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. Dragged Across Concrete
    At a whopping 158 minutes, “Concrete’s” sleek, languorous anatomy of a heist represents the filmmaker’s most extreme exercise yet in painstaking genre deceleration, sparked as ever by the tangy movie-movie vernacular of his writing, the crunchy metal-on-asphalt dynamism of his craftsmanship, and the back-from-the-brink reanimation of his stars.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stay Hungry
    Underneath it all is a lurching and poorly defined film concept.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anchors Aweigh
    Anchors Aweigh is solid musical fare. The production numbers are zingy; the songs are extremely listenable; the color treatment outstanding.
  4. The Lost City
    Even at the movie’s masks-on SXSW Film Festival premiere, The Lost City was a breath of fresh air: the kind of breezy two-hour getaway that doesn’t take itself too seriously, delivering screwball banter between Bullock and Tatum — a guilty-pleasure treasure hunt that pretends to be more progressive than it really is by alternating between who’s saving whom.
  5. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    Benefits from edge-of-your-seat pacing despite a conspicuous lack of action.
  6. The X Files
    Falls somewhere in between standing on its own feet as a real movie worth the price of a ticket and merely being a glorified TV episode refitted for theaters.
  7. Boys on the Side
    Yet even with those slightly different chords, Ross manages to pluck the right heartstrings, in the process delivering a grade-A tear-jerker.
  8. Following
    Climactic triple-cross is a satisfying payoff, though scenarist-helmer Nolan doesn’t really sock across any possible point of emphasis – black humor is soft-pedaled, suspense just middling, and the character writing keeps classic fall guy Bill a bit too blank-slate to incur much sympathy.
  9. The Commune
    For Vinterberg, this uneven but nonetheless absorbing pic at least marks a return to characteristically bristly territory.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cleopatra
    Cleopatra is not only a supercolossal eye-filler (the unprecedented budget shows in the physical opulence throughout), but it is also a remarkably literate cinematic recreation of an historic epoch.
  11. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
    Never completely takes off, yet somewhat overestimates the surrounding zaniness. Still, any opportunity to witness the improvisatory skills of Sarah Silverman, Bonnie Hunt and Amy Sedaris should not be missed.
  12. The Devil's Advocate
    A fairly entertaining supernatural potboiler that finally bubbles over with a nearly operatic sense of absurdity and excess.
  13. SPECTRE
    What’s missing is the unexpected emotional urgency of “Skyfall,” as the film sustains its predecessor’s nostalgia kick with a less sentimental bent.
  14. Femme Fatale
    An extravagant suspense cocktail of wacky and lascivious ingredients that goes down fine.
  15. Quality of Life
    Picture's cliched underlying story of restless youth plays as too naive for an older audience and too provocative for teens.
  16. Alice Neel
    Much like Neel's portraits, the film is marked by audacious understatement, neither whitewashing nor sensationalizing the artist's sterling achievements and messy personal life.
  17. Radiant City
    In the end, helmers have some nifty tricks up their verite sleeves.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Asphalt Zahov
    With its remarkably intimate look at Israeli Bedouin culture, a subject heretofore little treated, Danny Verete's Yellow Asphalt is a deeply affecting and brutally uncompromising anthology of three unrelated stories.
  19. The Strange Case of Señor Computer
    A retro sci-fi tale that takes its time stoking a low-key absurdism to high silliness. Initial slow going pays off in cumulative laughs.
  20. Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
    A calm, rational and utterly devastating point-by-point analysis.
  21. Lustre
    Uneven but affecting.
  22. Iraqi Odyssey
    The running time of two hours and 43 minutes is unquestionably self-indulgent; thankfully the clan’s charisma keeps attention from lagging too much despite frequent opportunities for trimming.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pink Panther Strikes Again
    The Pink Panther Strikes Again is a hilarious film about the further misadventures of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. Action proceeds smartly through plot-advancing action scenes, interleaved with excellent non-dialog sequences featuring Sellers and underscored superbly by Henry Mancini.
  24. Quincy
    Stretching to more than two hours, Quincy stumbles into some pacing problems as it goes, and considering the sheer number of turns the man’s life took, one wonders if a miniseries might have served him better.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White Lightning
    Joseph Sargent’s direction is particularly effective in the light and auto-chasing sequences, latter a field day for stunt drivers and occasionally incorporating humorous bits of biz. Reynolds is quite up to all the demands of his smashing role.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Shaggy D.A.
    Jones is a pleasant light comedian whose style is perfectly suited to the WASPish world of Disney. As his wife, Suzanne Pleshette has her first film role in five years, and her beauty and intelligence livens a part that might have been dull without her.
  27. Brother and Sister
    Alice and Louis are such artificial, wanly self-absorbed characters, forever speaking in finely turned, therapy-honed aphorisms that never sound anything other than screen-written, that it’s hard even to invest in their conflict at an abstract level.
  28. That Christmas
    Every season brings dozens of new Christmas offerings, most of which prove instantly forgettable. This one’s a keeper.
  29. Transamazonia
    There’s an opacity to this ambitious, conscientious film’s characterization on all fronts that hinders our emotional involvement, even as it holds our interest.
  30. Stitch Head
    Stitch Head, while it remains visually clever, has a bare-bones script that makes it feel like a Pixar movie the writers forgot to add enough jokes to.
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