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. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
    Porumboiu so carefully intellectualizes every outwardly inconsequential exchange that the picture has no room to breathe, forcing audiences to work hard to catch the sly playfulness and cunning within.
  2. The Other Man: F.W. de Klerk and the End of Apartheid
    It’s an opportunity only half seized: Haphazard both as biography and historical survey, the film asks more salient questions than it can answer in a rushed 76 minutes.
  3. Vessel
    The film is an intriguing story passionately told, shot through and through with activist zeal, although a greater deal of distance might have allowed it to make a stronger case.
  4. Avatar: The Way of Water
    At its height, it feels exhilarating. But not all the way through. Cameron, in "The Way of Water," remains a fleet and exacting classical popcorn storyteller, but oh, the story he’s telling! The script he has co-written is a string of serviceable clichés that give the film the domestic adventure-thriller spine it needs, but not anything more than that.
  5. Above and Beyond
    Above and Beyond reps an uneasy combo of two very different kinds of documentary, one of them personalizing the past and the other “objectifying” political advocacy.
  6. Suburban Gothic
    While the results may be perilously slight, Suburban Gothic’s particular brand of low-key sarcasm and absurdity will tickle those looking for laughs more dry than slapstick (or splatstick) in nature.
  7. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
    Captain Underpants isn’t out to be more than a trifle; that’s part of its appeal. It’s not so much potty-mouthed as it is a potty-minded kiddie burlesque, one that finds the supreme innocence in naughtiness.
  8. The Boss Baby
    The Boss Baby, the jokey new 3D animated lark from DreamWorks Animation (it’s being distributed by 20th Century Fox), is a visually brisk, occasionally clever low-concept comedy that’s also trying, half-heartedly, to be some sort of Pixarish masterpiece. You may wind up wishing that it had been one or the other.
  9. The D Train
    Funny and sad isn’t the easiest combination to pull off, and while both descriptors fit The D Train well enough, this dark comedy might just as well be described as edgy and soft, audacious and coy, a largely enjoyable letdown.
  10. I Am Michael
    It cuts to the heart of the self-doubt, fear and prejudice associated with modern homosexuality.
  11. Sleeping with Other People
    Headland demonstrated little interest in playing it safe with her previous film... But here she reins in that impulse almost too much, and Sleeping With Other People winds up both looking (with its adequate but unremarkable tech package) and often feeling like a run-of-the-mill studio comedy.
  12. The Stanford Prison Experiment
    The problem is not that this film is upsetting (it should be), but that it ultimately seems more interested, and skilled, at dispensing regular shocks than fresh insights.
  13. Z for Zachariah
    Z for Zachariah is a handsome-looking film (shot in widescreen, on remote New Zealand locations, by veteran David Gordon Green d.p. Tim Orr) and it doesn’t lack for provocative ideas, though it never digs quite deep enough into any of them.
  14. Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast
    A colorful and cheery fantasy that duplicates its series predecessors’ cutesy humor and feel-good message making.
  15. People Places Things
    For a film with one eye on messy, real emotions, People, Places, Things undercuts itself with goofy humor.
  16. Queen of the Desert
    Herzog’s script loses its way in the desert at one point, dutifully chronicling a life whose principal conflicts are a bit too abstract to dramatize. In the end, it’s not clear what’s driving Bell, nor what’s holding her back.
  17. Ana Maria in Novela Land
    Ganem has sufficient verve and appeal to sustain interest in both of her characters, and the sporadic tweaking of telenovelas and the fans who love them is often quite clever.
  18. Alex of Venice
    The pleasures of well-observed characters and small epiphanies are undeniable, and Alex of Venice, actor Chris Messina’s directing debut, is amply supplied with both, thanks to Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s extraordinary performance: Registering profound shocks with slight ripples rather than big emotions, she quietly commands attention.
  19. Champs
    Director Bert Marcus’ Champs is the moviegoing opposite of a prize fight, a slick but not particularly stylish documentary that actually becomes more focused and energized in the late rounds.
  20. Bluebird
    Edmands maintains too measured a pace as he cycles through the various lives affected, to the extent that one begins to wonder when things will start kick in.
  21. Lost and Love
    Notwithstanding some sentimental beats, Peng achieves a delicate balance between bleak realities and a life-affirming attitude, capped by a predictable but necessary catharsis.
  22. The Lady in the Van
    Low on narrative drive, and marred by a misjudged final-act swerve into extravagant whimsy, Nicholas Hytner’s amiable luvvie-fest is enlivened by Smith’s signature irascibility.
  23. Hyena
    What Hyena lacks in invention, however, it makes up for in technical bravado and geographical specificity.
  24. 3 Hearts
    The entire scenario, contrived to within an inch of its life, takes Poelvoorde’s appeal for granted. Marc’s anxiety becomes our own once he realizes what he’s done, though Jacquot makes it much more compelling to watch his characters fall in love than it is to see them writhe and twist amid its complications.
  25. Trumbo
    Trumbo may be clumsy and overly simplistic at times, but it’s still an important reminder of how democracy can fail (that is, when a fervent majority turns on those with different and potentially threatening values), and the strength of character it takes to fight the system.
  26. Suffragette
    Carey Mulligan gives an affecting, skillfully modulated performance that lends a certain coherence to this assemblage of real-life incidents, composite characters, noble sentiments, stirring speeches and impeccable production values — all marshaled in service of a picture whose politics prove rather more commendable than its artistry.
  27. Captive
    Although Captive largely succeeds as a two-hander, it stumbles in the minimal attempts to broaden the scope beyond Smith and Nichols’ time together.
  28. Keeping Up with the Joneses
    An amiable time-killer of an espionage comedy.
  29. Closer to the Moon
    If Caranfil’s mix of comedy and tragedy seems too scattershot to fully achieve catharsis, it does boast a rather Jewish sense of humor, itself a curious testimonial to the past.
  30. Preggoland
    An amusing, extravagantly implausible farce that nonetheless makes a pointed argument about the perceived marginalization of childless women in modern society.
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