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. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
    Directing her first studio feature, Cathy Yan keeps it all hurtling along with impeccable ferocity. Her action scenes have a deftly detonating visual spaciousness, capped by crowd-pleasing moments.
  2. Nightmare Cinema
    If there are no outright duds, there’s no real triumph either. But the whole is certainly diverse, lively and reference-packed enough to please horror fans attracted to this kind of enterprise.
  3. The Legend of Molly Johnson
    An exceptionally compelling Outback Western.
  4. Kevin Hart: What Now?
    He leaps so quickly into exaggeration that he bypasses reality, and the result isn’t very funny.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Swing Shift
    With all the heartwarming heroics to choose from on the homefront in World War II, Swing Shift tries instead to twist some consequence out of a tawdry adulterous tryst by a couple of self-centered sneaks. But the writing and acting are too flat for the challenge.
  6. This Boy's Life
    Unfortunately, after a relatively promising warmup, pic actually proceeds to flatten out the characters in the latter sections and to make them less dimensional and interesting than they initially seemed.
  7. Saturday Night
    Now, just one year shy of the pop phenom’s 50th anniversary, director Jason Reitman gives back, turning an oral history of the very first episode into a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage.
  8. Funny People
    Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolute Beginners
    Absolute Beginners is a terrifically inventive original musical for the screen. Daring attempt to portray the birth of teenagedom in London, 1958, almost exclusively through song is based upon Colin MacInnes' cult novel about teen life and pop fashion in the percolating moments just before the youth cultural explosion in the early 1960s.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight Lace
    Director David Miller adds a few pleasant little humorous touches and generally makes the most of an uninspired yarn.
  11. Glastonbury
    While one can appreciate helmer's resistance to a conventional, chronological overview, what emerges is a long, structureless muddle that does justice to neither the stellar acts nor changing countercultural times event has encompassed.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Horn Blows at Midnight
    This one is a lightweight comedy that never seems able to make up its mind whether to be fantasy or broad slapstick. There are some good laughs but generally The Horn Blows at Midnight is not solid.
  13. The Light Between Oceans
    The Light Between Oceans winds up taking one too many self-serious twists and turns. The film earns its darkness, but it might have been even more affecting if it didn’t shrink from the light.
  14. Videocracy
    Rather than presenting a well-argued expose of the disturbing symbiosis that exists between Italo politics and TV, with Prime Minister Berlusconi being only the most obvious connection, the scribe-helmer gets sidetracked by marginal characters while keeping bare facts to a minimum.
  15. The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini
    Director Jesse James Miller’s bio of ‘80s-era World Boxing Council lightweight champ Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini connects on emotional levels in the telling of an up-from-nothing brawler whose colorful career climaxed in tragedy.
  16. The Becomers
    A sort of shaggy dog story whose appeal wanes as one gradually realizes it’s unlikely to go anywhere in particular, The Becomers is equally mild as sci-fi, spoof and sociopolitical satire. It’s off-kilter enough to catch one’s attention, but in the end too underdeveloped to strongly reward it.
  17. Bad Hair
    Costume designer Ceci’s ensembles and Scott Kuzio’s production design are spot-on. Just as impressive is Simien’s steady handle on his serio-comic tone, at once sly, resonant, and horrific.
  18. The Portrait of a Lady
    A literary adaptation of exceeding intelligence, beauty and concentrated artistry, but one that remains emotionally remote and perhaps unavoidably problematic dramatically.
  19. The Man Who Invented Christmas
    In addition to being a rather fine addition to the Christmas-movie canon, the film marks a useful teaching tool — a better option for classroom screenings than any of the previous “Carol” adaptations, once students have finished reading the novella.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    This trashy, gaudy, sound-stage vulgarity about low life among the high life is as funny as a burning orphanage.
  21. Good Neighbors
    A romantic-comedy-cum-serial-killer-movie that bends genre to the point of snapping.
  22. Like Me
    The film’s lack of a traditional narrative will no doubt alienate many, but for the more adventurous, it offers a uniquely weird take on loneliness and lunacy.
  23. Ultimate X: The Movie
    Most impressive in an objective sense, as a technical exercise -- its staccato technique preventing greater involvement.
  24. The Emperor's New Clothes
    Pleasant rather than rollicking entertainment.
  25. Pandaemonium
    Never quite dull, neither does it ever find a viable rhythm, narrative arc or crux of emotional engagement.
  26. Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
    An unexpected departure off the map, flinging together elements of Alpine musical, ghoulish Jan Svankmajer-style claymation and a family portrait so hokey it makes the Brady Bunch look hip.
  27. All These Small Moments
    Though this sweet, subtle, and sentimental work is a smidge too simplistic in narrative design, it wins over any resistance with its quiet refinement and heartrending insight.
  28. No One Will Save You
    The film is most successful when it finds Brynn in survival mode.
  29. The Grab
    The big picture here is so elusive and vast that it helps Cowperthwaite to have a few intrepid investigators to follow, letting their research drive the shape of the film (which, when you unpack it, must have been one hell of a task to structure).
  30. Tab Hunter Confidential
    Drawing on a rich array of archival materials, Tab Hunter Confidential is lively and entertaining.
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