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. The Reconstruction of William Zero
    Cinematically speaking, this high-concept, low-budget sci-fi mind-bender falls into the same category as Shane Carruth’s shoestring marvel “Primer,” relying on creative ingenuity rather than elaborate effects to keep geek auds ensnared by its multi-layered mystery.
  2. Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives
    Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives...is an example of how a movie can be flagrantly hagiographic, sentimental, and hypnotized by its own subject — and still make you want to keep watching it.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Woman's Face
    There's a rather intriguing dramatic quality to this American version of an original Swedish production (from a French play, Francis de Croisset's Il etait une fois) which had Ingrid Bergman as star. In a story of a woman's handicap and final regeneration.
  4. The Laundromat
    The Laundromat is Soderbergh at his most playful, and also Soderbergh at his most wonkish, and damned, in this case, if the two don’t chime together.
  5. Surrounded
    An exceptionally well-crafted Western that spins a gripping, racially charged tale of suspicion, deception and survival in post-Civil War New Mexico.
  6. The Zookeeper's Wife
    There’s no nice way to put it in this case, but The Zookeeper’s Wife has the unfortunate failing of rendering its human drama less interesting than what happens to the animals — and for a subject as damaging to our species as the Holocaust, that no small shortcoming.
  7. The Second Act
    Dupieux’s strategy seems to be flipping or repeating certain punchlines for fresh effect, which is fine for a while, until you realize that neither The Second Act nor those second-degree readings have much to say.
  8. Ezra
    The underlying integrity of “Ezra,” what makes it an honest film despite some formula devices, is that its message about how to help children with special needs is that there’s no magic way. Beyond celebrating them for who they are and showing them who you are.
  9. Last Letter from Your Lover
    Frizzell tackles the period portion of the saga with some directorial verve, committing to its saturated, hyper-styled romanticism and shameless storytelling contrivance to a degree that is all but irresistible — and unfortunately leaves the remainder of the film feeling anonymous and less involving by comparison.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Laughing Policeman
    After an extremely overdone prolog of violent mass murder on a bus, The Laughing Policeman becomes a handsomely made manhunt actioner, starring Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern in excellent performances as two San Francisco detectives.
  11. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    The affectionate reunion of alter-kocker rockers plays like a greatest hits of past laughs, building to a thrilling live performance of songs fans know by heart, featuring guest appearances from several bona fide music gods.
  12. Birds of Paradise
    As Birds of Paradise reveals its (admittedly predictable) secrets one by one, it does so with style and a merited sense of confidence so assertively that even the biggest skeptics of the genre might pause before dismissing it as just another slight YA entry.
  13. White Wash
    Covering familiar ground from an unfamiliar angle, Ted Woods' oddball documentary White Wash examines the history of African-American disenfranchisement from a black surfer's viewpoint, in the process countering the racist myth that black people don't swim or surf.
  14. Ip Man 3
    Less offensively nationalistic than the second installment but falling short of the glowing humanity, genial Cantonese humor and visual flair of the first, the pic is somewhat tarnished by its pedestrian plot and limp characterization.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Thing
    If it’s the most vividly gruesome monster ever to stalk the screen that audiences crave, then The Thing is the thing. On all other levels, however, John Carpenter’s remake of Howard Hawks’ 1951 sci-fi classic comes as a letdown.
  16. Born in China
    To the extent that Born in China is, by its very existence, a minor act of cross-cultural diplomacy, its most progressive effect is to unveil the majestic diversity of Chinese landscapes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ocean's 11
    Laboring under the handicaps of a contrived script, an uncertain approach and personalities in essence playing themselves, the production never quite makes its point, but romps along merrily unconcerned that it doesn't.
  18. The World Is Not Enough
    007 is undone by villainous scripting and misguided casting and acting in a couple of key secondary roles.
  19. Jane by Charlotte
    Gainsbourg doesn’t cram the film with all that much material, and spares her mom the embarrassment of showing her personal clutter. She essentially goes easy on Birkin, asking intimate questions but settling for shallow answers.
  20. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
    At its core is a most affecting portrait of two people who love each other, but may no longer be able to live as one, and it is mostly a pleasure to spend two, or three, or five hours in their company.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Field of Dreams
    In spite of a script hobbled with cloying aphorisms and shameless sentimentality, Field of Dreams sustains a dreamy mood in which the idea of baseball is distilled to its purest essence.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ragtime
    The page-turning joys of E.L. Doctorow's bestselling Ragtime, which dizzily and entertainingly charted a kaleidoscopic vision of a turn-of-century America in the midst of intense social change, have been realized almost completely in Milos Forman's superbly crafted screen adaptation.
  23. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    Western audiences familiar with "Blood Simple" will get a kick out of the reinventions.
