Variety's Scores

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For 17,832 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: 9,164 out of 17832
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17832
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17832
17832 movie reviews
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  1. Tower Heist
    During the heist itself, the suspense is palpable, if only because Christophe Beck's funky score blares its horns so insistently, one can't help but feel anxious. But the laughs don't follow.
  2. Wanderlust
    Despite some amusing moments, everyone simply works too hard at providing rambunctious zaniness, until one grows painfully aware the inevitable outtakes reel will be superior to the movie.
  3. Albert Nobbs
    It's a career-crowning role for Glenn Close. Too bad the film is such a drag.
  4. Amigo
    Good intentions can't breathe fresh life into cliches or dispel the overall impression of schematic didacticism.
  5. Iron Man 3
    Iron Man 3 is more perfunctory and workmanlike than its two predecessors, but this solid production still delivers more than enough of what fans expect.
  6. Snow White and the Huntsman
    Handsome but hollow, Snow White & the Huntsman is easily among the stranger additions to a roster of rebooted fairy tales.
  7. Elektra Luxx
    Despite the fine thesping seen in this innocuous piece of fluff, the whole amounts to less than the sum of its parts.
  8. Super
    Waiting for Super to deliver the funny is an experience as long as the film itself.
  9. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
    This superhero spin on a largely Eastern legend will appeal primarily to Asian genre aficionados on homevid.
  10. Joyful Noise
    A routinely plotted competition drama in which Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton (playing her first bigscreen lead in 20 years) vie for control of a small-town Georgia church chorus.
  11. Safe House
    In contrast with the fragmented kineticism of Paul Greengrass' "Bourne" movies, there's no existential dimension to the shattered-glass aesthetic here; it's just raw, chaotic action, inelegantly shot and staged but no less unnerving for it.
  12. Loveless
    Loveless exerts a low-energy, dread-tinged fascination that intrigues rather than wows.
  13. Battleship
    Overlong and underwritten even by the standards of summer f/x extravaganzas, this Battleship will nonetheless float with many on the strength of its boyish, eager-to-please razzle-dazzle.
  14. The Bourne Legacy
    Subbing character actor Jeremy Renner into a franchise that requires Matt Damon-caliber magnetism, series scribe Tony Gilroy takes over the helming duties with an overlong sequel that features too little action and an unnecessarily complicated plot.
  15. Ouija
    This silly but straight-faced supernatural thriller manages to elicit an occasional shudder in between cheap jolts and false scares, emerging as a feat of competent direction (by debuting helmer Stiles White) over derivative scripting (by White and writing partner Juliet Snowden).
  16. Henry's Crime
    While the absurdity builds, the intensity never does -- a problem shared by director Malcolm Venville's previous feature, "44 Inch Chest."
  17. Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
    Dylan Dog isn't a terrible movie, just one that feels like a tepid mishmash of secondhand concepts, never developing a distinctive atmosphere or unique personality of its own.
  18. Blank City
    The major draw of Blank City lies in its generous glimpses of rare, virtually lost Super-8 and 16mm films.
  19. 0s & 1s
    This spectacular orchestration of visual elements seems wasted on a threadbare, inanely repetitive plotline.
  20. Drawing with Chalk
    Chalk suffers overall from a lack of subtlety, as problems abruptly get thrust into the foreground with little buildup or internal consistency.
  21. Mia and the Migoo
    Mia and the Migoo boasts a handsome, folkloric look that is often undermined by a ham-handed script.
  22. One Hundred Mornings
    Though never intended to match "The Road" for gruesome veracity or Michael Haneke's "Time of the Wolf" for full-on mysterious dread, this Irish production doesn't cut much of its own niche in an overworked genre.
  23. Rise of the Guardians
    Even tots may emerge feeling slightly browbeaten by this colorful, strenuous and hyperactive fantasy, which has moments of charm and beauty but often resembles an exploding toy factory rather than a work of honest enchantment.
  24. Rock of Ages
    Absent the infectious live-audience energy of Chris D'Arienzo's legit hit, this affectionate glam-rock-a-thon reps a visually bland staging of frankly insipid material, never tapping into the raucous, go-for-broke energy that would spin the show's cliches into gold, let alone platinum.
  25. Prometheus
    Elaborately conceived from a visual standpoint, Ridley Scott's first sci-fier in the three decades since "Blade Runner" remains earthbound in narrative terms, forever hinting at the existence of a higher intelligence without evincing much of its own.
  26. 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.
  27. The Bang Bang Club
    Club's entertainment value suffers at the expense of trying to capture the events as they happened -- an ill-advised endeavor, considering everything.
  28. The Big Bang
    A borderline unintelligible, scattershot attempt at Lynchian neo-noir that takes intellectual and aesthetic risks it has no reasonable hope of pulling off. And yet train wreck that it may be, it's completely watchable, at times garishly eye-catching, and certainly the only film in theaters that features Snoop Dogg comparing himself to Alfred Hitchcock.
  29. Ice Age: Continental Drift
    Now, the action takes to the sea, where pirates, original songs and a minx-like Jennifer Lopez character make for harmless diversion.
  30. Ted
    A predictably irreverent satire that's sweeter and, sadly, less funny than you might expect.
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