Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. Murder Party
    An amusingly over-the-top horror comedy.
  2. Golda's Balcony
    Kagan's green-screen filmization, in its over-busy editing, ever-changing angles and constantly shifting backdrops, strips the play of its starkness, leaving disproportionate schmaltz and propaganda.
  3. Feel the Noise
    Trifling time-killer.
  4. For the Bible Tells Me So
    Filmmaker Daniel Karslake lobs a grenade into the culture wars with his heartfelt, provocative and unabashedly polemical For the Bible Tells Me So.
  5. The Good Night
    Though its forays into the subconscious may strike more adventurous cinematic palettes as precious and unimaginative, few will be able to resist Martin Freeman's appealing lead turn or the wry Brit wit that gives this fanciful confection a robust comic core.
  6. The Heartbreak Kid
    Uproarious romp, grounded in believable if gleefully implausible human behavior, is a model of comic timing.
  7. Michael Clayton
    Features strong performances and a solid story, drawn from the familiar well of faceless corporations grinding ordinary people through their profit-making machinery. Yet Gilroy's fidelity to his script comes at the expense of the pacing.
  8. My Kid Could Paint That
    The popular human-interest story of a child prodigy becomes an engrossing meditation on truth, media exploitation and the value of art in My Kid Could Paint That.
  9. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
    Slick, good-looking, cluttered pic won't please fans of novelist Susan Cooper's original "The Dark Is Rising" sequence. But then, they are mostly grown-ups by now, and this very Hollywood-style adaptation of a very English book is aimed squarely at tweens.
  10. Strange Culture
    Younger filmmakers should be looking to Hershman Leeson for lessons on how to reinvent old forms while at the same time telling an urgently topical story.
  11. Lake of Fire
    An extraordinary docu achievement. Handsomely filmed on silvery 35mm and high-definition by Kaye himself, the shrewdly edited picture balances a full spectrum of views from all sides of the abortion debate without obviously taking a position itself.
  12. Kurt Cobain About a Son
    Some fans will find the approach (which avoids Nirvana music and perf footage) too arty and indirect; but others will welcome the specialized theatrical release and the subsequent DVD.
  13. The Darjeeling Limited
    Inventively staged picture should satisfy the upscale, youth and cult auds Anderson has developed, though it's unlikely to draw significantly better than his earlier work.
  14. Trade
    Little more than a slipshod, trashy, sometimes exploitative thriller.
  15. Bordertown
    Bordertown straddles two realms: the worthy and the kitsch. The flimsy conspiracy theories floated here, coupled with pic's trite thriller plotting, risk trivializing the atrocities while it obfuscates their causes.
  16. Feast of Love
    Septuagenarian director Robert Benton brings his characteristically fine touch with actors and appreciation for the female form to this tastefully erotic ensembler, but compassion finally outstrips insight in a drama as soft-headed as it is soft-hearted.
  17. The Game Plan
    Wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the most valuable player here, revealing impressive comic chops and megawatt charisma even while serving as a human punchline for many of the pic's predictable sight gags.
  18. The Kingdom
    A realist thriller that mixes crowd-pleasing mayhem with provocative politics.
  19. Lust, Caution
    Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a 2½--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns.
  20. The Price of Sugar
    A solid and affecting piece of work.
  21. Outsourced
    This unaffected charmer treats a hot-button contempo issue with old-fashioned grace and benevolent wit, rendering it a sure-fire word-of-mouth crowd-pleaser.
  22. Into the Wild
    Sean Penn delivers a compelling, ambitious work that will satisfy most admirers of the book.
  23. The Last Winter
    An imperfect but compelling thriller.
  24. Good Luck Chuck
    Dane Cook sells out arenas with his stand-up act, and Jessica Alba is, well, Jessica Alba, but once "Chuck" exhausts their devoted bases, this doesn't promise to bring much good luck to Lionsgate.
  25. Resident Evil: Extinction
    Unfortunately, the new pic never really achieves maximum velocity as a full-throttle action-adventure opus, despite game efforts by returning star Milla Jovovich, still a lithe and lethal dynamo when it comes to butt-kicking, zombie-slicing derring-do.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sydney White
    Result should satisfy Bynes fans looking for a pleasant, innocuous follow-up to her last vehicle.
  27. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    One of the best Westerns of the 1970s, which represents the highest possible praise. It's a magnificent throwback to a time when filmmakers found all sorts of ways to refashion Hollywood's oldest and most durable genre.
  28. The Jane Austen Book Club
    Cast is first-rate all around, unafraid to play up the annoying, insensitive or self-pitying aspects of their nonetheless likeable characters.
  29. The Man of My Life
    A drama that steadily succumbs to self-conscious artiness, drunk on its own sense of contrived poetry and cloudy existential reflection.
  30. Beauty Remains
    An unappealing, stiff melodrama.
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