  24. Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football
    For most of its running time, Fordson wanders far from the gridiron to offer overall impressions of a close-knit community of Arab-Americans who, in the wake of 9/11, often have found themselves targeted and stereotyped as militant Islamists or worse.
  25. The Hole
    Cool it may be, but scary (or even mildly shudder-inducing) it ain’t, even in 3-D.
  26. Mr. Six
    Scored to a beautiful, introspection-oriented saxophone score, Mr. Six surprises by attempting to delve behind Feng’s sometime-inscrutable facade, rather than pushing its leading man toward action.
  27. Lace Crater
    First-time director Harrison Atkins never quite finds his own distinct voice. He dabbles in horror and deadpan comedy, experiments in discordant jags on the soundtrack, and suggests a more fluid boundary between the living and the dead, but the film remains stubbornly hazy and obscure in its intentions.
  28. Dicks: The Musical
    "Dicks” is an unapologetically puerile, hard-R novelty that’s just lo-fi enough to maintain its underground cred.
  29. Flicka
    It's not really either an animal or a kids' film but rather a young adult drama that rings emotionally true.
  30. Vamps
    Heckerling always manages to get her finger firmly on the pulse of the contemporary moment, and while her club-hopping heroines may be undead, they serve as adorable metaphors for what the filmmaker sees as a zombified moment in cultural history.
  31. Bram Stoker's Dracula
    Francis Ford Coppola's take on the Dracula legend is a bloody visual feast. Both the most extravagant screen telling of the oft-filmed story and the one most faithful to its literary source, this rendition sets grand romantic goals for itself that aren't fulfilled emotionally, and it is gory without being at all scary.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Romulus, My Father
    Warmly felt but haltingly told meller Romulus, My Father holds the attention with fine perfs and exquisite lensing, but never really grips the imagination.
  33. Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
    It's hard to dislike a movie this light-hearted, but there's something terribly ephemeral about it as well; it's a film of complete weightlessness.
  34. Flesh and Blood
    If, in the final analysis, this is an experiment that doesn’t quite gel, it’s still one that will be worth the risk taken for adventurous viewers.
  35. And Their Children After Them
    Where the the writing is wan, the filmmaking compensates with emphatic braggadocio. Augustin Barbaroux’s cinematography is all humidly saturated tones and rolling, kinetic movement.
  36. The Intouchables
    Though never known for their subtlety, French co-helmers/scripters Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have never delivered a film as offensive as "Untouchable," which flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens.
  37. Life Partners
    The movie belongs to thesps Jacobs and Meester. Jacobs fully inhabits her less-than-completely-sympathetic role with warmth and just the right touch of unconscious entitlement, while Meester luminously expands the film’s affective core.
  38. Thor
    Thor delivers the goods so long as butt is being kicked and family conflict is playing out in celestial dimensions, but is less thrilling during the Norse warrior god's rather brief banishment on Earth.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Permanent Midnight
    Stiller’s attempted image makeover, though admirable, doesn’t make it. His perform-ance is strictly from the clenched-teeth, “Look at me, I’m acting!” school.
  40. Me and You
    Ultimately, such a stir-crazy two-hander can only be as interesting as its actors.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trick or Treat
    Like a relatively dark street on Halloween night, Trick or Treat is ripe for howls and hoots, but only manages to deliver a choice handful of them when the festivities are just about over.
  42. The Wandering Earth
    Director Frant Gwo’s adaptation of the 2000 novella by Liu Cixin is no genre classic, but its furious pace, spectacular visuals, and fanciful plot deliver decent escapist entertainment.
  43. Roommates
    By turns tenderly observed, improbably dark and perkily sitcom-esque, it’s certainly erratic, and uncertainly much else.
  44. Body of Lies
    A mostly formulaic approach that becomes more disappointing as the yarn unwinds.
  45. The Wedding Guest
    What’s lacking is personality from the human characters, which is a serious failing, considering how the film shifts into character mode as Apte slowly emerges as an equal to Patel, while both remain too guarded for audiences to fully appreciate as people.
  46. Towelhead
    Towelhead is transgressive without being effectively subversive, gutsy to no particular end. It simply lacks style, which counts for so much in this sort of thing.
  47. Antlers
    What makes suggestion-driven Antlers so disturbing isn’t the movie’s tension- and dread-building mechanics so much as the way the filmmaker burrows into the minds of his two main characters.
  48. The Notebook
    Unfortunately, the glowering, non-pro Gyemant twins, who seem to have only one facial expression (and oddly anachronistic haircuts), continually break the spell woven by the other performers.
  49. Teeth
    A game, disarming lead performance from Jess Weixler, who won a jury acting prize at Sundance, goes some way toward making palatable this mish-mash, whose provocative nature could carve out a certain commercial niche.
  50. Road House
    The action in Road House is beyond brutal; at moments, it’s vicious. Yet if the movie is far more violent than your average action film, in its slightly crackpot bare-knuckle way it’s also more humane.
