Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. Samoan Wedding
    The big, burly Samoan Wedding is a shrewdly written, impeccably timed and audaciously played romantic comedy.
  2. Black Friday
    Despite its large cast and complex criss-crossing from past to present, the movie rarely catches fire as an involving human drama.
  3. Notes on Marie Menken
    Handsome tribute is paid to the eponymous experimental filmmaker in Notes on Marie Menken, the fourth feature by Austrian docu helmer Martina Kudlacek, who previously made "In the Mirror of Maya Deren."
  4. Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
    Excerpted interviews with WWII and Vietnam veterans suggest that every war is hell, yet it is the specificity of the Iraq War combatants' reminiscences that makes their writing resonate so profoundly.
  5. Burning Annie
    Pic relies on nerdy world-weary irony to carry the day, but doesn't convincingly draw its characters.
  6. The Decomposition of the Soul
    A thorny subject is handled with care in this meticulous reconstruction of life inside the East German police state, as boiled down to the experiences of just two ex-inmates -- one man and one woman --- of a notorious Stasi prison. Overall effect is poetically thought-provoking, not depressing.
  7. Because I Said So
    An exercise in canned cuteness, Because I Said So pushes its normally appealing stars, Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore, over the edge of sitcom hysteria.
  8. The Messengers
    Though the Pangs prove culturally adaptive on a visual level, they seem completely clueless as to the tonal modalities of Mark Wheaton's admittedly undercooked, all-American script.
  9. The Situation
    Undeniably topical but the lack of emotional investment in its characters renders it more intelligent than engaging.
  10. Fired!
    Modestly amusing in fits and starts, Fired! proves most potent when on-screen interviewees are playing for keeps, not for laughs.
  11. Puccini for Beginners
    While it tips its hat to screwball comedy, Puccini for Beginners owes more to contemporary sitcom. It also has way more in common with "Sex and the City" than "The L Word." None of that is entirely a bad thing in a film that never really soars but has enough breezy humor.
  12. Constellation
    Exceptionally strong cast is pictures beating heart.
  13. East of Havana
    The temptations of allowing a promotional video to seep inside a genuine non-fiction study nearly overtake East of Havana and its look at a bubbling hip-hop culture in Cuba.
  14. In the Pit
    Leo Heiblum's pulsating music and Samuel Larson's dense, fascinating sound editing rewardingly compliment Rulfo's electrifying visuals.
  15. Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
    Although the outcome is public record, picture is undeniably gripping as it reveals a distressing degree of voter complacency.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tazza: The High Rollers
    Writer-director Choi Dong-hoon, whose grifter dramedy "The Big Swindle" was an unheralded gem two years ago, considerably ups the ante in his second feature, a long-limbed yarn centered on a bunch of ruthless professional gamblers. But involving characters and devil-may-care tone make the long running time hardly a stretch.
  17. An Unreasonable Man
    A basically admiring if critical portrait, documentary by Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skrovan (strangely, both standup comics and TV comedy writer-producers) finds more than enough absorbing material to hold interest through nearly three-hour runtime.
  18. Room 314
    Pic feels like a cross between an anthology of ambiguous short stories and a string of acting-class exercises. Thesping is first-rate across the board.
  19. Blood and Chocolate
    The entire star-crossed scenario is conveyed with the narrative simplicity of a musicvideo, lingering in an almost fetishistic manner on sensual details (boxes of chocolates, a blood-red ribbon) while compressing important elements of the story into clumsy montages.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Catch and Release
    A so-so romantic dramedy.
  21. Epic Movie
    If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, big studio Hollywood hitmakers should consider themselves lauded to the max in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Selzer's Epic Movie, the latest (and epically unfunny) entry in the movie parody franchise.
  22. Smokin' Aces
    Smokin' Aces blows some cool smoke rings until it makes the very un-cool mistake of overstaying its welcome.
  23. Seraphim Falls
    Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shockproof
    While never credible, story does point up the standard melodramatics and good playing to keep it all interesting. (Review of Original Release)
  25. Funny Money
    Greif obviously ascribes to the Blake Edwardian school of comedy, laying out gags with commendable topographical precision. But, unlike Edwards' unique mixture of sophistication and slapstick, Funny Money falls squarely in the tradition of pure farce, itself an anomaly in this age of aggressively abrasive personality comedies.
  26. G.I. Jesus
    A bold, often clumsy, but always intriguing piece of work.
  27. From Other Worlds
    Picture's leaps into the fantastic and rampantly farcical tend to be overextended, but finally don't detract from what is a well-judged, light entertainment.
  28. China Blue
    Bleakly Dickensian as all this sounds, much of China Blue is charming, because its subjects are.
  29. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    Sixty years after World War II, descendants of a prominent Nazi responsible for implementing Hitler's policies in Slovakia reignite debate over their heritage in emotional docu 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him.
  30. The Hitcher
    In the absence of actors with the tremendous presence of Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, picture loses its raison d'etre. Yet, directed by video helmer Dave Meyers with a certain fastidious distance from its plentiful gore, picture is also insufficiently over-the-top or corny to incite gleeful audience feedback.
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