched fiction found in the type of ladies' magazine the heroine edits.
  72. Flipped
    A well-intentioned family pic about first love that's overly concerned with period details and life lessons, rather than the genuinely sweet characters at its center.
  73. 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.
  74. The Disappearance of Alice Creed
    Crisp handling, some clever twists and a welcome streak of dry humor hold attention throughout
  75. The Wildest Dream
    A solid, gorgeous-looking documentary marred only slightly by a tendency to bury the lead -- namely, its subject, George Mallory.
  76. Twelve
    Can't decide if it's a cautionary tale or a lifestyle catalog.
  77. Lebanon
    Visceral, torn-from-the-memory filmmaking that packs every punch except one to the heart, Lebanon is the boldest and best of the recent mini-wave of Israeli pics ("Beaufort," "Waltz With Bashir") set during conflicts between the two countries.
  78. Spring Fever
    Overlong and very Euro-flavored.
  79. Mundo alas
    "Mundo" saves the full effect for dramatically lit performances at stopovers along the road, climaxing at the jam-packed Luna Park arena in Buenos Aires.
  80. Last Letters from Monte Rosa
    This low-budget curio feels remarkably authentic but lacks a core story structure.
  81. The Parking Lot Movie
    Unfortunately, picture's concept doesn't stretch to 74 minutes.
  82. The Sicilian Girl
    Even if Matteo Garrone's "Gomorrah" hadn't dramatically raised the bar for mafioso movies, The Sicilian Girl would have repped a mediocre entry in the Cosa Nostra canon and a waste of an extraordinary true story.
  83. Dinner for Schmucks
    An uproarious odd-couple remake of Francis Veber's hit French farce "The Dinner Game."
  84. Charlie St. Cloud
    Religious overtones, however, could make this the rare mainstream feature that connects with the faith-based entertainment market.
  85. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
    This fawning docu goes to lengths to portray the octogenarian Playboy magazine founder as among the greatest figures of 20th-century American popular culture, while only cursorily acknowledging his status as a pioneering softcore pornographer.
  86. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
    A faster, funnier follow-up in which CGI-enhanced canines and felines effect a temporary truce to combat a common enemy.
  87. The Concert
    The story regurgitates the usual trappings of underdog tales, milking stereotypes as well as tear ducts.
  88. The Extra Man
    Although too devoted to matters literary, theatrical, operatic and sexually outre to make it with general audiences, this adaptation of Jonathan Ames' novel exudes the sort of smarts and sophisticated charm specialized audiences seek.
  89. Get Low
    With a mix of sly humor, homespun grace and affecting poignancy, Get Low casts a well-nigh irresistible spell.
  90. Smash His Camera
    This entertaining docu by "When We Were Kings'?" Leon Gast is more eccentric personality portrait than the in-depth scrutiny of celebrity-culture madness afforded by fellow Sundance preem "Teenage Paparazzo."
  91. Who Killed Nancy?
    Despite the presence of Glen Matlock, Steve Dior and a handful of other punk rockers, plus a slew of oblique eyewitness who lurked around before and after the fact, the documentary soon bogs down in tiresome minutiae.
  92. Salt
    As a fierce superspy and mistress of many disguises, Jolie represents the one indisputably kickass element in this brisk, professionally assembled but finally shrug-inducing thriller.
  93. Ramona and Beezus
    It's not the personal, distinctive portrait of misfit girlhood it could have been.
  94. 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.
  95. Countdown to Zero
    A politically urgent picture, it will also literally scare the breath out of what will certainly be a worldwide audience.
  96. Farewell
    It's juicy, fascinating stuff, well orchestrated by Carion and finely thesped -- especially by Kusturica.
  97. Life During Wartime
    In revisiting his darkly comic 1998 ensembler "Happiness," Todd Solondz may have made his best film with Life During Wartime.
  98. Mugabe and the White African
    The documentary sometimes bears an eerie resemblance to Claire Denis' brilliant "White Material" in its tense evocation of menace stalking the periphery of the frame.
  99. Spoken Word
    Spoken Word benefits from an improbably perfect storm of production circumstances: The muscular, balanced script, the brainchild of an unusual alliance between professional poet Joe Ray Sandoval and TV writer William T. Conway, consistently plays to Nunez's strengths.
  100. Slingshot
    Supplies no end of shock, but an underdeveloped emotional core keeps the viewer at arm's length.
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