Variety's Scores

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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
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  1. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    Opening half-hour has some of the best stuff in the movie, walking a precarious line between black irony and showing the war from a totally German viewpoint, without tipping over into gallows humor or parody.
  2. Pray the Devil Back to Hell
    Gini Reticker's lucidly impassioned film, filled with strong, eloquent spokeswomen, garnered Tribeca's docu award.
  3. Milk
    Brolin's work is superlatively expressive of the inchoate impulses roiling inside his sorry character. But good as most of the cast is, the show belongs squarely to Penn.
  4. Wendy and Lucy
    "Old Joy" helmer Kelly Reichardt plays to her strengths in Wendy and Lucy, a modest yet deeply felt road movie about an idealistic young drifter, her faithful canine and the wide-open spaces of the Pacific Northwest.
  5. Moscow, Belgium
    Accomplished freshman outing by Flemish TV director Christophe van Rompaey features a knockout perf from actress Barbara Sarafian ("8½ Women").
  6. Of Time and the City
    Result is by turns moving, droll and charming, and niftily assembled, but not necessarily that profound.
  7. Eleven Minutes
    A skillfully crafted, highly entertaining documentary.
  8. 12
    Expansively, dramatically, magnificently Russian, Nikita Mikhalkov's loose remake of "12 Angry Men" plays like vintage jazz from a veteran band.
  9. Lemon Tree
    The rare ability to make intelligent, entertaining cinema from hot-button current issues is beautifully illustrated by Lemon Tree.
  10. Earth
    A ravishing distillation of the BBC/Discovery series "Planet Earth," docu brings to the large screen memorable images that cried out on TV for the full movie-going experience.
  11. O'Horten
    On screen non-stop, Owe is Buster Keaton-like perfection.
  12. Jerichow
    A tightly constructed "dramatic thriller" in which the tension comes as much from what the characters are thinking as from what they end up doing, Jerichow again confirms writer-helmer Christian Petzold ("Yella," "The State I Am In") as a world-class talent who remains underappreciated beyond Germany.
  13. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
    More than anything a fascinating portrait of how much New York has changed in 35 years, the film delivers the goods in excitement and big-star charisma.
  14. Easy Virtue
    An effervescent entertainment that marks a welcome return for "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" director Stephan Elliott after a nine-year absence.
  15. Lorna's Silence
    The film doesn't pack the same cumulative wallop as the brothers' earlier work, but its low-key artistry, immaculate construction and fine performance by relative newcomer Arta Dobroshi should rouse the usual fest acclaim and arthouse interest.
  16. Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
    Aussie genre pics of the 1970s and '80s get a rip-roaring salute in Not Quite Hollywood, complete with endorsement by Quentin Tarantino as chief onscreen fanboy.
  17. Bandslam
    High school musicals have their scrappiest number in Bandslam, an awkward, earnest, almost irresistible indie.
  18. Shorts
    More zippy, diverting fun from Robert Rodriguez's family filmmaking factory.
  19. Earth Days
    A moving, elegiac, deeply contemplative work that leaves the viewer not with a save-the-world checklist, but rather a spirit of hopeful reflection.
  20. Five Minutes of Heaven
    Powerhouse performances by Liam Neeson and James Nesbit make this an intense, ultimately moving tale.
  21. We Live in Public
    This astounding new documentary burrows into the thin and darkly funny spaces between artistry and vanity, isolation and community, collaboration and exploitation, sanity and madness.
  22. Amreeka
    A culture-clash dramedy whose background in Middle-East conflict is leavened with vibrant energy, balanced politics and droll humor by first-time feature director Cherien Dabis.
  23. Crude
    Picture makes an engrossing case for justice.
  24. You, the Living
    Results are painfully amusing, frequently random and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious.
  25. Good Hair
    A raucous and rigorous inquiry into the subject of African-American hair -- the stigmas, the secrets, the shocking price of maintenance -- that gets at universal but rarely discussed truths about black femininity.
  26. The Nightmare Before Christmas
    If it were a normal holiday animated film, The Nightmare Before Christmas would be an entertaining, amusing, darker-than-usual offering indicating that Disney was willing to deviate slightly from its tried-and-true family-fare formula. But the dazzling techniques employed here create a striking look that’s never been seen in such sustained form, making this a unique curio that will appeal to kids and film enthusiasts alike.
  27. A Prophet
    Though less pleasurably offbeat than the helmer’s well-received “Read My Lips” and “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” this is solid, sinewy pulp fiction.
  28. The Secret of Kells
    With its jewel-bright colors and intricate use of lines, the result is absolutely luscious to behold.
  29. Mid-August Lunch
    A surefire pleaser for crowds of a certain age.
  30. The Eclipse
    A film of such seductive grace, humor and startling side trips into buttocks-clenching ghastliness that auds won't know what to make of it (although it won't keep them from wanting to visit Ireland immediately).
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