Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. Fast X
    Leterrier’s bad with story but reasonably strong on the action front. Characters are constantly jumping in and out of speeding vehicles in these movies, and Leterrier’s job here must have felt somewhat similar, clambering aboard the juggernaut that is the “Fast” franchise in full steam.
  2. A Quiet Passion
    [Davies'] most mannered and least fulfilling work to date, A Quiet Passion boasts meticulous craft and ornate verbiage in abundance, but confines Cynthia Nixon’s melancholia-stricken performance as arguably America’s greatest poet in an emotional straitjacket of variously arch storytelling tones.
  3. Baskin
    Baskin becomes something of a monotonous dirge. Diverting to an extent, the film’s horrors aren’t shocking or distinctive enough, its surreal atmospherics not quite strong enough to cover for the sketchy script.
  4. 11 Minutes
    Given how much of 11 Minutes takes place in the glibly heightened realm of the Hollywood-molded actioner, its various fragments are rather short on intrigue, whether considered alone or in simmering context.
  5. The Predator
    All of this is silly, borderline senseless, lively, and without any real rooting value at all. The supposedly lovable misfits here aren’t, no matter how the cast members feign hilarity at their potty-mouthing. Not that it matters — because nothing does in this expensive toy of a film, which ultimately works on the level of a disco ball. It’s shiny, it moves, and is accompanied by much noise.
  6. Nina
    Even when not fighting with her makeup, Saldana’s Simone rarely feels fully formed.
  7. A Haunting in Cawdor
    Though never outright dull, A Haunting in Cawdor manages to provide few incidents of genuine interest while leaving potentially rewarding character and thematic elements unexplored.
  8. Boo! A Madea Halloween
    It’s another of Perry’s raucous and slovenly comedies of responsibility, which means that its heart is in a very old — and right — place. If only a message that was this solid equalled solid laughs.
  9. Boris Without Béatrice
    A brittle, no-joke comedy of unchecked privilege that maintains the tone of social satire without ever alighting on a specific target.
  10. Special Correspondents
    Gervais’ tale is primarily consumed with middle-of-the-road squabbling between its headliners, whose yin-yang chemistry never results in more than a few chuckle-worthy bon mots.
  11. Puerto Ricans in Paris
    Luis Guzmán and Edgar Garcia give the project much more than it ever gives them, sustaining audience interest and generating mild amusement more or less through sheer force of will as they amble through a threadbare plot.
  12. King Cobra
    King Cobra is all smut and no soul, a tacky, superficially titillating reunion between Franco and “I Am Michael” director Justin Kelly.
  13. When the Bough Breaks
    The presence of a predominantly African-American cast arguably is the only distinguishing characteristic of this by-the-numbers thriller.
  14. The Duel
    The Duel promises a battle of wits and wills, then turns into a violent grab-bag. But it does make you want to see Woody Harrelson get another movie worthy of his leering bald Nietzschean bravura.
  15. American Pastoral
    Groping for grand tragedy and finding only actorly melodrama, shooting for political contrarianism but landing instead on reactionary conventionalism, American Pastoral is as flat and strangled as its source is furious and expansive.
  16. Dog Eat Dog
    That’s not to say Dog Eat Dog is bereft of interesting choices. Far from it, though its infrequent bursts of gonzo brilliance are all in service of such an uninteresting premise.
  17. From the Land of the Moon
    Of course, Cotillard is your first call if you want an actress to suffer exquisitely, but the issue is her character Gabrielle is essentially a nightmare of self-involvement, whose emotional torture is very difficult to get invested in since she herself has already bought all the shares.
  18. Staying Vertical
    The technical bravura that Guiraudie summoned in “Stranger” — the subtle manipulation of light, weather, shot language, and temporal cunning — now falls by the wayside in a story that lurches from episode to disconnected episode.
  19. Kinatay
    Mendoza strengthens his gift for describing space with inquisitive cameras, but as the helmer’s star rises, his subtlety wanes, resulting in obvious statements made banal by heavy-handed ironies.
  20. To Life
    Given the complexity of everything the characters went through, it’s a shame to witness their lives reduced to a sequence of TV-movie moments.
  21. Traded
    Mostly due to the limp direction by Timothy Woodward Jr., Traded never really offers much in the way of suspense or excitement. But the sporadic outbursts of bloody violence are efficiently rendered.
  22. Adult Life Skills
    For the most part, the film is similarly content to repeat the past, all the way through to its predictable liberating-feel-good wrap-up.
  23. Ants on a Shrimp
    Dutch helmer Maurice Dekkers devotes most of his film to the celebrity chef’s extensive foraging, while his abstemious staff harps on about the onerous pursuit of perfection; one crucial missing ingredient, however, is the joy of eating or cooking.
  24. Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV
    Like many a poorly-plotted video game, “Kingsglaive” manages to skate by for a while on the sheer splendor of its visuals.
  25. Yarn
    It’s less than the sum of its attractive parts, with scant overall insight or weight. Like an old handmade sweater, this is a movie that might unravel too easily if you gave any single element a hard tug.
  26. The 9th Life of Louis Drax
    For Aja, who has demonstrated an appetite for truly twisted material in the past, it all adds up to a disappointingly tame outing.
  27. Rebirth
    The pitfall of a tantalizing set-up is that it requires a sterling payoff to match — a recipe for disappointment born out by Rebirth, whose premise-establishing early passages lead only to underwhelming revelations.
  28. For the Plasma
    Only faintly touching upon notions of intuitive collaboration and inspiration, For the Plasma wanders about as if it’s in a fog, ultimately to the point of pointlessness.
  29. Rupture
    This is a plot that feels lazily reverse-engineered from a collection of disparate, pre-existing scenes and elements, rather like one of those cooking shows where contestants are given a selection of random ingredients and forced to come up with a meal.
  30. Bad Santa 2
    It’s essentially a hangout movie populated exclusively with some of the worst people imaginable, rarely with any sort of solid scene-setting or straight-men to provide context.
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