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. Self Medicated
    Searing portrait of an out-of-control youth who winds up in a decidedly shady rehab center has more than its share of teen-angst cliches but still makes a surprisingly trenchant tearjerker, thanks to strong acting from all quarters and an especially blistering perf from Lapica.
  2. Urban Hymn
    Competent if pedestrian Urban Hymn takes a familiar walk down the path of inspirational youth drama.
  3. Next Door
    The film’s games of genre-shuffling and celebrity self-satire can’t override the essential tedium of its core conflict.
  4. Five Dances
    The sensual movement of bodies through space creates a visual language whose infinite variations seduce and fascinate over the course of the film’s numerous rehearsals.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Slumber Party Massacre
    Out of traditional horror material consisting of red herrings, sudden shock movements into frame, etc, helmer Amy Jones develops some very stylish sequences.
  6. 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.
  7. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    Fitfully amusing and nearly saved by its distinguished cast.
  8. Trust Me
    Mixing comedy, drama, satire and noir, the Marvel actor’s second outing behind the camera plays for the same kind of uncomfortable laughs that his 2008 dramedy “Choke” did, but this one gazes so deeply into Hollywood’s navel that, with the affable Gregg in practically every scene, it ultimately can’t escape the whiff of a vanity project.
  9. Due Date
    So infuriating is Ethan that Due Date very nearly loses us, too, at the outset, but over time, the bearded boor manages to win everyone over, audience included.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Commando
    In Commando, the fetching surprise is the glancing humor between the quixotic and larky Rae Dawn Chong and the straight-faced killing machine of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chong lights up the film like a firefly, Schwarzenegger delivers a certain light touch of his own, the result is palatable action comics.
  11. Te Ata
    The well-intentioned biopic is ungainly, overtly articulating everything it doesn’t need to yet failing to explain much of what starts out as unclear about the tale.
  12. How to Be Single
    Splintered between thinly sketched focal points rather than actually plumbing the real fear, paranoia and elation that come from operating without a romantic partner, How to Be Single never transcends its most sitcom-y instincts.
  13. Girl, Interrupted
    A solid central performance by Winona Ryder and a captivating wild turn by Angelina Jolie in the yarn's flashiest role.
  14. The American Astronaut
    Unfortunately that blast-off heralds an orbit to nowhere, with initial delight fading as pic runs out of ideas all too soon, never building a sense of momentum or narrative thrust.
  15. The Man in My Basement
    The result is a tale made up of numerous endpoints and thematic conclusions, whose dots don’t feel meaningfully connected, and whose situational oddities rarely yield excitement or intrigue.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Net
    Riddled with more coincidences and implausibilities than Hitchcock permitted himself in his entire career, The Net still gets by as a reasonably suspenseful, very au courant thriller.
  17. 21 Years: Richard Linklater
    21 Years: Richard Linklater makes for a disappointingly hollow hagiography: gushy, superficial and strangely overdue — arriving significantly later than its title prescribes.
  18. For the Plasma
    Only faintly touching upon notions of intuitive collaboration and inspiration, For the Plasma wanders about as if it’s in a fog, ultimately to the point of pointlessness.
  19. Six Days Seven Nights
    Sprinkled with just enough laughs, close shaves and compromising positions to keep audiences mildly interested, this old-fashioned popcorn picture is agreeably breezy and colorful, but lacks the pizzazz and star chemistry of a genre ancestor such as "Romancing the Stone."
  20. The Baxter
    May find a following among those who stand in awe of the names Sandler, Ferrell and Spade. But Showalter pushes too far: Nerdiness, after all, can be only so attractive.
  21. The Kid
    A consistently involving and often exciting drama in which the two Wild West icons are presented from the p.o.v. of an impressionable adolescent who weighs the pros and cons of each man as a role model.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Number 17
    Like the play, the story is vague and, despite its intended eerieness, unconvincing. [02 Aug 1932, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adam's Apples
    A funny, politically incorrect and, somewhere deep down, thoughtful black comedy, Adam's Apples is the third and final film in helmer-writer Anders Thomas Jensen's excellent trilogy centered on oddballs and misfits in Denmark.
  24. The Man with the Iron Fists
    As endearing as it is exhausting, The Man With the Iron Fists bears strong resemblance to a hyperactive puppy: sloppy, scatterbrained, manic and migraine-inducing, but possessing an earnest sense of excitement.
  25. Love
    Given the escalating ambition of Noe’s oeuvre and the pornographic promo materials teased in advance of the pic’s Cannes premiere, who would have thought that Love would ultimately prove to be Noe’s tamest film?
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mighty Joe Young
    Mighty Joe Young is wholesome, well-crafted family fare like Hollywood used to make.
  27. Surge
    As an experiment in steering a potentially tight thriller entirely by one character’s irrational whims, it’s abrasively compelling, even if the go-go-go plotting doesn’t withstand closest scrutiny.
  28. Jack the Giant Slayer
    Jack the Giant Slayer feels, unsurprisingly, like an attempt to cash in on a trend, recycling storybook characters, situations and battle sequences to mechanical and wearyingly predictable effect.
  29. Death at a Funeral
    This slavishly faithful update... fails to tap into anything culturally specific or uniquely funny in its Pasadena setting or its theoretically looser, livelier black cast. And because the characters are so flat, we couldn't care less about the blows to their sense of propriety.
  30. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
    “Valerian” manages to be both cutting-edge and delightfully old-school — the kind of wild, endlessly creative thrill ride that only the director of “Lucy” and “The Fifth Element” could deliver, constructed as an episodic series of missions, scrapes and near-misses featuring a mind-blowing array of environments and stunning computer-generated alien characters.
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