Variety's Scores

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For 17,839 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 17839
  2. Mixed: 7,035 out of 17839
  3. Negative: 1,638 out of 17839
17839 movie reviews
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  1. Dom Hemingway
    Shepard balances a livelier-than-life script with striking, super-saturated images, which makes the film feel bigger than it is.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mommie Dearest
    This is Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford and the results are, well, screen history. Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, costars and all. Much has been written and said pro-and-con about Crawford since daughter Christina wrote the book on which this film is based. Whatever the truth, director Frank Perry’s portrait here is sorry indeed, 129 minutes with a very pathetic and unpleasant individual.
  3. A Jihad for Love
    Predicament makes the picture kin to 2001's "Trembling Before G-d," about gay Orthodox Jews. Both docs share the same fascination and limitation.
  4. Love Affair
    A film of gorgeous surfaces and negligible emotional resonance, this third rendition of a perennial sentimental favorite is easy on the eyes and has its share of beguiling moments in the early going, but crucially lacks a compelling climax and any sense of urgency in its storytelling.
  5. Spaceman
    Spaceman, it’s my duty to report, is a glum and meandering science-fiction fairy tale of a movie.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Getaway
    The Getaway has several things going for it: Sam Peckinpah's hard-action direction, this time largely channeled into material destruction, although fast-cut human bloodlettings occur frequently enough, and Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw as stars.
  7. The Foreigner
    The Foreigner amounts to an above-average but largely by-the-numbers action movie in which Chan does battle with generic thugs and shadowy political forces.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pacific Heights
    The specter of a menace who invades one's home turf and can't be ousted is universally disturbing, and director John Schlesinger goes all out to make this creepy thriller-chiller as unsettling as it needs to be.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hot Spot
    Seeps with atmosphere, unfolds at a deceptively relaxed pace, steadily accumulates noirish grit, then dizzily plunges into a Lynch-like plumbing of the dark passions and nasty secrets at the heart of Main Street, USA.
  10. Prefontaine
    This first dramatic feature by "Hoop Dreams" director Steve James has one foot still squarely planted in the docu aesthetic and notably lacks any psychological interest or emotional depth.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    Almodovar's inventive direction, superb lensing by Jose Luis Alcaine, a fine score by Ennio Morricone and top technical credits make pic a pleasure to watch.
  12. I'm So Excited
    Longtime Pedro Almodovar followers who have secretly been hankering for a return to the broad, transgressive comedy of his early work will be thrilled by I’m So Excited, a hugely entertaining, feelgood celebration of human sexuality that unfolds as a cathartic experience for characters, audiences and helmer alike.
  13. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    [Portman's] drearily empathetic film lacks whatever universality has made “Tale” such an international phenomenon.
  14. Monuments
    There’s not a lot here that’s wholly new, and the film’s tone of melancholy, offbeat uplift signals from the outset that we shouldn’t expect any grand revelations. Instead its pleasures come in smaller packages.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Back to the Future Part III
    Recovers the style, wit and grandiose fantasy elements of the original. The simplicity of plot, and the wide expansiveness of its use of space, are a refreshing change from the convoluted, visually cramped and cluttered second part.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caravaggio
    Much of the joy of the film is to be found in the way Jarman and his team recreate the look and color of the original paintings.
  17. He liu
    The three principal actors fit their roles like gloves, and the handsome camerawork (by Liao Peng-jung) is a major asset. There's no music, just natural sounds on the track. Except for a shot in which the microphone boom is clearly visible, the film is highly professional in every aspect.
  18. America's Heart and Soul
    Features 20-odd valiant souls treasuring their freedom and overcoming obstacles while skycams soar over purple mountains' majesty and an acrobatic pilot does loop-de-loops over fruited plains.
  19. The Terminal
    This buoyant, optimistic fable seems to share in the late Ronald Reagan's optimism for America. It does so with the help of a gifted comic ensemble led by Tom Hanks.
  20. Punks
    Slick, ingratiating and high-spirited enough to win over gay men of all colors.
  21. Antiviral
    Icky though it is, Antiviral never builds the sort of character investment or narrative momentum that would allow its visceral horrors to seriously disturb, rather than seeming like choice gross-out moments lovingly designed for maximum viewer recoil.
  22. Spark: A Burning Man Story
    "Spark” remains a lovingly made and shot tease, designed to ensure that what really happens at Burning Man stays at Burning Man.
  23. Instructions Not Included
    Instructions Not Included is a sporadically amusing but unduly protracted dramedy that slowly — very slowly — devolves into a shameless tearjerker during its third act.
  24. Stray Bullets
    It’s admirably well-crafted within its mostly savvy limitations.
  25. Safety
    Although Safety takes its cues from a true story, its beats are comfortingly familiar — or annoyingly so, depending on your fondness for the rhythms of the genre.
  26. Picture This
    Sweet, silly and sincere, director Prarthana Mohan’s spin has a clear understanding of what makes its source material revelatory and resonant.
  27. Olympic Dreams
    An engagingly wistful dramedy.
  28. Odessa... Odessa!
    Glacial in its pacing but beautifully, mournfully evocative of its subjects' ethnic/psychic exile.
  29. Friends with Kids
    Unfolds in a glib, familiar sitcom universe (think "Seinfeld" crossed with "Friends" sans ethnic flavor but with plenty of Judd Apatow-style crass patter about sex and body parts).
  30. Extraterrestrial
    Results are offbeat and amusing, but also a bit thin as the whole essentially amounts to one long shaggy-dog joke.
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