Variety's Scores

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For 17,831 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: 9,163 out of 17831
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17831
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17831
17831 movie reviews
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  1. The Other Side of the Ice
    With its striking Arctic scenery, “Ice” is a gorgeous if overexplained armchair adventure.
  2. Rapture-Palooza
    More irrelevant than irreverent, the unworthy script from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s” Chris Matheson might play to apocalyptically stoned college kids, but offers nothing in the way of broader social satire, suggesting the waste of a perfectly good Reckoning — not to mention the talents of a cast far funnier than the doom-and-gloom results suggest.
  3. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain
    Once you get past an incredibly self-indulgent intro — an uncomfortably long mash-up of comedy sketch and road-trip-with-entourage doc that seems simultaneously apologetic and arrogant — you can enjoy approximately an hour of boisterously freewheeling and unabashedly raunchy funny stuff in Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain.
  4. The Kill Hole
    No aspect asserts itself strongly enough for the whole to satisfy, and at times the pic’s humorless approach to cliches unintentionally borders on “MacGruber” territory.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beverly Hills Cop
    Beverly Hills Cop is more cop show than comedy riot. Expectations that Eddie Murphy's street brand of rebelliousness would devastate staid and glittery Beverly Hills are not entirely met in a film that grows increasingly dramatic.
    • Variety
  6. Leonie
    Played with a strong spine and a resolute lack of charm by Emily Mortimer, Gilmour is a perfect vehicle for Matsui’s agenda, which is clearly a feminist/revisionist celebration of the life of a major artist.
  7. Love Is All You Need
    Corny as a vat of polenta, but still rib-sticking enough to satisfy those who like lightly seasoned, easily digestible cinematic starch, Italy-set Love Is All You Need offers a romantic comedy for middle-aged palettes.
  8. Detour
    A moderately tense but also somewhat monotonous and overstretched exercise in claustrophobic suspense that doesn’t compare well to similar efforts like “Buried” and “127 Hours.”
  9. Midnight's Children
    It’s a vibrant journey, but not a terribly illuminating one.
  10. Tai Chi Hero
    A sporadically engaging martial-arts extravaganza that looks even better compared with its predecessor, last year’s borderline-insufferable “Tai Chi Zero.”
  11. Greetings from Tim Buckley
    The result is at once skillfully observed and a bit so-what.
  12. Austenland
    Austenland doesn’t really satirize Austen’s world (or fans) so much as use them as a pretext for a mixture of middling burlesque and routine romantic comedy.
  13. One Direction: This Is Us
    The film’s central fivesome prove charming pallbearers throughout the film, which alternates between inspired and insipid as it hits its hagiographic marks.
  14. Violet & Daisy
    Violet & Daisy feels radically disconnected from recognizable human behavior.
  15. Post Tenebras Lux
    The title, signifying “light after darkness,” derives from the Latin translation of the Book of Job, an appropriate source given that a considerable amount of the prophet’s proverbial patience is required. Not that the pic doesn’t have its frequent rewards.
  16. Copperhead
    Director Ron Maxwell’s adaptation of Harold Frederic’s 1893 novel elicits a certain amount of admiration for its old-fashioned carpentry and earnest, worthy approach, but its stilted dramaturgy and endless speechifying defeat the committed efforts of a sprawling ensemble.
  17. Passion
    Clearly, Passion means to be a hoot, a wet-dream thriller for cinephiles. But by the time it reaches its overwrought final act, the picture has generated neither the tension of its forebears nor the audacity that would allow it to transcend its silliness.
  18. Thérèse
    Serviceable but uninspired.
  19. Fury
    Though colorfully embellished with authentic detail and logistically complex to bring to the screen, Ayer’s script is bland at the most basic story level, undermined by cardboard characterizations and a stirring yet transparently silly climactic showdown.
  20. Hannah Arendt
    Von Trotta’s Arendt biopic feels like a movie stuck in another era, stolid and rote, more of an outline for a dramatic treatment than the real thing.
  21. The Best Man Holiday
    The cluttered, overlong narrative never really finds its footing.
  22. Heli
    An accomplished but singularly unpleasant immersion in Mexico's vicious cycle of drug-fueled violence.
  23. A Girl and a Gun
    More entertaining than especially revelatory, this timely documentary adds a sprightly note to a somber subject.
  24. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
    Though Resnais’ gamble seems to have failed, it’s encouraging to see a director on the brink of 90 still willing to experiment in a way most helmers half his age wouldn’t dare.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hook
    Hook feels as much like a massive amusement park ride as it does a film. Spirited, rambunctious, often messy and undisciplined.
  26. 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
  27. Following
    Climactic triple-cross is a satisfying payoff, though scenarist-helmer Nolan doesn’t really sock across any possible point of emphasis – black humor is soft-pedaled, suspense just middling, and the character writing keeps classic fall guy Bill a bit too blank-slate to incur much sympathy.
  28. Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter)
    While the surfaces, backgrounds and sense of constant motion are authentic to their tinselly cores, what goes on among the fictional participants resembles gag-reliant improv routines that haven’t been entirely worked out.
  29. The Frozen Ground
    [A] solid if unmemorable true-crime drama.
  30. Hatchet III
    There’s something curiously underwhelming about the blood-soaked mayhem on display in Hatchet III.
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