Variety's Scores

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For 17,837 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: 9,166 out of 17837
  2. Mixed: 7,034 out of 17837
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17837
17837 movie reviews
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  1. The Universe of Keith Haring
    Warmly affectionate yet curiously hollow, The Universe of Keith Haring is a straightforward biodoc about the Gotham-based artist and style-setter.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Lair of the White Worm
    Donohoe as the vampire seductress projects a beguiling sexuality that should suck the resistance out of all but the most cold-blooded critics. She is also hilarious, a virtue shared by everyone and everything in The Lair of the White Worm.
  3. Cyrano, My Love
    As fizzy as a freshly poured glass of Perrier-Jouët, though considerably less complex, writer-director Alexis Michalik’s Cyrano, My Love attempts to give the “Shakespeare in Love” treatment to the timeless French play “Cyrano de Bergerac,” with shamelessly derivative yet undeniably entertaining results.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sixteen Candles
    Ringwald is engaging and credible. For the boys, there's a bright, funny performance by Anthony Michael Hall.
  5. The Machinist
    An intense, precision-controlled psychological mystery built around a very creepy lead performance by Christian Bale.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Biloxi Blues
    Biloxi Blues is an agreeable but hardly inspired film version of Neil Simon's second installment of his autobiographical trilogy, which bowed during the 1984-85 season. Even with high-powered talents Mike Nichols and Matthew Broderick aboard, World War II barracks comedy provokes just mild laughs and smiles rather than the guffaws Simon's work often elicits in the theater.
  7. Difret
    The unwillingness to let nuance communicate lends a flat quality to the drama here; after the initial crimes, suspense situations are simply lopped off prematurely, the action jumping clumsily to their aftermath.
  8. Masai: The Rain Warriors
    Overall, film may feel too slow and didactic for contempo urban kids conditioned by video games. However, the script is never smarmy or complacent, and shows young people engaged in collective problem-solving and decision-making that is often, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  9. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    The emotions of the stories have been lost. We could be watching the standard ghoulish CGI effects that take place in any horror movie of the week.
  10. The Wolverine
    The Wolverine boasts one of the best pulp-inspired scripts yet. It’s still full of corny dialogue...but there’s a genuine elegance to the way it establishes Logan’s tortured condition and slowly brings the character around to recovering his heroic potential, methodically setting up and paying off ideas as it unfolds.
  11. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    "Soldado” may not be as masterful as Villeneuve’s original, but it sets up a world of possibilities for elaborating on a complex conflict far too rich to be resolved in two hours’ time.
  12. The Karate Kid
    It's a sign of that pic's dramatic durability that "Kid" manages to be as absorbing as it is, despite its nearly 2½-hour running time.
  13. Saltburn
    Fennell’s debut promised a fearless original voice and style. Saltburn certainly has attitude, but nothing new to say.
  14. An Amazing Couple
    The briefest of the three pics, it's also the least successful, suggesting that this kind of character-driven comedy isn't the genre with which Belvaux is most comfortable. Still, there are delightful sequences and ideas and the film carries a great deal more substance and resonance when placed alongside the other two in the series.
  15. The Taking of Tiger Mountain
    The film’s strength really lies in its thrilling pace and robust action, elaborately choreographed and executed to involve a large ensemble of characters in a gripping way.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paris Blues
    Within its snappy, flashy veneer is an undernourished romantic drama of a rather traditional screen school.
  17. Limonov: The Ballad
    Given all its omissions and elisions, and the sense of coolness-cosplay that permeates this noisy but lifeless film, “Limonov” might not be a total misapprehension of the mercurial, charismatic and infuriating Eduard Limonov, but it is at least a mispronunciation.
  18. Emmanuel's Gift
    Sincere but fairly soft piece of ennobling journalism that gives a positive spin to some of Africa's seemingly intractable problems.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mo' Better Blues
    Personal rather than social issues come to the fore in Mo' Better Blues, a Spike Lee personality piece dressed in jazz trappings that puffs itself up like Bird but doesn't really fly. More focused on the sexual dilemmas of its main character than on musical themes, pic might well be subtitled He's Gotta Have It.
  20. Question One
    Of particular interest to gay-rights activists and their adversaries, this "War Room"-like but extremely civil documentary seems best suited to community venues and the smallscreen.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evil Under the Sun
    Apart from cutting down the number of characters, Hamilton and scripter Anthony Shaffer have also had the audacity to switch things around in the inevitable denouement scene. Poirot points right away at the guilty party, while the true suspense is put into the how’s and why’s that follow.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cahill U.S. Marshal
    Wayne carries out characterization realistically and gets firm support right down the line.
  23. Hilma
    Hallström mostly strikes a nice balance between approachability and mystique, between the definitive and the abstract, getting a huge amount of help from his daughter Tora’s open and warm performance in her first leading role.
  24. Shooting the Mafia
    Not quite a fleshed-out personal study, nor fully a meditation on what Battaglia’s camera sees, this intriguing but frustrating film finally makes the case for letting the photographer’s pictures tell their story.
  25. Bad Trip
    The result is sniggering slapstick that’s two-parts biological fluids and one-part salute to the innate empathy of mankind, often in the same scene.
  26. Morlang
    A sleek, highly stylized arthouse thriller.
  27. Murph: The Protector
    The serviceable documentary Murph: The Protector could hardly fail to be an emotionally potent experience.
  28. Butter on the Latch
    There’s something deeper — and deeply original — going on in Decker’s film that demands either a second viewing or a willingness to push past easy dismissal (certainly by conventional standards, the film seems hopelessly amateurish).
  29. Kingsman: The Secret Service
    While seriousness has overtaken the Bond franchise in recent years (hardly a bad thing, mind you), Kingsman runs no such risk. Vaughn welcomes details that might seem silly in another director’s hands, such as a bulletproof umbrella or tiny microchips that can make one’s head explode, presenting everything playfully enough that plausibility isn’t a factor.
  30. The Pod Generation
    The Pod Generation is very much about our flesh, and the forces that are only too happy to take it away from us.
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