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. Metal Lords
    In a film that sings the praises of heavy metal music and reveres those who create it, Metal Lords stumbles in its ability to truly rock.
  2. Under the Same Moon (La misma luna)
    Wrapping the political hot potato of illegal immigration in the sentimental balm of a mother-son reunion drama, this stirring tale will be embraced most enthusiastically by Mexican audiences on both sides of the border.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight Express
    Midnight Express is a sordid and ostensibly true story about a young American busted [in 1970] for smuggling hash in Turkey and his subsequent harsh imprisonment and later escape. Cast, direction and production are all very good, but it’s difficult to sort out the proper empathies from the muddled and moralizing screenplay which, in true Anglo-American fashion, wrings hands over alien cultures as though our civilization is absolutely perfect.
  4. Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
    While the story arc of Hippocrates is not especially remarkable, the film works best in its depiction of life in the bowels of the hospital, which the public never visits.
  5. Standing Tall
    Bercot studiously avoids the sort of catharsis-oriented pop psychology the genre so often peddles.
  6. Killing Ground
    Tasmania-born Damien Power’s impressive first feature, Killing Ground, transcends the cliches even as the film uses plenty of familiar tropes, laying down a solid hour of effective buildup to a duly hair-raising, prolonged climax.
  7. Anthropoid
    The trouble is that for all the narrative intrigue and excitement such an endeavor might suggest, director Sean Ellis’ less-than-dramatic recreation of this daring act of defiance proves surprisingly stiff...barely redeemed by an even more surprisingly intense finale.
  8. Audrey the Trainwreck
    An edgier Richard Linklater for a less privileged generation, mumblecore helmer Frank V. Ross captures his characters' dead-end disaffection not through stasis, but through nervous activity.
  9. Ways to Live Forever
    Lively, entertaining and well made, pic is thankfully neither mawkish nor grueling, though its refusal to confront some of the harsher realities of its dramatic situation does leave it feeling somewhat bland.
  10. Tigers
    It’s a compelling tale, well cast and directed with vivid intensity by Ronnie Sandahl. Still, the somewhat frustratingly limited insight we get into our hero’s addled head may affect export prospects for a film that is more about psychology than athletics.
  11. We Live in Time
    It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories, and the sequence hardly matters.
  12. Heli
    An accomplished but singularly unpleasant immersion in Mexico's vicious cycle of drug-fueled violence.
  13. She's Lost Control
    Marquardt never buries her symbolic subtext very deep, what with a woman who freezes her eggs and a man who ensures that his patients feel nothing.
  14. Sibyl
    Triet’s chic, blackly comic psychodrama piles up bad decisions like so many profiteroles in a croquembouche, admiring the teetering spectacle of its chaos as it goes.
  15. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
    "The Immortal Man” serves as a handsome reminder of what always felt quite cinematic about the series — both in its beefy-but-pulpy storytelling and its robust, well-patinated production values.
  16. Mortal Kombat
    But where others have sunk in the mire of imitation, director Paul Anderson and writer Kevin Droney effect a viable balance between exquisitely choreographed action and ironic visual and verbal counterpoint.
  17. Ping Pong
    Very striking stylistic control is exerted in this absorbing if overlong tale of angst-ridden high school competitors.
  18. Gunnin' for That #1 Spot
    Beastie Boy Adam Yauch proves he can make a comprehensive, state-of-the-art docu of interest to basketball aficionados.
  19. Drift
    Lee crafts actions and situations that are credible without being particularly engrossing -- recognition doesn't necessarily translate into absorbsion.
  20. Fantasia 2000
    Like a light buffet of tasty morsels rather than a full and satisfying meal; all the episodes are more or less agreeable, but as a whole it lacks a knockout punch, one dynamite sequence that will galvanize viewers.
  21. Only the Strong Survive
    Less an historical flashback than a present-tense valentine.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rundown
    Cements the Rock's status as a contempo action hero with a bigscreen future.
  23. The Perfect Storm
    The yarn's emotional undercurrents never take hold, resulting in a picture that leaves one thinking less about the fates of the characters than about how the actors had to spend most of their working days soaking wet.
  24. Life
    [An] engaging, elegiac portrait of a legend in the making.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Private Benjamin
    The trouble may be with the use of too many screenwriters who have been told to always keep their star’s image uppermost in their scribblings. But she’s not so gifted that she can carry a heavy load of indifferent material on her own two little shoulders, without considerable sagging.
  26. Beowulf
    For all its visual sweep and propulsively violent action, this bloodthirsty rendition of the Old English epic can't overcome the disadvantage of being enacted by digital waxworks rather than flesh-and-blood Danes and demons.
  27. The Humbling
    Fronted by a vibrant, deeply committed Al Pacino performance and very fine support from Greta Gerwig, this uneven but captivating film deserves to find its own audience, though doing so will surely prove to be an uphill climb.
  28. See for Me
    Skyler Davenport’s lead turn in director Randall Okita’s no-nonsense thriller (which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last summer) will be worth remembering well after the January doldrums have passed.
  29. White Boy Rick
    Although Demange directs the heck out of it, White Boy Rick ultimately feels like a glorified TV movie, albeit with a better cast and a much hipper score.
  30. Being Maria
    Being Maria is a flawed but fascinating look at the turbulent life of actor Maria Schneider.
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