  51. I Don't Understand You
    Things spiral wildly out of control for Dom and Cole, but the foundation feels real.
  52. The Grand Seduction
    Only a curmudgeon would deny the pic its moments of clean, wholly predictable fun.
  53. Space Jam
    Cute, rambunctious, generally amusing rather than outright funny, this clever mix of live action, highlighted by the unequaled skills of basketball superstar Michael Jordan, and animated Looney Tunes antics will be a must-see for kids.
  54. The Groomsmen
    Burns' always impressive sense of place lends authenticity to the pals' perambulations, and the stellar cast brings a welcome overabundance of personality to regrettably one-note roles.
  55. Adult Beginners
    This sophomore directing effort for Ross Katz (“Taking Chance”) resolves itself a bit too tidily in the final stretch, but sustains affection most of the way with its well-observed moments and gently offbeat comic rhythms.
  56. 16 Years of Alcohol
    The highly directed film adopts a semi-impressionistic approach more European than British in flavor, aided by a terrific central performance by Kevin McKidd and painterly lensing by John Rhodes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Tycoon
    Producer Sam Spiegel's contribution is admirable, but Elia Kazan's direction of the Pinter plot seems unfocussed though craftsmanlike. Robert De Niro's performance as the inscrutable boy-wonder of films is mildly intriguing.
  58. Run This Town
    Run This Town offers some sharp observations about the struggle to provide anything like watchdog journalism in an age of diminished budgets and readership.
  59. Little Buddha
    Little Buddha is a visually stunning but dramatically underwhelming attempt to forge a bridge between the ancient Eastern religion and modern Western life. Bernardo Bertolucci's second foray into remote Asian territory is considerably less successful than his first, "The Last Emperor," as the double narrative is awkwardly structured and never comes into sharp focus.
  60. Happy Endings
    A protracted parade of woefully familiar motifs from the Amerindie playbook, Happy Endings comes off like an undernourished Paul Thomas Anderson wannabe.
  61. Filly Brown
    The resulting film is a trite piece of storytelling, with character development and plot points that feel not so much lived in as borrowed from other movies.
  62. The Missing Person
    An intriguingly plotted mystery that unfortunately forgets to put the noir in film noir. A drab, pale-looking affair without a trace of visual style, this cross-country pursuit yarn fights a losing battle to sustain viewer attention via narrative alone, so much does it flounder for lack of imagistic flair.
  63. Cesar's Last Fast
    While not necessarily the definitive cinematic account of Chavez’s life or the UFW movement, Cesar’s Last Fast provides a well-crafted, sometimes stirring encapsulation.
  64. The Golden Era
    Seemingly caught between a daring impressionistic approach and a pedantic recital of dates and locations, this three-hour endurance test is marked by sincere adoration of its subject.
  65. Break Point
    Undeniably likable in its own breezy, resolutely unambitious way, Jay Karas’ tennis laffer Break Point manages to generate decent laughs, even if its reliance on indie-comedy formula borders on the pathological.
  66. William
    Tim Disney’s film strikes a bland compromise between science-fantasy, suspense-melodrama and family entertainment, developing no element to a level that generates more than mild interest. It’s a polished but dull enterprise that leaves one wondering just what the filmmakers had in mind.
  67. Cowboy del Amor
    Richly amusing and sporadically insightful as it offers an up-close-and-personal view of Ivan Thompson, a self-proclaimed "cowboy cupid" who plays matchmaker between American men and Mexican women.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Up in Smoke
    What’s lacking in Up in Smoke is a cohesiveness in both humor and characterization. Once the more obvious drug jokes are exhausted, director Lou Adler lets the film degenerate into a mixture of fitful slapstick and toilet humor.
  69. Kodachrome
    Thanks to some likable performances from Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olsen and Ed Harris, it’s an entirely watchable if entirely by-the-numbers throwback to the sweet-and-sour Sundance-style indie films of yore. But there’s a blurry boundary between “vintage” and simply “passé,” and Kodachrome is too often caught on the wrong side of that line.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Heaven's Gate
    The first scenes of Heaven’s Gate are so energetic and beautiful that anyone who knows the saga of the $35 million epic might begin to think it was going to be worth every penny. Unfortunately the balance of director Michael Cimino’s film is so confusing, so overlong at three-and-a-half hours and so ponderous that it fails to work at almost every level.
  71. Encounter
    It’s deceptively simple yet deeply philosophical stuff, channeled by first-rate genre filmmaking.
  72. The Boys Are Back
    This is polished yet authentically moving.
  73. The Red Violin
    Fails on a number of counts, mostly because the individual stories aren't very gripping.
  74. Bossa Nova
    Imagine a '30s screwball comedy played to a sensuous Brazilian beat and you're ready for Bossa Nova, a delightfully amusing romantic roundelay.
