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. The Secret Garden
    In its top-heavy image-driven way, The Secret Garden is trying for some of the atmospheric poetry that was missing from Agnieszka Holland’s 1993 version. Yet if anything, that just makes it fall further away from the novel’s essence. The garden isn’t a supernatural place, but it’s supposed to be a mystical place. In this movie, it comes closer to being a special effect.
  2. The Last Mimzy
    Kids will like Mimzy if for no other reason than it doesn't talk down to them.
  3. Breakfast on Pluto
    Despite numerous surface pleasures, including a beguiling pop soundtrack and presence of rising star Cillian Murphy in the lead role, dramatic shortcomings spell a mixed overall reception.
  4. Yosemite
    Resolutely unshowy, sometimes almost too lower-case in its observations, Yosemite pays off in an authenticity that pervades both individual scene rhythms and performances.
  5. Spider-Man 3
    A sense of strain envelops the proceedings this time around. One can feel the effort required to suit up one more time, come up with fresh variations on a winning formula and inject urgency into a format that basically needs to be repeated and, due to audience expectations, can't be toyed with or deepened very much.
  6. Lousy Carter
    We’ve all seen movies like “Lousy Carter” before, and this one’s adequate, without being particularly insightful or memorable.
  7. Mission: Impossible II
    Even more empty a luxury vehicle than its predecessor, M:I 2 pushes the envelope in terms of just how much flashy packaging an audience will buy when there's absolutely nada inside.
  8. Drew: The Man Behind the Poster
    The director commissioned Struzan to paint the one-sheet for his debut, “Sexina: Popstar P.I.,” and while this sophomore effort is no masterpiece, it’s far more deserving of Struzan’s talent.
  9. Taste
    Lê Bảo’s rich film reaches further back too, beyond the politics of globalization and migration, beyond even culture, into a pre-ethnographic past, to see us as trapped animals, paradoxically dehumanized by the sunless concrete ugliness of human civilization.
  10. Mom and Dad
    Though sure to be distasteful for some viewers even to ponder, this giddy exercise transcends mere bad-taste humor to become one of the great jet-black comedies about suburbia.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Road to Nowhere
    Monte Hellman's first feature film in 21 years is one of his finest and deepest, a twin peak to his 1971 masterpiece, "Two Lane Blacktop."
  12. Unbroken
    A bit embalmed in its own nobility, it’s an extraordinary story told in dutiful, unexceptional terms, the passionate commitment of all involved rarely achieving gut-level impact.
  13. Into the Forest
    Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood are both superb in the lead roles, but Rozema’s emphasis on the primacy of family and nature exposes a deficit of visual and narrative imagination.
  14. Seducing Doctor Lewis
    Though harmless and amusing, this Quebecois comedy set in an impoverished fishing village is a bit too festooned with provincial humor and a bit too short on memorable perfs or feel-good climaxes to break out commercially beyond French-speaking Canadian territories.
  15. The Living Daylights
    With a hint of that my-way problem-solving approach, The Living Daylights freshens the Bond series’ cornball formula elements while reprising details that had made director John Glen’s debut, For Your Eyes Only, such a superior outing.
  16. The Shallows
    At times, it’s hard to tell whether The Shallows is trying to sell a tropical vacation, that Sony Xperia phone or a fantasy date with Lively herself, but in any case, the film looks virtually indistinguishable from a slick, high-end commercial.
  17. The Experiment
    A solid slice of entertainment without reaching the psychological depths promised by the subject matter.
  18. The Clovehitch Killer
    This atypical serial-killer thriller distinguishes itself in resisting thrills — let alone any actual violence — till well past its halfway point, instead maximizing the quiet discomfort in a son’s rising suspicion that his outwardly Dagwood-type dad could be a notorious murderer.
  19. Make Believe
    A charming, affectionate and often elegantly executed study of teenage magicians, their craft and the social shadows they step out of when they do their stuff.
  20. Torn
    Performances and presentation are solid enough, but the pic feels a bit undernourished, particularly once it closes on a note that’s well intentioned but provides no real resolution.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Obsession
    Robertson’s low-key performance is as crucial to the manifold surprise impact as Bujold’s versatile, sensual and effervescent charisma.
  22. A Home at the End of the World
    Driven by soulful performances and by a genuine sense of wonder for the unpredictable permutations of love and family.
  23. The Best Man Holiday
    The cluttered, overlong narrative never really finds its footing.
  24. Copying Beethoven
    Helmer Agnieszka Holland's Copying Beethoven joins 1994's "Immortal Beloved" in the ranks of mediocre dramatic interpretations of Beethoven's biography.
  25. Restless City
    Picture's visual elegance makes a limited arthouse life possible, although Nigerian-born fashion photog-turned-helmer Andrew Dosunmu is far more interested in aesthetics than narrative in erecting his visually poetic "City."
  26. Outlaw King
    Whatever its value as rabble-rousing historical reenactment, Outlaw King never quite compares to the many films it’s so keen to imitate, and in some cases outright quote.
  27. Biosphere
    Ultimately the performers are winning enough, and the ideas in the ambiguous story intriguing enough, to achieve an end result of successful middleweight charm and substance.
  28. Shakespeare High
    Alex Rotaru's very busy documentary focuses more on the kids' stories than on their work; considering how sensational some of them are, it's probably a strategic advantage.
  29. A Land Imagined
    "Land” will feel overly familiar to those looking for more than well-intentioned musings on the horrendous treatment of guest workers.
  30. Nights and Weekends
    Some may find the result boring or unpolished, but there's poetry -- not to mention a fair dose of comedy -- in the mix.
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