Variety's Scores

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For 17,840 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: 9,167 out of 17840
  2. Mixed: 7,035 out of 17840
  3. Negative: 1,638 out of 17840
17840 movie reviews
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    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tomorrow, When the War Began
    Parochial paranoia dovetails with adolescent angst in the glossy sci-fi coming-of-ager Tomorrow When the War Began.
  2. Big Boys Gone Bananas!*
    A David-and Goliath story that delves into corporate scare tactics, legal effrontery, brand protection, media manipulation, online propagandizing and craven behavior.
  3. Closer to God
    The result is ultimately admirable more for what it resists — the usual sci-fi horror exploitation cliches — than for the watchable yet somewhat underwhelming impact of a narrative that feels perhaps a little too reined-in for its own good.
  4. Blame
    Shephard has a lively eye for the neurotic ripples of high-school society, but her most audacious gambit is to dare to place the audience in a grey zone between innocence and judgment regarding a relationship that plays out more sympathetically than it should.
  5. Allure
    A Worthy Companion is a lacerating snapshot of what abuse really does: how it can tear away someone’s identity.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Little Drummer Girl
    A disappointingly flat film adaptation of one of John Le Carre's top novels.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bedtime Story
    Bed time Story will divert the less discriminating, although there are times when even such major league performers as Marlon Brando and David Niven have to strain to sustain the overall meager romantic comedy material.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Suddenly, Last Summer
    It has some very effective moments, but on the whole it fails to move.
  9. Giants Being Lonely
    The film asks us to indulge and share the privacy of its characters. That’s its moody, free-floating allure.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
    Good looking production is above average family entertainment, enhanced to great measure by zesty, but never show-off, direction by Robert Butler, in a debut swing to pix from telefilm.
  11. Knox Goes Away
    Knox Goes Away doesn’t traffic in comedy — or exaggerated reality. In addition to being a noir that holds you exactly the way a noir should, it may be one of the best dramas about dementia I’ve ever seen.
  12. Everything's Going to Be Great
    Everything’s Going to Be Great is a ramble, an unconvincing grab bag, a domestic tall tale with too much stuffed into it.
  13. Assault on Precinct 13
    In an era when similar genre pics increasingly resemble videogames, musicvideos or glossy commercials, the blunt, brawny simplicity of helmer Jean-Francois Richet's storytelling style seems positively novel.
  14. The Signal
    Exceedingly stylish and ultimately quite silly, The Signal is a sci-fi head trip better appreciated for the journey than the destination.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Because of Winn-Dixie
    Uneven though it is, Because of Winn-Dixie, based on Kate Di Camillo's novel, is tough to dislike.
  16. Penguin Bloom
    Shrewdly, Watts goes for something subtle and soft here — instead of clichéd garishness, her performance hinges on her doleful gaze and melancholic tinge, ultimately helping Penguin Bloom honor its real-life character’s journey with some respect.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    *batteries not included
    Batteries Not Included could have used more imaginative juices to distinguish it from other, more enchanting Spielbergian pics where lovable mechanical things solve earthly human dilemmas. Still, it’s suitable entertainment for kids.
  18. Vacancy
    At the risk of spoiling anything, Vacancy, is one strange movie. It ends so precipitously, one can only assume it's a setup for the sequel (which, given all that happens, seems a mite unlikely).
  19. Terminator: Dark Fate
    "Dark Fate” is a lean, tough, and absorbing sequel that taps back into the enthralling surface of the “Terminator” series’ comic-book kinetics as well as the sinister sweet spot of its grandiose pulp mythology.
  20. Black and Blue
    Black and Blue feels imbalanced and overlong, favoring fast and repetitive chase scenes over well-calibrated tension.
  21. Copycat
    Ending is on the conventional side, more so than anything else in the picture , but script by Ann Biderman and David Madsen keeps the tart surprises coming throughout most of the picture with only occasional lapses into red herrings and artificial manipulation.
  22. Swim Little Fish Swim
    [A] slight, predictable debut.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Dream Team
    The Dream Team is a hokey comedy that basically reduces mental illness to a grab bag of quirky schtick. Yet with a quartet of gifted comic actors having a field day playing loonies on the loose in Manhattan, much of that schtick is awfully funny.
  24. The Empire
    Despite fun trappings . . . the actual conflict in the film boils down to a series of very simplistic binaries: good and evil, sacred and secular, female and male, one and zero, being and nothingness.
  25. Empire of Light
    In the era when content is king, Sam Mendes still believes in moving pictures. Empire of Light is the proof.
  26. The Sea
    [A] good, middlebrow adaptation — which, despite being scripted by Banville himself, sacrifices much of the novel’s structural intricacy for Masterpiece-style emotional accessibility.
  27. Good Dick
    An annoying example of self-therapy posing as art.
  28. Shock to the System
    Enough action, a tiny pinch of sex and some campy moments from Morgan Fairchild.
  29. A Girl Like Her
    A mix of found-footage thriller, mock-doc realism and public service announcement that rings true almost as often as it rings false.
  30. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    Tartakovsky’s instincts are to keep the action moving quickly and let one piece of kid-friendly slapstick tumble into the next, but when the jokes are this consistently uninspired, it doesn’t matter how fast they’re dispensed.
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