Variety's Scores

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For 17,833 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: 9,165 out of 17833
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17833
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17833
17833 movie reviews
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  1. Before We Vanish
    Playing frequently like an absurdist political satire with only flashes of violence, this low-tension, drawn-out work won’t gratify the chills or adrenaline rushes fanboys crave, but the ending strikes a romantic chord so pure that all but the most jaded cynics will be moved.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fury
    The Fury features Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes as adversaries in an elaborate game of mind control. Director Brian De Palma is on home ground in moving the plot pieces around effectively.
  3. Enzo Avitabile Music Life
    Unlike Demme’s concert pics, this aims more for the process, yet brief scenes “in the old neighborhood” play out like cliches, and only Avitabile’s restlessness really lingers.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wanderers
    Despite an uneasy blend of nostalgia and violence, The Wanderers is a well-made and impressive film. Philip Kaufman, who also co-scripted with his wife, Rose [from the novel by Richard Price], has accurately captured the urban angst of growing up in the 1960s.
  5. Elvis
    Luhrmann has made a woefully imperfect but at times arresting drama that builds to something moving and true. By the end, the film’s melody has been unchained.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Electric Horseman
    Even though Redford, as an ex-rodeo champ, and Fonda don’t create the romantic sparks that might be expected, it’s their dramatic professionalism that salvages Horseman and makes it a moving and effective film by the time the final credits roll by.
  7. Buddy
    Casper Kelly is a talent to watch. In “Buddy,” he’s essentially reviving an old joke and doing multiple variations on it. But he has a gleefully rich understanding of the inner insanity that can drive pop culture.
  8. Holy Hell
    Like watching a takedown of Hitler by a disillusioned Leni Reifenstahl, what emerges is one of the decade’s strangest and most unsettling documentaries, especially given its as-yet-unwritten ending.
  9. Pick of the Litter
    “Pick” is brisk and pleasant, but not terribly involving or memorable.
  10. Mongolian Ping Pong
    A charming but overextended yarn about some prairie tykes who mistake a table-tennis ball for a glowing pearl from the gods.
  11. Hell House
    Hell House is a slice of contempo life many viewers will find bizarre and disturbing, not necessarily in the precautionary-moral way its subjects intend. Briskly paced docu is well handled in tech departments.
  12. American Psycho
    Pace is sleek, airless and apt.
  13. Identity
    Some fancy footwork in the writing and directing can't disguise the hoary "Ten Little Indians" origins of Identity.
  14. Intermission
    Borderline grungy but highly entertaining comedy-drama.
  15. Peau d'homme coeur de bête
    Tough, cogent and resonantly chilling, this slow-burning drama continues the vein of harsh realism seen in recent Gallic cinema including "La Vie de Jesus" and "More Than Yesterday."
  16. Team America: World Police
    Goes the extra mile to piss off everybody -- which includes gleefully destroying renowned Hollywood liberals, literally and figuratively.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Grand Canyon
    [An] earnest, often moving but not totally successful film.
  18. Constructing Albert
    Constructing Albert remains an oddly unsatisfying movie about food that’s so tasteful you can barely imagine what it tastes like.
  19. ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas
    Though it’s far from the last word on ZZ Top, “That Little Ol’ Band From Texas” fills in the nuts and bolts, giving you enough of a glimpse of how it all happened to make it seem like a down-home rock ‘n’ roll mirage come true.
  20. Chinese Puzzle
    Bringing an appreciative outsider’s perspective to the sights, sounds and polyglot energy of New York, Klapisch and his collaborators ensure that the two hours whiz by decoratively and entertainingly.
  21. Napoleon
    Dense without feeling rushed, then done without ever having really sprung to life, Napoleon seems determined to cover a great deal of ground over its not-insignificant running time.
  22. You Kill Me
    With an eclectic mix of strong-minded thesps all pulling in slightly different directions, this shape-shifting genre hybrid successfully commingles 12-step therapy, romantic comedy and hit-man thriller.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Living Out Loud
    This feminist comedy shot through with fantasies about the travails of newly single womanhood strikes some rich chords, but doesn't quite put together a complete tune.
  24. Killing Them Softly
    A routine, even mundane crime story relayed in tones of world-weary fatigue, Killing Them Softly deglams the mob movie to coolly distinctive if rarely pulse-quickening effect.
  25. Downsizing
    Downsizing is an ingenious comedy of scale, a touching tale of a man whose problems grow bigger as he gets smaller, and an earnest environmental parable.
  26. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    It’s the bright and daffy absurdist spinoff that these weren’t-but-could-have-been-sketch-comedy characters deserve, and it feels, in its modestly clever and diverting way, just right.
  27. Marvelous and the Black Hole
    A set-your-watch-by-it riff on the unlikely-friendship-helps-two-lonely-people formula, this time involving a troubled schoolgirl and a stage magician, it is however so nicely performed and takes such honest pleasure in the flourishes of its little magic show, that only a hard heart would mention that the palmed coins and hidden cards of its construction were visible all along.
  28. Bound
    Debuting writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski come off like Coen brothers wannabes with no sense of humor.
  29. The Lost King
    A richer, stronger, and more moving piece of work [than Philomena], a historical detective story that carries the kick of a true-life “Da Vinci Code.”
  30. Brideshead Revisited
    Offers lush and compelling drama drawn from Evelyn Waugh's beloved novel. Purists may blanch at the screenplay's changes to the source material's narrative fine points, but its spirit survives intact.
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