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. Cadillac Records
    Most of the details are right-on in Cadillac Records, though the director's efforts to sell it sometimes steers the film into mawkish or hokey territory.
  2. Ali
    Just about everything Mann has chosen to present is valid, substantial and convincing, but by the end, the feeling persists that while certain essences have been grasped, only part of the story has been told.
  3. Twelve and Holding
    Deals in sometimes queasy areas of underage sexuality and emotional extremes; again, deftness and confidence ultimately put across a screenplay (this time by Anthony S. Cipriano) overloaded with sensational incident.
  4. Crooklyn
    Both annoying and vibrant, casually plotted and deeply personal, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn ends up being as compelling as it is messy.
  5. Knuckle
    As anthropology lessons go, Knuckle is strong stuff, and it's easy to accept Palmer's conclusion that the problem he's showing us may well have no solution.
  6. We Women Warriors
    Nicole Karsin's beautifully crafted documentary We Women Warriors highlights the activism of three strong, extraordinarily likable women from three different regions and indigenous cultures of Colombia.
  7. The Gardener
    A stimulating and highly accessible cinematic conversation.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sugarland Express
    Unfortunately, the film degenerates in final reels to heavy-handed social polemic and sound-and-fury shootout.
  9. Deidra & Laney Rob a Train
    Crow and fellow up-and-comer Ashleigh Murray make an infectiously spirited duo in director Sydney Freeland’s sophomore feature; exuberant but not obnoxious, their combined energy and ingenuity is enough to steam the film through some off-track script wobbles.
  10. The Transfiguration
    Where the film runs into some difficulty is in sustaining its initially very promising mood of incipient violence. Withholding revelations can be an effective strategy, but it’s perhaps slightly overused here, as the result feels ever so slightly dry.
  11. Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk
    Corbett Redford’s film channels and sustains the energy of restless youth while communicating the distinctive qualities of a community that carried collectivist 1960s ideals into a new generation, even as it rejected any vestige of their hippie parents’ music.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Fistful of Dollars
    This is a hard-hitting item, ably directed, splendidly lensed, neatly acted, which has all the ingredients wanted by action fans and then some.
    • Variety
  13. Ladies in Black
    "Ladies” is let down by a screenplay lacking the sharp wit and emotional depth to bring its characters and themes fully to life.
  14. Alice, Darling
    This is a quietly powerful drama about psychological manipulation and damage.
  15. Drop
    It’s a junk-food thriller fried to near-perfection, balancing the tensions of kidnapping, conspiracy and murder with those of a nerve-wracking first date. It’s crisp and delicious.
  16. The Good Nurse
    What lingers most about it is a sense of selfless compassion, the kind that Amy possesses when she painfully reminds herself of the good buried within inexplicable evil. Watching her try to summon that good makes for a quietly devastating finale, one that’s thoroughly earned by the soulful film that precedes it.
  17. Magazine Dreams
    Magazine Dreams creates a character haunting in his extremity. But his dream becomes ours, as does the heartbreaking prospect of it being snuffed before our eyes.
  18. Clerks II
    A softer, flabbier and considerably higher-budgeted follow-up to Kevin Smith's 1994 indie sensation that nevertheless packs enough riotous exchanges and pungent sexual obscenities to make its 97 minutes pass by with ease.
  19. Tetro
    When Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods. Tetro represents something of a middle ground in that respect.
  20. Unknown White Male
    Bruce's efforts to retrace and recover his life after his memory loss contain all the drama and uncertainty of a fine psychological drama.
  21. Knocking
    Crisply made and gutsily performed as it is, this slender 78-minute film too often feels like pointed social allegory in search of a really good cover story.
  22. Transformers One
    Transformers One approaches the well-known characters with a degree of nuance and complexity (as well as violent finality, in a few cases) that marks the most sophisticated onscreen portrait of them to date.
  23. The Black Phone
    It’s a horror ride that holds you, and it should have no trouble carving out an audience, but I didn’t find it particularly scary.
  24. Coco Before Chanel
    More sentimental than chic, Gallic biopic Coco Before Chanel nonetheless knits a convincing portrait of the designer's journey from her humble beginnings as a provincial seamstress to the halls of Parisian haute couture.
  25. Find Me Guilty
    Part mob-trial thriller, part "dese 'n' dose" extended standup routine, character-rich pic plays like vintage Lumet, mining the grim comedy from life-and-death legal wranglings in the manner of "Dog Day Afternoon," "Prince of the City" and "The Verdict."
  26. Washington Heights
    Believable characters trump the retread plot and hokey message.
  27. Queens of Drama
    The only way to enjoy Queens of Drama is to surrender to its excesses. Which explains why it works so perfectly as a bold lesbian melodrama best told in pop and punk numbers.
  28. I Am Not Madame Bovary
    Long, relatively low-key but always engaging, I Am Not Madame Bovary wears its expansive scale lightly.
  29. Telling Lies in America
    Unswervingly sincere and dramatic without surprise or revelation, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' longtime pet project may be personal, but it offers little to audiences that hasn't been served up in quantity in the past.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Parallax View
    The Parallax View is a partially-successful attempt to take a serious subject - a nationwide network of political guns for hire - and make it commercially palatable to the popcorn trade - via chases, fights, and lots of exterior production elements.
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