  75. Mr 3000
    Never generates enough laughs to escape the infield. It doesn't help that this is a sports movie that lacks any suspense or dramatic tension about what transpires on the field, and Mac plays such a self-absorbed jerk through most of the film that rooting interest is minimal.
  76. 13 Going on 30
    A star vehicle composed of second-hand parts that nevertheless gets great mileage (and big laughs) from its recycled plot.
  77. Sacrifice
    Sacrifice is practically a chamber piece, and duly draws its strength from its performances, especially those of Ge and Wang.
  78. The Big Fix
    Alternately gutsy and preachy, specific and scattered, the righteously angry pic risks alienating those who could be galvanized by its proof of Big Oil's corrupting omnipotence.
  79. The Last
    Compared with “Us,” also in theaters now, the movie feels benign, almost polite — which can’t possibly be what Lipsky had in mind. No, he seems determined to shock, but his films are like those proverbial trees, falling noisily in empty forests. That’s not to say Lipsky should stop making movies — one hopes The Last won’t be his last — but that it might be a good time to take a serious look at what he’s trying to achieve, if hardly anyone’s paying attention.
  80. Pedro Páramo
    Thankfully, its surreal allure — buoyed by a sense of tragic longing — is powerful enough to echo throughout its runtime.
  81. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Despite the script’s direct acknowledgment that it’s telling a “white-American-lady story,” the movie never quite shakes off a glib, incurious outsider’s perspective that can tilt into outright cluelessness, particularly where some of its more egregious casting choices are concerned.
  82. Fifty Dead Men Walking
    A classic about the Irish "troubles." Despite the unavoidably convoluted facts of the real-life story, pic boasts plausibly written, solidly acted characters and a conflict that pushes the viewer's righteous-indignation buttons.
  83. Chemical Hearts
    For all its serious-faced surface grit, Chemical Hearts never quite rings true.
  84. The Broken Hearts Gallery
    The Broken Hearts Gallery pushes all the rom-com buttons but does it knowingly, with a spirit that embraces killer cynicism and then comes out the other side.
  85. Army of the Dead
    It has a pleasing brawn and sweep, and you get caught up in it. As meat-and-potatoes escapism, it’s good diner food served with extra ketchup.
  86. How I Live Now
    Wisely sticks to its protagonist’s p.o.v. while avoiding a longer view of the calamitous events around her, making up in emotional immediacy what it lacks in broad dramatic sweep.
  87. Kinky Boots
    A London drag queen and a bunch of Midlands working stiffs find common ground and, uh, mutual respect in Kinky Boots, a slick, cross-tracks Britcom whose stride is hampered by its desire not to offend.
  88. Sushi: The Global Catch
    Sushi: The Global Catch offers an intriguing mix of history, process and state-of-the-fish reports, advocating a reversal of the world's assault on bluefin tuna fisheries and a short course on the alternatives.
  89. Our Kind of Traitor
    The shattering of one’s noble ideals is a delicate thing to capture on film, and White plays the moment of rupture with a banality that threatens to undermine our faith in her as storyteller more than in the system itself.
  90. How to Live Forever
    The prospects, advisability and potential methods of prolonging human life are examined in an engagingly multifaceted manner in How to Live Forever.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Just One of the Guys
    Key male part of quiet outsider whom Hyser brings to life is essayed by another film newcomer, Clayton Rohner, but Rohner looks too old to be a high school kid.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brainstorm
    Producer-director Douglas Trumbull’s effects wizardry – and the concept behind it – is the movie...On the downside, majority of players, including stars Christopher Walken and Wood as a married couple in a research environment, seem merely along for the ride.
  93. Arcadian
    Unfortunately, Brewer and screenwriter Mike Nilon ignored an essential rule: Conceiving an original monster isn’t nearly as important as coming up with compelling human characters
  94. Smart People
    Dysfunctional family seriocomedy is well cast, but characters and conflicts lack the sharper definition of similar recent exercises like "Little Miss Sunshine," "The Upside of Anger" and Noah Baumbach's films.
    • 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.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Candy
    Life, love and addiction make a mostly bitter, but occasionally sweet, concoction in Oz drama Candy, which is sometimes hard to swallow.
  97. Bad Words
    This exuberantly foul-mouthed and mean-spirited comedy goes somewhat soft in the final stretch but remains an often uproarious model of sharp scripting and spirited acting.
  98. Natural Selection
    This filmed-in-Texas road movie finds a smooth groove between self-conscious quirkiness and broadly played farce.
  99. Uncle Drew
    Uncle Drew may be tired, but it shows that one’s fundamental love for the game never gets old.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fourth War
    Tightly directed by Frankenheimer with an eye for comic relief as well as tension maintenance, The Fourth War holds the fascination of eyeball-to-eyeball conflict.
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