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. Scheherazade Tell Me a Story
    Though treating women's oppression as a political issue isn't exactly new, the clarity with which it's spelled out in Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story is both bold and brave.
  2. Summer Pasture
    A remarkably intimate documentary woven out of tradition and change, and the endearing subjects who contend with both.
  3. Iron Crows
    Virtually an experimental film -- the humanity is rich, but pure image and sensation are what makes it tick.
  4. Le Havre
    Mixing together some of helmer Aki Kaurismaki's favorite Gallic and Finnish thesps with a few newbies, Le Havre feels like a welcoming family reunion.
  5. Undefeated
    Enjoyably upbeat and intelligently inspiring.
  6. Miss Bala
    With the blistering firecracker that is Miss Bala, next-gen Mexican director and AFI grad Gerardo Naranjo delivers on the promise of such well-respected early pics as "Drama/Mex" and "I'm Gonna Explode," revealing them as dry runs for this "Scarface"-scary depiction of south-of-the-border crime run amok.
  7. Bobby Fischer Against the World
    Assembly is brisk and high-grade, allowing for the variable quality of archival materials.
  8. Position Among the Stars
    As with his previous pics about the brood, Dutch-Indonesian helmer Leonard Retel Helmrich deploys an expressionistic, quasi-soap-opera approach to produce striking results, thanks especially to use of Steadicam. But the protagonists seem to be playing to the cameras more this time round, making "Stars" a less charming effort than earlier installments.
  9. Hope Springs
    Hope Springs is an altogether pleasant surprise: a mainstream dramedy that frankly and intelligently addresses the challenges facing a couple after 31 years of marriage.
  10. The Raid: Redemption
    Taking the genre to a higher level of intensity, the Welsh-born Evans continues what he started in previous Indonesia-set actioner "Merantau," but this picture will seal his cult status.
  11. There Was Once...
    Hungarian schoolteacher Gyongi Mago's campaign to raise awareness of her hometown's once-vibrant, now conspicuously absent Jewish population is captured in the superior docu There Was Once ...
  12. Inni
    Whereas 2007's well-traveled "Heima" reveled in scenic color imagery of the artists' homeland, this minimalist item strips the band down to its output, fashioning black-and-white performance footage into a uniquely spellbinding experience.
  13. Argo
    Ultimately, the thrill of Argo is in watching how the illusion-making of movies found such an unlikely application on the world political stage, where the stakes were literally life and death.
  14. Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone
    Effortlessly entertaining.
  15. The Nine Muses
    Akomfrah's steady, patient pace makes it fairly easy and ultimately fascinating to absorb his many heady references.
  16. Elevate
    Hoop dreams die hard, and the stories in Elevate are both sobering and thrilling.
  17. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    When this "Enemy Within" settles into key action sequences, such as a stunning nighttime ambush or a daytime battle against Fabio, it becomes wildly entertaining.
  18. Trouble with the Curve
    A defiantly analog rejoinder to last year's tech-savvy baseball drama, "Moneyball," Robert Lorenz's square but sturdy directing debut rests on the wonderfully spiky chemistry between Eastwood and Amy Adams.
  19. Oranges and Sunshine
    A deeply moving study of emotionally scarred adults who were illegally deported as children to Australia from Britain in the 1940s and '50s.
  20. Into the Abyss
    These days, true-crime docs are a dime a dozen, and yet, returning to the "In Cold Blood" analogy, Into the Abyss dares to plumb the dark hole in America's soul. Herzog's investigation may not work as an anti-death-penalty editorial, but its findings are undeniably profound.
  21. Warm Bodies
    Hoping to do for flesh-eaters what "The Twilight Saga" did for vampires, albeit on a smaller scale, writer-director Jonathan Levine spins Isaac Marion's novel into a broadly appealing date movie about a zombified Romeo and his lively Juliet.
  22. Magic Mike
    Ladies are gonna love Magic Mike, a lively male-stripper meller inspired by Channing Tatum's late-teen, pre-screen stint as an exotic dancer.
  23. The Love We Make
    The former Beatle, a longtime Maysles friend, could have found no better documentarian.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945)
    Here is an excellent film whose basic story could have been told within normal feature limits, but which, instead, is extended close to three hours. Longer or shorter, this panorama of British army life is depicted with a technical skill and artistry that marks it as one of the really fine pix to come out of a British studio.
  25. Being Flynn
    The film surrounds its leads with a cast whose faces capture the ragtag dignity Flynn described in his book -- no overacting required, no emotional panhandling allowed.
  26. The Yellow Sea
    Gushing more blood and possessing more stamina than any number of Hollywood hack-'em-ups, writer-director Na Hong-jin's pulse-pounding, mordantly funny genre piece is at times messily convoluted, yet serious and full-bodied enough to achieve a genuinely tragic dimension.
  27. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    Though its glacial pacing will represent a significant hurdle for many viewers, the film grows steadily more involving as dawn breaks and the men make their way back home, and its unflinching observations of the legal and medical establishment at work frequently rivet. Visually, it's as gorgeous a film as Ceylan has made.
  28. Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
    A celebration and a lament -- a celebration of Channing's seven decades as musical comedy star, and a lament that there's really no one like her anymore.
  29. Black Butterflies
    The uncompromising power of Ingrid Jonker's poetry runs like a pulsing vein through Black Butterflies.
  30. The Kid with a Bike
    The breakout here is 13-year-old Doret, the Dardennes' latest stunningly naturalistic, non-professional acting discovery.
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