Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. The Happy Poet
    Both subscribes to and somewhat departs from the bare-bones improvisational formula established by the mumblecore movement, sometimes sacrificing ambiguity for the sake of broader, telegraphed, one-note laughs.
  2. Renoir
    There is no major drama here save the encroaching end of one great artist and the birth of another, but Bourdos and his fellow screenwriters have translated something so monumental into a succession of such small domestic tableaux in which the Renoirs are seen as people first and artists second.
  3. Leonie
    Played with a strong spine and a resolute lack of charm by Emily Mortimer, Gilmour is a perfect vehicle for Matsui’s agenda, which is clearly a feminist/revisionist celebration of the life of a major artist.
  4. 20 Feet from Stardom
    For most of its running time, this personality-packed docu is nothing short of absorbing as it recaps the essential role African-American background singers played in shaping the sound of 20th-century pop music.
  5. Wrong
    A curious tale about a man searching for his missing dog in a suburban bubble where everything is a little askew, has some laughs, but it doesn’t take long for the absurdist humor to pall among a pileup of nonsensical ideas that would be funnier if grounded in a less hazy concept.
  6. The Place Beyond the Pines
    Two half-stories about fathers and sons on opposite sides of the law do not a full movie make in The Place Beyond the Pines, the overlong and under-conceived reunion between “Blue Valentine” director Derek Cianfrance and lookalike star Ryan Gosling.
  7. The Kings of Summer
    [The Kings of Summer] is much more interested in the laughs that can be mined from character rather than plot. Galletta’s script, Vogt-Roberts’ direction and the distinctive play of the actors, notably Offerman and Mullally, lets the viewer know who everyone is right away, and the gag lines flow.
  8. Trance
    A trippy variation on the dream-within-a-dream movie, Boyle’s return-to-form crimer constantly challenges what audiences think they know, but neglects to establish why they should care.
  9. Olympus Has Fallen
    A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen.
  10. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks
    The conflict at the core of the WikiLeaks saga is dramatically lacking.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Croods
    Although state-of-the-art in its rendering of textures, movement and stereography, The Croods, adopts a relatively primitive approach to storytelling with its Flintstonian construction of stock, ill-fitting narrative elements.
  12. Love Is All You Need
    Corny as a vat of polenta, but still rib-sticking enough to satisfy those who like lightly seasoned, easily digestible cinematic starch, Italy-set Love Is All You Need offers a romantic comedy for middle-aged palettes.
  13. Jobs
    Ultimately, Jobs is a prosaic but not unaffecting tribute to the virtues of defiance, nonconformity, artistry, beauty, craftsmanship, imagination and innovation, qualities it only intermittently reflects as a piece of filmmaking.
  14. White Elephant
    The lensing is flawless in White Elephant, but the same can't be said for the script, which tries to keep too many thematic balls in the air without privileging any one.
  15. My Brother the Devil
    An energetic and imaginative tale of siblings at a criminal crossroads and a street movie that is imaginatively, even poetically, shot, the pic nonetheless remains rooted in the turmoil of an immigrant British demimonde.
  16. Pavilion
    The beauty of the footage is undeniable, and the aimlessness never overstays its welcome as the film documents that strange stretch in our lives when nothing seems to matter more than the present moment, suspended in a sort of idle immortality.
  17. A Hijacking
    Hostage thrillers are all-too-often shrill affairs, with clock-watching screenwriters wringing maximum melodrama from spiraling disorder. Not so Tobias Lindholm’s superb A Hijacking, which actually grows more chillingly subdued as its nightmare scenario unfolds.
  18. The Act of Killing
    Never before has anyone made a documentary like The Act of Killing, and the filmmakers seem at a loss in terms of how to organize the many threads of what they capture...Still, essential and enraging, The Act of Killing is a film that begs to be seen, then never watched again.
  19. Blue Caprice
    Precision-honed performances and a nonsensationalistic approach distinguish this impressive first feature from French helmer Alexandre Moors, which avoids pat explanations as it offers a speculative glimpse into murderous minds.
  20. Upside Down
    A dystopic sci-fi romance about inverted planets that will have audiences wondering which way is up, but not really caring much or for very long.
  21. Welcome to the Punch
    A proficient but personality-free policer that demands little of either its audience or its enviable best-of-British cast, this simplistic urban morality tale miscasts the appealing James McAvoy as one good cop whose dogged pursuit of Mark Strong’s alpha criminal only uncovers the rot within police ranks.
  22. My Amityville Horror
    This documentary plays like an extended episode of “Unsolved Mysteries,” deficient as it is in stylistic zeal, investigative spirit and plain old scares.
  23. Caroline and Jackie
    The sum of the film is greater than its parts, and while it does make demands of its audience, the cumulative emotional impact is startling.
  24. Paris-Manhattan
    This update-cum-ripoff might be aiming for witty and romantic, but it’s mostly a hollow, rambling effort leavened with some stargazing.
  25. Starbuck
    A potent comedy of genetic chaos, Starbuck is pointedly contemporary and occasionally cloying, but guaranteed to draw attention for its premise and central character.
  26. The Sapphires
    Soul music’s alleged redemptive powers are fully at work in this jumbled, sketchily written but vastly appealing true-life musical comedy.
  27. Hunky Dory
    The picture draws only slight entertainment value from the spectacle of youngsters warbling 1970s pop tunes, like a retro version of “High School Musical” with less charm.
  28. Gimme the Loot
    While Leon’s script can’t help but be episodic as the characters scheme their way out of one scrape after another, their shenanigans are compulsively watchable, brimming with enough details to make this modest film grow large in the memory.
  29. Something in the Air
    Decidedly not revolutionary cinema, Something in the Air instead quietly demystifies its subject. The tone of the piece is wryly affectionate but never indulgent; the experiences depicted feel emotionally true and lived-in without ever catching the viewer up in a rush of intoxication or excitement.
  30. The Kill Hole
    No aspect asserts itself strongly enough for the whole to satisfy, and at times the pic’s humorless approach to cliches unintentionally borders on “MacGruber” territory.
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