Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Difret
    The unwillingness to let nuance communicate lends a flat quality to the drama here; after the initial crimes, suspense situations are simply lopped off prematurely, the action jumping clumsily to their aftermath.
  2. The Salt of the Earth
    Wim Wenders’ mastery of the documentary form is again on display in The Salt of the Earth.
  3. R100
    If a dominatrix is one who takes total control of her passive partner, then R100 is the cinematic equivalent of a kinky femme fatale in black leather and stiletto heels, cracking a whip and a smile.
  4. Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2
    Taken on its own loopy terms, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 can be a marvel, as To keeps his manic movers and shakers colliding and ricocheting in ever more elaborate permutations.
  5. The Water Diviner
    An often capriciously mixed cocktail of war film and cross-cultural family melodrama, The Water Diviner marks an ambitious if emotionally manipulative directing debut for Russell Crowe.
  6. Tip Top
    An utterly brazen mix of screwball comedy, film noir and sharp social commentary that hits its own strange bullseye more often than not, Bozon’s third full-length feature (and first since 2007’s WWI musical, “La France”) benefits immeasurably from actors willing to go as far out on a limb as their intrepid director.
  7. Maidan
    Beyond the film’s immediacy, “Maidan” is an impressive, bold treatment of a complex subject via rigidly formalist means
  8. The Search for General Tso
    Eventually, the quixotic “search” of the movie’s title seems secondary to that more arduous quest of so many Chinese-Americans to find their place in a country that did not always welcome them with open arms, and how food forged the path of least resistance.
  9. Tales of the Grim Sleeper
    What emerges, finally, is an urgent distress call from one of America’s many, predominately black inner cities cast adrift by decades of municipal neglect and institutional racism.
  10. Human Capital
    A slick, stylish drama, Human Capital starts as a class critique wrapped around a whodunit, and though the mystery elements have overtaken the social assessment by the final third, the pic remains an engrossing, stinging look at aspirational parvenus and the super-rich they emulate.
  11. Time Out of Mind
    Richard Gere goes slumming in the streets of Manhattan and emerges with one of his more remarkable performances in Time Out of Mind, a haunting piece of urban poetry that further confirms Oren Moverman as a socially conscious filmmaker of rare conviction and authority.
  12. Little Accidents
    Features a standout central performance by newcomer Boyd Holbrook (“The Host”), but suffers from predictable plotting and shallow characterizations that keep the movie from ever transcending the obvious.
  13. Black Sea
    As ruggedly crafted as you’d expect from director Kevin Macdonald, with a sturdy ensemble led by Jude Law as a submarine captain of formidable sangfroid, the film nonetheless never quite sparks to life.
  14. Red Knot
    As Red Knot (very) slowly unwinds, Thirlby conveys an impressive range of emotions through the eloquence of her facial expressions and body language. Like Kartheiser, however, she labors under the burden of playing a role that is more a vague concept than a fully developed character.
  15. She's Beautiful When She's Angry
    It’s to the credit of “She’s Beautiful” that it seems neither hectic nor glib despite the enormous amounts of material that doubtless had to be excluded to fit a single feature’s frame.
  16. The Physician
    For all the effort put into recreating the era in question — supported here by awe-inspiring visual effects work by Pixomondo — Jan Berger’s script still relies on simplistic emotional ploys and reductive characterizations... But then, such tactics proved perfectly acceptable in such hefty period offerings as “Braveheart” and “Gladiator,” and The Physician truly is a comparable achievement.
  17. Dying of the Light
    The only real tension you feel in Dying of the Light is that between the thoughtful, tough-minded character piece Schrader presumably thought he was making and the bruised, indifferent hackwork that has ultimately made it to the screen.
  18. The Foxy Merkins
    Olnek and collaborators share a genuinely offbeat sensibility, and The Foxy Merkins would have made a hilarious short. Yet it simply doesn’t come up with enough inventive scenes, let alone overall narrative spine, to sustain itself at feature length.
  19. The Barefoot Artist
    We get very little sense of her personal life... Nor do we get much insight into the evolution of her art, which looks fascinating in the glimpses afforded, but is viewed primarily in terms of community art therapy, rather than appreciated as an aesthetic end value in itself. Though these omissions frustrate a bit in retrospect, The Barefoot Artist is nonetheless an engrossing watch.
  20. The Pyramid
    Correctly ascertaining that auds will be less interested in the outcome than in the obstacles along the way, Levasseur plants and executes the pic’s exclamation-point scares with grinning, squelching gusto.
  21. Miss Julie
    The three thesps are impressive, with Chastain and Farrell delivering fevered performances that might have been knockouts on the boards, but in this respectfully flat approach feel a bit overscaled — you can see their virtuoso technique at work.
  22. An Open Secret
    The amazing invincibility of Hollywood-entrenched pedophiles creates a thematic unity of its own in Berg’s otherwise somewhat shakily constructed film.
  23. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    If none of the Hobbit films resonate with "Rings'" mythic grandeur, it’s hard not to marvel at Jackson’s facility with these characters and this world, which he seems to know as well as John Ford knew his Monument Valley, and to which he here bids an elegiac adieu.
  24. Unbroken
    A bit embalmed in its own nobility, it’s an extraordinary story told in dutiful, unexceptional terms, the passionate commitment of all involved rarely achieving gut-level impact.
  25. Exodus: Gods and Kings
    What’s remarkable about Scott’s genuinely imposing Old Testament psychodrama is the degree to which he succeeds in conjuring a mighty and momentous spectacle — one that, for sheer astonishment, rivals any of the lavish visions of ancient times the director has given us — while turning his own skepticism into a potent source of moral and dramatic conflict.
  26. Horse Money
    Working about as far as possible from the commercial mainstream of the movie business, Costa has again made a singular docu-fiction hybrid that defies classification as readily as it reimagines the possibilities of cinema for the post-spectacle, post-theatrical era.
  27. Little Hope Was Arson
    While the crimes were appalling, one leaves Little Hope Was Arson less concerned with them — especially as all the churches have since been rebuilt — than with larger questions of forgiveness.
  28. All Relative
    Even a brisk running time, barely topping 80 minutes, is too long to ask audiences to stay in the company of these characters and their terrible self-inflicted predicaments.
  29. The Mule
    In the end, The Mule is essentially a straightforward, somewhat overextended crime story enlivened by its uniquely grotesque circumstances (based on a true story, as noted at the beginning), and directed by Mahony in a lean, no-frills style that’s entirely convincing where it counts.
  30. Song of the Sea
    Song of the Sea is differentiated not only by its rich visual design — grayer and more subdued than “The Secret of Kells,” yet still a marvel to behold — but also by its ethereal musical dimension, another collaboration between composer Bruno Coulais and Irish folk band Kila.
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