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. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    The result may still be a big, bloated spectacle, but it's a big, bloated spectacle you can just about follow.
  2. Strangerland
    Too much of Strangerland simply feels dodgy and overdetermined, veering between art-film pretensions and melodramatic gestures, and governed by ambitions that outstrip the filmmakers’ abilities.
  3. Below Her Mouth
    A sexually frank but narratively flimsy girl-meets-girl romance that never gets under its gorgeous characters’ amply exposed skin.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crazy People
    Crazy People combines a hilarious dissection of advertising with a warm view of so-called insanity... Finished film is a credit to all hands.
  5. Leave It to Beaver
    Fuzzily conceived and blandly executed, Leave It to Beaver is neither fish nor fowl. Not exactly a straight-faced homage to the classic TV series, but far short of an outright parody, this exceedingly mild comedy plays like the product of a committee that never reached a consensus on which direction to take.
  6. Chalet Girl
    A chirpy, tween-skewing, snowboarding-themed romantic comedy, Chalet Girl slaloms exuberantly down a predictable path, kicking up regular flurries of fun along the way.
  7. Chronicling a Crisis
    Just marginally a documentary, Chronicling a Crisis turns out to be one of Amos Kollek's more affecting films.
  8. The Foxy Merkins
    Olnek and collaborators share a genuinely offbeat sensibility, and The Foxy Merkins would have made a hilarious short. Yet it simply doesn’t come up with enough inventive scenes, let alone overall narrative spine, to sustain itself at feature length.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Airport
    Airport is a handsome, often dramatically involving $10-million epitaph to a bygone brand of filmmaking. However, the ultimate dramatic situation of a passenger loaded jetliner with a psychopathic bomber aboard that has to be brought into a blizzard-swept airport with runway blocked by a snow-stalled plane actually does not create suspense because the audience knows how it's going to end.
    • Variety
  10. Jungle 2 Jungle
    An extremely handsome physical production, with breathtaking Venezuelan vistas by Tony Pierce-Roberts, Jungle 2 Jungle is an otherwise modest effort. Simple truths are often the most effective, but in this instance they are only banal and mildly amusing.
  11. Madea's Witness Protection
    The interaction among opposites inspires an abundance of predictable race-based jokes, many of which have the saving grace of actually being funny.
  12. Lost River
    A risible slab of Detroit gothic that marks an altogether inauspicious writing-directing debut for Ryan Gosling.
  13. Breaking In
    Coasting for as long as it can on the considerable charms of its star, Breaking In is otherwise a work of profound half-assedness, running through the paces of its bare-bones framework with all the verve, energy and invention of a night-watchman winding down the last hour of his shift.
  14. Devil's Knot
    Devil’s Knot only occasionally feels weightier than a high-end Lifetime original or “Law & Order” episode.
  15. The Haunting
    A wannabe horror classic that turns deadly dull once the sense of anxious expectation wears off.
  16. House in the Alley
    Despite the bumpy pacing and the routine plot elements, writer-director Le-Van Kiet periodically generates a sense of palpable trepidation during what might best be described as a worst-case scenario about post-partum depression.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Toxic Avenger
    This madcap spoof on The Incredible Hulk is an outlandish mix of gory violence and realistic special effects.
  18. Guns Akimbo
    This undeniably slick, energetic contraption plays somewhere between grating and numbing.
  19. Brothers By Blood
    It’s only Guez’s second film, although he’s written others (including the similarly genre-subverting zombie movie “The Night Eats the World”), and there’s enough promise here — especially on the performance front — to look forward to future projects.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mountain Men
    It’s a limp feature debut for director Richard Lang.
  21. Sneaks
    Though the story wears down its tread, strong performances elevate the material. Mackie, Fishburne, Lawrence, Bailey and David all pour a ton of heart into their vocal dynamics, allowing nuanced vulnerability and a bubbly buoyancy to shine through, keeping us tethered to the emotional pull of the picture.
  22. The Perfect Game
    It's an unabashedly corny but occasionally stirring dramedy based on the true-life story of scrappy young baseball players from Mexico who, in 1957, scored an improbable string of successes while playing their way from a Monterrey sandlot to the Little League World Series.
  23. Endings, Beginnings
    The movie may be a self-help exercise of sorts — for those who seldom recognize themselves on screen, and who don’t measure up to the expectations set by rom-coms and princess movies — but it’s disguised as a shaggy character study.
  24. Two Tickets to Greece
    Despite occasional detours into darker themes, this is fundamentally a relaxing trip for an audience — ideal for women of a similar age to the main characters who might fancy treating themselves to a trip to the Greek islands without actually having to get on a flight.
  25. Hollywood Buddha
    A refreshingly unpretentious cocktail of karmic serendipity and a tongue-in-cheek look at Hollywood values vs. ecumenical verities.
  26. Along Came a Spider
    Weaves a humdrum plot that's never ahead of the audience until three-quarters through.
  27. Ed Gein
    A disappointingly mild re-creation of true events.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
    Where the original had a vaguely tenable narrative hook (deadbeat dad finds redemption through nocturnal heroics), the new pic seems purely a vehicle for lavish visuals and cheap gags.
  29. Killerman
    Bader does a respectable job of sustaining interest by repeatedly introducing clichés and genre tropes, then upending expectations or taking unpredictable detours.
  30. Aliens in the Attic
    Performances are unremarkable but acceptable pretty much across the board, and the vocal talents -- particularly Thomas Haden Church as the belligerent Tazer and Josh Peck as the lovable Sparks -- are well cast.
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