Variety's Scores

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For 17,807 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 17807
  2. Mixed: 7,022 out of 17807
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17807
17807 movie reviews
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  1. Joy of Man's Desiring
    Static, strikingly composed documentary stretches are interspersed with actors playing workers who voice a variety of complaints, appreciations and parables that deliberately, even pointedly, fail to encompass the sense of being there amid the unfolding spectacle.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pumping Iron
    The most fascinating aspect of this film is the dedicated training that turns average-built young men (frequently they refer to themselves as weaklings in their early youth) into superbly-created physical edifices.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cooley High
    Cooley High is pitched as a black American Graffiti, and the description is apt. Furthermore, you don't have to be black to enjoy it immensely. The Steve Krantz production is a heartening comedy-drama about urban Chicago high school youths, written by Eric Monte.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There Was a Crooked Man...
    It is the type of action drama in which neither the actors nor director appear to believe the script or characters.
  5. Milli Vanilli
    As a documentary, Milli Vanilli brings off something at once strategic, artful, and humane: It presents what happened to Milli Vanilli so that we empathize directly with these two young men who were drawn, like sacrificial virgins, into the pop maelstrom.
  6. Family Portrait
    While free-floating and airy in its construction, the film’s deceiving familiarity slowly erodes, morphing into an unsettling, formally astute brain-tickler observing the placid domesticity of an affluent Texas family in their natural habitat.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kid Glove Killer
    Kid Glove Killer is one of those moderately-budgeted programmers that appear at long intervals to rise far above the level intended. Spotlight shines brightly on Van Heflin in the lead. His skillful timing and delivery of lines holds interest in many sequences that might easily have crumbled in less capable hands.
  8. Matilda
    A delightfully twisted fairy tale that artfully juggles broad tomfoolery and sly drollery, along with a generous serving of sight gags enhanced by special effects. Even though it's being pitched primarily at younger moviegoers and their parents, pic is exuberantly quirky enough to please almost anyone.
  9. New York Doll
    A charmer whose lack of profane language or images renders it unexpectedly viable for general broadcast.
  10. DJ Ahmet
    The sort of film that urges one to tell everyone about it so that they too can bask in its wondrous pleasures, “DJ Ahmet” is a revelation in that it seamlessly straddles the line between laugh-out-loud crowd-pleaser and art-house gem with affecting gravitas.
  11. Mahjong
    Pic is the eclectic Taiwanese helmer’s most accessible work since the 1986 “The Terrorizer” but is flawed by hit-and-miss scripting and performances.
  12. All the Money in the World
    We may never know how Spacey would have been, but Plummer is easily the best thing about a film that is technically accomplished, yet a bit too mechanical in the way it sets up and executes the high-stakes kidnapping at its center.
  13. One Week and a Day
    This sentimental film takes things one step at a time.
  14. A Screaming Man
    Haroun’s tender but unsentimental regard for his characters allows his storytelling a natural gravitas thoroughly suited to the simultaneously unfolding private and national tragedies.
  15. Nanny
    Jusu meticulously calibrates the interactions between her characters, revealing a nuanced understanding of race and class relations.
  16. Renoir
    None of this would work at all if it weren’t pinned to the unselfconscious gaze of Fuki (delightful newcomer Yui Suzuki), 11 years old and already an original.
  17. The Island President
    In the face of rising sea levels, the Maldive Islands are the Alamo, and environmental crusader Mohamed Nasheed is their Davy Crockett. Boasting astonishing access, director Jon Shenk's The Island President documents a brave battle against overwhelming odds.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Our Nixon
    A brisk, eye-opening documentary about the Nixon White House as seen from the inside, this triumph of editing is composed of home movies shot by the president’s staff, accompanied by later TV interviews and priceless audio from the secret tapes, making it a must-see for anyone interested in Americana.
  19. The Cabin in the Woods
    Not since "Scream" has a horror movie subverted the expectations that accompany the genre to such wicked effect as The Cabin in the Woods, a sly, self-conscious twist on one of slasher films' ugliest stepchildren: the coed campsite massacre.
  20. American Pain
    It’s hard to think of a prior chronicle quite so luridly indicting as American Pain.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miami Blues
    This quirky and sometimes brutally funny film strings together terrific moments but never takes a point of view.
  22. Friendship
    Robinson’s brand of middle-class psycho surrealism works perfectly in bite-size sketch-comedy doses. Stretched out to feature length, a character like Craig simply stops making sense.
  23. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    Entertaining and fabulously imaginative in many ways, this second bigscreen rendition of the late author's modest morality tale on the wages of unbridled excess sports excesses of its own.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's Alive
    Stomach-churning.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lady in Red
    Lewis Teague, a former second-unit director, guides his large cast reasonably well through John Sayles’ craftsmanlike script.
  26. Headhunters
    A smooth, intriguing opening and a predictable but emotionally satisfying home stretch bookend helmer Morten Tyldum's otherwise by-the-numbers Norwegian thriller Headhunters.
  27. Quinceañera
    This is a fresh, spirited drama, charming and unpretentious. It mines a similar vein to recent Latino-themed pics such as "Raising Victor Vargas" and "Real Women Have Curves."
  28. Union County
    Life has a way of getting complicated when you introduce temptation, and though Union County can be frustratingly simple at times, the stakes are life and death.
  29. Marcel Proust's Time Regained
    Engrossing despite its chaotically fragmented form.
  30. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    A chilling history lesson in realpolitik.
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