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. Detour
    A moderately tense but also somewhat monotonous and overstretched exercise in claustrophobic suspense that doesn’t compare well to similar efforts like “Buried” and “127 Hours.”
  2. Quid Pro Quo
    A strikingly original and provocative first feature from scribe-helmer Carlos Brooks.
  3. Man of Steel
    The humorless tone and relentlessly noisy (visually and sonically) aesthetics leave much to be desired.
  4. My Name Is Emily
    the film thrums with an urgency that’s both asset and liability, at once invested with deep feeling and undone by a barrage of flashbacks, allusions, and counterintuitive bits of wisdom.
  5. A Bag of Marbles
    Even when the chips are down, every boy’s adorable beret looks box-fresh. It’s the boys themselves, however, who often cut through the Camembert to deliver a shot of honest, imperilled feeling.
  6. The Unicorn
    Lead players Lauren Lapkus and co-scripter Nick Rutherford are amply engaging and sympathetic, even when the behavior of their characters is cringe-worthy embarrassing. No, never mind: Make that especially when those characters are humiliating themselves for our enjoyment.
  7. Havana Suite
    The surprisingly watchable delight strikes universal chords.
  8. The Harvest/La Cosecha
    The Harvest/La Cosecha, whose exec producers include actress Eva Longoria, has few artistic pretensions, but its observations are potent.
  9. Payback
    Payback is a rarefied conceptual documentary that will appeal to a limited but highly appreciative audience.
  10. Drunktown's Finest
    Unfortunately, Drunktown’s Finest too often suffers from stilted performances and scripting.
  11. Embers
    Embers offers a series of compelling premises and never follows through on them, content to drift along on its characters’ dull malaise and allow self-conscious visual poetry to stand in for real emotion.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fog
    John Carpenter is anything but subtle in his approach to shocker material. Story exposition and setting are well-established before the opening titles are over, and The Fog proceeds to layer one fright atop another.
  13. Cinderella the Cat
    The film plays on a number of clever riffs on the Cinderella tale, all in the darkest of veins, from the sadism of Mia’s step-siblings to Salvatore’s drug empire built on shoes made from soluble cocaine.
  14. Dogs
    Although the director cut his teeth working in commercials and on more comedic material, he has no trouble orchestrating the breath-catching suspense of Dogs, depicting violent confrontations with a certain chilling detachment, then reveling in the gruesome result.
  15. The Absence of Eden
    While “Absence of Eden” lacks narrative originality, it often dazzles visually.
  16. The Best You Can
    An optimistic film that feels truthful about aging, even if it doesn’t say anything we haven’t heard before.
  17. American Fable
    Gorgeously shot, and helmed with a sense of daring and verve that belies Hamilton’s greenness to feature filmmaking, this is a debut of obvious promise, although its story never quite rises to the level of its craft.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mission
    The script is based on a little-known but nonetheless intriguing historical incident in mid-18th century South America, pitting avaricious colonialists against the Jesuit order of priests. The fundamental problem is that the script is cardboard thin, pinning labels on its characters and arbitrarily shoving them into stances to make plot points.
  19. For a Good Time, Call...
    Doesn't rise much above sitcom level in material or execution, but provides enough laughs and goodwill to be disarmingly entertaining.
  20. A Christmas Carol
    Shortchanging traditional animation by literalizing it while robbing actors of their full range of facial expressiveness, the performance-capture technique favored by director Robert Zemeckis looks more than ever like the emperor's new clothes in Disney's A Christmas Carol.
  21. The Birthday Party
    The overlap of the two households, which offers an exciting narrative possibility, peters out with predictable cynicisms, while the climax is borderline comedic in its forced symbolism about family bonds.
  22. Offseason
    Though thinly conceived overall with not much philosophy to back its daunting visuals, Offseason still offers some genuinely spine-tingling images and sounds that will keep midnight audiences on their toes until the end.
  23. Desperado
    Could scarcely be more dazzling on a purely visual level, but it's mortally anemic in the story, character and thematic departments.
  24. En soap
    Casts an entrancing spell thanks to understated perfs by leads and Christensen's featherlight touch with Kim Fupz Aakeson's screenplay.
  25. Exporting Raymond
    Mildly amusing.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    To Sir, with Love
    A well-made, sometimes poignant, drama.
  27. Hunt
    A twisty, action-packed political thriller — one that keeps you guessing even as it spirals into ever-crazier realms.
  28. Yes
    Ultimately has nothing of any real depth or profundity to say, but a thousand self-consciously complex ways of saying it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Woman in Red
    A wonderful diversion through all of this is Gilda Radner, a relatively plain fellow office worker who initially thinks she’s the object of Wilder’s wanderlust and is bitterly – and vigorously – disappointed when she finds out she isn’t.
  30. Inheritance
    How the film conceives of Maya is somewhat limited by her being a naive pawn in a bigger picture, but Dynevor easily demonstrates the screen presence to sustain this whole enterprise.
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