Variety's Scores

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For 17,832 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: 9,164 out of 17832
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17832
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17832
17832 movie reviews
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  1. Paternal Instinct
    Endearing nature of the personalities involved makes a fine argument for weighing parental suitability on terms more profound than the prospective parents sexual orientation.
  2. The Runaways
    A conventionally enjoyable making-and-breaking-of-the-band saga.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gallipoli
    Peter Weir's Gallipoli tackles a legend in human terms and emerges as a highly entertaining drama on a number of levels, none of them inaccessible to anyone unfamiliar with the actual events.
  4. Letters to Father Jaakob
    The director's magisterial control over the proceedings makes something fresh and heartrending out of predictable material, particularly for older, thoughtful audiences.
  5. Return to Ithaca
    This airily shot talkfest doesn’t want for sensitivity, but overestimates viewers’ investment in a quintet of prickly characters whose personal histories take the film’s entire duration to assemble.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Gambler
    The Gambler is a compelling and effective film. James Caan is excellent and the featured players are superb. However, it is somewhat overlong in early exposition and has one climax too many.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Fine Madness
    Too heavyhanded to be comedy, yet too light to be called drama, the well-mounted production depicts a non-conformist poet-stud in an environment of much sex, some violence and modern headshrinking. Fine direction and some good characterizations enhance negative script outlook.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Other
    An outstanding example of topflight writing structure and dialog, enhanced to full fruition by a knowing director.
  9. Nightbooks
    Its whimsical touches, along with a reverence for creative young minds, gives the film a warmth that counterbalances its shocks.
  10. 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Picture of Dorian Gray
    In the adaptation by Albert Lewin, much of the offscreen narration, explaining among other things what is going on in Gray’s mind may be too much for most to grasp.
  12. White King, Red Rubber, Black Death
    A stunning indictment of Belgium's brutal colonization of the Congo in the late 19th century, Brit documaker Peter Bate's White King, Red Rubber, Black Death illustrates how European exploitation in Africa caused irreparable damage to the continent.
  13. Bye Bye Germany
    There’s a storybook complacency to Garbarski’s filmmaking (indeed the literal translation of the German title is “Once Upon a Time in Germany”) that gives us the impression that all this is snow-globe history, put away behind glass on a shelf somewhere.
  14. Ron's Gone Wrong
    It’s a shame that the mile-a-minute plot of “Ron’s Gone Wrong” isn’t more focused.
  15. Memphis
    A digressive, daringly experimental study of a flailing musician, magnetically played by accomplished bluesman and poet Willis Earl Beal.
  16. My Week with Marilyn
    To the extent that Michelle Williams' multilayered interpretation of Marilyn Monroe serves as its raison d'etre, My Week With Marilyn succeeds stunningly.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lili
    Aumont is delightful as the magician and his act with Gabor, staged almost as a production piece, is a high-light.
  18. Carousel
    In short, Carousel is a flawed drama that can be disjointed, but by the end the movie feels worth it: mannered at times, touchingly real at others.
  19. Kill Your Darlings
    Directed with an assured sense of style that pushes against the narrow confines of its admittedly fascinating story, John Krokidas’ first feature feels adventurous yet somewhat hemmed-in.
  20. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    Nineteen years after their last adventure, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford have no trouble getting back in the groove with a story and style very much in keeping with what has made the series so perennially popular.
  21. Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
    Longtime fans of Walker's warm, sepulchral baritone, startlingly evocative songwriting and lushly imaginative instrumentation will rejoice at this revealing documentary.
  22. All Square
    Away from the baseball diamond, All Square effectively pivots to moments of surprisingly affecting drama.
  23. Battle for Haditha
    Intense, fair-minded entry in the pileup of Iraq pictures.
  24. Salt
    As a fierce superspy and mistress of many disguises, Jolie represents the one indisputably kickass element in this brisk, professionally assembled but finally shrug-inducing thriller.
  25. The Princess of France
    Even the most deliberately airy amusement can use more ingenious structuring and assertive personality than Pineiro is inclined to provide at this (still early) stage in his career.
  26. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
    One could argue that “Mockingjay” didn’t really merit being split in two (and surely a single three-hour movie could be made of it), but we benefit from the fact that the film has been given room to breathe, which allows for subtle character moments...and the gradual building of suspense during the actual siege in the Capitol.
  27. I Love You Phillip Morris
    Less of a comedy than a hilarious tragedy, I Love You Phillip Morris stars Jim Carrey in his most complicated comedic role since "The Cable Guy."
  28. Pecker
    A pleasant but ephemeral spoof that may disappoint Waters' hard-core fans while not recruiting many new devotees.
  29. To All the Boys: Always and Forever
    Incidentally, the big payoff of this film isn’t what becomes of Lara Jean and Peter’s fates, but getting to see the supporting cast blossom around her.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twister
    Appealing for its ambition to achieve a unique tone and for its wildly disparate cast, pic never entirely comes together.
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