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. Guys and Balls
    A by-the-numbers ensemble dramedy that hits every underdog and gay-fish-out-of-water cliche on the nose.
  2. In Paris
    Inside Paris is that rarity, a genuinely honest, unpretentious and delightful, small film, alternately sober and effervescent, steering clear of either heavy-going philosophizing or dreaded whimsy.
  3. Christopher Robin
    The movie basically ingratiates itself with kids by scolding adults for losing track of what’s important, and yet, both in the 1930s and today, a responsible father doesn’t really have the option of quitting his job.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Day of the Dead
    Day of the Dead is an unsatisfying part three in George A. Romero's zombie saga. The acting here is generally unimpressive and in the case of Sarah's romantic partner, Miguel (Antonio DiLeo, Jr.), unintentionally risible.
    • Variety
  5. Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
    The quiet humanity of McCarthy’s filmmaking meshes oddly with the material’s zanier demands, finally reaching an anodyne middle ground.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Total Recall
    The fierce and unrelenting pace, accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek strain of humor in the roughhouse screenplay, keeps the film moving like a juggernaut.
  7. The Concert
    The story regurgitates the usual trappings of underdog tales, milking stereotypes as well as tear ducts.
  8. Wonder Woman 1984
    For nearly two hours of its 151-minute runtime, Wonder Woman 1984 accomplishes what we look to Hollywood tentpoles to do: It whisks us away from our worries, erasing them with pure escapism.
  9. Battle in Heaven
    Both intensely exciting for its cinematic inventions and terribly uninvolving on emotional and dramatic levels.
  10. Body of War
    By documenting the difficult life of their paraplegic subject, helmers Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue succeed in personalizing some of the war's grim statistics, but the purview of their portrait feels too limited for the pic to play widely.
  11. Ophelia
    The best part of Ridley’s performance is her plodding, heavy-footed walk that reminds us this well-groomed lady is still a stubborn child underneath her fancy dress. She has a blank, open face that absorbs the court’s machinations and reflects little back until she decides to act insane.
  12. The American Meme
    The American Meme is a film I very much recommend, since it’s both highly entertaining and an essential snapshot of the voyeuristic parasitic American fishbowl.
  13. The Short History of the Long Road
    There is enough substance here to propel The Short History of the Long Road forward through its minor bends and speed-bumps. Most of all, it is Carpenter’s restrained performance and air of wisdom, permeating the screen with an astutely soulful quality that’s tough to turn away from.
  14. The Heat
    Breaking it down, The Heat has been engineered to deliver the laughs, and the result certainly does, despite coming alarmingly near to botching the procedural elements along the way.
  15. Bad Times at the El Royale
    At two hours and 21 minutes, this 1969-set period thriller is taxingly slow and almost oppressively self-indulgent, constantly backtracking and replaying already-drawn-out scenes from multiple perspectives.
  16. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.
  17. Red Doors
    A lightly feminist, good-naturedly comic sketch of a Chinese-American family in crisis. But despite pic's earnestness and obvious good intentions, narrative elements, carefully set forth though they may be, fall back on overfamiliar, underdeveloped tropes.
  18. Machete
    Wildly uneven as it doggedly strives (sometimes with obvious strain) to sustain a free-wheeling, anything-goes air of exuberant junkiness.
  19. The Choral
    Art counts for a lot more than patriotism to Guthrie, and the happy surprise of Nicholas Hytner‘s film — despite its twee, veddy English trappings — is that it largely takes his side.
  20. In Her Shoes
    While the director's avid fans may be disappointed, upscalish mainstream auds, particularly women, will eat up this well-acted, emotionally focused adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's popular novel.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Visit
    The top-notch cast never hits a false note.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Under solen
    A celebration of traditional, detailed filmmaking.
  23. The Governess
    Minnie Driver gets a showy workout in The Governess, a beautifully crafted, if ultimately opaque, study of art, sensuality and outsider status in early Victorian England.
  24. Tomorrowland
    The glaring failure of Tomorrowland is that its central premise — children are the future — is almost completely negated by the preachiness of the execution and the clumsiness of the storytelling.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Point Break
    A hare-brained wild ride through big surf and bad vibes, Point Break acts like a huge, nasty wave, picking up viewers for a few major thrills but ultimately grinding them into the sand via overkill and absurdity.
  26. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
    If only the music and lyrics were more memorable, then “Jeannette” might have delivered on its potential. But Dumont has a stiff, fixed-camera style that deprives the story of its transcendence.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Days of Thunder
    This expensive genre film about stock car racing has many of the elements that made the same team's Top Gun a blockbuster, but the producers recruited scripter Robert Towne to make more out of the story than junk food.
  28. 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.
  29. L'iceberg
    A brave but doomed attempt to revive the art of pure physical comedy, the willfully eccentric, practically dialogue-free, Iceberg sets itself a high standard with an opening 15 minutes of the most delicious slapstick, but thereafter only a few moments of gentle surrealism and the occasional poetic image justify the ride, with only 10% of the pic's potential laughs evident above the surface.
  30. The Offering
    The Offering does move along at a brisk clip, so it’s at no risk of being boring even as its potential to terrify dissipates. But it ends up illustrating the virtue of “less is more,” particularly when attempting a serious occult horror story
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