Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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 2.4 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. Certainty
    Valerie Harper essays a Catholic twist on her yakkety yenta "Rhoda" persona, while Giancarlo Esposito, as the wise, hip priest heading the retreat, is called upon to bring believability to a film low in that commodity.
  2. Delhi Safari
    The picture all too obviously recycles bits and pieces from "Madagascar," "The Lion King" and other made-in-America toons. Unfortunately, much gets lost in the translation.
  3. Allegiance
    The picture's assorted characters, though credible, feel wearisomely one-dimensional, while the pumped-up action, unfolding in a single day, basically consists of an extended game of hide-and-seek.
  4. Let My People Go!
    Let My People Go! offers an unholy alliance of camp and farce that both celebrates and mocks gay and Jewish stereotypes.
  5. Spring Breakers
    Just about every charge of social negligence leveled at Spring Breakers can be countered with an arch claim of intent, which makes it at once playful and wearying; enjoyment is contingent on how little you're willing to fight it.
  6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
    The franchise has lost a bit of its luster with every successive installment, but never has a “Pirates” film felt this inessential, this depressingly pro forma.
  7. Machete Kills
    As violent as its predecessor yet noticeably duller and less outrageous, Machete Kills is dragged to the finish line entirely by its director’s madcap energy and an absurd cast of major stars in strange cameos.
  8. Emperor
    Emperor’s bloodless presentation fails on a fundamental dramatic level, playing like the fancy version of a junior-high educational filmstrip, down to the false suspense of Alex Heffes’ corny ticking-clock score.
  9. Grudge Match
    Essentially recasting “Grumpy Old Men” with the senescent specters of Rocky Balboa and Jake LaMotta, the result is sporadically amusing, with some chucklesome sight gags and crowdpleasing supporting turns from Alan Arkin and Kevin Hart, yet it’s all so overcooked that it defeats its own purpose.
  10. Muppets Most Wanted
    Muppets Most Wanted looks and sounds eager to please but immediately feels like a more slapdash, aimless affair, trying — and mostly failing — to turn its stalled creativity into some sort of self-referential joke.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Back to the Future Part II
    The energy and heart which Robert Zemeckis and story-writing partner Bob Gale (who takes solo screenplay credit this time) poured into the ingenious story of part one is diverted into narrative mechanics and camera wizardry in Future II.
  12. Planes
    Diverting in bits and pieces, but absent the heart, soul and ingenuity one associates with the best of Disney animation, the endlessly merchandisable picture could very well soar at the box office, but it won’t stick the landing where word of mouth is concerned.
  13. Saving Lincoln
    The script, while largely historically accurate, is undermined by stilted dialogue, and the picture is laced with ill-fitting parts that wind up literally all over the matte. The result is a film better suited to classrooms than theaters.
  14. The Numbers Station
    Sentencing a sad-looking John Cusack and a hard-working Malin Akerman to roughly 90 minutes of solitary confinement in a poorly lit underground bunker, this glum, juiceless spy thriller is a by-the-numbers affair indeed, unlikely to find an audience on any frequency.
  15. Red Flag
    There's a reason creepy character actors seldom play lead, and Karpovsky's amusingly off-kilter quality is better suited to the background, while Prediger (as the stranger he desperately wants to ditch, lest his ex-g.f. discover his infidelity) has the makings of an indie star.
  16. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    Mira Nair’s latest immigrant saga saddles itself with a laborious narrative structure and half-baked thriller elements in a misguided attempt to open up what should be an intimate, introspective story.
  17. Hunky Dory
    The picture draws only slight entertainment value from the spectacle of youngsters warbling 1970s pop tunes, like a retro version of “High School Musical” with less charm.
  18. Transcendence
    There are intriguing, half-formed ideas afoot in Transcendence, but the script and Pfister’s heavy, humorless direction tend to reduce everything to simplistic standoffs between good and evil.
  19. Jupiter Ascending
    While the Wachowskis have always put their greatest emphasis on aesthetics, they allow the visual impulse to get the best of them here, investing so much attention in creating unique fashions, technology, architecture and design that they’ve blinded themselves to the huge logical gaps in their own story.
  20. Salinger
    It’s difficult to get past the film’s restless, ill-fittingly bombastic style.
    • 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
  22. Antiviral
    Icky though it is, Antiviral never builds the sort of character investment or narrative momentum that would allow its visceral horrors to seriously disturb, rather than seeming like choice gross-out moments lovingly designed for maximum viewer recoil.
  23. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's
    This scattershot documentary — an undiluted advertisement for this temple of high-end consumerism — jumps skittishly from subject to subject, disjointed and repetitive for all but dyed-in-the-wool fashionistas.
  24. Arthur Newman
    Firth and Blunt make a strange couple, and Ariola a musicvideo helmer making his feature debut, should have devoted more time to making the chemistry work than to sustaining the melancholy mood.
  25. Stranded
    Another blandly competent, thoroughly forgettable low-budget sci-fier assembled from the stray parts of other, better movies.
  26. Drinking Buddies
    Relative to the major brands, the intimate, handcrafted approach should yield more flavor. Instead, Drinking Buddies offers mostly froth.
  27. The Colony
    Utterly routine futuristic horror-thriller The Colony substitutes the term “ferals” for plain old zombies (the modern, fast-moving kind), and that’s about it for originality.
  28. Blended
    Blended suffers from a fundamental lack of trust in its audience, following every unexpectedly smart exchange with a numbskull pratfall or one-liner, and every instance of genuine sincerity with an avalanche of schmaltz.
  29. 1st Night
    Many of the actors give performances in line with their low profile here.
  30. Drift
    Manages to get a fair bit right about early 1970s surf culture when it isn’t trafficking in the hoariest of David-vs.-Goliath cliches.
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