Variety's Scores

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For 17,810 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: 9,150 out of 17810
  2. Mixed: 7,023 out of 17810
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17810
17810 movie reviews
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  1. Odd Thomas
    Sommers attempts to glue it all together with a raffish all-in-fun tone (despite some gory moments and unpleasant conceits), but the pic is neither witty nor macabre enough to pull off Koontz’s balance of elements in cinematic terms.
  2. The Lunchbox
    Batra adeptly plays on the tension of will they or won’t they meet, making good decisions based on character and situation rather than the need to uplift an audience.
  3. Run & Jump
    With remarkable warmth and immediacy, Green and co-scripter Keogan have managed to capture the beauty of an obviously flawed family, one neither too perfect nor too demographically balanced to ring true, and imbue it with a sense of plenitude that seems to flow as much from the sun-drenched land itself as from the quirkily particular personalities involved.
  4. Towheads
    Works better as a series of well-conceived, impeccably timed and executed physical gags, with light dustings of pathos, than as the story of a woman sacrificing her artistic identity on the altar of motherhood.
  5. Devil's Due
    The film expends plenty of effort crafting a few memorable freakout setpieces and nailing down the logistics of its found-footage camera placement, yet it offers precious little in the way of real scares or engaging characters, and even less in original ideas.
  6. Dedh Ishqiya
    Dedh Ishqiya ends on a note of sadder-but-wiser resignation that recalls its predecessor, but its high romantic cultural allusions convey a deeper sense of what’s at stake.
  7. Band of Sisters
    Mary Fishman’s admiring docu is more a general survey than a detailed history or portrait of individual personalities and causes, and as a result, it holds interest without achieving any real narrative arc, offering inspirational content in a merely workmanlike package.
  8. Omar
    Deliberately ambiguous in how it approaches the inexorable nexus of violence, Omar will trouble those looking for condemnation rather than the messiness of humanity.
  9. Generation War
    Overly melodramatic but fairly engrossing.
  10. Ride Along
    A lazy and listless buddy-cop action-comedy that fades from memory as quickly as its generic title.
  11. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
    Crisp, efficient and appreciably modest in scale...this conspicuous attempt to breathe new life into a long-dormant action franchise gets at least a few things right, chiefly the shrewd casting of Chris Pine.
  12. Divorce Corp
    Divorce Corp. is reasonably cogent when it comes to explaining divorce-court terminology and statistics, even if it comes up somewhat short in terms of actual facts and figures. The filmmakers are far less successful when they start dragging in outrageous examples of official misconduct.
  13. Reasonable Doubt
    This utterly unmemorable, uninspired and unnecessary genre exercise should fade from view so fast they might just as soon have called it “Without a Trace.”
  14. Chander Pahar (Mountains Of The Moon)
    It’s a tale that was once thrilling, but the thrills seem to have evaporated.
  15. Truth
    A low-budget potboiler with an overblown score not loud enough to drown out the hackneyed dialogue.
  16. The Nut Job
    The critters look cute, but behave less so, while the competing-heists concept never quite takes off.
  17. Black Coffee
    The timidly plotted proceedings never veer from romantic-comedy formula. There’s a whole lot of talk and very little action here, and not just because the squeaky-clean pic wears its PG rating like a badge of honor.
  18. Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo
    As a narrative, “Evangelion 3.0″ may make you feel your brain is turning into goat cheese. As a showcase for pure visual ingenuity and splendor, though, it rocks.
  19. Return to Nuke 'Em High Volume 1
    The term “freewheeling” does not begin to describe the slapdash, anything-goes quality of the screenplay co-written by Troma mogul Kaufman.
  20. Hamlet
    A modestly inventive but curiously bloodless version of the Bard’s timeless tragedy.
  21. The Legend of Hercules
    Lutz’s acting muscles aren’t nearly as well developed as his pectorals and deltoids, and while the role may not call for a master thespian, it at least begs someone who can emote without looking like he’s straining to execute a dead lift.
  22. If You Build It
    A bittersweet ending offers both victory and defeat, but closes on a note of hard-won optimism.
  23. The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box
    After a decent if formulaic setup, the story bogs down in dull midsection intrigue, and helmer Jonathan Newman doesn’t deliver as much excitement as expected in the climactic stretch.
  24. Cold Comes the Night
    A capably assembled if ultimately unremarkable thriller.
  25. Raze
    Raze is a brutally monotonous fight-to-the-death-contest actioner whose novelty element — all-female competitors — is undermined by lack of imagination on every other level.
  26. Loves Her Gun
    Loves Her Gun ultimately doesn’t quite cohere as one part slackerish social observation in a nicely turned mumblecore mode, and one part cautionary psychological thriller about the dangers of treating fear with a loaded weapon.
  27. The Banshee Chapter
    Proving the “Paranormal Activity” formula can still work when used with canny restraint, Erickson achieves good results with long, eerie found-footage takes that end in jolts.
  28. The Great Flood
    Morrison has always closely collaborated with musicians, but here the helmer goes one better, making music the ultimate product of the Great Flood.
  29. Beyond Outrage
    The Japanese action aesthete plays it cool and smooth in a picture that exerts a steadily tightening grip, though not until after a first hour of near-impenetrable gangster gab that may leave the uninitiated feeling stranded.
  30. Commitment
    Tyro helmer Park Hong-soo handles wall-to-wall action, political intrigue and adolescent love with a relentless efficiency that befits his protagonist, even if the execution can feel as methodical as that of a killer checking off a hit list.
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