Variety's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 9,148 out of 17807
  2. Mixed: 7,022 out of 17807
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17807
17807 movie reviews
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  1. Metropia
    The characters at first seem photorealistic, but their faces barely move. There are good, basic sci-fi ideas in the script, but they're not satisfyingly developed.
  2. Iron Man 2
    Isn't as much fun as its predecessor, but by the time the smoke clears, it'll do.
  3. Happiness Runs
    Sherman's personal wounds feel fresh, which makes for a superficially beautiful but otherwise bitter story.
  4. The Lightkeepers
    Such predictable pap is generally better suited for romance novels or Lifetime movies. Here, it's elevated somewhat by a decent cast.
  5. Mother and Child
    An insightfully observed and exceptionally acted ensemble piece precisely about what the title suggests.
  6. Multiple Sarcasms
    Timothy Hutton's fine, loose-limbed perf as a man adrift lifts Multiple Sarcasms, frosh scribe-helmer Brooks Branch's male menopause apologia, out of cliche-ridden territory -- at least temporarily.
  7. Ocean of Pearls
    This mix of tepid hospital intrigue plus underdeveloped cultural/relationship conflicts feels like a routine TV episode stretched to feature length, with little dramatic urgency or cinematic style to render its good intentions compelling.
  8. OSS 117 - Lost in Rio
    Jean Dujardin pulls off a charming, Peter Sellers-esque performance as he bumbles his way through retro cloak-and-dagger intrigue, displaying his character's uncanny ability to insult anyone -- and, especially in this episode, women and Jews -- who's not 100% Gallic, male and a diehard Charles de Gaulle fanatic.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Babies
    Babies is refreshing in its methods, impressive in its scope and remarkable in its immediacy. That said, it's also an occasionally frustrating documentary that deprives the viewer of the comforts of exposition and cultural context.
  10. Trash Humpers
    Pity the festival-going fool who stumbles unawares into Harmony Korine's patently abrasive, deliberately cruddy-looking mock-documentary Trash Humpers. All others -- that is, those familiar with Korine's anti-bourgeois oeuvre and know what they're in for -- will have a glorious time.
  11. The Infidel
    The Infidel takes some all-too-predictable detours into moralizing and sentimentality, but remains consistently sharp as long as it sticks to its acerbic tone and saucy comic sensibility.
  12. Road, Movie
    A modestly amusing dramedy that is all the more pleasant for its fleeting detours into cheeky fantasy.
  13. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
    Paul Viragh's script is too bitty to hold it all together, and filigrees of technique fail to disguise the weaknesses in helmer Mat Whitecross' first solo flight.
  14. The Trotsky
    Both cartoonish and cerebral, and studded with in-jokes referencing multicultural life in "la belle ville" and classic cinema, the colorful pic stretches its premise a bit thin over nearly two hours.
  15. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    While the 1984 film has aged, its now-familiar jolts still pack more punch than this pic's recycled ones, which sometimes register so tepidly as to cause snickers.
  16. Furry Vengeance
    This undistinguished picture qualifies as an endangered species. As a digital babysitter, however, it may prove sufficiently efficient to generate fair-to-middling homevid sales.
  17. The Good Heart
    A picture too simplistic and sentimental for art seekers and too rough for general audiences.
  18. Harry Brown
    Bleak, gripping, sporadically exciting drama.
  19. Mercy
    Its modesty is what makes its very real virtues -- a tart, literate script, an adroit balance of humor and pathos, a memorable onscreen collaboration between star-scribe Scott Caan and his father James -- so cumulatively impressive.
  20. Please Give
    Keener, so deliciously nasty in Holofcener's "Lovely and Amazing," is no less engaging here in what is, surprisingly, the film's least bitchy role.
  21. The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
    Only real payoff is seeing the monstrosity assembled, and though that will surely earn the Dutch writer-director a cult reputation on the genre circuit, "going there" does not a movie make.
  22. Anton Chekhov's The Duel
    This worthy follow-up to Kosashvili's brilliant "Late Marriage" should delight auds worldwide.
  23. The Back-up Plan
    This tepid romantic comedy falls somewhere between a weak sitcom pilot and a second-tier Hallmark movie.
  24. The Losers
    The Losers is the sort of pyro-heavy exercise parodied in "Tropic Thunder," and no amount of production polish can hide the hollowness beneath its junk-food high.
  25. A Shine of Rainbows
    Irresistibly good-natured even when it's cheesy.
  26. Behind the Burly Q
    The women's outspoken commentaries prove consistently colorful and their long-ago stripteases -- feathers flying, tassels spinning -- still pack a sensual, sassy, what-the-hell punch.
  27. Best Worst Movie
    Strangely moving, insightful and entertaining documentary.
  28. The Good, the Bad, the Weird
    East meets West meets East again, with palate-tingling results, in The Good the Bad the Weird, a kimchi Western that draws shamelessly on its spaghetti forebears but remains utterly, bracingly Korean.
  29. Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger
    Despite uninspired dialogue and direction, newcomer Catanzariti impresses as the oddball finding her niche. But the show, such as it is, belongs to top-billed Castle-Hughes.
  30. Paper Man
    The picture's biggest stumbling block is its superhero hook.
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