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. Happy Christmas
    Happy Christmas desperately needs some real jokes, rather than settling for the bemused chuckles that accompany its banal observations into human nature.
  2. Strayed
    A taut, suspenseful, linear approach, and a trio of excellent performances.
  3. Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    An entertaining, affectionate documentary created by three self-professed fanboys, which proves as nostalgic for the host himself as for a bygone broadcast era, before the reality-TV explosion allowed the inmates to fully take over the asylum.
  4. The Threesome
    The results are mixed in ways the filmmakers probably didn’t intend, but they’re at once genuinely intriguing and enormously charming given the talent involved.
  5. Chalk
    Filtering one school year through the eyes of three young instructors and a rookie administrator, this loosely scripted satire mostly steers clear of cheap shots and over-the-top gags, balancing its comic observations with a real measure of affection for teachers and students alike.
  6. I Will Make You Mine
    While the female leads reflect Chen’s desire to create richer parts for Asian actresses, the writer-director has said they also reflect facets of herself. That may be, but she’s written her character as the most aggravating of the three, which makes for a risky but also compelling ask of the audience.
  7. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    A film with a terrifically engaging concept that overstays its welcome by quite a stretch.
  8. Mohawk
    [Geoghegan] allows his film’s message about intolerance and oppression to emanate naturally from the action, thereby letting the proceedings gradually transform into a revisionist fantasy of defiance, expulsion and vengeance.
  9. Lars and the Real Girl
    Helmer Craig Gillespie's sweetly off-kilter film plays like a Coen brothers riff on Garrison Keillor's "Lake Woebegone" tales, defying its lurid premise with a gentle comic drama grounded in reality.
  10. Handling the Undead
    Full of frail, mortal feeling and overcast last-days imagery, Handling the Undead lingers coolly in the bones longer than many zombie films that offer more immediate, grisly gratification.
  11. Tears of the Black Tiger
    Fun, if finally too silly.
  12. The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
    It would be unfair to expect an amusing but slight comedy like this one to serve as a substantial political statement. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for any movie that reminds us, in a heartfelt but unassuming way, that we are many, but we are one.
  13. Thumbsucker
    Thumbsucker (like "Donnie Darko") is more likely to prosper in the long haul as a home-format cult fave than in its initial arthouse tour. Both offer eccentric humor within a fairly somber overall tone, support-cast surprises, and (to a lesser degree in Thumbsucker) fable-like, hyperreal elements.
  14. The Cruise
    There is unquestionably enough lively material here to snare one’s attention but, even at just 76 minutes, many will feel that this cruise has gone on plenty long enough.
  15. Kicks
    An arresting visual experience, Kicks has style to spare, and in fact it probably should have spared a little, as this first-time director sometimes crowds his film with more auteurial flourishes than his rather simple story can support. Nonetheless, this is a debut of undeniable promise, both for its director and its largely unknown cast.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Defiant Ones
    The performances by Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are virtually flawless. Poitier captures all of the moody violence of the convict, serving time because he assaulted a white man who had insulted him. It is a cunning, totally intelligent portrayal that rings powerfully true.
  17. Inglourious Basterds
    A violent fairy tale, an increasingly entertaining fantasia in which the history of World War II is wildly reimagined so that the cinema can play the decisive role in destroying the Third Reich.
  18. The Mermaid
    Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid defies the time-worn nature of its material, concocting pure enchantment with the director’s own blend of nutty humor, intolerable cruelty and unabashed sweetness.
  19. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
    The brief, meteoric, tragic life of martial arts star Bruce Lee forms the basis of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. The film is an unlikely pastiche of traditional biography, Hollywood saga, chopsocky set pieces and inter-racial romance. Seemingly contrary elements and styles nonetheless mesh into an entertaining whole and the result proves extremely touching and haunting.
  20. Never Let Me Go
    Never Let Me Go is that rare find, a fragile little four-leaf clover of a movie that's emotionally devastating, yet all too easily trampled by cynics.
  21. Faye
    As “Faye” presents it, Dunaway was too volcanic and troubled a personality not to pour herself into her roles. That’s part of what made her great. Yet the film also wants to cue us to the gossipy and reductive way that this kind of thinking has too often been applied to her.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Batman
    Nicholson embellishes fascinatingly baroque designs with his twisted features, lavish verbal pirouettes and inspired excursions into the outer limits of psychosis. It's a masterpiece of sinister comic acting.
  23. In Another Country
    Beguilingly simple, relaxed in its mastery and enhanced by Isabelle Huppert’s impeccable poise.
  24. Why Don't You Just Die!
    Set almost entirely in a corrupt cop’s Moscow apartment, Why Don’t You Just Die! is a neatly conceived dark-comedy chamber piece — à la the Wachowski siblings’ clockwork-perfect queer-noir “Bound” or Sidney Lumet’s airtight but otherwise diabolical “Deathtrap” — in which a simple setup spirals into unimaginably twisted mayhem.
  25. Prime Minister
    As a portrait of struggles in the seat of power, the film presses all the right emotional buttons.
  26. Babel
    Effectively building dread and emotional tension as tragic incidents triggered by human stupidity and carelessness steadily multiply, this film, like "21 Grams" in particular, employs a deterministically grim mindset in the cause of its philosophical aspirations, but is gripping nearly all the way.
  27. Man from Reno
    Boyle keeps the wheels churning nicely for the most part, and the climax ratchets up the pic’s sense of urgency without loosening its bearings.
  28. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
    The film is offbeat, silly, disarming and loopy all at the same time, and viewers will decide to ride with that or just give up on it, according to mood and disposition.
  29. Unstoppable
    Given the linear, one-track nature of the plot, Scott and Bomback prove surprisingly effective at delivering a well-rounded experience, going out of their way to fill in the personalities of their two leads.
  30. Brave
    Brave offers a tougher, more self-reliant heroine for an era in which princes aren't so charming, set in a sumptuously detailed Scottish environment where her spirit blazes bright as her fiery red hair.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »