Variety's Scores

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For 17,805 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: 9,148 out of 17805
  2. Mixed: 7,020 out of 17805
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17805
17805 movie reviews
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  1. For Greater Glory
    Despite enough good intentions to pave a four-lane highway, the ardently sincere but dramatically unfocused For Greater Glory plays like a multipart miniseries that has been hacked down to feature length.
  2. Snow White and the Huntsman
    Handsome but hollow, Snow White & the Huntsman is easily among the stranger additions to a roster of rebooted fairy tales.
  3. Richard's Wedding
    Turkel constantly undermines the feel-good with the ridiculous and vice versa, vacillating between infantile insults and professions of affection, a duality that ultimately wears thin.
  4. Crooked Arrows
    The story of a ragtag Native American team rediscovering the tribal roots of the game to defeat preppie champions is rife with tired tropes, and lacking in three-dimensional characters or colorful plot-twists. Happily for this Onandaga-financed production and vet director Steve Rash, gifted Native American lacrosse players lend hard-hitting impact to the game scenes.
  5. Music from the Big House
    The performances are fun, if musically only adequate -- there are no evident virtuosi languishing within Angola's walls -- and Chiarelli's attempts to frame matters philosophically fall a little flat.
  6. Prometheus
    Elaborately conceived from a visual standpoint, Ridley Scott's first sci-fier in the three decades since "Blade Runner" remains earthbound in narrative terms, forever hinting at the existence of a higher intelligence without evincing much of its own.
  7. A Cat in Paris
    Delightfully old-school on the animation side, but too old-fashioned on the story side, French 2D toon A Cat in Paris is easy enough on the eyes yet never quite justifies feature-length status.
  8. Found Memories
    Though the focus is on one older woman (effectively played by Sonia Guedes) the film's spirit is embodied by the whole town, which lingers in the memory.
  9. 5 Broken Cameras
    An undeniably powerful record of the Palestinian village of Bil'in's course of civil disobedience from 2005 to the present...the pic is also shamelessly sentimental and manipulative in its construction.
  10. Redlegs
    Filmmaker magazine editor/critic Brandon Harris' debut feature, Redlegs, puts its indebtedness to Cassavetes upfront -- or rather, in back, spelled out clearly amid the closing acknowledgements -- as three protagonists act out a junior version of "Husbands'" epic drunken wake.
  11. Jack and Diane
    If Benicio del Toro designed Hallmark cards, or if "Lady and the Tramp" were lesbians, they'd have a lot in common with Jack & Diane, a well-constructed, well-intentioned but too deliberate attempt to provoke the unprovokable.
  12. The Loved Ones
    Transcends mere torture porn -- though there's plenty for the squeamish to squirm over here -- in its deftly controlled mix of empathy, grotesquerie and sardonic humor.
  13. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
    Good-humored and endearing, full of energy and color (sometimes neon) if not quite Pixar-level invention.
  14. Chernobyl Diaries
    Scattered stretches of suspense and a few undeniably potent shocks are not enough to dissipate the sense of deja vu that prevails throughout Chernobyl Diaries, a wearyingly predictable thriller about "extreme tourists."
  15. Battle Royale
    Departing from two decades' worth of domestic and personal dramas and returning to his roots as Japan's maestro of mayhem, Kinji Fukasaku has delivered a brutal punch to the collective solar plexus with one of his most outrageous and timely films.
  16. The Intouchables
    Though never known for their subtlety, French co-helmers/scripters Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have never delivered a film as offensive as "Untouchable," which flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens.
  17. Men in Black III
    It's clear the filmmakers aren't simply expecting to coast on audience goodwill...Men in Black 3 is at its best when it simply owns its own absurdity.
  18. Bill W.
    Showing deep appreciation for Wilson's influence, as well as for the obscurity in which he spent his career in the spiritual-rescue business, the helmers employ a motherlode of photographs, diary entries, correspondence and recorded speeches to tell a sensational story that many will think they know, but don't.
  19. Moonrise Kingdom
    Moonrise Kingdom represents a sort of non-magical Neverland -- that momentous instant when the world can seem so small and a naive crush can feel all-consuming.
  20. Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog
    Puppy appeal nudges past some dramatic deficiencies -- if just by a nose.
  21. Indie Game: The Movie
    The picture scores big points by drawing a sharp distinction between corporate vidgame programmers and indies.
  22. Polisse
    Though rough edges are very much part of picture's fabric and charm, the current two-hour-plus edit is too choppy, with many sequences feeling rushed or underdeveloped.
  23. Hysteria
    Dancy manages a few sly moments, and Everett is as ever a scene-stealer, if barely recognizable under a beard and altered features, and with a raspy voice. But the estimable Pryce and Jones are wasted, along with many other fine thesps, while Gyllenhaal works too gratingly hard in an already strained role.
  24. Entrance
    A textbook example of a movie that betrays its audience, Entrance begins as a mildly interesting slice-of-life look at a struggling Los Angeles cafe worker, then impulsively devolves into a manipulative slasher picture.
  25. Piranha 3DD
    Ups the self-parody so much that it's practically a Wayans Brothers spoof, albeit with fewer jokes.
  26. The Samaritan
    If anything, this Canadian production misses a great opportunity to dig into its setting and examine the dark side of seemingly pristine Toronto, even as the script by Elan Mastai and director David Weaver labors over a mostly boilerplate storyline.
  27. Virginia
    A scattershot Southern melodrama that can't decide what it's supposed to be.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What to Expect When You're Expecting
    Helmer Kirk Jones does a solid job negotiating the material and managing the few tonal shifts when an occasional dark moment emerges.
  29. The Dictator
    Typically, political correctness couldn't be farther from the filmmakers' mind, and yet, what the picture most sorely lacks is the sort of humanist appeal Chaplin delivered at the close of "The Great Dictator."
  30. The Road
    This low-budget shocker eventually pays off, displaying just enough narrative ingenuity to compensate for a cinematically crude and logistically sketchy deployment of the requisite blood-and-guts mayhem.
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