Variety's Scores

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For 17,833 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: 9,165 out of 17833
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17833
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17833
17833 movie reviews
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  1. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
    A quiet work with Ozu-like structure and concerns, but remains more an intellectual exercise than one from the heart.
  2. Appaloosa
    Harris' first directorial outing since his impressive and entirely different "Pollock" biopic bears echoes of many genre predecessors, especially Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo" -- but echoes they remain.
  3. Fireproof
    Cameron is genuinely compelling as Caleb.
  4. Forever Strong
    The performances are credible across the board, excessive sentimentality is largely avoided, and the sequences devoted to rough-and-tumble rugby match-ups are expertly shot and edited.
  5. Smother
    Diane Keaton can still sink her actorly teeth into a wacked-out character, and Vince Di Meglio's screwball comedy provides her with one of her best purely comedic roles since "Annie Hall."
  6. Eagle Eye
    The picture's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act.
  7. Nights in Rodanthe
    Hardly groundbreaking, but for those with an appetite for an increasingly rare gust of unapologetic romance, well, as they say, any port in a storm.
  8. The Elephant King
    The film may be too mainstream for arthouses, and too arty for the mall.
  9. Morning Light
    The film feels more like the ultimate scrapbook for the participants than the vicarious thrill the pair no doubt imagined for audiences.
  10. The Secret Life of Bees
    Like a mouthful of honey, The Secret Life of Bees is cloyingly sweet and gooey, and you're not quite sure you can swallow it undiluted.
  11. Blindness
    Meirelles' slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago's prose.
  12. Flash of Genius
    Moderately inspiring in the way such true-life stories of "the indomitable human spirit" are always constructed to be.
  13. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    This is the kind of sparsely plotted comedy that depends on compelling characters, but it stars two young actors defined by ironic detachment.
  14. Body of Lies
    A mostly formulaic approach that becomes more disappointing as the yarn unwinds.
  15. City of Ember
    A fabulously designed underground metropolis proves more involving than the teenagers running through its streets in City of Ember, a good-looking but no more than serviceable adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's 2003 novel.
  16. Quarantine
    A modestly inventive, sporadically exciting thriller that nonetheless proves too faithful to its central conceit for its own good.
  17. Fear(s) of the Dark
    An omnibus of black-and-white animation with a couple exceptionally clever episodes tied together by an unnecessary recurring monologue.
  18. Passengers
    Cruising somewhere between therapy drama and paranoid thriller, this middlebrow tone poem aims for ambiguity but often veers into soporific, suspending answers (and often, viewer interest) en route to an ending that explains all.
  19. Pride and Glory
    Feels like a film that should have been made at least 25 years ago. Or made as a period piece. Heavy, doom-laden and, unfortunately, entirely predictable.
  20. High School Musical 3: Senior Year
    While Ortega and fellow choreographers Charles Klapow and Bonnie Story stretch their imaginations, there's something almost lazy about the picture's underachiever script.
  21. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
    The way Kuenne presents the material, with an aggressive style that lingers less than a second on most shots, it's impossible not to feel emotionally exhausted.
  22. The Haunting of Molly Hartley
    This softcore thriller runs strictly by the numbers.
  23. My Name Is Bruce
    Cheerfully embracing his status as cult B-movie genre megastar even as he sends it up, Bruce Campbell's sophomore directorial excursion, My Name is Bruce, is a big in-joke of definite if limited appeal.
  24. Gardens of the Night
    Well-meaning but underachieving drama.
  25. We Are Wizards
    Meandering mindlessly, Wizards comes off as yet another humdrum Pottery artifact.
  26. Transporter 3
    Boasts a measure of the retro machismo, style and attitude some 007 fans have found lacking in "Quantum of Solace." But it also has a pointless storyline, incoherent editing and a polyglot cast that renders some of the dialogue utterly incomprehensible.
  27. Local Color
    Alas, even the soft-hearted may find this formulaic yarn of a young man's apprenticeship to a cantankerous artist too rosy-hued and treacly.
  28. Punisher: War Zone
    Along with torrents of gore, Punisher: War Zone has moments that are deliriously funny, because the violence is so awful and so casual.
  29. The Reader
    Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.
  30. The Tale of Despereaux
    This graphically well-rendered kidpic is less crass and mouthy than many recent feature-length toons, but also more sluggish and ungainly as it tries to approximate DiCamillo's singularly delicate tone.
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