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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  1. Brian Banks
    So, where do Shadyac and Atchison expect audiences to direct their frustration at such a miscarriage of justice? Well, that’s what makes “Brian Banks” special: It is not an angry film, but one that preaches forgiveness in the face of such adversity.
  2. Norwegian Wood
    Lovely but listless.
  3. Baskin
    Baskin becomes something of a monotonous dirge. Diverting to an extent, the film’s horrors aren’t shocking or distinctive enough, its surreal atmospherics not quite strong enough to cover for the sketchy script.
  4. To the Wonder
    Never before has Malick explored sexuality so openly onscreen, and while the nudity is fairly discreet, the eroticism of flesh cradling flesh, even the gesture of a hand touching a shoulder, turns out to be a natural subject for Lubezki’s exquisitely graceful camerawork.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fame
    Alan Parker has come up with an exposure for some of the most talented youngsters seen on screen in years. There isn't a bad performance in the lot. The great strength of the film is in the school scenes -- when it wanders away from the scholastic side as it does with increasing frequency as the overlong feature moves along, it loses dramatic intensity and slows the pace.
    • Variety
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lady Sings the Blues
    The film serves as a very good screen debut vehicle for Diana Ross, supported strongly by excellent casting, handsome 1930s physical values, and a script which is far better in dialog than structure.
  7. Steep
    Like its sister films in the surfing-movie genre, the extreme-skiing movie Steep is less a documentary than a sales pitch -- not for a product or a place, but for a sport, one its practitioners feel requires pugnacious self-promotion.
  8. A Kid Like Jake
    The movie doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere until it explodes, and the dazzling fireworks don’t quite offset its long, seemingly aimless fuse.
  9. The Accountant 2
    The Accountant 2 is an agreeably loopy hyperviolent good time.
  10. Hitch
    Considerably heavier on romance than comedy, Hitch stitches together relatively few laughs but generates enough goodwill and energy.
  11. Samoan Wedding
    The big, burly Samoan Wedding is a shrewdly written, impeccably timed and audaciously played romantic comedy.
  12. The Midnight Meat Train
    Film isn't scary, per se, but it's mostly effective nonetheless, with Cooper capably steering his character from charming young artist to nervous wreck, evoking Ralph Fiennes' more unhinged turns along the way.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Enforcer
    The spitball script [from a story by Gail Morgan Hickman and S.W. Schurr] lurches along, stopping periodically for the blood-lettings and assorted running and jumping and chasing stuff.
  14. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
    On the level of pure popcorn entertainment, there’s not a thing one can fault the 3D megabuster for.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ffolkes
    The biggest attraction is the banter between Roger Moore and the various types with whom he comes in conflict during his preparations to save a hijacked supply ship.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shivers
    A silly but moderately effective chiller about creeping parasites that systematically (and comically) 'infect' an entire highrise population with nothing less than sexual hysteria.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lover Come Back
    This is a funny, most-of-the-time engaging, smartly produced show. Farce has Rock Hudson as would-be conqueror of Doris Day, who as the victim of a who's-who deception plays brinkmanship with surrender.
  18. Ruth: Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words
    It’s curiously difficult to stay engaged with Mock’s film that merely puts forth a paint-by-numbers assembly of the wealth of material it has at its disposal.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sunday in New York
    Norman Krasna's screenplay, from his Broadway legiter, doesn't really get rolling until it has virtually marked time for almost an hour, but once it gets up this head of steam the entire complexion of the picture seems to change.
  20. Operation Finale
    The last thing you want a movie like this one to feel like is a slick Hollywood suspense drama with famous historical names plugged in. Operation Finale doesn’t feel like that, yet taken on its own here’s how it really happened terms, the movie is at once plausible and sketchy, intriguing and not fully satisfying.
  21. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Even more than in "Far From Heaven," Moore's housebound wife is a study in pent-up brilliance, with extraordinary devotion to her family.
  22. Before I Fall
    While the story easily could have fallen into a broken-record rut, “Nobody Walks” director Russo-Young finds ways of making the day in question feel fresh each time Sam lives it, while giving the overall presentation a look, feel, and voice that’s distinct from the vast swatch of YA movies.
  23. Dolphin Tale 2
    Blissfully swimming against the hyperactive kidpic tide, Dolphin Tale 2 gently peddles inspirational life lessons while respecting both its characters and its audience.
  24. August: Osage County
    This two-ton prestige pic won’t win the hearts of highbrow critics or those averse to door-slamming, plate-smashing, top-of-the-lungs histrionics, but as a faithful filmed record of Letts’ play, one could have scarcely hoped for better.
  25. It: Chapter Two
    It: Chapter Two is much longer than it needs to be, but it builds to something significant — and a lot of that filler feels justifiable in terms of how audiences’ consumption patterns are changing.
  26. Spin Me Round
    Is this supposed to be some kind of sitcom? A thriller? A provocative #MeToo statement on sexual dynamics in the workplace? Yes, all of the above, it turns out.
  27. Stray Dolls
    The downbeat, disenfranchised “dark side of the American dream” thing has been done to death in a thousand noirs, but Stray Dolls elbows just enough room for itself in that crowded category, especially for how it honors the American cinematic tradition of the last-chance motel: a place designed for passing through that somehow never lets you leave.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Twice in a Lifetime
    The pic is loaded with jock humor and incidental comments that allow the characters’ frustrations to seep out. Audiences will love Burstyn’s warm wrinkles and visit with her daughters to a male strip joint, as well as Hackman’s workmanlike heroism.
  29. The Wisdom of Crocodiles
    Starts intriguingly but ends up thrashing around as a toothless wonder.
  30. Hats Off
    Despite intimate, prolonged access to her subject, director Jyll Johnstone seems to have missed the most interesting wrinkles of Weddell's story in favor of fuzzy life's-a-stage affirmations.
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