Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. The Best Man Holiday
    The cluttered, overlong narrative never really finds its footing.
  2. Everyday
    As the years go by and the kids grow — perhaps the only real benefit of Winterbottom’s approach — time begins to run together, making it all too easy for the mind to wander.
  3. Free Ride
    The script’s autobiographical roots tend to substitute for a well-constructed dramatic throughline, giving the film an open-endedness that feels more dismissive than ambivalent.
  4. We Will See Tomorrow
    Essentially a homemovie cobbled together with bland talking-head interviews, director Yuliya Tikhonova’s film offers little to interest jazz aficionados or those simply curious about the band’s lineup of veteran sidemen from the era of classic jazz.
  5. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
    [Francis] Lawrence and his team have calibrated the entire experience for maximum engagement. And while its pleasures can’t touch the thrill of seeing the Death Star destroyed — not yet, at least — the film runs circles around George Lucas’ ability to weave complex political ideas into the very fabric of B-movie excitement.
  6. Contracted
    The ick factor is high in Contracted, a body-horror opus that will satisfy genre fans who like to be grossed out, but doesn’t have much to offer on any other count.
  7. The Motel Life
    So full of explanatory flashbacks and animated sequences visualizing the characters’ invented yarns that their real dramas are indeed almost obscured.
  8. Reaching for the Moon
    Attention is retained by the commendably unhistrionic leads, who convincingly etch the pair’s enduring devotion even when passions run dry.
  9. Out of the Furnace
    Cooper seems to make actors feel safe and willing to expose themselves in ways they ordinarily might not, and time and again he takes scenes to places of unexpected emotional power.
  10. Caucus
    [A] fascinating but only intermittently insightful film.
  11. Medora
    Filmmakers Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart uncover and illuminate a strain of stoic resilience that could be the last best defense against bottomless despair. Unfortunately, as Medora repeatedly suggests, that invaluable resource may not be inexhaustible.
  12. Sweet Dreams
    Sweet Dreams finds and sustains a delicate balance, seizing on small moments of hope in a place where the horrors of 1994 are in many ways still an open wound.
  13. Finding Mr. Right
    Unwieldy and exasperating, but not without a certain pushy, ingratiating charm.
  14. The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers
    Moderately interesting as a once-over-lightly political history lesson best suited for home-screen consumption.
  15. Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen
    Once Mulholland has established that both men hark back to a bygone, Teddy Roosevelt-fostered image of laconic masculinity, his peculiar vantage point generates little insight into the psychology and accomplishments of either man, as “The True Gen” abandons biographical logic in favor of a catalogue of arbitrary differences and similarities.
  16. A Case of You
    A lot of interesting, funny performers aren’t very interesting or funny in director Kat Corio’s A Case of You.
  17. 12-12-12
    An impressive yet drama-less concoction that can’t totally disguise its slightly stale aftertaste.
  18. Paris Countdown
    This been-there-done-that story marks a pretty banal debut for writer-director Alain Marie, who seems far more interested in aping Refn and early-career Michael Mann than in finding his own style.
  19. Angels Sing
    Working from a script by Lou Berney, which in turn was adapted from a novel by Turk Pipkin, director Tim McCanlies maintains an even hand throughout, so that neither the moments of broad comedy nor the stretches of tearjerking sentimentality get out of hand.
  20. Krrish 3
    All credit to Krrish 3 for not being an audience-pummeling industrial product like most of Hollywood’s superhero films. It has the off-hand, anything-is-possible spirit of a children’s book or fairy tale.
  21. Musicwood
    Maxine Trump’s feature loses focus as it progresses, though its insights into guitar making, forestry harvesting and environmental shortages resonate strongly.
  22. Frozen
    This always enjoyable tale of mysterious magic, imperiled princesses and square-jawed men of action proves longer on striking visuals than on truly engaging or memorable characters.
  23. The Truth About Emanuel
    Played flatly head-on with some poetic pretensions, the concept never becomes particularly credible or appealing.
  24. Tim's Vermeer
    The result is just about the most fun you can have while learning, partly because it strips away any tangents beyond the task at hand, offering a lean, 80-minute account of how this crazy guy erected his own Everest and then proceeded to climb it.
  25. Swerve
    Packs enough pace, suspense and quality thesping to overcome some minor plot wobbles.
  26. Paradise: Hope
    Paradise: Hope has humor and warmth, and shows more genuine affection and kindness toward its characters than Seidl usually allows.
  27. Approved for Adoption
    It’s impossible not to be charmed on some level by Jung Henin and Laurent Boileau’s Approved for Adoption, though it’s best not to ask for too much.
  28. The Nun
    Nicloux is unable to instill the material with any tension.
  29. Faust
    [A] film with a maddeningly opaque narrative and a brutalizing cascade of nonstop verbiage.
  30. Go for Sisters
    Like too many of Sayles’ films, Go for Sisters seems bound to slip through the cracks, not quite memorable enough to make a lasting impression.
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