Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    K-9
    There are a few amazing moments (the dog’s rescue of Belushi in a bar). In between lingers lots of standard action-pic fare, plenty of toothless jokes and some down-right mangy dialog.
  2. They Remain
    They Remain is a movie that lives down to your worst expectations.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Her Alibi
    He’s a mystery writer, she’s a mystery; and it’s also a mystery how TV fodder like this manages to get the high-gloss, top-talent treatment at studios.
  4. Serenity
    Serenity sees a usually reliable screenwriter-turned-director take a bold swing and miss the mark completely, so intent on pulling the rug out from under you that he never notices you weren’t even standing on it.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Hitcher
    The Hitcher is a highly unimaginative slasher that keeps the tension going with a massacre about every 15 minutes.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Hanoi Hilton
    The Hanoi Hilton is a lame attempt by writer-director Lionel Chetwynd to tell the story of US prisoners in Hoa Lo Prison, in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Pic is a slanted view of traditional prison camp sagas, injecting lots of hindsight and taking right-wing potshots that do a disservice to the very human drama of the subject.
  7. Status Update
    Inasmuch as one can complain about a film having plot holes when it hinges entirely on a magic cellphone app, much of “Status Update” feels cursory and unconsidered by its hokey standards.
  8. The Happys
    When the jokes don’t actually materialize (or land), the proceedings become bogged down in drama that the film’s one-dimensional characters can’t sustain.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Way West
    Project probably looked good on paper, but washed out in scripting, direction and pacing. Incidents do not build to any climax; excepting the first and last reels, any others could be shown out of order with no apparent discontinuity.
  10. Book Club
    Really, it’s sad that the best Hollywood can come up with for so much seasoned talent is this stale shake-and-bake combining upscale-lifestyle porn with some tepid smirky humor.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Raw Deal
    Comic book crime meller suffers from an irredeemably awful script, and even director John Irvin’s engaging sense of how absurd the proceedings are can’t work an alchemist’s magic.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    St. Elmo's Fire
    Beyond occasional mutterings of words like ‘love’ and ‘beer,’ there’s never any explanation in the dialog that would hint at motivation.
  13. Life Itself
    It is sentimental and sprawling, which are not necessarily bad things, but also manipulative and contrived, which very much are.
  14. Paradox
    Paradox, a waste of time made bearable only by its brevity, plays like a bad acid flashback from the 1970s, a time when similarly self-conscious trippy pastiches of rock music and genre conventions proliferated on the midnight-movie circuit.
  15. Krystal
    Though Macy is an odd fit to direct (coming at the talky script like it was a madcap piece of theater), the wonky tone is all screenwriter Will Aldis’ invention.
  16. Caught
    Instead of emphasizing tense action and atmosphere — the usual limited-budget solutions — the filmmakers here seem to think having their characters nervously chatter on about their situation in reams of clumsy dialogue will do the trick. It does not.
  17. Peppermint
    As a onetime Girl Scout den mother turned brass-knuckled avenging angel, Garner gives everything that is asked of her, from brute physicality to dewy-eyed tenderness, but this half-witted calamity botches just about everything else. Drably by-the-numbers except for the moments where it goes gobsmackingly off-the-rails, Peppermint misfires from start to finish.
  18. The Grudge
    The Grudge plods on as if it were something more than formula gunk, cutting back and forth among the thinly written unfortunates who’ve been touched by the curse of that house.
  19. Baja
    Blandly competent in assembly, Baja has only pedestrian comic ideas, and even those aren’t executed well.
  20. Gehenna: Where Death Lives
    It’s not a total wash, but the eventually dreary mix of vague religious morality and rather ponderous horror suggests Katagiri should pay more attention to script development next time out.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Clash of the Titans
    Clash of the Titans is an unbearable bore that will probably put to sleep the few adults stuck taking the kids to it. Desmond Davis directs with a tired hand, not helped much by the lackadaisical writing.
  22. Vampire Clay
    Nothing this absurd should be this boring.
  23. 211
    A rote, overstuffed compilation of genre cliches with pedestrian handling of action elements and frequent notes of maudlin contrivance.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Boxcar Bertha
    Performances are dull. Whatever sociological, political or dramatic motivations may once have existed in the story have been ruthlessly stripped from the plot, leaving all characters bereft of empathy or sympathy. There’s hardly a pretense toward justifying the carnage
  25. Good Boys
    A little too imitative of “Superbad” ... Good Boys lacks that film’s wit and heart. It’s a lively, slick package, yet crude and obvious at every turn.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Orca
    Orca is man-vs-beast nonsense. Some fine special effects and underwater camera work are plowed under in dumb story-telling.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Toys
    Only a filmmaker with Barry Levinson's clout would have been so indulged to create such a sprawling, seemingly unsupervised mess as Toys, a painful exercise that makes Hudson Hawk look like a modest throwaway.
  28. Angel Face
    Filho obviously wants to convey the naive outlook an impressionable young girl would have on her own situation, but there’s far too much manipulation involved to take her selection of scenes seriously.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    This trashy, gaudy, sound-stage vulgarity about low life among the high life is as funny as a burning orphanage.
  30. 7 Splinters in Time
    A time-traveler becomes fragmented in disastrous ways, and so too does the film itself, in “7 Splinters in Time,” edited to ribbons in a schizoid manner that likely only makes complete sense to its maker.
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