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. Inkheart
    Despite abundant talent on both sides of the camera and a bevy of eye-catching supernatural beasties, this f/x-heavy story of a literature-loving father and daughter battling dark forces unleashed from the pages of a rare tome doesn't conjure much in the way of bigscreen magic.
  2. Outlander
    Not helped by a wooden perf from Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien who accidentally imports a real alien to eighth-century Earth.
  3. Of Time and the City
    Result is by turns moving, droll and charming, and niftily assembled, but not necessarily that profound.
  4. Chandni Chowk to China
    As with many a Bollywood epic, you can bring the kids, your lunch, your cell phone, your unfiled taxes. There's so much here, and in such heaping, lengthy portions, you could probably weave a sari before the end credits.
  5. Cherry Blossoms
    A successful novelist whose films bear the expansive plotting and telling character detail of the page, Doerrie never seems in any particular hurry to tell her tales, preferring the journey to the destination.
  6. Hotel for Dogs
    Ultimately warm and furry, with a wet nose buried in gross receipts.
  7. My Bloody Valentine
    At heart an unabashedly retro work, reveling in the cliches and conventions of the slasher horror pics that proliferated in the early 1980s.
  8. Notorious
    A rock-solid biopic with a foolproof rise-and-fall storyline and a warmly nuanced performance by Jamal Woolard.
  9. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
    An almost shockingly amateurish one-note-joke comedy.
  10. Bride Wars
    A shrill, mechanical comedy.
  11. The Unborn
    Whereas Japanese horror movies have been criticized for not making sense, The Unborn errs on the opposite extreme, coming off all the more ridiculous for over-explaining itself.
  12. Just Another Love Story
    Contrived excess is rarely as entertaining as it is in the ironically titled Just Another Love Story, a furiously overheated romantic thriller from Danish writer-helmer Ole Bornedal.
  13. Silent Light
    Reygadas' typically arresting widescreen visuals and the presence of non-pro actors speaking in German-derived Plautdietsch makes for an initially hypnotic combination, but the spell breaks its hold well before the end of the picture's inflated running time, signaling an endurance test for all but the most ascetic arthouse auds.
  14. Defiance
    A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
  15. Good
    Considering its theme and setting, there's something very wrong with a Good that seems merely competent, uninspired and a bit old-hat.
  16. Revolutionary Road
    A near-perfect case study of the ways in which film is incapable of capturing certain crucial literary qualities, in this case the very things that elevate the book from being a merely insightful study of a deteriorating marriage into a remarkable one.
  17. Waltz with Bashir
    It's these surreal touches, deployed with tactical restraint, that make the picture extraordinary and convey the febrile atmosphere of warfare, where by fear, horror -- and later guilt -- distort and distend perception and memory.
  18. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion.
  19. The Spirit
    Plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bedtime Stories
    With Bedtime Stories, Sandler has delivered on his promise to make a movie his kids can enjoy. What's more, he's managed to do so without alienating his core audience.
  21. Last Chance Harvey
    Stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson (reunited after 2006's "Stranger Than Fiction") are so disarmingly charming that even the most treacly moments work an emotional magic.
  22. Marley & Me
    This perky, episodic film is as broad and obvious as it could be, but delivers on its own terms thanks to sparky chemistry between its sunny blond stars, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and the unabashed emotion-milking of the final reel.
  23. Valkyrie
    Has visual splendor galore, but is a cold work lacking in the requisite tension and suspense.
  24. The Secret of the Grain
    An overlong, dramatically unbalanced picture whose emotional wallop gets somewhat diffused.
  25. Theater of War
    What emerges from Walter's docu is not a sense of failure, but a recognition that the play's the thing, enriched by every flawed performance, perfection almost irrelevant to its cry of anguish.
  26. The Tale of Despereaux
    This graphically well-rendered kidpic is less crass and mouthy than many recent feature-length toons, but also more sluggish and ungainly as it tries to approximate DiCamillo's singularly delicate tone.
  27. The Class
    Talky in the best sense, the film exhilarates with its lively, authentic classroom banter while its emotional undercurrents build steadily but almost imperceptibly over a swift 129 minutes. One of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year.
  28. Moscow, Belgium
    Accomplished freshman outing by Flemish TV director Christophe van Rompaey features a knockout perf from actress Barbara Sarafian ("8½ Women").
  29. Seven Pounds
    An endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head. Intricately constructed so as to infuriate anyone predominantly guided by rationality and intellect.
  30. Yes Man
    Genial but slim, picture is certainly a light-hearted alternative to weighty year-end awards bait, but the conceit isn't realized fully enough.
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