Variety's Scores

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:
17840 movie reviews
  1. Once you get past an incredibly self-indulgent intro — an uncomfortably long mash-up of comedy sketch and road-trip-with-entourage doc that seems simultaneously apologetic and arrogant — you can enjoy approximately an hour of boisterously freewheeling and unabashedly raunchy funny stuff in Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain.
  2. Running a full reel longer than needed, the film’s balance of romance, humor and pathos starts to slip in the final stretch... though the emotional notes ring true.
  3. A small, affecting road movie peopled with sharp vignettes.
  4. Such a sprawling, two-pronged saga may well have been better served in television miniseries format.
  5. Deftly employing the power of suggestion and an emotionally potent sound design, Body at Brighton Rock is a well-crafted thriller with some crafty tricks up its sleeve.
  6. The result is an earnest, sometimes skillful effort that nonetheless often feels slack and underwritten, as well as ultimately less-than-rewarding.
  7. Levinson gives his stars roughly equal time, carefully modulating the sense of balance throughout. His direction seldom seems showy, and yet, we sense the intention behind each cut as power and control shifts throughout the movie.
  8. Appropriately for a film about robots, efficiency is the primary virtue of Astro Boy, a well-oiled CG-animated superhero pic that makes up in competence and vitality what it lacks in originality.
  9. Gleeson and Keaton, for their part, play this bourgeois rags-to-tweed fairytale with such good humor that one is fleetingly able to overlook the frank bogusness of the mechanics that bring them together.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heartbreak Ridge offers another vintage Clint Eastwood performance. There are enough mumbled half-liners in this contemporary war pic to satisfy those die-hards eager to see just how he portrays the consummate marine veteran.
  10. In the end, only a fraction of McLeod’s ambitions sticks a landing. But Astronaut stays afloat with sweetness, thanks to a measured performance from Dreyfuss.
  11. Director Ridley Scott's lavish production isn't totally satisfying, coasting aimlessly at times before suddenly leaping to a more intense dramatic plane.
  12. I found “The Mandalorian and Grogu” to be fun in a slightly flat way. But because the movie has so little pretense, it’s basically an invitation to wallow in the lite “Star Wars” nostalgia that’s there in every frame.
  13. That the film is animated gives it an appropriately magical feel, but it can't save the story from being drowned in devices and stereotype.
  14. Blast Beat cares far more about testing the limits of the family’s togetherness, and while the resolution doesn’t have the sweetness of a pop song, Arango is happy to settle for heavy metal discordance.
  15. There is a sense of bloat and where-do-we-go-from here aimlessness to this unconscionably protracted undertaking.
  16. The cause of death would appear to be visual-effects overkill in the case of Rigor Mortis, a flashy, incoherent and virtually scare-free Hong Kong horror exercise that marks the directing debut of actor, singer, record producer and fashion maven Juno Mak.
  17. A witty script and strong performances hoist Metroland beyond the confines of its rather standard, TV-style approach.
  18. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then “Point of No Return,” a soulless, efficiently slavish remake of “La Femme Nikita,” creates a whole new category of homage-paying.
  19. There’s a grand paradox at work in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. The film isn’t simply a technological experiment; it’s also a highly original, heartfelt, and engrossing story. And part of the power of it lies in the way that those two things are connected.
  20. Though visually stunning and blessed with immaculate 3D work, film is fatally bogged down by tackling an essentially ridiculous premise (gladiator-attired owls fight genocide) with stony solemnity, and by subsisting on a note of sustained menace and terror in what is ostensibly a children's film.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Overboard is an uninspiring, unsophisticated attempt at an updated screwball comedy that is brought down by plodding script and a handful of too broadly drawn characters. Only element that occasionally lifts pic is the work of the redoubtable Goldie Hawn, who gives a gem of a performance.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweet Charity is, in short, a terrific musical film. Based on the 1966 legituner [by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, based on Federico Fellini's film, Nights of Cabiria], extremely handsome and plush production accomplishes everything it sets out to do.
  21. Bridges gives the movie its only genuine pulse as a gym coach known for his hard and manipulative ways.
  22. This update of 1950s drive-in sci-fiers finds the right balance between icky, funny and scary, with sheer energy compensating for a script that could have used more parodic panache.
  23. Solidly entertaining for those who like their dialogue crisp and with a main verb in every sentence.
  24. An odd concoction: an English-language movie made by Dutch filmmakers working with an American cast on location in Russia and Mexico. That strangeness, combined with sharp casting and affectionate performances, is a big part of "Affair's" charm.
  25. The pic plays like one long chase. Nevertheless, fashioned with ultra-sophisticated means, Sky Blue will be a must-see for anime fans around the world.
  26. Though handsome to look at, so-so supernatural chiller The Awakening recalls "The Others," "The Orphanage" and other haunted-house tales of recent vintage, making an impression more derivative than memorable.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As a sequel to Romancing the Stone, the script of The Jewel of the Nile is missing the deft touch of the late Diane Thomas but Lewis Teague's direction matches the energy of the original.

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