Variety's Scores

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For 17,839 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 17839
  2. Mixed: 7,035 out of 17839
  3. Negative: 1,638 out of 17839
17839 movie reviews
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    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Battle Beyond the Stars
    Despite the expense involved, the pic appears not to take itself too seriously. Principal characterizations are skin deep.
  2. Green and Gold
    To put it bluntly, Nelson gives this clichéd indie a lot more than it ever gives him.
  3. Europe's New Faces
    What Sam Abbas, as director, cinematographer and editor, does here is to disarmingly present the situation in snippets that give the audience all the details of crossing from Libya to Italy, including elements both harrowing and mundane. In so doing, he engenders empathy and understanding for these displaced people and their struggle, taking a humanist approach rather than an abstract one.
  4. Marc by Sofia
    Marc by Sofia isn’t particularly penetrating or eye-opening on Jacobs as an artist, businessman or human being, but it is a pleasant and casually glamorous hang.
  5. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    What Erica Rivinoja, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s script lacks in lingering nutritional value, it compensates for with amusing food puns. If nothing else, the pic’s zany tone and manic pace are good for a quick-hit sugar high.
  6. The Djinn
    This lean thriller doesn’t provide much food for thought, but it delivers a compact dose of extreme jeopardy.
  7. Godzilla vs. Kong
    Godzilla vs. Kong is most satisfying when it’s at its most simple, which happens either in quiet bonding scenes between Jia and Kong, or else in those deafening moments when the monsters are duking it out.
  8. Terrifier 2
    Terrifier 2 is essentially a series of grotesque homicidal set pieces stitched together into a threadbare narrative of midnight funhouse clichés.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cry Freedom
    Cry Freedom personifies the struggle of South Africa's black population against apartheid in the evolving friendship of martyred black activist Stephen Biko and liberal white newspaper editor Donald Woods. It derives its impact less from epic scope than from the wrenching immediacy of its subject matter and the moral heroism of its appealingly played, idealistic protagonists.
    • Variety
  10. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
    Well-wrought individual scenes and sharply focused acting provide Rebecca Miller's third feature with a measure of gravity, but too much abrupt, even melodramatic behavior and undigested psychological matter leave nagging dissatisfactions.
  11. Go for Sisters
    Like too many of Sayles’ films, Go for Sisters seems bound to slip through the cracks, not quite memorable enough to make a lasting impression.
  12. What's Love Got to Do with It?
    As strenuously as the film professes to give arranged marriages a fair shake, its whole cornball narrative is rigged against the very concept: “Love Contractually” may be the pitch, but “Love Actually” is the preferred outcome.
  13. No Hard Feelings
    When you see No Hard Feelings, you realize that the film’s promise of risky business is little more than a big tease.
  14. Doctor Sleep
    This sequel to “The Shining” may register, in the end, as a long footnote, but it makes you glad that you got to play in that sinister funhouse again.
  15. Cape of Good Hope
    Although by now routine, the intertwining of separate story strands is solidly structured, and the different mini-narratives resolved in unsurprising yet satisfying ways.
  16. The Contender
    The large, talented cast elevates the film above the trappings of its loquacious debates, particularly Allen.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mystic Pizza
    Genuine and moving... Script is remarkably mature in its dealings with teens.
  18. The Princess Blade
    A martial arts fantasy in modern dress, but set in an unidentified country and era, The Princess Blade is a tough toasted sandwich with a soft filling.
  19. Fade to Black
    Smartly directed by Pat Paulson and Michael John Warren and nicely lensed.
  20. The Man Who Bought Mustique
    A memorable portrait of an unbearable personality.
  21. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    David Koepp's script, from the Michael Crichton novel, is schematic and largely predictable. There's an obvious threat and not too many ways to quell it. Underneath the technical virtuosity is a standard chase film, and director Steven Spielberg does little to elevate it dramatically.
  22. Love! Valour! Compassion!
    It is so sharply written and entertaining that in its stage-to-screen transfer the material easily overcomes its theatrical sensibility and the static direction of Joe Mantello, who also staged the Broadway production.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bostonians
    This is a classy adaptation of a Henry James novel.
  24. The Boy Downstairs
    Mamet has a quick, spry reaction time and a gently forlorn focus that holds the screen, and she holds this movie together.
  25. The Rachel Divide
    The portrait it paints is sure to confound and infuriate in equal measure. Far from simply a snapshot of a discussion about race, Brownson’s documentary is a riveting account of self-sabotage, misplaced priorities, and obstinacy run amok.
  26. J. Edgar
    Any movie in which the longtime FBI honcho features as the central character must supply some insight into what made him tick, or suffer from the reality that the Bureau's exploits were far more interesting than the bureaucrat who ran it -- a dilemma J. Edgar never rises above.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Streets of Fire
    A pulsing, throbbing orchestration careening around the rescue of a kidnapped young singer. The decor is urban squalor.
  28. Mr. Peabody & Sherman
    The narrative’s time-travel element allows for plenty of fluffy, fleet-footed action.
  29. The Cartel
    A lopsided whine about the state of American public schools, The Cartel is a lesson in dichotomous documaking: Effervescent and tedious, crusading and craven, it's a prime example of that ubiquitous oxymoron: the agenda-driven "expose."
  30. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    The end of the world can't come fast enough in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, a disastrously dull take on the disaster-movie formula.
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