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. Three Thousand Years of Longing
    These days, audiences are so savvy about the tricks at a filmmaker’s disposal that the movie’s greatest achievement is that it seizes our imagination (or perhaps that’s our attention deficit disorder being so brusquely manhandled) and holds it for the better part of two hours, defying us to anticipate what comes next.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scanners
    Scanners offers at least one literally eye-popping moment and another that can only be called mind-blowing.
  3. The Death of Robin Hood
    The Death of Robin Hood holds our attention for the sheer severity of its reinvention, the rooted, hessian-rough vividness of its ruined world, and its earnest, complex preoccupation with matters of the soul — a vanishingly rare virtue in the multiplex in general, let alone in the realm of endlessly repurposed IP.
  4. Protocols of Zion
    Entertaining and substantial enough to attract at least a portion of the Michael Moore audience.
  5. Dark Night
    With a title easily confused for Christopher Nolan’s 2012 Batman sequel...Tim Sutton’s Dark Night is at once a glib play on words and a sobering rumination on the mindset of a suburban America simultaneously obsessed with and plagued by gun violence.
  6. Jumbo
    Eventually, Jumbo clatters to a stop with a tinny cheer for acceptance, a sugar rush of Belgian new wave music, and the sense that the audience has been taken for a bit of a ride.
  7. Over the Moon
    Sometimes it’s OK for an adventure to be just an adventure, and this one gets in the way of its own assets, while pointing to the potential of future journeys from the Netflix animation team.
  8. At Middleton
    Adam Rodgers’ debut feature is a painless enough diversion, but novel ideas and humor beyond mild chuckles are in scant supply.
  9. The Last Sentence
    This biographical drama, shot in crisp black-and-white, offers a potentially intriguing study in high-minded political/moral obstinacy, but feels too claustrophobic — and, finally, tediously like a one-man window on great events — to fully come to dramatic life.
  10. Anything
    Though the film’s heart is in the right place, writer Timothy McNeil’s directorial debut (an adaptation of his play) hits so many familiar notes that it undercuts its compassionate lead performances, in the process rendering it merely a superficial tale of unlikely amour.
  11. White Wedding
    A highly engaging picture with a post-apartheid edge (certain scenes play like a farcical "Invictus").
  12. Sea Fever
    It’s a conventional buildup-to-process-of-cast-elimination suspenser that’s unfortunately low on actual suspense, let alone thrills or narrative invention.
  13. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    For all its failings, there is one thing about “Long Walk to Freedom” that can’t be denied: Idris Elba gives a towering performance, a Mandela for the ages.
  14. Brothers at War
    Provides some interesting perspectives but also veers dangerously close to vanity project.
  15. Fred Won't Move Out
    Irregularly spiked with some droll sitcom-style humor, this thoughtful but exceedingly modest miniature will be best nursed within the festival circuit.
  16. Orphan
    There’s much horror here, and much beauty, but little meaningful tension between the two.
  17. Saw X
    The torture set pieces in the “Saw” films are lavish gifts of baroque horror presented to the audience. They are, quite simply, the reason we came. Tobin Bell, with his stare of pitiless wisdom, is also a draw, but “Saw X” raises the issue of how much of John Kramer’s hand-wringing is too much. In the eyes of a lot of “Saw” fans, hand-wringing < hands cut off with mechanized garden shears.
  18. Kompromat
    Focusing on the moment-to-moment thrills proves more satisfying than wondering what actually sparked this intrigue.
  19. The Other Half
    What might have seemed pro forma on paper...overcomes its occasionally studied stylistic tics to become a troubled, anguished love story that neither exaggerates nor soft-pedals the demons on display.
  20. RED
    Only a curmudgeon could entirely resist the laid-back charms of Red, an amusing, light-footed caper about a team of aging CIA veterans rudely forced out of retirement.
  21. Citadel
    Writer-director Ciaran Foy skillfully taps into primal fears and urban paranoia to keep his audience consistently unsettled in Citadel, an intensely suspenseful horror-thriller.
  22. Goosebumps
    The ADD overload combined with an understandably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one’s ever in real danger, and the monsters are never too scary) results in a disposable product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to resonate with no one.
  23. An Officer and a Spy
    An Officer and a Spy has a this-happened-and-then-this-happened quality. And that’s why the movie, beneath the two-dimensional jauntiness of its acting and the period vividness of its sets and costumes, feels more dutiful than riveting.
  24. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
    Gudegast, for all his casualness toward plausibility, is an energizing filmmaker. He keeps the mano-a-mano standoffs humming, and he’s got a sixth sense for how to showcase Butler as a glamorously disheveled schlock version of Dirty Harry–meets–Popeye Doyle-meets– “Lethal Weapon”-gone-lone-wolf.
  25. Rules Don't Apply
    Beatty tries hard to re-create the look and feel of late-’50s Hollywood as it existed both on-screen and off, aided by DP Caleb Deschanel and terrific costume and set contributions. And yet, it actually comes off too conservative for its own time, with stiff performances from Collins and Ehrenreich.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Interview with the Assassin
    Satisfying picture that like a pot of water on the stove keeps heating up until it explodes.
  27. Otomo
    Not a cheerful watch: It's a shocking portrayal of rampant racism.
  28. Spartan
    A work that continually seems on the verge of genuine excitement but sabotages itself at every turn...results will intrigue only those interested in the nooks and crannies of Mamet's career.
  29. The Debut
    A pleasant and polished first feature for director Gene Cajayon.
  30. Gangster No. 1
    Often nastily violent, and defiantly foul-mouthed in a realistic but dramatically unnecessary way, this portrait of a ruthless young hood in '60s London has several fine qualities but dilutes them with disorganized direction.
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