Variety's Scores

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For 17,805 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: 9,148 out of 17805
  2. Mixed: 7,020 out of 17805
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17805
17805 movie reviews
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  1. The Matrix
    An eye-popping but incoherent extravaganza of morphing and superhuman martial arts.
  2. Lucy and Desi
    A nimble and fascinating documentary.
  3. Last Flight Home
    It is a tribute, a grappling with mortality, an exercise in self-surveillance, a messy home movie, a brief account of aviation history and a lesson in letting go and grief.
  4. Once Upon a Time Verônica
    “Veronica” is accomplished in aesthetics if not thematic weight, with a handsome look and some attractive soundtrack choices.
  5. The Impossible
    Wrenchingly acted, deftly manipulated and terrifyingly well made.
  6. Calle Málaga
    It’s the most prominent and devoted leading showcase Maura has had in years, and one she carries with her invaluable brand of internally illuminated, can’t-be-taught charisma.
  7. After the Life
    It certainly wraps the trilogy on a very powerful, emotionally draining note. It's refreshing to see the precision and audacity with which Belvaux and his excellent cast succeed in imbuing the increasingly familiar story with completely new angles, insights and nuances.
  8. Big Animal
    A rueful yet gentle fable about the price of individuality and the value of dignity that preserves the intellectually stimulating spirit of Kieslowski's best work while tapping into a universally understandable vein of low-keyed absurdist comedy.
  9. Last Life in the Universe
    It recovers from an opening that's a little oblique to grow progressively more seductive as the two lost central characters become entwined.
  10. I'm Not Scared
    While another director might have imbued the story of a Sicilian boy awakened to his parents' involvement in child abduction with more emotional weight and thematic depth, Salvatores' classically illustrative treatment should open arthouse doors for the visually sumptuous production.
  11. Super Size Me
    Primarily humorous in a believe-it-or-not fashion.
  12. Woman on the Beach
    A wonderful, serious-minded romantic comedy-drama.
  13. Second Skin
    The human dramas of individual gamers are what really make this technically polished documentary so fascinating and potentially commercial.
  14. Heading South
    Cantet's anticipated follow-up to "Time Out" supplants that pic's important issues with unexamined attitudes toward sex and the tropics.
  15. Le Week-End
    Bittersweet, charming yet often very thorny.
  16. Exiled
    Cast of regulars blends like those in a late-on Howard Hawks' movie.
  17. High Art
    Compassionate and deft as Cholodenko's helming is, pic's overall impact largely depends on its central triangle.
  18. Five Fingers For Marseilles
    Five Fingers for Marseilles turns out to be an impressively effective and engrossing cross-cultural hybrid that has a great deal more than novelty value going for it.
  19. United in Anger: A History of ACT UP
    If the AIDS crisis has crested, it's due in large part to the radical advocacy group so intelligently portrayed in United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, a documentary that could have been a lot angrier but aims to educate rather than agitate.
  20. Innocence of Memories
    It’s an occupational hazard of rambling psychogeography that the unwary traveller will find themselves irritated as often as they are enthralled: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Gee negotiates this hurdle with variable success.
  21. On the President's Orders
    Populist politics can turn all too easily to popcorn ones; On the President’s Orders vividly captures the tipping point.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life with Father
    Irene Dunne and William Powell have captured to a considerable extent the charm of the play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse [based on the book by Clarence Day Jr]. The major humor of the story, based on Father's eccentric characteristics and Mother's continual mollifying of his tantrums, is still evident in the pic.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Road to Zanzibar
    Although picture has sufficient comedy situations and dialog between its male stars, it lacks the compactness and spontaneity of its predecessor.
  24. The Daytrippers
    Greg Mottola's feature directorial debut, is an amusing farce about the delicate intricacies and imbalances of a modern marriage. A spirited cast, including old pros such as Anne Meara and younger talent such as Parker Posey, elevates the basically sitcom material into something fluffier and funnier than its nature suggests.
  25. The Platform
    Once the major ideas are on the table, the momentum wobbles and The Platform trades thrills for the empathetic weight of imprisonment. There’s more blood and less hope, though Aranzazu Calleja’s music box-inspired score can lighten the mood to that of a storybook fable.
  26. What's Eating Gilbert Grape
    An offbeat, middleweight charmer that is lent a measure of substance by its astute performances and observational insight.
  27. Hoppers
    Hoppers never stops surprising you in rudely antic ways, and that’s the essence of its delight.
  28. Cold Mountain
    A grim picaresque odyssey across a beautiful scarred landscape laced together by private romantic longing. Handsomely made and vividly acted.
  29. Something, Anything
    Marked by an affecting and understated performance from newcomer Ashley Shelton, this lovely drama tends toward the over-emphatic at times, but overall demonstrates a warm, subtle intelligence in the way it captures a person’s growing sense of dislocation from the traditional pressures of marriage, family and career.
  30. Jim: The James Foley Story
    Oakes’ film may not share its subject’s hard-headed journalistic drive, but as an articulation of grief — directed by a childhood friend, with significant participation from the Foley family — it’s undeniably moving.
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