Variety's Scores

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:
17794 movie reviews
  1. There’s a stern, let’s-get-to-work air to the film’s craft and conception that hampers whatever thrill of the chase “Inferno” has to offer. Fundamentally silly the film may be, but it never graduates to spryness.
  2. Against all odds, “Nashville” series regular Peeples keeps the film watchable, delivering a capable star turn with enough flashes of soul to belie the script’s artifice and credible pop vocals to boot.
  3. The only real tension you feel in Dying of the Light is that between the thoughtful, tough-minded character piece Schrader presumably thought he was making and the bruised, indifferent hackwork that has ultimately made it to the screen.
  4. On paper, this could have been the antidote to an increasingly codified strain of comic-book movies, but in the end, it’s just another high-attitude version of the same.
  5. Curry’s interest is in obsession, not Libya, yet surely a corrective is needed, and dressing up a nation’s collapse as if it were an American triumph smacks of the same willful delusion as George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished.”
  6. While it’s not saying much, Thor: Ragnarok is easily the best of the three Thor movies — or maybe I just think so because its screenwriters and I finally seem to agree on one thing: The Thor movies are preposterous.
  7. Lapses in the screenplay are mitigated only slightly by the natural chemistry between Long and Rossum.
  8. Even by its genre’s comfort-food standards, this movie feels blandly circumscribed, almost child-proofed, as if any sharper reality or wit might be harmful to the intended audience.
  9. Piling on the misery-laden subplots in scene after angry, overamped scene, Before I Disappear is the sort of movie that can’t stop reminding you how cruel the world is and how messed up its people are, to the point where its bludgeoning cynicism feels no more authentic or lived-in than the glimmer of hope that suddenly breaks on the horizon.
  10. Some genre fans who prefer the silly to the satiric may bite, but the anemic pic isn’t remotely weird or witty enough for cult immortality.
  11. This slickly assembled exploitation-movie wankfest gets some mileage out of its star’s fully committed performance, though not enough to offset the grim, monotonous tenor of the proceedings — or the glib, fetishistic recycling of Asian thriller tropes.
  12. A melodrama with soft-rock ballads where its beating heart should be.
  13. Shyamalan has long been criticized for serving up borderline (or downright) silly premises with a straight face and overtly pretentious atmosphere, but he basically abandons that approach here in favor of a looser, more playful dynamic between his fresh-faced leads.
  14. It takes all the leads’ considerable combined charm to forestall the aftertaste of the pic’s smug life lessons and near-comically blinkered worldview.
  15. Although “Allegiant” does recapture the original film’s sense of constantly discovering and adapting to fresh information, audiences no longer identify with anyone in particular.
  16. A sporadically amusing, more often grating romantic comedy.
  17. McCarthy, who can toss off an insult like “Suck my d—k, Gigantor!” and give it a vague impression of wit, coaxes forth just about every laugh and stray chuckle that could possibly have been extracted from the material.
  18. A few droll and/or silly moments poke through the general boredom. But Martin and Peranson’s snarkfest doesn’t really offer any critique that Hopper didn’t already aim at himself, however incoherently, in the supremely self-conscious “Last Movie.”
  19. The effort of sussing out this satire’s attitude seems silly for the fact that its jokes just aren’t funny enough.
  20. Loitering With Intent is essentially a 75-minute hangout movie, which would work better if the characters were worth hanging out with.
  21. I
    Star Chiyaan Vikram delivers a knockout three-pronged performance, but this cinematic bravura is offset by underdeveloped scripting, flatly one-dimensional villains and overdone lone-hero-vs.-swarms-of-murderous-attackers setpieces.
  22. Transitioning his story to the screen, Taia retains the bare bones but strips away warmth and insight, without any fresh perceptions that would compensate.
  23. The lead actors are solid as usual, but you can feel them all knocking their heads against the low ceiling of material that’s afraid to take any risks — playing it so safe that the film ends up lacking anything in the way of real personality, scares or plot surprises.
  24. Last Knights is a fairly ludicrous mystery and a so-so action movie, but it’s nonetheless been constructed with an earnest attention to detail that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
  25. One part inspiration to two parts exasperation, Andrew T. Betzer’s debut feature, Young Bodies Heal Quickly, is an initially arresting road trip for some off-the-wall characters that takes its sweet time going nowhere in particular.
  26. Zombeavers is not a total wash, and seen at night, under the right combination of low expectations and controlled substances, it may even seem better than it really is.
  27. Benson displays more energy and assurance behind the camera than he does in front of it; even still, his tonal command of his own narrative is wobbly at best, employing cynical humor and climactic eruptions of violence to jazz up what is ultimately an overly earnest and predictable cautionary tale.
  28. Despite the assiduous grinding of plot mechanics by William Brent Bell (“The Devil Inside”) and scripter Stacey Menear, the movie never fully distracts its audience from the inherent silliness of its premise...and, as a result, is more likely to elicit laughs and rude remarks rather than screams and rooting interest.
  29. Emitting the unpleasant stench of over-affectation, Treading Water slaps together its particular peculiarities with such randomness, it’s as if the film were conceived from blindly throwing disparate elements at the wall.
  30. This basic-cable-quality farce is as unobjectionable as it is unmemorable.

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