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. Level Up
    As it episodically flirts with absurdism, black comedy, and other offbeat flavors, Level Up seems to be simply trying on different attitudes without owning them.
  2. Coyote Lake
    While the movie doesn’t work, it isn’t idiosyncratic enough even to hold attention as a misfired oddity.
  3. Slumberland
    Slumberland is stronger at conjuring elaborate dream worlds than it is at crafting a satisfying emotional foundation, which is generally true of Lawrence’s past projects as well.
  4. Brick Mansions
    Delamarre knows his way around an action scene and keeps the proceedings moving briskly enough, even if the picture clocks in at about 10 minutes longer than its taut, 81-minute predecessor.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Day of the Dolphin
    Mike Nichols' film of The Day of the Dolphin is a rare and regrettably uneven combination of ideas and action. George C. Scott stars as a marine scientist whose work with dolphins faces corruption by his own sponsors. The story climax strains belief, but Nichols is one of a handful of directors who can get away with occasional improbability.
  6. Leatherface
    This “origin story” is a somewhat mixed bag. But it’s also an earnest and well-crafted attempt at course-correction, straying from stock slasher recyclage to provide a different story that actually connects a few dots in the very tangled cinematic “Chainsaw” universe to date.
  7. Dracula Untold
    Dracula Untold opts for the stately, staid approach, and even at a mere 85 minutes (sans credits) it’s something of a bore — neither scary nor romantic nor exciting in any of the ways it seems to intend.
  8. Aftermath
    As an exercise in sustained claustrophobia, the movie is not without its grisly accomplishments. Its effectiveness lies not in those moments when its characters are struck down without warning, but rather in the lingering sense that death has slowly, quietly taken up residence among them.
  9. My Little Pony: The Movie
    Beat by beat, My Little Pony: The Movie is at once clichéd and exceptional.
  10. Green Lantern
    An attempt to infuse an earnest piece of comicbook lore with an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek sensibility yields decidedly mixed results in Green Lantern.
  11. Confusion of Genders
    Despite a few potholes of ennui along the way, pic has enough entertainment value to cross borders and titillate auds with its plentiful nudity and uninhibited sexual mores.
  12. Angel Eyes
    Darts back and forth from being a psychological thriller to a vaguely metaphysical drama to a fate-driven romance -- it all becomes a blur.
  13. Simon Birch
    Johnson (who scripted "Grumpy Old Men") flattens out any promise so completely that the feature resembles nothing so much as a subpar "Hallmark Hall of Fame" entry.
  14. Inhale
    Icelandic helmer Baltasar Kormakur ("101 Reykjavik," "Jar City") injects notes of hysteria into the script's frenetic pileup of gratuitous cliches, as Dermot Mulroney pushes his square-jawed, desperate hero to near-masochistic extremes.
  15. 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up
    There’s barely enough plot for a half-hour episode of a weekly TV series spinoff. And there’s even less here in terms of acting, writing and filmmaking polish to appeal to anyone over the age of 10.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Exorcist II: The Heretic
    Since any title containing Roman numerals invites comparison, the answer is: No, Exorcist II is not as good as The Exorcist. It isn't even close. Gone now is the simple clash between Good and Evil, replaced by some goofy transcendental spiritualism.
  17. The Change-Up
    If "Freaky Friday" had an impudent, foul-mouthed little brother, it would be The Change-Up, an often needlessly crass, bromance-oriented spin on the body-swap comedy.
  18. What a Man
    The leads jell well but the film overcompensates to justify their union, surrounding them with broadly drawn secondary characters presented in an uncertain, inconsistent comic tone.
  19. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    An epic showcase for mediocre CGI and slapdash screenwriting.
  20. Swing Kids
    Apart from its appealing young cast and period score, it has precious little to entice audiences into movie theaters.
  21. Lethal Weapon 4
    The quintessence of the buddy cop pic, "LW4" is big on action, playful banter and just enough plot to keep our attention from wandering.
  22. Jigsaw
    For 92 minutes, it more or less succeeds in sawing through your boredom, slicing and dicing with a glum explicitness that raises the occasional tingle of gross-out suspense but no longer carries any kick of true shock value.
  23. Dark Places
    As heroines go, it’s refreshing to get one as complex as this: When psychologically scarred female characters do turn up in thrillers, they’re usually little more than shivering victims who set a group of male cops in motion, but here, Libby does her own detective work, while Hendricks lends star power to the flashback scenes.
  24. Fame
    This PG-rated offering thus dances along a fine line -- one that suggests a shelf-life well short of its "I wanna live forever" anthem.
  25. Twist
    Shot on location in subdued colors, Twist offers much less hope for its troubled characters than Dickens did. Its very downbeat vision may turn off auds, which is a pity because the film has a great many qualities, not least the admirable performances of Stahl, Close and Pelletier.
  26. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Superficial but entertaining new pic offers equal parts freshness and kitsch appeal set to a pulsating Latin soundtrack.
  27. Ciao America
    Never less than pleasant and genteel, but rarely more.
  28. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
    A Madea Family Funeral isn’t good, exactly, but it’s Perry good. It combines weaponized comedy and sexualized soap opera in a way that defuses all shame.
  29. Dead Man Down
    As Scandi directors go, Niels Arden Oplev couldn’t be hotter. After putting his stamp on “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the Dane has what appears to be his pick of projects. So why follow it up with such revenge-fantasy dreck as Dead Man Down, a derivative collection of brazen plot holes and latenight-cable cliches into which he drags “Dragon” star Noomi Rapace?
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