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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    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Altered States
    Direction by Ken Russell has energy to spare, with appropriate match-up of his baroque visual style to special effects intensive material.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crimes of the Future
    Cronenberg’s obsession for such matters as bodily mutation and grotesque growths, aberrant medical experiments, massive plagues and futuristic architecture are all here in a convoluted look at a future gone perverse.
  3. La scorta (re-release)
    Ricky Tognazzi's La Scorta topped the Italian box office charts for weeks, thanks to its skill in capturing the country's current political climate in an entertaining action film format. (Review of Original Release)
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Help!
    The simple good spirits that pervaded A Hard Day's Night are now often smothered as if everybody is desperately trying to outsmart themselves and be ultra-clever-clever. Nevertheless, Help! is a good, nimble romp with both giggles and belly-laughs.
  5. No Stone Unturned
    In a strange way, the movie, as doggedly made as it is, remains stubbornly uncompelling. That, I think, is because Gibney’s own connection to the subject, while it charges him with righteous passion, has resulted in a rare loss of perspective.
  6. Wolf Totem
    Despite its magnificent natural vistas and some pulse-pounding action in stunning 3D, Wolf Totem boils down to a familiar environmentalist allegory that doesn’t move or provoke too deeply.
  7. The Model
    The screenplay by Matthiessen and co-writers Martin Pieter Zandvliet and Anders Frithiof August is compelling up until the melodramatic, credulity-straining final act, although the characters, apart from Emma, feel underdeveloped.
  8. Pirate Radio
    Picture generally stays afloat on the strength of its characters but sometimes threatens to sink under its overlong running time and vignettish structure.
  9. The Reader
    Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Year of the Dragon
    Unquestionably, Cimino’s eye for detail and insistence thereon has paid off in his impressive recreation of Chinatown at producer Dino De Laurentiis’ studios in North Carolina. Crammed with an array of interesting characters, including the extras in the background, Dragon brims with authenticity.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cleopatra Jones
    Cleopatra Jones is a good programmer with the offbeat twist of having a sexy woman detective as the lead character. The script incorporates a slew of action set pieces, capably directed by Jack Starrett.
  12. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
    Ultimately, pic feels very much like a romanticized, outsider's view of the South that willfully seeks out the culture's strangest, most weirdo aspects for other outsiders' gleeful delectation.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fortune
    The Fortune is an occasionally enjoyable comedy trifle, starring Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty as bumbling kidnappers of heiress Stockard Channing, who is excellent in her first major screen role. Very classy 1920s production values often merit more attention than the plot.
  14. Freaky Tales
    Freaky Tales takes nearly 40 minutes to find its footing, but once it kicks in, there’s roughly an hour of grindhouse glory ahead (assuming streaming audiences make it that far).
  15. Life Is Beautiful
    Sluggish, uneven and lacking in rhythm, it nonetheless has enough pathos and winning humor.
  16. Defamation
    End result is at once intelligent, wry and -- there's no way around it -- quintessentially Jewish, in the best sense.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Child's Play
    Child's Play is a near-miss at providing horrific thrills in a tale of a doll come to murderous life, told with a knowing tongue-in-cheek attitude. Fun withers in stretching the thin material to feature length.
  18. The Firm
    Rebounding from his biggest career flopflop with "Havana," Sydney Pollack has done an ultra-pro job in giving spit and polish to this star-driven, sure-fire commercial project.
  19. Stoker
    A splendidly demented gumbo of Hitchcock thriller, American Gothic fairy tale and a contemporary kink all Park's own.
  20. The King
    The story of a veritable devil who comes to test and destroy a family of faith, The King is a noxious film morally and an aggravating one dramatically.
  21. Love & Air Sex
    This more broadly appealing project feels daringly frank on the subject of sex. But as is frequently the case with the most saturnalian comedies, it’s actually quite conservative when it comes to allowing its characters to follow through on their uninhibited talk.
  22. Trouble with the Curve
    A defiantly analog rejoinder to last year's tech-savvy baseball drama, "Moneyball," Robert Lorenz's square but sturdy directing debut rests on the wonderfully spiky chemistry between Eastwood and Amy Adams.
  23. Hard Candy
    A spectacular performance by teenage thesp Ellen Page elevates this disturbing slice of designer shocksploitation into a film that's impossible to dismiss on principle.
  24. Go Further
    Unquestioning agitprop for vegetarianism, hemp fiber, solar energy, sustainable organic living and other causes espoused by actor-activist Woody Harrelson.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Object of Beauty
    The Object of Beauty is a throwback to the romantic comedies of Swinging London cinema, but lacks the punch of the best of that late 1960s genre. Mildly diverting but empty picture.
    • Variety
  26. Defiance
    A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
  27. Under Siege
    Under Siege is an immensely slick, if also old-fashioned and formulaic, entertainment. Steven Seagal fans and action buffs should eat up this taut suspenser, which is set entirely on board a battleship.
  28. Nerve
    Nerve is a comic-book vision of how the Internet has become a gladiatorial arena of voyeurism. But the movie, like the game it’s about, is hard to stop watching, even when you know it’s playing you.
  29. Eternity
    Eternity should have been 90 minutes long, with more energy and more crackpot invention than it has at nearly two hours. It’s a bauble that tries to stretch itself into a boutique dream.
  30. The Keeping Room
    A potentially gripping story of empowerment through armed resistance is almost totally undermined by studied, self-conscious storytelling.
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