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. Dog Sweat
    Great for ADD-style viewing but not for advancing Iranian cinema's currently challenged profile.
  2. The Greening of Whitney Brown
    This simplistic story of bucolic redemption has few pretensions to depth, ambiguity or realism, relying on its name cast, sprightly lead and a helluva horse to attract family audiences.
  3. In Darkness
    For the film to work, Holland needs audiences to connect as deeply with the trapped Jews as Socha eventually does. With the exception of the group's leader, movie-star handsome Mundek Margulies (German-born, internationally recognized Benno Furmann), the characters are flat as shadows.
  4. Don 2
    Though the picture is respectful of the heist-film template -- the gathering of the crew, the readying of props, the planned circumvention of all obstacles -- its main imperative consists of placing Kahn in impossible situations and watching him trick or strongarm his way out.
  5. Angels Crest
    Another in the procession of dead children movies that followed Atom Egoyan's magisterial "The Sweet Hereafter," helmer Gaby Dellal's sophomore effort unfolds in a similarly snow-blanketed small town filled with grieving adults, the community divided in apportioning blame. In contrast with Egoyan's labyrinthine structure and complex storylines, Crest cobbles together bits of plot and a motley assortment of half-formed characters.
  6. The Big Fix
    Alternately gutsy and preachy, specific and scattered, the righteously angry pic risks alienating those who could be galvanized by its proof of Big Oil's corrupting omnipotence.
  7. A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    Part personal quest, part testimonial and part fund-raiser, A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps fulfills disparate agendas for helmer Dina Rosenmeier, a mildly resentful daughter wondering why her humanitarian mother prioritized orphaned Indian children over her own offspring.
  8. Sparkle
    Sparkle deals in such well-worn rise-and-fall music-bio tropes that it's hard to blame it for simply coasting on narrative shorthand at times. But the lackadaisical storytelling can inch toward outright laziness.
  9. Fanny, Annie & Danny
    The more difficult characters here (all female) and resulting character dynamics are so consistently shrill that the picture feels a bit too one-dimensional and cruel to leave the small-tragedy aftertaste it could have.
  10. Captain Phillips
    There is something too dry and austere about Greengrass and Ray’s telescoped vision, which touches only fleetingly on the pirates’ motives, the suffering of the Somali people and the collateral damage of global capitalism.
  11. Norwegian Wood
    Lovely but listless.
  12. Lula, the Son of Brazil
    The screenplay by Daniel Tendler, Fernando Bonassi and Lula biographer Parana succumbs to many of the most unfortunate narrative tendencies of biopics, including a proclivity for piling on incident after incident as a substitute for real character insight.
  13. It's About You
    Luckily, the music trumps the indifferently shot concert footage and lends shape to the evocatively lensed recording sessions in iconic locations. Nothing, unfortunately, mitigates Markus' sincere but trite and awkward narration.
  14. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
    In sartorial terms, the fabric is to die for, but helmer Whitney Sudler-Smith's documentary follows a banal pattern, while the finishing lacks finesse.
  15. Won't Back Down
    Grossly oversimplifying the issue at hand, writer-director Daniel Barnz's disingenuous pot-stirrer plays to audiences' emotions rather than their intelligence, offering meaty roles for Maggie Gyllenhaal as a determined single mom, and Viola Davis as the good egg among a rotten batch of teachers, while reducing everyone else to cardboard characterizations.
  16. Detention
    What starts as a bracing rush quickly devolves into a deadening assault of stimuli.
  17. Tonight You're Mine
    Picture may not be Scots helmer David Mackenzie's best effort, but it's easily his most lighthearted, a cheery trifle that reps a contrast to his recent pictures, the apocalyptic "Perfect Sense" and U.S.-set comic misfire "Spread."
  18. Girl in Progress
    Never finds its own groove, alternating between high-school dramedy and overworked-single-mom narratives without ever really becoming a mother-and-daughter story until the closing scenes.
  19. Scalene
    Carefully crafted and impressively thesped, particularly by Margo Martindale, Zack Parker's ambitious, self-styled thriller channels a wide spectrum of high-concept classics, from "Rashomon" to "Memento." But the resolution of its conflicting truths proves so bizarre and idiotically off-the-wall that it mitigates all that precedes it.
  20. Escape from Planet Earth
    A lightweight, warp-speed, brightly colored trifle.
  21. We Have a Pope
    The results veer between occasional smiles and outright pretension, with only Piccoli's mastery transcending the material.
  22. To the Arctic
    Alternates between intimate wildlife saga and majestic views of the North Pole, offering strong visual compensations for its meandering structure, syrupy tone and excessive sampling of Paul McCartney's back catalog.
  23. Bombay Beach
    In an inspired twist, Har'el brings surreal levity to the potentially downer subject by interrupting her elegiac regional portraiture with a series of amateur dance numbers. Still, without dramatic momentum, this fringe-appeal snapshot feels less like a film than a coffee-table photo project come to life.
  24. Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements
    Even devotees of the Replacements' defiant perversity will be unsatisfied with this talky tribute to a noisy band.
  25. Crazy Horse
    What's generally missing here though is a sense of the creative process; rather than sweat-and-tears rehearsals breaking the dances into individual movements, the numbers are largely shown nearly complete. Consequently, there's little sense of the discipline involved, or the struggle for perfection that makes dance documentaries so engrossing.
  26. A Good Day to Die Hard
    Willis still packs that rapscallion charm, balancing his wisecracking, reluctant-hero shtick with the unstoppable, all-American quality that earned the original film its title. But the chemistry between him and Courtney is nonexistent, with the younger thesp, who makes co-star Cole Hauser look expressive, adding so little to the equation, one can only hope the studio doesn't plan to pass the franchise on to him.
  27. The Swell Season
    Swell never really gathers momentum, remaining a collection of moments, some more privileged than others.
  28. A Warrior's Heart
    While the sheer novelty of a feature about lacrosse may be enough to generate some audience curiosity about A Warrior's Heart, this respectably crafted but thoroughly predictable indie rarely deviates from the gameplan followed by countless other dramas about self-absorbed young hotheads who get a shot at redemption on the playing field.
  29. Windfall
    Variably articulate subjects drone on and on in an 83-minute film that could easily make its TV news-style point in a half-hour or less.
  30. The Forgotten Space
    Sekula's overwritten narration, with its fair share of whoppers, does his argument no favors, overwhelming genuinely interesting statistics.
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