Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Chandni Chowk to China
    As with many a Bollywood epic, you can bring the kids, your lunch, your cell phone, your unfiled taxes. There's so much here, and in such heaping, lengthy portions, you could probably weave a sari before the end credits.
  2. The Answer Man
    Jeff Daniels' gleeful misanthropy and Lauren Graham's emotional openness are poorly served by the pic's transparently phony story and therapeutic uplift
  3. Connie and Carla
    It takes chutzpah to borrow from comedy maestros Billy Wilder and Blake Edwards, and Nia Vardalos would seem an unlikely candidate to get away with it unpunished.
  4. The Village
    A watchable film for awhile that unravels in a muddled last act likely to send many opening-weekend filmgoers home head-scratching and grumbling.
  5. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    Second time round, Bridget is still fat, funny and endearing -- but "all a bit, um, familiar, actually."
  6. Southie
    Bottom-drawer plot of a South Boston bad boy returning to tie up loose ends reads like every other "Mean Streets" knockoff in the past decade, with no scene, development or performance standing out from undifferentiated din.
  7. Cook County
    Despite a few continuity problems, this rough-edged, low-budget drama impresses with spot-on performances, perfect-pitch dialogue and an overall sense that something bad might happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.
  8. Gut Renovation
    The latest in a line of documentaries decrying the destruction of viable working-class businesses and residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Su Friedrich’s film bypasses sadness and indignation for flat-out anger and well-aimed sarcasm.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Revenge of the Nerds
    Revenge of the Nerds shows more than enough smarts to deserve a passing grade.
    • Variety
  10. Preservation
    Preservation ultimately impresses as an arrestingly suspenseful thriller that takes clever narrative twists and turns while moving through familiar territory.
  11. The Jesus Rolls
    In the end, the project doesn’t really work. The Coen brothers have a touch for the absurd, and a gift for dialogue, that’s lacking here, and without those two qualities, Jesus wears out his welcome relatively early in the journey.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Prophecy
    Daring and unique on the one hand, but hard to swallow on the other, Prophecy is a fantasy thriller about murderous angels waging a war on Earth. First-time director Gregory Widen deserves a pat on the back for attempting risky balancing act.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Deadly Friend
    Pic has enough gore, suspense and requisite number of shocks to keep most hearts pounding through to the closing credits.
  14. The Night Clerk
    Sheridan and de Armas’s scenes together leave an impression long after the rest of the movie evaporates.
  15. Mortal Kombat
    True to the game, the violence is both ghoulishly creative and gratuitously extreme.
  16. The Bronze
    Though no one would accuse The Bronze of not being funny, it somehow manages not to be funny often enough.
  17. One Last Thing...
    Plays closer to an after-school special (with HBO-standard dialogue) than a satisfying feature film.
  18. Bloodshot
    Bloodshot is a trash compactor of a comic-book film, but it’s smart trash, an action matrix that’s fun to plug into.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Raw Deal
    Comic book crime meller suffers from an irredeemably awful script, and even director John Irvin’s engaging sense of how absurd the proceedings are can’t work an alchemist’s magic.
  20. Jobs
    Ultimately, Jobs is a prosaic but not unaffecting tribute to the virtues of defiance, nonconformity, artistry, beauty, craftsmanship, imagination and innovation, qualities it only intermittently reflects as a piece of filmmaking.
  21. The Libertine
    Starting out seductive but ending up tiresome, debuting director Laurence Dunmore's pic is an honorable misfire.
  22. The Losers
    The Losers is the sort of pyro-heavy exercise parodied in "Tropic Thunder," and no amount of production polish can hide the hollowness beneath its junk-food high.
  23. Southland Tales
    Rarely has a picture been so self-consciously designed to be a culturally meaningful touchstone, and fallen so woefully short, as Southland Tales.
  24. Nina's Heavenly Delights
    Stereotypes abound, dialogue is conventional and pace scattered. Still, resulting stew is pleasant.
  25. Devil
    Devil is nothing very special or original, but it gets the job done briskly and economically.
  26. Life Happens
    The film is ultimately an untenable muddle.
  27. Schizopolis
    Some of the filmmaker's keen intelligence remains on display, but only in fractured and often obscure form, and pic overall gives the impression of a giant expurgation of negative feelings about things in general rather than a carefully articulated brief on recognizable subjects.
  28. Aftermath
    Aftermath is one of those mopey coping-with-grief movies in which the characters grapple with intense emotions, while audiences feel nothing.
  29. Forever Young
    [Bruni Tedeschi] fails to make much of a case for why any of it should resonate with anyone outside this tiny, hermetically enclosed community. ... [An] indulgent, histrionic personal history.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Superman III
    Superman III emerges as a surprisingly soft-cored disappointment. Putting its emphasis on broad comedy at the expense of ingenious plotting and technical wizardry, it has virtually none of the mythic or cosmic sensibility that marked its predecessors.
    • Variety
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »