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. Kill Me Three Times
    Director Kriv Stenders’ tiresome tale of scheming adulterers, cruel spouses and one bemused hitman (Simon Pegg) feels like poser noir all the way, never achieving the darkly comic flair or freshness of style needed to sell its fatalistic twists.
  2. Oh My God
    Compacts nearly three years' worth of globe-trotting interviews into an often visually vibrant but rhetorically muddled package. So intent on giving (almost) every perspective a fair shake that it winds up saying little of consequence.
  3. Affluenza
    A splashy-looking yet depressingly empty exercise that is never more shallow than the times when it tries to go deep.
  4. USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage
    "USS Indianapolis” is a World War II “epic” that’s overscaled yet underimagined. It’s a tale of survival that never provides the audience with a basic entry point into how and why we should care.
  5. Little Boy
    The problem here isn’t theological; even if it were in service of a different message entirely, the sheer gracelessness of Monteverde’s storytelling would be a massive turnoff.
  6. The Boy Next Door
    The film’s initial formulaic competence gives way to outright preposterousness rather quickly, hinging on idiot-plot character motivations.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Swarm
    Killer bees periodically interrupt the arch writing, stilted direction and ludicrous acting in Irwin Allen's disappointing and tired non-thriller.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Troll
    Troll is a predictable, dim-witted premise executed for the most part with surprising style.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Cassandra Crossing
    The Cassandra Crossing is a tired, hokey and sometimes unintentionally funny disaster film in which a trainload of disease-exposed passengers lurch to their fate.
  10. The Art of War
    Almost every element in Art of War is slightly off.
  11. Queen of the Damned
    Handsomely mounted, this direly conventional bit of vampire business is enlivened by flashes of humor and game performances. It isn't great entertainment or camp, but pic sets its ambitions so low, it can't help partially delivering on them.
  12. Waiting...
    The wait for laughs lasts the entire length of Waiting ..., first feature from writer-director Rob McKittrick that aims to be a "Clerks"-type comedy set in a chain restaurant but ends up somewhere below a "Porky's" sequel.
  13. Expend4bles
    This is true 21st-century trash: a movie in which the action itself is expendable.
  14. Invisible
    Begins as a morosely melancholy study of a thirtysomething couple on the verge of divorce, then devolves into an unpleasant thriller about their confrontation with psychos.
  15. American Milkshake
    Milkshake sucks all the flavor out of a tasty premise.
  16. White Noise
    An unsatisfying supernatural thriller with an effectively unsettling build-up and a frustratingly muddled pay-off.
  17. American Virgin
    Ambitious but flawed comedy.
  18. Exorcist: The Beginning
    Earns points simply for not being bad enough to leave a stain on the screen. Unfortunately, this annoyingly disjointed shocker stumbles badly after promising early scenes, and quickly devolves into a chaotic blur of underdeveloped characters, illogical transitions and standard-issue scary-movie tropes.
  19. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
    While there are certain shots that provoke an emotional pull, whether that be fear, sadness or wonderment, there’s a synthetic quality to them. It leaves us yearning for a full immersion into this world of make-believe. Environments lack depth and dimension, coming across flat and uninteresting.
  20. Measure of Revenge
    A mess from start to finish, this would-be thriller about a mother seeking vengeance (Melissa Leo) never comes close to raising the pulse but does raise more than a few eyebrows along the way.
  21. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
    Liebesman hews close to the 2003 pic’s bile-tinged snuff-film aesthetic. His approach falls somewhere between the overwrought sadism of the “Saw” series and the giddy gore-for-gore’s-sake energy of “The Devil’s Rejects,” sharing those films’ twisted notion that today’s auds are willing to embrace such homicidal maniacs as heroes.
  22. The Electric State
    The filmmakers have diluted the source material, showing a clear lack of interest in making their creation just as haunting, searing and satisfying as the original product.
  23. Basmati Blues
    Basmati Blues is one of those movies that isn’t terrible but still leaves you wondering why it exists.
  24. 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.
  25. Marmaduke
    With extended closing credits, Marmaduke clocks in at 88 minutes and feels longer.
  26. Paulo Coelho's Best Story
    A dramatically flat and tediously disjointed drama that comes across as a standard-issue, cliche-littered, struggling-writer-finds-fulfillment biopic that has been cut-and-pasted into borderline incoherence.
  27. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
    A faster, funnier follow-up in which CGI-enhanced canines and felines effect a temporary truce to combat a common enemy.
  28. Billionaire Boys Club
    There are no billionaires here, just a lot of testosterone where the movie’s brains ought to be.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter
    Film is effective in its own right, but as with most sequels, it lacks freshness. American actress Burt is any adolescent boy’s fantasy seductress. Rest of the cast is adequate, but a letdown compared with the original’s.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Legend
    Legend is a fairytale produced on a grand scale, set in some timeless world and peopled with fairies, elves and goblins, plus a spectacularly satisfying Satan. At the same time, the basic premise is alarmingly thin, a compendium of any number of ancient fairytales.
    • Variety
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