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. No Escape
    Grittily propulsive filmmaking and solid performances from Owen Wilson and Lake Bell aside, there’s no escaping the movie’s hand-wringing manipulations and pandering sense of privilege.
  2. The Park Bench
    Hayden and Perez do their best to generate sweetness and spark, but the obstacles separating these characters are as contrived as the cliches that animate them.
  3. The Curse of Downers Grove
    Although it’s being marketed as a horror film, The Curse of Downers Grove turns out to be something else — a messy hash of teen soap opera, stalker thriller and whatnot whose titular, possibly supernatural aspect is basically irrelevant.
  4. One & Two
    There are simply too many loose ends to distract us, and too much empty air in which audiences can’t help but poke holes.
  5. The Iron Ministry
    While cerebral in intent and planning, the pic doesn’t feel overly straitjacketed by theory and offers unexpected moments of amusement.
  6. Being Evel
    An exercise in hero worship that doesn’t shy away from its subject’s least admirable traits, “Being Evel” attempts to deliver a complex portrait of a man who preferred to be seen as a self-styled myth
  7. The Boy
    So little happens in The Boy, and so little suspense is effectively built around its central figure, that by the time things finally do heat up the movie has flatlined too completely for us to care.
  8. Sinister 2
    A retread of such brainless, shameless lameness that it’s hard to imagine anyone begging for another installment.
  9. Hitman: Agent 47
    Insofar as Hitman: Agent 47 is about anything, really, it’s about the pleasures of being on location — from the gratuitous image of Ware taking a dip in a five-star-hotel swimming pool to the sight of Singapore’s staggering Gardens by the Bay.
  10. The Second Mother
    The script is executed with enough naturalism to ward off complaints of contrivance — all the way up to a tidy, but quite satisfying, denouement.
  11. American Ultra
    Too often plays like an earnest yet unsatisfying adaptation of a cult graphic novel, with most of the charm lost in translation.
  12. Learning to Drive
    It’s no stretch for Kingsley to project stiff dignity and forthrightness, but that familiarity works against him here, despite his every effort to give the character a human pulse. Clarkson, expert at bringing authenticity to the most inauthentic material, gets to show far more range.
  13. Guidance
    The modest pic’s laughs get bigger as it goes along, and so does its surprising warmth.
  14. Paulette
    Politics aside, however, the movie delivers on the inspiration of its premise, featuring just the sort of laughs one hopes for.
  15. Air
    This first feature for videogame designer/writer Christian Cantamessa has an intriguing premise and two capable stars, none of which is utilized as memorably as one might hope.
  16. Big Sky
    Evan M. Wiener’s screenplay throws in too many disparate elements without developing any of them very effectively, while Grau’s direction is slick but unable to provide the tension or consistency needed.
  17. Return to Sender
    A queasy but strangely gutless exploitation pic.
  18. Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'
    A strictly members-only entertainment for a dedicated target audience, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ will impress the uninitiated as very loud and very colorful, but not nearly fast-paced enough.
  19. Amnesiac
    Helmer Michael Polish and his spouse-star, Kate Bosworth, were reportedly attracted to the project for the change-of-pace role it afforded her. But even beyond its sketchy screenplay, the pic’s main problem is that Bosworth lacks the villainous authority required to make Mike Le and Amy Kolquist’s tricky if undercooked screenplay work.
  20. Final Girl
    A mildly intriguing thriller of comeuppance that leaves you wanting more — not more archly stylized violence or repetitive revenge fantasy, perhaps, but more insight into the connection between the eponymous assassin (Abigail Breslin) and her highly skilled mentor (Wes Bentley).
  21. Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism
    A chintzy children’s fantasy that summons the powers of suggestion, but falls well short of mesmeric.
  22. We Come as Friends
    A masterfully composed and suitably outraged look at the neocolonialist exploitation of South Sudan.
  23. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    Cavill and Hammer have each toplined major tentpoles before, so it’s something of a mystery why neither makes much of an impression here, but there’s a curious vacuum at the center of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that almost certainly owes to its casting.
  24. Reset
    Reset strings together a series of hit-and-miss ideas that never deliver an “aha!” payoff.
  25. The Falling
    Morley marries a quasi-Victorian premise with a modernist technique that feels drawn from her film’s own milieu.
  26. Sneakerheadz
    The tone throughout Sneakerheadz is mostly light and bright, but the filmmakers don’t stint on anthropological detail, or shy away from the darker aspects of getting kicks by any means necessary.
  27. Fantastic Four
    Ultimately, Fox’s stab at reviving one of its inherited Marvel properties feels less like a blockbuster for this age of comics-oriented tentpoles than it does another also-ran — not an embarrassment, but an experiment that didn’t gel.
  28. The Runner
    The Runner doesn’t lack for drama, but the characters are so thinly and predictably drawn, and the movie’s supposed insights into the art of political compromise so banal, that nothing catches fire.
  29. Paulo Coelho's Best Story
    A dramatically flat and tediously disjointed drama that comes across as a standard-issue, cliche-littered, struggling-writer-finds-fulfillment biopic that has been cut-and-pasted into borderline incoherence.
  30. Northmen: A Viking Saga
    The cast is earnestly committed, and if there are a few too many hokey last-second rescues from certain doom, Northmen nevertheless rarely risks curdling into camp.
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