Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Guns Akimbo
    This undeniably slick, energetic contraption plays somewhere between grating and numbing.
  2. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
    Managed (more than directed) by motion-capture star-turned-aspiring blockbuster helmer Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There Be Carnage has all the indications of a slap-dash cash grab. The set-pieces look sloppy, the visual effects are all over the place, and the laughs come largely at the movie’s expense.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    House II: The Second Story
    Director Ethan Wiley is determined to be cute rather than scary. He intros some cuddly creatures – a baby pterodactyl, plus a critter who’s a cross between a dog and a caterpillar – but they don’t add anything to the pic’s charm. Action scenes aren’t very thrilling or suspenseful.
  4. Knives and Skin
    The positive qualities lie in the surrealistic film’s bold cinematography, distinctive use of music, and diversity of cast, though that’s not enough to redeem this tedious viewing experience.
  5. Heavyweights
    There's never been a remotely significant summer camp film, and Disney's Heavyweights does nothing to advance the genre. Far worse, this yarn about an adolescent fat farm is shameful in its execution and content.
  6. Mob Town
    “You think you’re in the movies or something?” crows Davi’s Genovese to an underling, but Mob Town’s wink-wink address of its own artificiality doesn’t excuse its inept execution, which extends to a stereotypical Italian score by Lionel Cohen.
  7. Blumhouse's Fantasy Island
    The finished film plays at times like an out-of-control pitch meeting, lurching from one ostensibly clever idea to the next without having taken the trouble to connect the dots, or even to remain consistent with the two simple rules it sets out for itself.
  8. Grand Isle
    A sub-Tennessee Williams potboiler triangle between restless sexpot, impotent husband, and hunky handyman ever-so-slowly congeals into a lumpy gumbo of thriller elements in Grand Isle.
  9. En Brazos de un Asesino
    Even as a luxe fantasy of danger and hotness, the film falls short — though competently assembled in general, real high style is lacking. Too many scenes take place in empty warehouses or obviously dressed sound stages, budgetary concerns apparently hobbling the story’s feinted milieu of decadent haunts of the criminal-rich.
  10. The Secret: Dare to Dream
    Littered with confounding clichés and hokey devices, director/co-writer Andy Tennant’s feature is the exact inverse of what a passionate romance should aspire to be, let alone one preaching the power of positivity.
  11. Three Christs
    As audiences, we trust filmmakers to do a reasonably accurate job of representing stories based in truth, and we get angry when they take the kind of liberties Avnet and company allow themselves here. As if it weren’t bad enough that Three Christs were boring, it’s impossible to believe, and for that, there is no cure.
    • 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.
  13. Morbius
    Morbius is a movie in which it’s clear that no one ever sent the script back for a rewrite with the instructions, “Please add a script.” As in: Add spice, add dialogue, add something so that the movie plays like more than a barely colored-in diagram.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Rookie
    Overlong, sadistic and stale even by the conventions of the buddy pic genre.
  15. Come Away
    As it is, the film feels simultaneously far too heavy and not at all substantial, a long, slow buildup to something wondrous that never comes.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Legacy
    The Legacy tries for an added dimension of satanic possession, but winds up a tame, suspenseless victim of its own lack of imagination.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Graffiti Bridge
    A half-baked retread of tired MTV imagery and childish themes.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    King Solomon's Mines
    Cannon’s remake of King Solomon’s Mines treads heavily in the footsteps of that other great modern hero, Indiana Jones – too heavily. Where Jones was deft and graceful in moving from crisis to crisis, King Solomon’s Mines is often clumsy with logic, making the action hopelessly cartoonish. Once painted into the corner, scenes don’t resolve so much as end before they spill into the next cliff-hanger.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ironweed
    Unrelentingly bleak, Ironweed is a film without an audience and no reason for being except its own self-importance. It's an event picture without the event. Whatever joy or redemption William Kennedy offered in his Pulitzer prize-winning novel is nowhere to be found, surprising since he wrote the screenplay.
  20. Lazy Susan
    Lazy Susan aims hazily between the sad-sack valentine likes of “Muriel’s Wedding” and something more satirically misanthropic, missing a target it never quite commits to in the first place.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bolero
    Poor Bo no sooner has her initial introduction to amour than the new lover gets gored in a sensitive location, putting him out of commission.
  22. Emerald Run
    Emerald Run is one of the weirdest hodgepodges to make its way to theater screens and digital platforms in quite some time.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Rhinestone
    Effortlessly living up to its title, Rhinestone is as artificial and synthetic a concoction as has ever made its way to the screen.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Oxford Blues
    Director-writer Robert Boris fails to establish a consistent tone to make his fairytale story believable.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Invaders from Mars
    Tobe Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars is an embarrassing combination of kitsch and boredom.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
    A virtual remake of the 1972 original, without that film's mounting suspense and excitement.
  27. Inheritance
    This overlong tale spends most of its nearly two hours as a somewhat draggy, talky mystery before finally deciding to be a thriller, with credibility lacking throughout.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band will attract some grown-up flower children of the 1960s who will soon find the Michael Schultz film to be a totally bubblegum and cotton candy melange of garish fantasy and narcissism.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The White Buffalo
    Production features arch scripting by Richard Sale (from his novel), stilted acting by the cast and forced direction by J. Lee Thompson.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Fine Mess
    Blake Edward’s obsession with the slapstick comedy genre has produced some all-time comedy classics and some best-forgotten clinkers. A Fine Mess belongs in the latter category.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »