Variety's Scores

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For 17,835 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 17835
  2. Mixed: 7,032 out of 17835
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17835
17835 movie reviews
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  1. The Song
    A well-crooned country tune can invest even the hoariest cliches with honest feeling, and in much the same fashion, The Song takes a familiar tale of love, marriage, betrayal and redemption, and delivers a largely satisfying rendition.
  2. Party Girl
    [An] accomplished if unexceptional debut feature.
  3. Saint Laurent
    The upside for Saint Laurent’s admirers is that Bonello’s film reflects more of the designer’s tortured creative drive in its dark onyx surfaces; it’s the slightly deranged auteur portrait that a fellow artist and iconoclast deserves.
  4. The Blue Room
    While this appropriately brief film unravels its enigma at a tidy clip, it gathers neither enough heat, nor quite enough of a chill, to linger in the bones.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sorcerer
    William Friedkin's Sorcerer is a painstaking, admirable, but mostly distant and uninvolving suspenser based on the French classic The Wages of Fear [from the novel by Georges Arnaud]. Friedkin vividly renders the experience of several men driving trucks loaded with nitro through the South American jungle, yet the characters are basically functional. 'Sorcerer' is merely the name of one of the trucks.
  6. The Salvation
    There’s really only one ingredient for which The Salvation is likely to be remembered: Eva Green.
  7. Bird People
    Where the film goes is both unexpected and necessary, since however grounded and relatable these thinly detailed characters might be, the movie doesn’t actually seem to be going anywhere.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alien Nation
    Solid performances by leads James Caan and his humanoid buddy-cop partner Mandy Patinkin move this production beyond special effects, clever alien makeup and car chases.
  9. Burt's Buzz
    [A] thin but engaging portrait.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Net
    Riddled with more coincidences and implausibilities than Hitchcock permitted himself in his entire career, The Net still gets by as a reasonably suspenseful, very au courant thriller.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Police Academy
    Police Academy at its core is a harmless, innocent poke at authority that does find a fresh background in a police academy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stir Crazy
    Director Sidney Poitier’s chief role seems to be providing enough space for Pryor and Wilder to do their schtick without going too far afield from the scant storyline
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tremors
    An affectionate send-up of schlocky 1950s monster pics, but with better special effects, Tremors has a few clever twists but ultimately can’t decide what it wants to be – flat-out funny, which it’s not, or a scarefest.
  14. Honour
    Earnest issue drama and pulpy B-thriller mechanics make awkward but not uncompelling bedfellows in Honour.
  15. Silence
    Though undeniably gorgeous, it is punishingly long, frequently boring, and woefully unengaging at some of its most critical moments.... Still, viewed through the narrow prism of films about faith, Silence is a remarkable achievement.
  16. Uncharted
    Uncharted is a lively but thinly scripted and overlong mad-dash caper movie, propelled by actors you wish, after a while, had more interesting things to say and do.
  17. Two Night Stand
    Two Night Stand’s strength lies in the doubts and the ambivalence it expresses about the way we love now.
  18. Found
    Although not entirely successful, this intriguing, above-average genre effort still reps an ambitious and resourceful debut for helmer/co-writer Scott Schirmer.
  19. The Transporter Refueled
    The Transporter Refueled comes up strong where it counts, with frequent bursts of ludicrously implausible yet coherently directed mayhem.
  20. Coldwater
    Suitable for teens — lies somewhere between indignant expose and unusually tasteful exploitation picture, with shower scenes and sweaty young delinquents aplenty.
  21. Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart
    Zagar’s thesis — that overpowering media exploitation determined its legal outcome early on — is introduced in the very first shot, then hammered home harder the longer the pic goes on.
  22. Fort McCoy
    Connor and co-director Michael Worth allow Fort McCoy to proceed at an unhurried pace, giving Stoltz ample opportunity to subtly convey undercurrents of guilt and anger percolating beneath his character’s affable exterior.
  23. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
    You won’t feel cheated; at stray moments, you’ll feel the wonder. But for every high point, there’s a moment when the thrill threatens to leak away.
  24. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    Cavill and Hammer have each toplined major tentpoles before, so it’s something of a mystery why neither makes much of an impression here, but there’s a curious vacuum at the center of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that almost certainly owes to its casting.
  25. No No: A Dockumentary
    While the film’s sense of chronology is at times strained and its tale of redemption hardly unique, its subject is certainly one of a kind.
  26. The Age of Adaline
    A sensitively directed slab of romantic hokum that wrings an impressive amount of emotional conviction from a thoroughly ludicrous premise.
  27. Kink
    The consistently celebratory stance of “Kink” is commendable, but also feels somewhat limiting.
  28. Krampus
    Krampus isn’t especially scary, but it generates goodwill nonetheless for treating its home-invasion-for-the-holidays setup with an appreciably straight face.
  29. Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers And The Emergence Of A People
    Though a tad uneven, as a whole the documentary cannily juggles an overview of African-American history in general with the specifics of its photographic representation and talents.
  30. McFarland USA
    A rare studio entertainment featuring a largely Latino ensemble, yet necessarily fronted by a big-name draw like Costner, McFarland, USA feels at once mildly progressive and unavoidably retrograde.
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