Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Still Alice
    Julianne Moore guides us through the tragic arc of how it must feel to disappear before one’s own eyes, accomplishing one of her most powerful performances by underplaying the scenario.
  2. The Riot Club
    Scherfig approaches the milieu with shrewd anthropological wit, amplifying Wade’s research with her own keen outsider insights — this on top of an expert grasp of tension and tone as the club’s initial allure turns to anxiety and disgust.
  3. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
    The film is a master class in comic timing, employing pacing and repetition with the skill of a practiced concert pianist.
  4. Pawn Sacrifice
    Absent the ability to really get the audience’s heads in the game, the film succeeds better at presenting chess as a subtle metaphor for the psychological warfare being waged behind the scenes.
  5. Pasolini
    Ferrara finds himself imitating rather than innovating.
  6. Stop the Pounding Heart
    Where “Heart” excels, however, is simply in capturing the rhythm of life.
  7. Beloved Sisters
    An enthralling, gorgeously mounted depiction of the complicated relationship between the post-Enlightenment writer and philosopher Friedrich Schiller and the sisters Charlotte von Lengefeld (who would become his wife) and Caroline von Beulwitz (his eventual biographer).
  8. The Postman's White Nights
    Some stunning shots and a likable protag can’t cover up the story’s shallowness.
  9. Nightcrawler
    Touches of apocalyptic comedy run throughout Nightcrawler, but the movie’s overriding tone is one of strident, finger-wagging self-seriousness.
  10. Ned Rifle
    Though lacking the emotional depth and almost epic scope that made “Henry Fool” loom so large after Hartley’s anecdotal, idiosyncratic early features, Ned Rifle is a far more satisfactory extension of its memorable characters than the misbegotten “Fay Grim.”
  11. Men, Women & Children
    This painfully well-meaning but largely unpersuasive bid for cross-generational understanding feels at once of-the-moment and too obvious by half, like a less overblown version of “Crash” for the information superhighway.
  12. Madame Bovary
    Measured and absorbing rather than deeply compelling or vital, this latest adaptation of a rarely well-filmed novel makes a strong effort to capture the stiflingly provincial world that Flaubert was able to describe in such precise, painstaking detail on the page.
  13. Love & Mercy
    A wonderfully innervating cure for the common musical biopic, Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy vibrantly illuminates two major breakthroughs — one artistic, one personal — in the life of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.
  14. The Last Five Years
    Beyond scrappy, The Last 5 Years lacks a unifying aesthetic, as if this were merely the run-through, grabbed on the fly without lights, costumes or location permits. This approach does improve upon the stage show in one key respect, however, allowing us to see all those crooned-over emotions writ large on the faces of its two terrific lead performers.
  15. A Little Chaos
    Too often, helmer Rickman galumphs through what’s meant to be a witty romp, underlining the script’s most obvious, rigged qualities.
  16. The Keeping Room
    A potentially gripping story of empowerment through armed resistance is almost totally undermined by studied, self-conscious storytelling.
  17. Jackie & Ryan
    Mellow, digestibly sweet and embellished with lovely folk tunes, this modest bit of Americana reveals pleasing new sides of both leads.
  18. Hungry Hearts
    It’s as if the director can’t decide what he wants: to chronicle the disintegration of a family, or to take a magnifying glass to a woman whose mania overwhelms all rational thought.
  19. Goodnight Mommy
    Shooting in sleek 35mm, Franz and Fiala have dreamt up a home-invasion scenario where the aggressors lived there all along.
  20. Good Kill
    Just as Niccol’s narrative structure is at once fraught and immaculate in its escalation of ideas and character friction, so his arguments remain ever-so-slightly oblique despite the tidiness of their presentation.
  21. Far From Men
    Despite his movie-star reputation and looks, Mortensen remains a remarkably humble screen presence, a trait that’s perfect for a part that demands considerable empathy from whoever’s playing it.
  22. Escobar: Paradise Lost
    "Escobar” offers an odd mix of action movie, romantic melodrama and cautionary traveler’s tale, which works better than it should thanks to Del Toro’s fascinating performance and Di Stefano’s assured, muscular helming.
  23. Eden
    Hansen-Love, who co-wrote the script along with her former-DJ brother Sven, zeroes in on the signature experiences of ’90s club life with expert precision.
  24. The Cut
    The script, co-written by vet Mardik Martin, is pedestrian, and the mise-en-scene, striving hard for a classic Hollywood look, lacks grandeur, notwithstanding impressive location work.
  25. The Cobbler
    The result is a slow-motion zeppelin crash that starts as a dull-edged fable, and then spirals further and further out of control without ever growing more exciting or interesting.
  26. Cake
    To be sure, Aniston leads with her scowl here, in the sort of performance that often gets called “brave” but is, in fact, more accurately described as a well-executed change of pace.
  27. The Hole
    Cool it may be, but scary (or even mildly shudder-inducing) it ain’t, even in 3-D.
  28. Burying the Ex
    Strained, sexist schlock, which raises zero jolts and only fitful chuckles with its gamely performed tale.
  29. No Good Deed
    Ensuing action is tamely PG-13 in terms of graphic violence. Despite competent performances and packaging, dialogue and situations in Aimee Lagos’ script are too routine to create much excitement.
  30. Black or White
    The good news is that Kevin Costner does some of the finest, most deeply felt work of his career as a widower lawyer fighting for custody of his biracial granddaughter in Mike Binder’s Black and White. The bad news is that this well-intentioned family drama never quite shakes free from its didactic, movie-of-the-week dramaturgy and a hand-holding approach to race-relations.
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