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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  1. Lilo & Stitch
    Somehow, Lilo & Stitch has lost its unpredictable sense of anarchy in the retelling.
  2. Lost Highway
    Although uneven and too deliberately obscure in meaning to be entirely satisfying, result remains sufficiently intriguing and startling to bring many of Lynch's old fans back on board for this careening ride.
  3. She Came to Me
    We’re invited to laugh at what we’re seeing, yet Miller works in such a heartfelt and unassuming way that we’re never standing outside the quirks.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Narrow Margin
    Spectacular stunt work and Canadian locations punch up the train thriller Narrow Margin, but feature remake is too cool and remote to grab the viewer.
  5. Apres Vous (After You)
    Elegantly written, well-thesped comedy is too hermetic and bittersweet to be laugh-out-loud funny, but sustains a fairly successful ratio of uncomfortable situations to amusing solutions.
  6. Amateur
    Just as quirky and idiosyncratic as the Gotham-based writer-director's earlier efforts, this one pushes the spiky humor a bit more to the fore while unfolding a tale loaded with offbeat oppositions and odd character detailing.
  7. Flag Day
    Even telling the story of this scarred, flawed, barely together family, Penn creates honest notes of nostalgia.
  8. The Deb
    Screenplay credit goes to Hannah Reilly, who wrote the stage musical from which “The Deb” was adapted with Meg Washington. While their lyrics are clever and contemporary, this project is every bit Wilson’s jam. Her sensibility is grounded in sincerity but relies on bawdy, off-color jokes to deflect from empowerment messaging that might otherwise seem square. And it works.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hamlet
    Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet is bland.
  10. Hysteria
    Dancy manages a few sly moments, and Everett is as ever a scene-stealer, if barely recognizable under a beard and altered features, and with a raspy voice. But the estimable Pryce and Jones are wasted, along with many other fine thesps, while Gyllenhaal works too gratingly hard in an already strained role.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In the Grey
    Ritchie goes relatively easy on the joy-of-killing stuff, at least until the climax, and there’s an engaging couple of minutes en route thanks to the simplest, cleanest action filmmaking the film has to offer: a chase involving motorcycles, police cars and some proficient editing.
  12. We Are Marshall
    Full of good intentions, We Are Marshall has a game plan that's hard to fault, but as with any playbook, a scheme is only as good as how well it's executed.
  13. The Amazing Maurice
    Courtesy of source material by offbeat fantasy maestro Terry Pratchett, it’s genuinely eccentric enough — with its sly talking cat, intrepid band of gold-hearted rats and chronic aversion to keeping the fourth wall intact — to come off as charming rather than smarmy.
  14. The Winning Season
    With an invaluable assist from Sam Rockwell, hilarious and wounding as a deadbeat dad who lands a high school coaching gig, it's the rare inspirational movie with more than just winning or losing on its mind.
  15. Split: A Deeper Divide
    None of this will be news to informed viewers, and the documentary's broad theme necessitates quick, superficial treatment of myriad underlying causes. But it's a solid, fairly even-handed spur for discussion that will be particularly welcome in classroom settings.
  16. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    This f/x-heavy third adaptation of the Christian-themed fantasy series feels routine and risk-averse in every respect, as if investment anxiety had fatally hobbled its sense of wonder.
  17. Bliss
    Whether classified as straight-up genre piece or substance-abuse drama in disguise, this is a dive into psychedelic hedonism that succeeds in constantly topping itself, rather than succumbing to shock-value fatigue like the aforementioned Noé joints.
  18. Landscape with Invisible Hand
    Finley loses his exacting handle on the material, allowing the story’s more commonplace ideas to dictate its direction in ways both unsurprising and a little rough around the edges.
  19. Penguins of Madagascar
    The graceful camerawork, precise editing and high-quality animation still can’t disguise the lack of imagination that went into the overall conception and the repetitive sameness that creeps into every bind the penguins find themselves in.
  20. She's the One
    There's charm to burn in "She's the One," Ed Burns' sophomore romantic comedy. Very much in the vein of his award-winning "The Brothers McMullen," outing is a decided step forward artistically and technically. Endowed with a refreshing honesty and poignancy, the film should score well with audiences and rack up upbeat theatrical returns.
  21. Fatherhood
    It transitions Hart from playfully scowling cutup to earnest heartfelt actor, and it does so in a way that, at times, is genuinely touching, even as the audience can see every sanded-down conflict and market-tested beat falling into place.
  22. The Hudsucker Proxy
    The Hudsucker Proxy is no doubt one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be.
  23. The Better Angels
    Apart from the heavy debt it owes to Malick’s oeuvre, Edwards’ entrancing debut is radically non-generic, either as history film and coming-of-age piece.
  24. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Redundancy remains a problem, but this overlong superhero sequel gets by on sound, fury and star chemistry.
  25. Focus
    A stilted, heavy-handed parable about fascistic intolerance.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Passionada
    A lovely, albeit imperfect fable marked by strong performances and infused with glorious bursts of soulful fado folk music.
  27. Enemy at the Gates
    Shows a consistent inability to generate any kind of drama when characters open their mouths.
  28. New Suit
    Another satirical view of the everyday insanity of working within the Industry, slickly made New Suit adds no special insight to the subgenre.
  29. Daydream Believer
    An unusually bright, inspired look at the perils of breaking into the acting business.
  30. L'autre monde
    First hour is an often gripping look at the realities of modern Islam ("You can do anything you want, as long as it's not in public," says a soldier's wife), before silliness takes over.
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