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. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
    Consistently fascinating and suspenseful.
  2. That Demon Within
    Lam’s darkest work to date, one where violence is not just graphic but ugly, and Hong Kong symbolically comes to resemble a charnel house.
  3. Cesar's Last Fast
    While not necessarily the definitive cinematic account of Chavez’s life or the UFW movement, Cesar’s Last Fast provides a well-crafted, sometimes stirring encapsulation.
  4. Transcendence
    There are intriguing, half-formed ideas afoot in Transcendence, but the script and Pfister’s heavy, humorless direction tend to reduce everything to simplistic standoffs between good and evil.
  5. Heaven Is for Real
    Those willing to engage may be pleasantly surprised by some of its understated virtues.
  6. The Players
    The Players is an odd beast that, like all omnibus films, is only as strong as its weakest link.
  7. The Love Punch
    A creaky heist-caper comedy that hopes to get by on sunny amiability.
  8. The Sea
    [A] good, middlebrow adaptation — which, despite being scripted by Banville himself, sacrifices much of the novel’s structural intricacy for Masterpiece-style emotional accessibility.
  9. Magic Magic
    Meticulously acted, gorgeously shot and hilariously insightful about the strange, inarticulable ways people can get on one another’s nerves, this psychological thriller takes its premise to surprising, darkly comic extremes.
  10. Proxy
    Skirting horror and black-comedy terrain without quite surrendering to either, the pic proves rather bracing even if it doesn’t hold up to much plot-logic scrutiny.
  11. Perfect Sisters
    Stan Brooks’ first directorial feature provides scant psychological depth, drawing its characters and staging their incidents in crude fashion, despite superficial production gloss.
  12. Bad Country
    A blandly executed action-thriller whose cast names (Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe) and mild ’80s Louisiana flavor offer only modest compensations for the story’s workmanlike construction and routine twists.
  13. Bears
    Surely some of the film’s various incidents have been creatively stitched together from stray bits and pieces of footage, but its central conflict is an entirely organic one, and rarely is any offscreen string pulling distractingly evident.
  14. The King of Escape
    A marked strength of the movie is that it does succeed in making the unlikely central love affair believable within its own universe.
  15. A Fragile Trust
    [A] meticulous postmortem.
  16. Detonator
    The filmmakers etch the character dynamics so astutely that we never doubt the credibility of even the most ill-considered actions.
  17. Jinn
    [A] ponderously paced, needlessly convoluted and altogether unexceptional thriller.
  18. Alien Abduction
    A sci-fi thriller as generic as its title, Alien Abduction generates only low-voltage shocks.
  19. Ilo Ilo
    Anthony Chen is remarkably astute in his depiction of the class and racial tensions within such a household, his accessible style enabling the characters’ underlying decency and warmth to emerge unforced.
  20. Draft Day
    Draft Day affords the simple but uncommon pleasure of watching intelligent characters who are passionate about what they do trying to do the best that they can.
  21. Half of a Yellow Sun
    The rare prestige pic that could actually stand to be longer.
  22. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Redundancy remains a problem, but this overlong superhero sequel gets by on sound, fury and star chemistry.
  23. Hank and Asha
    Kakkar and Pastides generate a rooting interest in their characters, with compellingly persuasive performances.
  24. Policeman
    This fascinating but uneven pic has a conceptual rigor that doesn’t always translate into compelling viewing or even a smooth narrative whole. Nevertheless, it reps a strong debut from tyro helmer-writer Nadav Lapid.
  25. Fed Up
    A formulaic and functional documentary that nevertheless proves effective at getting the message out about America’s addiction to unhealthy food.
  26. Cold in July
    A superior piece of Texas pulp fiction that starts out like a house on fire, sags a bit in the middle, then rallies for an exuberantly bloody finish.
  27. A Promise
    Led by a trio of lackluster performances from Alan Rickman, Rebecca Hall and “Game of Thrones” thesp Richard Madden, this awkward, passionless drama conveys neither the sensuality nor the drawn-out sense of longing required by its period tale of a young secretary who falls in love with his employer’s wife.
  28. Watermark
    Despite the staggering range of material Watermark manages to present — Burtynsky’s five-year undertaking is certainly the most encompassing survey any one artist has ever dedicated to the subject — it’s still just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.
  29. In the Blood
    Pulses are likely to remain level during In the Blood, a serviceable vehicle for MMA champ Gina Carano.
  30. Afflicted
    A low-budget horror-thriller that’s resourceful enough to wring a few fresh chills from a slender premise and a less-than-novel formal conceit.
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