Variety's Scores

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For 17,805 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 17805
  2. Mixed: 7,020 out of 17805
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17805
17805 movie reviews
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  1. American Swing
    Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart's documentary is just functionally assembled, lacking the style or larger social context that distinguished similar studies like "Inside Deep Throat."
  2. The Haunting in Connecticut
    Long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension.
  3. Guest of Cindy Sherman
    If a doc manages to inform and entertain, it's ahead of the competition. If it features engaging personalities (or penguins), so much the better. And if it manages not to lose its assets while dipping its toe into murkier issues -- becoming, say, a brow-knitting thumb-sucker -- then it's really a work of art.
  4. Shall We Kiss?
    This is upscale French entertainment at its best.
  5. Knowing
    Genre fans always looking for something new and awesome may feel like they've seen most of this before, but the conceptual and emotional strength of Summit's Nicolas Cage starrer largely carries the day.
  6. Sin Nombre
    Fukunaga refrains from artificially amping up excitement for its own sake, maintaining an intimate, observational style that offers up a host of things to look at and think about.
  7. I Love You, Man
    A Judd Apatow clone that's one of the few recent R-rated raunch fests the ubiquitous auteur of larky crudeness actually had nothing to do with, I Love You, Man cranks out the kind of lowball humor that makes you gag on your own laughs.
  8. Duplicity
    Smart, droll and dazzling to look at and listen to, writer-director Tony Gilroy's effervescent, intricately plotted puzzler proves in every way superior to his 2007 success "Michael Clayton."
  9. The Great Buck Howard
    Behind-the-curtains comedy reps an amusing showcase for John Malkovich's diva-like theatrics in the title role.
  10. Skills Like This
    Likable but lightweight slacker comedy.
  11. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    What adds heart, and humor, is the interplay between the legendary couturier and Giancarlo Giammetti, his longtime partner in business and life.
  12. Angel
    A monumental piece of miscasting in the title role, and an apparently tin ear for the nuances of English dialogue by Gallic helmer Francois Ozon.
  13. Sunshine Cleaning
    Director Christine Jeffs, who previously helmed "Rain" and "Sylvia," tries to strike a balance between the yarn's dark currents and offbeat comedy, but the result is often uneasy, with the humor receding as things progress.
  14. Miss March
    Miss March is overall a raggedy, unfocused affair that wastes both directors' acting talent and feels like too much work between the laughs.
  15. The Last House on the Left
    If the original could be accused of having a real point (even a subtext), the uninspired redo has none whatsoever.
  16. The Cake Eaters
    A vibrant, unpretentious small-town tale.
  17. The Edge of Love
    While the period drama has several redeeming features, tonally it's all over the map, veering between artsy stylization and hum-drum, sometimes almost twee melodrama.
  18. The Perfect Sleep
    Unfortunately, Alter's often inventive work is kneecapped by a deliriously nonsensical script, which misses the mark as both over-the-top parody and straight-faced homage, and could have been intended as either.
  19. Race to Witch Mountain
    Strikes a deft balance of chase-movie suspense and wisecracking humor, with a few slam-bang action setpieces that would shame the makers of more allegedly grown-up genre fare.
  20. Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
    "Pathfinder" meets "Gerry" in Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America, a striking and virtually wordless story of two Vikings separated from their tribe and left to stumble through the North American wilderness.
  21. Tokyo Sonata
    Though there's nothing here that hasn’t been dealt with in other Japanese movies, picture benefits considerably from its pitch-perfect performances.
  22. Brothers at War
    Provides some interesting perspectives but also veers dangerously close to vanity project.
  23. Watchmen
    The movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there's simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated.
  24. Phoebe in Wonderland
    Partly produced by Lifetime, the pic attempts to elevate the disease-of-the-week movie into a moral dialectic between conformity and imagination.
  25. Everlasting Moments
    Artistically on a plane with or near the vet filmmaker's best work, this period drama about a woman slowly discovering her metier is an artisanal creation par excellence.
  26. Sherman's Way
    An agreeable tone and cast make Sherman’s Way go down easy.
  27. Tokyo!
    An uneven but enjoyable trio of films that take affectionate (and sometimes literal) aim at the Japanese capital.
  28. Reunion
    Drearily pretentious, ultra-stagy exercise in middle-age self-loathing.
  29. 12
    Expansively, dramatically, magnificently Russian, Nikita Mikhalkov's loose remake of "12 Angry Men" plays like vintage jazz from a veteran band.
  30. Crossing Over
    The way the picture dwells almost exclusively on cinematically exploitable elements -- gangbanger crime, prostitution, honor killing, terrorism paranoia -- gives it a sordid patina that even the classy, able thesps can't offset.
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