Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. Six Minutes to Midnight
    Six Minutes to Midnight, helmed by Andy Goddard, wants to be a Hitchcockian thriller, but merely manages a familiar pastiche peopled with stock characters that should divert less-discriminating viewers.
  2. Timecop
    For the most part, Hyams’ lackluster direction and the repetitive quality of the action sequences squander an intriguing premise and impressive production design, leaving few moments that elicit the sort of “Wow!” response such fare needs in order to prosper.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Pick-up Artist
    As long as this film sticks to what its title suggests, The Pick-Up Artist is a tolerably amusing comedy. But as soon as the compulsive skirt-chaser gets hooked on one girl, James Toback's long-gestating portrait of a one-track mind becomes bogged down in unconvincing plot mechanics.
  4. The Real Blonde
    Enjoyable, if sometimes scattered, comic exploration of the quest for integrity and depth in a world wowed by artifice and superficiality.
  5. 4 Minute Mile
    Engaging performances by the principal players, including Richard Jenkins as a legendary coach beset by personal demons, are almost enough to win the day, but in the end, the cliched narrative is too slight to put the picture over the finish line.
  6. The Beauty Inside
    The film reaches a narrative and emotional impasse once it gets past the will-they-or-won’t-they stage.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Butterfield 8
    Alterations made on John O'Hara's 1935 novel by the scenarists (among other things, they have updated it from the Prohibition era, spectacularized the ending and refined some of the dialog) have given Butterfield 8 the form and pace it needs, but the story itself remains a weak one, the behavior and motivations of its characters no more tangible than in the original work.
  8. TRON: Ares
    While it was exciting to see what “Tron” might look like in the 21st century, the brand gets in the way of Ares’ internal evolution. However fascinating it might be to watch him “level up,” what audiences expect — and what Rønning delivers — are cycle races and dynamic gladiator battles.
  9. Bartleby
    Although closer in tone to "Office Space" than Herman Melville, Jonathan Parker's absurdist update of Bartleby is surprisingly faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of the "Moby-Dick" author's 1853 novella about an under-achieving Wall Street copy clerk.
  10. My First Mister
    Lahti's feature directorial debut walks an innocuous middle line between the story's maudlin possibilities and its meaningful potential.
  11. Brother Bear
    A very mild animated entry from Disney with a distinctly recycled feel.
  12. Bush's Brain
    By turns darkly comical, seriously scary and purposefully incendiary, Bush's Brain may seem, depending on your politics, either a shamelessly one-sided assault on a popular U.S. president or a justifiably harsh critique of a politician who personifies the Peter Principle.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
    You might leave Glee 3D feeling a little gooey all over, but that slushie does taste kind of sweet.
  14. Saw III
    Unlike the disturbingly mysterious original, Saw III is a neatly wrapped-up package that explains everything -- including Jigsaw's evil contraptions and the background of his crazed female assistant.
  15. Ted 2
    Both “Ted” movies are, ultimately, one-joke affairs rooted in the idea of taking some emblem of childhood innocence and vulgarizing it.... That joke, though, turns out to be a resilient one, and the chemistry between Wahlberg and MacFarlane is infectiously puerile.
  16. All We Had
    Katie Holmes makes an undistinguished helming debut with All We Had, a middlebrow drama with no pretensions but also no depth.
  17. Albino Alligator
    Spacey makes an honorable and intelligent helming debut with less-than-dazzling material.
  18. The Theory of Flight
    A risky idea only occasionally gets both wheels off the ground in "The Theory of Flight," a sometimes wryly amusing, oftimes dramatically awkward story
  19. Bride of Chucky
    After an eight-year series hiatus, Bride of Chucky emerges with recharged batteries and a mordantly funny edge that's attuned to the dawning millennium. [19 Oct 1998]
    • Variety
  20. Divergent
    By trying to cram in as many explanatory info dumps as possible, Burger neglects to tend to the elements of the film that could easily make up for any narrative deficiencies: namely, a sense of place and a feeling of urgency.
  21. All the Dead Ones
    Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra, collaborating as directors for the first time, channel the artificiality of late Manoel de Oliveira but without the enticing mystery, hampered by an understandable earnestness that yearns for a more subtle approach.
  22. The Greatest Showman
    The director, Michael Gracey, is an Australian maker of commercials who has never directed a feature before, and he works with an exuberant sincerity that can’t be faked. The Greatest Showman is a concoction, the kind of film where the pieces all click into place, yet at an hour and 45 minutes it flies by, and the link it draws between P.T. Barnum and the spirit of today is more than hype.
  23. Phantasm: Ravager
    Even dedicated Phantasm fanatics may be hard-pressed to discern anything resembling a unifying narrative thread. But the latter group — the film’s target audience — likely will be willing to eschew coherence for the opportunity to savor this chaotic reprise of familiar characters and concepts in the cinematic equivalent of a greatest hits album.
  24. Mothers' Instinct
    Mothers’ Instinct doesn’t breathe: It hasn’t the grandeur of great melodrama, nor the savoir-faire of great noir. Like its mismatched heroines, it’s constantly, twitchily figuring itself out, as we sit tight, intrigued, tensely waiting for it to trip.
  25. Last Vegas
    A smattering of funny gags and the nostalgia value of the cast — none of whom, curiously, have ever shared the screen before — keeps the whole thing more watchable than it has any right to be.
  26. Luck
    While the new studio’s debut can’t touch “Toy Story,” it’s an auspicious start for a talented group of storytellers.
  27. Trudell
    More hagiography than history, Heather Rae's long-in-production portrait of Native American activist and poet John Trudell has the uncritically admiring feel of authorized biography.
  28. HairBrained
    The film doesn’t quite have the verve or originality to capitalize on its spasmodic absurdist impulses, leaving the whole in a rather innocuous middle ground despite all efforts at quirkiness.
  29. Fullmetal Alchemist
    The first live-action adaptation of the phenomenally popular Japanese manga created by female author Hiromu Arakawa proves to be a mixed bag of eye-catching visuals and uneven storytelling — rushed and choppy at times, and draggy and repetitive at others.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Skin Game
    With Alfred Hitchcock its director, more was expected. The story appears to be run through in a straight style as though closely following John Galsworthy's London stage hit.
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