Variety's Scores

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For 17,831 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: 9,163 out of 17831
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17831
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17831
17831 movie reviews
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  1. The Family Fang
    It’s a measure of Bateman’s skill in front of and behind the camera that his performance here betrays nary a shred of actorly indulgence, operating instead in a subdued register that achieves quietly aching moments in the final stretch.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
    Frears levitates the film’s harsh realism with a fantastical counterpoint in touches like the ghost of a tortured labor leader who haunts Rafi from the outset, and a band of gypsy buskers who serenade the ongoing anarchy.
  3. The Last Duel
    Despite a brief action interlude here or there, The Last Duel turns out to be a lavishly convoluted and, at times, rather interesting medieval soap opera.
  4. Lady Buds
    While the personalities spotlit here are easy to root for, what emerges is less an upbeat look at female enterprise than yet another case of corporate money and political mechanizations killing off community-based small businesses to further enrich their deep-pocketed, invasive new rivals. It’s an ultimately depressing trajectory, though the film itself remains engaging and well crafted.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Bodyguard
    In his directorial debut, Tony Bill assembles a truly remarkable cast of youngsters with little or no previous acting experience. Chris Makepeace is superb as the slightly built kid coming anew to a Chicago high school dominated by extortionist gang leader Matt Dillon, also terrific in his part.
    • Variety
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
    An okay family musical fantasy featuring Gene Wilder as an eccentric candymaker who makes a boy's dreams come true.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Reflections in a Golden Eye
    A pretentious melodrama.
  8. Slash/Back
    Innuksuk approaches everything with such a generous, supportive spirit, it seems churlish to focus on shortcomings in a film with so much personality. ... "Slash/Back" seems bound to find a cult following, but it will mean the most to Inuit audiences, for whom standing up to invaders is more than just another genre-movie cliché.
  9. Juliet, Naked
    It’s a winsome screwball love story that grows on you and takes you somewhere charming.
  10. Man Bites Dog
    An offbeat, darkly hilarious portrait.
  11. Last Days
    Result is dead-on depiction of the hedonistic rock lifestyle, punctuated by sequences of haunting beauty but also quasi-religious imagery that borders on tacky.
  12. A Decade Under the Influence
    An entertaining, deeply respectful assessment of the directors and actors who rode the countercultural wave of the 1970s.
  13. Cremaster 3
    Matthew Barney delivers his masterpiece in Cremaster 3, unquestionably the 35-year-old sculptor-performance artist-filmmaker's most linear, most narratively inclined work to date.
  14. Better Luck Tomorrow
    Lin's nicely turned out picture is sometimes both predictable and a bit far-fetched narratively, but still provides a generally absorbing look at a slice of society normally taken for granted, both in life and onscreen.
  15. The Business of Strangers
    While it could have used a punchier final act that distilled its themes more cogently and conclusively, this intelligently scripted drama about power and its many channels nonetheless delivers thanks to Stettner's stylish visual sense and, most of all, to the smart, commanding performances of leads Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles.
  16. Young Adam
    All of the promise that was evident in Scottish helmer David Mackenzie's flawed freshman feature, "The Last Great Wilderness" (2002), is richly achieved in his second pic, Young Adam, a resonant, beautifully modulated relationships drama.
  17. Finding Neverland
    An impeccably made and genuinely moving account of how Scottish author J.M. Barrie came to write "Peter Pan."
  18. Jay Kelly
    Jay Kelly is a fictional inside-the-movie-world portrait that’s been made with a great deal of care and affection and entertaining dish, and it’s the definition of a movie that goes down easy.
  19. PG: Psycho Goreman
    As satire, Psycho Goreman is no “Planet Terror,” but it’s a droll enough schlock-in-quote-marks diversion, and part of its appeal is just how damn cheap it is. In the omni-tech era, it’s fun to see a filmmaker build an FX fantasy out of scraps, from the ground up.
  20. Rabbit à la Berlin
    Cunningly fashioning found footage into a rabbit's-eye view of events, Polish helmer Bartek Konopka creates a chillingly apt political allegory in Rabbit a la Berlin.
  21. 16 Acres
    An uncommonly engrossing and articulate documentary.
  22. Fame High
    Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy (“The Garden”) favors formulaic uplift over investigation, failing to offer a p.o.v. on whether young creative people should be driven as mercilessly as these. Lackluster videography further dulls the pic, which culminates in frustratingly fleeting glimpses of the students’ year-end performances.
  23. Dislecksia: The Movie
    The film conveys key information and makes important distinctions not generally known, and its effectiveness probably depends on the viewer’s tolerance for poorly executed kitsch and manic physical intrusions by the filmmaker.
  24. Björk: Biophilia Live
    Bjork’s charm has always hinged on her ability to be guileless and unknowable at once; “Biophilia Live” is no exception.
  25. Les Cowboys
    Bidegain, who for years has served as the muscle behind Jacques Audiard’s scripts, advances his ongoing deconstruction of genre-movie masculinity in his uncompromising, anti-romantic directorial debut.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    To Each His Own
    Charles Brackett, who wrote and produced, injected a human quality in the script, and Mitchell Leisen makes full use of it in his direction.
  27. Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road
    Even if you think you know it all, “Long Promised Road” is an affectionate and satisfying movie, sentimental at times but often stirringly insightful, a collection of pinpoint testimonials to Wilson’s artistry by such authoritative fans as Springsteen and Elton John, and a movie that lets the enchanting qualities of Wilson’s music cascade over you.
  28. Kill Boksoon
    Kill Boksoon, like its heroine, could do with learning that there’s more to life than being highly efficient in execution.
  29. Haywire
    Paring down narrative and character concerns in favor of a breathtaking application of pure thriller technique, Soderbergh's latest picture is a lean, efficient exercise tossed off with his customary sangfroid and wickedly dry sense of humor.
  30. After Everything
    Its refractory tone, both deadpan and swoony, announces that the first-time feature directors have a phenomenal eye for character (which is something those who’ve been watching Marks’ work as an actress may already have realized).
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