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. The Highwaymen
    Commands attention less as historical counterpoint than as a sturdy showcase for the neatly balanced lead performances of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.
  2. An American Pickle
    Of course, the essence of the fish-out-of-water comedy is that it’s never been a realistic genre — it’s pure Hollywood fantasy. Yet An American Pickle, in its ethnically satirical and scattered way, lacks the integrity of its own ridiculousness. It’s pungent but flavorless: an unkosher dill.
  3. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
    The film has a knowingly conflicted engagement with millennial-generation feminism that freshens its outlook even as it unevenly rejigs many of its predecessor’s gags. Still, while a subtly clawed Chloë Grace Moretz proves a worthy new foil, it’s Zac Efron’s tragicomic anatomy of a dudebro that remains this series’ sharpest asset.
  4. The Bridge
    Compelling result is handled with enough dignified artistry to quell most fears of exploitation.
  5. Brown Sugar
    As eye and ear candy, pic has its modest pleasures, beginning with the attractive Diggs and Lathan.
  6. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    There's something perversely fascinating about helmer John Hyams' freewheeling yet deliberately paced mashup of noirish mystery, splatter-movie intensity, first-person-shooter vidgame and "Apocalypse Now"-style surrealism.
  7. Gayby
    Although it traffics freely in stereotypes and sitcom-style one-liners, Gayby is never less than likable.
  8. Orchestra of Exiles
    Despite lively commentaries by a pantheon of master musicians and magnificently performed classical pieces, "Exiles" only distantly echoes Huberman's visionary adventure.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rocketeer
    Newcomer Campbell exhibits the requisite grit and all-American know-how, but the lead role is written with virtually no humor or subtext. Those around him come off to better advantage, notably Dalton as the deliciously smooth, insidious Sinclair; Sorvino and Alan Arkin, with the latter as the Rocketeer’s mentor; Terry O’Quinn as Hughes; and the lovely, voluptuous Connelly.
  10. Wheeler
    The term “vanity project” doesn’t come close to adequately describing the hubristic folly that is Wheeler, an excruciatingly dull and self-indulgent faux documentary
  11. In Bed With Victoria
    If anything, what Triet has done is demonstrate that people are allowed to be complicated — and at times contradictory. And the tidy Hollywood ending betrays the fact that Victoria’s problems have less to do with sorting out who’s in her bed than what’s in her head.
  12. Duck Butter
    There’s dialogue, but very little interchange. The movie makes your average mumblecore mumblefest sound like Preston Sturges.
  13. Outrage Coda
    It’s a testament to Kitano’s effortlessly sleek, inherently watchable filmmaking (he reteams with regular DP Katsumi Yanagijima and uses the atonal descending motif of composer Keiichi Suzuki’s score to good effect) that you’re just about kept in your seat throughout all the speechifying.
  14. The Motive
    Whatever attracted Cuenca (“Cannibal”) to this material is seldom evident in his handling of it. Yet the material itself still lends the film its genuine if all-too-modest pleasures.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crimes of the Heart
    Thoughtfully cast, superbly acted and masterfully written and directed, Crimes of the Heart is a winner.
  16. Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
    It is engrossing stuff, as a cautionary tale as well as a taste of the spirit that leads people into explorations more bold than wise. The lure of the ocean’s mysteries (and the Titanic’s enduring romance) are vividly conveyed.
  17. The Mule
    There’s nothing inherently wrong with presenting bigoted people onscreen, since heaven knows they exist in real life, but the trouble with The Mule is that it invites audiences to laugh along with Earl’s ignorance.
  18. Shrek Forever After
    The reputed swan song for the series and its first entry in 3D, pic contains a respectable number of laughs, but also borrows its storyline from the oft-recycled "It's a Wonderful Life," and if that's all its creators can do, it's best to put Far Far Away far far away.
  19. Apex
    Kormákur’s film doesn’t trade in surprises, but offers more than enough heart-in-mouth action spectacle to compensate.
  20. The Oath
    Here’s a project that had the nerve to address these tensions in a megaplex environment, only to squander them on a standoff it pretends could be so glibly resolved.
  21. Turbo
    Here, the laughs come not from the silly voices but a blend of snappy editing and clever character bits, including a recurring joke about an inappropriately named sidekick who calls himself White Shadow (Michael Patrick Bell).
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    TRON
    Tron is loaded with visual delights but falls way short of the mark in story and viewer involvement. Steven Lisberger has adequately marshalled a huge force of technicians to deliver the dazzle, but even kids (and specifically computer game freaks) will have a difficult time getting hooked on the situations.
    • Variety
  23. Beloved
    At nearly three hours, however, it rather overstays its welcome, trying the patience even as it sustains intrigue regarding its final revelations.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Psycho III
    A few amusing little notions are streched to the point of diminishing returns in Psycho III.
  25. Bottom of the 9th
    Director Raymond De Felitta steps back up to the plate with Bottom of the 9th, another dramatically solid and emotionally satisfying drama that pivots on a long-shot attempt to fulfill long-delayed dreams.
  26. Sisters
    Beneath the film’s entertainingly crude hijinks, there are actual human stakes here, as the two sisters recognize in each other the growing up they themselves need to do — though Pell’s script keeps the hugging and learning to a reasonable minimum.
  27. Unleashed
    Slick transitions and punchy pace leave just enough time for Hopkins and Freeman to make dopey dialogue sound far smarter than it is. And as both pit bull and puppy dog, Jet Li convinces.
  28. The Dictator
    Typically, political correctness couldn't be farther from the filmmakers' mind, and yet, what the picture most sorely lacks is the sort of humanist appeal Chaplin delivered at the close of "The Great Dictator."
  29. Quantum of Solace
    Stripped of "Royale's" humor, elegance and reinvented old-school stylishness, Quantum has little left except its plot, which is rudimentary and slightly barmy, in the line of the Roger Moore pics of the '70s and '80s.
  30. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
    It leaves us with a character you won’t soon forget, but you wish that the movie were as haunting as he is.
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