Variety's Scores

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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
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  1. Inside
    Inside has a suspense hook to drive it forward and a climactic violent set piece, if not quite the one we were expecting. But the question of who’s going to kill or get killed ultimately proves less important than how their pasts have shaped these men — or rather trapped them, like quicksand.
  2. Theater Camp
    Mostly, audiences are stuck watching everybody trying to be funny: testing out one-liners, singing off-key, panhandling for laughs. Running jokes trip over their own shoelaces.
  3. Standard Operating Procedure
    Adds relatively little insight to the public understanding of wayward military behavior more incisively analyzed in "Taxi to the Dark Side."
  4. Star Trek: First Contact
    Having earned his stripes by directing a few TV episodes, Frakes makes an auspicious debut as a feature filmmaker, sustaining excitement and maintaining clarity as he dashes through a two-track storyline.
  5. I Love You, Man
    A Judd Apatow clone that's one of the few recent R-rated raunch fests the ubiquitous auteur of larky crudeness actually had nothing to do with, I Love You, Man cranks out the kind of lowball humor that makes you gag on your own laughs.
  6. Where's My Roy Cohn?
    A biographical portrait that doubles as an origin story for today’s amoral political landscape, its marriage of incisiveness and timeliness should make it an indie hit this fall.
  7. Memory: The Origins of Alien
    “Memory” captures the hypnotic layers of history and meaning that were folded into the shock value of “Alien.”
  8. Ushpizin
    An enjoyable seriocomic tale of a poor couple whose holiday-time miracle becomes a test of faith.
  9. The Walk
    What Zemeckis delivers here is an entirely different brand of spectacle from that which audiences have come to expect from recent studio tentpoles, sharing a true story so incredible it literally must be seen to be believed, as opposed to imaginary feats full of impossible CG creatures.
  10. Veni Vidi Vici
    Capitalism, as depicted here, is inherently sociopathic. As the murders continue to claim ordinary middle-class folks, audiences can’t help but find themselves on edge, bracing for the sniper’s next attack.
  11. The Barbarian Invasions
    A full-bodied, funny and gloriously unpretentious ode to family, friendship and the meaning of life, The Barbarian Invasions is solidly entertaining, sharply written and genuinely touching.
  12. Dior and I
    As carefully crafted as the clothes is Tcheng’s well-considered direction, privileging the creative process over stereotyped glamour or backstabbing.
  13. Sundown
    Yes, Sundown is a mystery, but it’s also a Rorschach test. No two people will see the film the same way.
  14. It Is In Us All
    If as a thriller, the cryptic It Is in Us All, doesn’t thrill quite enough, as an examination of the kind of perverse death-obsession that unloved, unhappy, estranged boys can develop, it is a darkly provocative and promising debut mood-piece from Campbell-Hughes.
  15. Plan 75
    Plan 75 might have been a risible exercise in emotional manipulation if not for the sensitive tone with which Hiyakawa approaches all of her characters.
  16. Companion
    Directing his first feature, Hancock brings an impressive degree of control to a project that’s entirely execution dependent. If the timing and tone weren’t just right, the satirical edge would sour, and the entire project might seem silly or in extremely bad taste.
  17. Fauci
    It’s a documentary that merits a place in classrooms as well as theaters, as a preventative against the virus of cynicism.
  18. A Complete Unknown
    A Complete Unknown is a drama of scruffy naturalism, with a plot that doesn’t so much unfold as lope right along with its legendary, curly-haired, sunglass-wearing coffee-house troubadour hero. Yet the feel — the effect — is that of a musical.
  19. The Paper
    A rambunctious look at a struggling New York tabloid, "The Paper" is Paddy Chayefsky lite. With every member of the all-star staff battling personal life crises as they race to put the next edition to bed, Ron Howard's pacy meller can't help but generate a fair share of humor, excitement and involvement.
  20. Long Way North
    In both tone and approach, this animated treasure couldn’t be more different from the lavish high-tech toons competing in the American marketplace.
  21. Friday Night Lights
    Friday Night Lights is the "Black Hawk Down" of high school football movies. As exclusively as Ridley Scott's picture was about combat, this film concerns football and nothing but.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Manon of the Spring
    Manon des Sources is the poignant, but more dramatically wobbly, followup to Jean de Florette, producer-director Claude Berri's risky two-film adaptation of a novel by Marcel Pagnol, who, unsatisfied with his own next-to-last feature in 1952, expanded it as a two-part novel.
  23. Ordinary Love
    David Holmes and Brian Irvine’s score is melodic and insistent, and it knows when to fall away into silence to let the audience appreciate Neeson and Manville’s superb chemistry.
  24. The Bikeriders
    It goes a long way to humanize figures who’ve been long misrepresented on film, while giving audiences privileged access to this inner world.
  25. Swimming Pool
    Working predominantly in English for the first time, the French director has crafted an absorbing tale about the merging of fiction with reality, propelled by contrasting performances from Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier.
  26. Sweet and Lowdown
    The almost wall-to-wall music is glorious, with solo guitarist Howard Alden doing a sock job. Penn, incidentally, utterly convinces in the scenes in which he's seen "playing" the guitar.
  27. Narc
    A darkly textured, powerfully suspenseful genre piece.
  28. Galaxy Quest
    One of the holiday movie season's more pleasant surprises. A mischievously clever and slickly commercial sci-fi comedy.
  29. The Broken Circle Breakdown
    Sophisticated cutting brings out the story’s complex emotional undercurrents, though “Breakdown’s” less convincingly scripted second half sputters more often than it shines.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    1900
    Bertolucci’s ambitious generational canvas is elaborately constructed.
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