Variety's Scores

For 17,807 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 2.4 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:
17807 movie reviews
  1. A jagged little pill that, in the end, goes down too smoothly.
  2. A bland and innocuous small-fry outing that retains a measure of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon's charm, though scarcely enough to justify the time, expense and visual-effects trickery it must have taken to inflate an endearing 2D cartoon into a dopey 3D extravaganza.
  3. A surprise, a delight and a whimsical experiment.
  4. Largely thanks to Verbeek's performance, full of physical grace notes and small details, she manages to involve the audience, even though her character is more a movie creation than one based in real psychology. Rea, largely giving his usual mumbling Oirish perf, proves a selfless support, and provides an anchor to the movie.
  5. There's more mood than matter here, but suspenseful atmospherics effectively distract from minor plot holes.
  6. What it doesn't have, to its credit, is a neat conclusion. In the end, the film appears to suggest that Aura likely will feel free to keep searching for herself, repeating mistakes and making new ones, because she has all the time in the world.
  7. The ever-perceptive writer-director further hones her gifts for ruefully funny observation and understated melancholy with this low-key portrait of a burned-out screen actor.
  8. While far from easy, both roles provide a delightful opportunity for Firth and Rush to poke a bit of fun at their profession.
  9. Cunningly fashioning found footage into a rabbit's-eye view of events, Polish helmer Bartek Konopka creates a chillingly apt political allegory in Rabbit a la Berlin.
  10. Throughout, the drivers are framed against the various cityscapes they traverse, though their philosophical views on what is unfolding around them differs with age and temperament.
  11. Tangled is snappily paced and easy enough to get wrapped up in, propelled by a set of jaunty, serviceable songs from venerable composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater.
  12. An overwrought, underwritten hootchy-kootchy tuner that desperately wants to be "Cabaret," but lacks the edge and historical context to pull it off.
  13. Garden of Eden sends sleek, half-nude bodies glumly cavorting through lush Riviera landscapes in a paradigm of unintentional camp.
  14. The pain feels cushioned and secondhand, the characters are not terribly sympathetic or interesting other than for their misfortune, and the film shows little interest in analyzing the situation other than to point fingers at greedy CEOs.
  15. Like a beautifully tailored suit that starts to smell funny after a few minutes, this sumptuous but stultifying lark sets up a quasi-Hitchcockian intrigue between two strangers abroad, but smothers any thrills or sparks in a haze of self-regard.
  16. Director David Yates spins the series' most expansive, structurally free-form chapter yet -- lumbering and gripping by turns, and suffused with a profound sense of solitude and loss.
  17. This f/x-heavy third adaptation of the Christian-themed fantasy series feels routine and risk-averse in every respect, as if investment anxiety had fatally hobbled its sense of wonder.
  18. Grief may be the topic under examination, but humor -- incisive, observant and warm -- is the tool with which it's dissected in Rabbit Hole, a refreshingly positive-minded take on cinema's ultimate downer: overcoming the death of a child.
  19. A Tempest so kitschy, yet curiously drab and banal.
  20. If The Fighter feels like kind of a mess, lurching from one scene to the next as if the film itself has taken a few hits to the head, that's not entirely a bad thing.
  21. A visually inspired multi-genre amalgamation, a borderline-surreal folly that suggests a martial-arts action-adventure co-directed by Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini.
  22. The more the film implicates David, the more it distances itself and the viewer, playing out in the emotionally detached but sensationalistic, overripe manner of a tabloid freakshow.
  23. While 21st-century effects and a cutting-edge dance score make this a stunning virtual ride, the underlying concept feels as far-fetched as ever.
  24. Rather than a case of the Dude doing the Duke, Bridges' irascible old cuss is a genuine original who feels larger than the familiar saga that contains him.
  25. Less of a comedy than a hilarious tragedy, I Love You Phillip Morris stars Jim Carrey in his most complicated comedic role since "The Cable Guy."
  26. A wicked, sexy and ultimately devastating study of a young dancer's all-consuming ambition, Black Swan serves as a fascinating complement to Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," trading the grungy world of a broken-down fighter for the more upscale but no less brutal sphere of professional ballet.
  27. But atmospherics notwithstanding, the narrative unfolds unconvincingly in jerky fits and starts.
  28. Family-friendly holiday fare.
  29. The familiarity of the music may actually be a disadvantage; the ear wants the melodies to conform to one's memory of them, but instead they've been tortured into compliance with the needs of a standard movie musical.
  30. Neither sexually explicit nor showily lyrical, Undertow nonetheless has a sensuous, romantic feel that balances same-sex love with an equally empathetic view toward the adoring, then bewildered, then enraged wife.

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