Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
    Loaded with the usual barrage of irreverent, politically incorrect and virtually non-stop gags. Director Peter Segal and writers Pat Proft, David Zucker and Robert LoCash succumb to occasional bouts of toilet humor, but there’s also some extended hilarity in a scene set around the Academy Awards.
  2. Anna and the Apocalypse
    “Anna” picks itself up, dusts itself off, and comes home with a finale that’s so satisfying and sincere, it’ll make some viewers misty-eyed.
  3. Dancer in the Dark
    A 2½-hour demo of auteurist self-importance that's artistically bankrupt on almost every level.
  4. Official Secrets
    The crux of Gun’s struggle is that she risked everything to tell the truth, and the war happened anyway. Ultimately, her personal story was neither uplifting, nor tragic, which means the film surrounding her doesn’t hurtle toward a satisfying arc.
  5. Seoul Searching
    Lee’s movie at once examines and embodies the complicated riddle of cultural identity: Beneath its boozy antics and largely predictable narrative developments, it offers warmly perceptive insights into how difficult it can be for so many first- and second-generation Asian immigrants to define themselves.
  6. Gwen
    Approach the film with managed genre expectations, however, and there’s much to admire (and duly shiver over) in its formidable, stormcloud-hued atmospherics, low-simmer storytelling and a particularly fine, unaffected breakout performance by teenage actress Eleanor Worthington-Cox in the testing title role.
  7. 16 Blocks
    Not that it ever rises to the level of Sidney Lumet's Gotham police pics ("Serpico," "Prince of the City"), but 16 Blocks does raise the banner for the tradition of the textured urban cop drama, spurred by action but made substantial by characters at crossroads.
  8. Yves Saint Laurent 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris
    Companion piece to Teboul's "Yves Saint Laurent -- Time Regained" nicely complements that excellent film but is less riveting as a free-standing experience.
  9. One True Thing
    As sensitively written, fluidly directed and expertly acted as it is, and as elemental as its dramatic conflicts may be, One True Thing has trouble breaking free of its limitations as a small-scale, modestly aimed family drama.
  10. Songcatcher
    Unfolds at a leisurely but enjoyable pace, its dramatic contrivances never pushed too hard.
  11. Sex Is Comedy
    A not terribly creative movie about the creative process.
  12. Unfaithful
    This refitting of Claude Chabrol's 1968 classic "La Femme Infidele" is less concerned with suspense and dramatic fireworks than is the usual American "erotic thriller," and much more devoted to nuances and the minutiae of how men and women behave, pretend and lie in duplicitous situations.
  13. The Summer of Sangaile
    At its best, The Summer of Sangaile captures the special intensity of those relationships in which everything seems to fade away save for the other person.
  14. Under Our Skin
    Takes a creative, humanistic approach that makes the complex material dramatic and visually interesting.
  15. Mr. Nobody
    Though a lot of it is well written and directed and, quite often, funny or poignant, the individual scenes rarely become part of a larger whole.
  16. Belgica
    Big-picture cliches aside, this truth-blurring but thoroughly convincing portrait makes its case via the details.
  17. Kids
    Disturbing because it is so believable, Kids goes well beyond any previous American film in frankly describing the lives of at least a certain group of modern teenagers.
  18. The Creator
    The emotional core of The Creator rests on the shoulders of a star who has just one gear: angry. The rest wants to be “Blade Runner,” but plays more like a cross between “Elysium” (with its floating futuristic fortress and specious political message) and “The Golden Child” (about an all-powerful Asian kiddo in desperate need of protecting).
  19. Backbeat
    This energetic, dramatically potent look at the band's Hamburg days has quite a bit going for it in the way of cultural and musical history, but lacks a crucial, heightened artistic quality and point of view that would have given it real distinction.
  20. Good Kill
    Just as Niccol’s narrative structure is at once fraught and immaculate in its escalation of ideas and character friction, so his arguments remain ever-so-slightly oblique despite the tidiness of their presentation.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Southern Comfort
    Pic is most exciting as a visual experience, as Walter Hill once again proves himself a consummate filmmaker with a great talent for mood, composition and action choreography.
  22. Don't Come Back from the Moon
    The movie captivates and fascinates as a free-form dream constantly poised on a knife edge between roiling nightmare and reassuring resolution. The surprising yet satisfyingly ambiguous ending allows for either option.
  23. The Parent Trap
    Richardson, who gracefully sways through a memorable drunk scene, and Quaid, whose megawatt smile has never been more dazzling, are disarmingly charming as the parents. And that's important; if the actors were any less engaging, the audience might not be so forgiving of their characters.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Babies
    Babies is refreshing in its methods, impressive in its scope and remarkable in its immediacy. That said, it's also an occasionally frustrating documentary that deprives the viewer of the comforts of exposition and cultural context.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rumble Fish
    Rumble Fish is another Francis Coppola picture that's overwrought and overthought with camera and characters that never quite come together in anything beyond consistently interesting.
  26. Nobody Else But You (Poupoupidou)
    A subversive and strange little film noir.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What's Up, Tiger Lily?
    Take a Toho Films (Japan) crime meller [directed by Senkichi Taniguchi], fashioned in the James Bond tradition for the domestic market there, then turn loose Woody Allen and associates to dub and re-edit in camp-comedy vein, and the result is What’s Up, Tiger Lily? The production has one premise – deliberately mismatched dialog – which is sustained reasonably well through its brief running time.
  28. Don't Talk to Irene
    Even when the film’s eccentricities feel too choreographed, it manages to deliver its preordained uplift with good-humored charm.
  29. Before We Forget
    Ultimately, though, Before We Forget feels much too tidy (didactic, even) in how it unfolds for it to land the emotional gutpunch it so wants to deliver.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Three on a Match
    It amounts to a picture which has tried but failed to photographically decipher four characters. [01 Nov 1932, p.12]
    • Variety
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »