Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,825 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: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Neo Ned
    Neo Ned may be ludicrous on paper, but it has what fans of independent film are looking for -- atmosphere, humanity and just a dash of fantastic drama.
  2. The Boss of It All
    For all its slightness, pic is helmer's least pretentious and most sheerly enjoyable for years.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bleak Moments
    A film with downbeat themes of solitude, difficulties of communication, coping with a retarded 29-year-old sister, it has enough human insight sans mawkishness or undue sentimentality to make it wryly funny, with its recognition of human foibles that gives it an edge, charm and warmth, tempered with compassion.
  4. Mogul Mowgli
    Outside of Ahmed’s seething, spitting, can’t-look-away performance, Mogul Mowgli is a sparsely scripted but scratchily atmospheric culture-clash drama that runs on some quite traditional father-son melodramatics. But considering the film outside the performance would be a mistake.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Family Thing
    The handful of powerful speeches here do little, however, to offset story weaknesses that also include soft-edged characterizations, a faintly patronizing air regarding the black characters and a general avoidance of the issue most viewers will want to see addressed.
  6. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    All in all, the pace -- although buoyed by Joel Goodman score -- is rather plodding until Clash's life story intersects with that of the little red guy, at which point it lifts off. And even yanks a tear or two.
  7. Monument Ave.
    The only problem is that the great majority of screen time is devoted to the kind of loutish, drunken, small-minded, confrontational macho posturing that, in assorted ethnic stripes, has been paraded across the screen innumerable times in recent years.
  8. Untouchable
    With Weinstein on the ropes, Macfarlane pulls no punches, doing a fair but unflinching job of letting those he once dominated share their narrative. That they do so on camera makes what they have to say that much more impactful, and Macfarlane does their testimony justice, delivering a hard-hitting documentary that speaks truth to power.
  9. The Imitation Game
    So innately compelling is Turing’s story — to say nothing of Benedict Cumberbatch’s masterful performance — it’s hard not to get caught up in this well-told tale and its skillful manipulations.
  10. Smiley Face
    A sterling space cadet performance by Anna Faris floats the genial if slight pothead comedy Smiley Face, a distaff "Dude, Where's My Car?"
  11. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
    For all the film's provocations and documentation, however, Greenwald never seems get to the heart of the matter: that it is the consumer who makes Wal-Mart powerful.
  12. London Road
    There’s an over-compensatory fussiness to its most elaborate formal conceits, with the gradual shifting of the pic’s palette from desaturated December grays to iridescent oil-pastel tones a crude symbolic device.
  13. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    Though there are a number of outdoor scenes and production values are handsome, ultimately it's the narrow focus and chamber nature of the material that lends the movie its resonance and emotional power.
  14. To the Limit
    A visually breathtaking essay about daredevils hooked on the thrill of speed rock-climbing.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bugsy Malone
    It’s a brave, funny and winning pic which is nearly – but regrettably not quite – a triumph.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is Elvis
    A real curiosity item, This Is Elvis is a fast-paced gloss on Presley's life and career packed with enough fine music and unusual footage to satisfy anyone with an Interest in the late singing idol.
  17. Chasing Amy
    Much of the dialogue is good, and Smith does a decent job of presenting the emotional fallout from every major participant's p.o.v.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Married to the Mob
    Fresh, colorful and inventive, Married to the Mob is another offbeat entertainment from director Jonathan Demme.
  19. The Water Horse
    Though it strikes some predictable coming-of-age notes, this moving, well-wrought adventure should appeal to fans of "E.T." and Carroll Ballard.
  20. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    Tempering the strong medicine of its social-justice protestations with a streak of outlandish melodrama, this “Monster” may not have quite as many facets as its title implies, but Pla’s formally deft manipulation of perspective keeps the pic both urgent and even-handed.
  21. Sisters in Law
    Documentary has the fascination of watching an African "Judge Judy" with a more important case load. It also offers the satisfaction of seeing the law being used to change patterns of social injustice.
  22. Maria by Callas
    First-time director Tom Volf plainly adores Callas — sometimes to a fault — but his film stands as a necessary corrective to decades of bad press. It’s an unalloyed tribute to her as a musical genius who gave all of herself to the public.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beetlejuice
    Beetlejuice springs to life when the raucous and repulsive Betelgeuse (Keaton) rises from his moribund state to wreak havoc on fellow spooks and mortal enemies.
  24. Man Push Cart
    An example of spare, slice-of-life indie cinema at its most unpretentious, Man Push Cart adeptly and subtly layers facts about the protag's history and character into his story.
  25. Tadpole
    A smart sex comedy that successfully swims upstream to spawn and score.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spy Kids
    Fulfills kids' empowerment fantasies and features enough techno-wizardry and cool f/x to satisfy those weaned on videogames.
  27. All the Real Girls
    Director David Gordon Green has created some fresh, penetrating, beautifully drawn scenes of one-on-one intimacy…But some of what surrounds these interludes is variously misguided, fuzzy and borderline pretentious.
  28. Time of the Wolf
    Haneke demonstrates profound insight into the essence of human behavior when all humility is pared away, raw panic and despair are the order of the day, and man becomes more like wolf than man.
  29. Robinson in Ruins
    Although rich in ideas and always compelling to look at, writer-helmer Patrick Keiller's latest semi-experimental pic Robinson in Ruins reps a minor disappointment after his outstanding, same-veined previous works, "London" and "Robinson in Space."
  30. The Raid 2
    It’s hard to shake a nagging feeling of more is less; with its convoluted plot mechanics clearly cribbed from past thriller templates, the film never quite generates or sustains its predecessor’s pure sense of menace.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »