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. Infinite Football
    [Ginghină's] endlessly evolving ideas for revolutionizing football are not a blueprint for a real-world solution at all. Instead they represent that intensely relatable and human place inside, where any of us, however small our lives and crushed our ambitions, can be limitless, unhobbled by injury, unfettered by ordinariness, unbounded by physics: infinite.
  2. Profile
    Bekmambetov’s cumulatively hysterical film begins as a study of terror before lurching into something closer to horror.
  3. Utoya: July 22
    U – July 22 is designed to be as immersive as it is exhausting, and largely succeeds.
  4. Season of the Devil
    There are some raw, stirring interludes here...but the film’s sheer mass of similar material rather reduces their impact.
  5. Touch Me Not
    Pintilie is the opposite of a misanthrope — she’s genuinely invested in opening the mind to the body’s sensations. Keeping it all balanced is where she gets bogged down.
  6. Dovlatov
    It’s easy to simply be mesmerized by German’s exceptional talent for stage blocking and camera movements, yet while there’s much here to appreciate, the film lacks the power of “Under Electric Clouds” despite being his most emotionally approachable work to date.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sister Act
    It’s a divine concept, and after a weak start director Emile Ardolino milks it for all the laughs it’s worth, while deriving requisite warmth from solid performances by Goldberg and Smith.
  8. Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    The most endearing quality of Nicholas Stoller and Matthew Robinson’s script — not counting the fact they didn’t try to whitewash their Latina heroine — is the way it permits Dora to remain indefatigably upbeat no matter what the situation, whether navigating treacherous Incan temples or facing an auditorium of jeering teenage peers.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wilby Conspiracy
    The Wilby Conspiracy [from Peter Driscoll’s novel] is a good action melodrama about apartheid in South Africa. It was made in Kenya. The stars Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine are relentlessly stalked by Nicol Williamson, superb as a coldly dedicated and brutal policeman out after racial agitators.
  10. Backstabbing for Beginners
    It’s to the film’s credit that it creates a sense of high-stakes peril despite us knowing the rough outcome from the get-go, and largely without simplifying its moral dilemmas into straightforward choices between heroism and villainy.
  11. Take Your Pills
    The kinds of connections that Take Your Pills makes, between the culture of information overload and a radically tightened job market and heightened personal performance and the chemical itch that fuels this whole late-stage capitalist dynamic, may strike some as too speculative for comfort. Yet it’s precisely by making connections like these that a documentary can fire up your perceptions enough to burn through the cumulative effects of advertising.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heavy Metal
    Courtesy of a vastly overlong, relatively unrousing 27-minute end-piece that may be the technical highpoint of the film, but lacks the punch and tightness of the earlier segments, the venture tends to run out of steam. Still, the net effect is an overridingly positive one.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Valley Girl
    Valley is very good simply because director Martha Coolidge obviously cares about her two lead characters and is privileged to have a couple of fine young performers, Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman, to make the audience care.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Conan the Destroyer
    Conan the Destroyer is the ideal sword and sorcery picture. As Conan, Arnold Schwarzenegger seems more animated and much funnier under Fleischer’s direction than he did under John Milius’ in the original – he even has an amusing drunk scene. Jones just about runs off with the picture.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heartbreak Ridge
    Heartbreak Ridge offers another vintage Clint Eastwood performance. There are enough mumbled half-liners in this contemporary war pic to satisfy those die-hards eager to see just how he portrays the consummate marine veteran.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Commando
    In Commando, the fetching surprise is the glancing humor between the quixotic and larky Rae Dawn Chong and the straight-faced killing machine of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chong lights up the film like a firefly, Schwarzenegger delivers a certain light touch of his own, the result is palatable action comics.
  17. First Match
    Emanuelle manages to make us care about this bullying girl without pleading for sympathy.
  18. Red Notice
    A fun, fast-paced and frequently amusing divertissement.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Meatballs
    Scripters have managed to gloss over the stereotypes and come up with a smooth-running narrative that makes the camp hijinks part of an overall human mosaic. No one is unduly belittled or mocked, and Meatballs is without the usual grossness and cynicism of many contempo comedy pix.
  20. Summer in the Forest
    Wright satisfies in providing a glimpse of an alternative community and lifestyle that appears near-idyllic without being painted in terms that are too sentimental or cute.
  21. An Ordinary Man
    An incredibly precise actor who understands exactly how to play to the camera, conveying volumes via even the slightest microexpressions, Kingsley navigates the tricky mix of humor, horror, and deep-seated regret that make this man, if not exactly ordinary, then relatable, at least.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Internal Affairs
    Figgis never lets the pace slow long enough to expose the story’s thinness despite, in retrospect, a moderate amount of action.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miami Blues
    This quirky and sometimes brutally funny film strings together terrific moments but never takes a point of view.
  24. Winter Brothers
    While we may not always know what Pálmason means, there’s the undeniable sense that he does, and mostly, that’s enough to add up to an impressively original, auspiciously idiosyncratic debut, one that scratches away at truths about masculinity, lovelessness and isolation, that are no less true for being all but inexpressible.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Woman in Red
    A wonderful diversion through all of this is Gilda Radner, a relatively plain fellow office worker who initially thinks she’s the object of Wilder’s wanderlust and is bitterly – and vigorously – disappointed when she finds out she isn’t.
  26. Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
    The film is sufficiently intelligent and entertaining to engage most grown-ups and, no kidding, fascinate history buffs.
  27. The Informer
    For all The Informer lacks in surface style — shot and scored as it is in functional, straight-to-VOD fashion — it remains a surprisingly well-oiled genre machine.
  28. Fighting with My Family
    Fighting With My Family may not be an Oscar contender but it has enough wit, heart, energy and good cheer to make it a fun watch even for non-wrestling fans.
  29. A Simple Favor
    The film feels a lot like the Serge Gainsbourg number that Stephanie dances to in the kitchen: jazzy, a little sleazy, and worth a cult following.
  30. Second Act
    Even though Second Act shouldn’t work, it does (sort of). It’s got flow, a certain knowing ticky-tackiness about its own contrivances. You know you’re watching a connect-the-dots comedy, but the dots sparkle. And Lopez gives her first star performance in a while. Age has enriched her talent; she brings curlicues of experience to every scene.
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