Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. I Am Chris Farley
    Worth watching for its trove of emotional testimonies from family and friends — including an atypically forthcoming Lorne Michaels and Adam Sandler — the pic is somewhat defanged by its surface-level approach and standard-issue filmmaking style.
  2. Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'
    A strictly members-only entertainment for a dedicated target audience, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ will impress the uninitiated as very loud and very colorful, but not nearly fast-paced enough.
  3. The Dressmaker
    Given the sheer number of threads that Moorhouse (who adapted the novel with her writer-director husband, P.J. Hogan) keeps in play, it’s surprising how well The Dressmaker coheres, albeit more along narrative lines than tonal ones.
  4. The Star
    As kid-friendly Christmas movies go, this one actually goes out of its way to remind what the holiday represents, which should please parents looking for something a little more sophisticated (but just barely) than the VeggieTales cartoons.
  5. Paulette
    Politics aside, however, the movie delivers on the inspiration of its premise, featuring just the sort of laughs one hopes for.
  6. Race
    Stephen Hopkins’ film offers a safe, middlebrow slice of history that beats a snoozy lecture any day. Making a few admirable attempts to complicate what could have been a standard-issue inspirational sports narrative, Race is better than it has to be, but not by too much.
  7. Tokyo Tribe
    The latest from the culty maker of “Suicide Club,” “Love Exposure” and last year’s TIFF Midnight Madness audience-award winner, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” is so insistently over-the-top from the start that the results are just fairly amusing when they ought to be exhilarating.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Warriors
    Theme of the pic, based on Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel, is a variation on countless westerns and war films. Update the setting to modern-day New York, and the avenues of escape to graffiti-emblazoned subway cars, and that’s The Warriors.
  9. Front Cover
    While there isn’t much subtlety or surprise in Yeung’s screenplay, his direction is restrained and graceful enough to make this a pleasant if unmemorable bittersweet love story.
  10. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
    A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story is strong on Velasquez’s developing backbone and smarts with the support of school and family. As a rallying cry for anti-bullying legislation, however, the film is superficial.
  11. Rabin, the Last Day
    In keeping with Gitai’s typically austere oeuvre, it’s a long, slow and sober piece — one could even call it a documentary, despite the fact that actors have been hired to perform deposition scenes derived directly from Shamgar transcripts.
  12. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words
    The lack of any significant investigation into performance styles is acutely felt, particularly given the very different methods of her major directors.
  13. Deathgasm
    This amiably dumb feature debut for New Zealand writer-director Jason Lei Howden could have used some additional polish on the scripting side to bump its bad-taste humor up from the routinely to the inspirationally silly.
  14. Flowers of Shanghai
    Gorgeously mounted, but butt-numbingly slow.
  15. Northern Soul
    If “Soul’s” script errs on the side of simplicity, it does effectively downplay the cliches inherent in its unambitious story arc. And the foregrounded local culture is always engaging, with meticulous but unshowy attention to period detail on all levels.
  16. The Pearl Button
    What “Nostalgia for the Light” did for the desert, The Pearl Button is meant to do for water, but the deft melding of past and present that characterized Patricio Guzman’s earlier film becomes muddied here by the Natural Science 101 voiceover and an unsatisfying bridge between two rather disparate subjects.
  17. Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom
    Getting swept up in the immediate excitement is entirely understandable, but ignoring the less savory elements, such as ultra-nationalist rhetoric, is problematic at best.
  18. Xenia
    Brashly uneven and wildly overlong, this comedy of brotherly love and outsider acceptance nonetheless boasts a spirited, audience-pleasing core.
  19. Miles Ahead
    Don Cheadle flails about trying to channel the spirit of late jazz-trumpeting legend Miles Davis in Miles Ahead, a biopic that rejects typical genre conventions to the point of chasing itself down lame, tangential paths.
  20. The Funhouse Massacre
    Not the cleverest or most original horror comedy, Andy Palmer’s indie feature is nonetheless above average within that subgenre, offering fast-paced fun for fans.
  21. Bridget Jones's Baby
    Despite Zellweger’s appealingly warm, vulnerable performance, the film itself is a mixed bag.
  22. Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
    This earnest, slight romance doesn’t generate enough sparks to overcome the anxiety of its obvious influence. But as a simple valentine to Hong Kong’s expat nightlife, the film makes for charming, breezy viewing, and the director shows promise going forward.
  23. Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict
    Guggenheim is such a fascinating figure that few will snipe at a character analysis that rarely gets below the surface.
  24. Casa Grande
    The pic is full of nicely observed vignettes that act as signifiers of caste, though at times the script turns overly didactic.
  25. Return to Ithaca
    This airily shot talkfest doesn’t want for sensitivity, but overestimates viewers’ investment in a quintet of prickly characters whose personal histories take the film’s entire duration to assemble.
  26. Alien: Covenant
    As acts of creation go, Scott has made an “Alien” movie for that segment of the audience that has always rooted for the monster.
  27. The Wave
    The Wave sticks mostly to the big-studio formula (albeit on a much smaller budget), introducing a handful of bland soon-to-be-victims before bombarding them with spectacular digital effects.
  28. Iraqi Odyssey
    The running time of two hours and 43 minutes is unquestionably self-indulgent; thankfully the clan’s charisma keeps attention from lagging too much despite frequent opportunities for trimming.
  29. Stink!
    No matter its cinematic derivativeness, Stink!’s outcry against continuing to use the American citizenry as chemistry experiment guinea pigs carries with it the unassailable whiff of common sense.
  30. Outlaws and Angels
    Outlaws & Angels trades in the lurid character psychology and crude ironies of the spaghetti Western — an idiom whose cynical worst-case-scenario view of humanity seems more acceptable to modern audiences than the good-shall-triumph faith of the traditional Hollywood western.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »