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. The Two Faces of January
    Best known as the screenwriter of such subtext-rich adaptations as “The Wings of the Dove” and “Drive,” Amini excels at conveying the subtle, unspoken tensions between characters, selecting a tightrope-risky example with which to make his directorial debut and orchestrating it with aplomb.
  2. After the Dark
    Credit for being offbeat can only do so much to redeem a neither-fish-nor-fowl bore like After the Dark, whose exploitable elements go tastefully unexploited while its gestures toward profundity turn out to be playing air guitar.
  3. About Last Night
    The actors give the proceedings a mostly quick-witted repartee that prevails over the occasionally stale script.
  4. Endless Love
    In “The Greatest” (2009) and “Country Strong” (2010), Feste proved herself quite skilled, if not especially innovative, at limning her characters’ emotional travails. But subtlety, complexity and even the slightest modicum of realism elude her here.
  5. Haunt
    Following on the coattails of “The Conjuring” and “Insidious,” Haunt is a classical haunted-house thriller with perhaps little that’s out of the ordinary for the genre, but occasionally inventive execution.
  6. Cesar Chavez
    Neither Pena nor the pic itself delivers the necessary dynamism, strained by a modest budget and too few extras to sufficiently re-create a movement that found strength in numbers.
  7. Winter's Tale
    The best miracles are those that creep up on you unexpectedly rather than endlessly announcing themselves, and the ones in Winter’s Tale are fatally obvious and self-congratulatory.
  8. Yves Saint Laurent
    Clothes make the man, but can’t save the film, in Yves Saint Laurent, in which the life of one of haute couture’s great innovators gets disappointingly by-the-numbers treatment.
  9. '71
    A vivid, shivery survival thriller that turns the red-brick residential streets of Belfast into a war zone of unconscionable peril.
  10. Adult World
    The improvisational zeal with which Cusack approaches his role (absent from his miscast villainous turn in “The Paperboy”) is particularly fun to watch.
  11. Papirosen
    Solnicki demonstrates that a work of art can be made from the humble materials of home-shot video and various 8mm formats, especially when the eye and ear behind the camera are as observant and unabashed as they are here.
  12. Listen Up Philip
    It’s a familiar tale, but one told by Perry with immense filmmaking verve and novelistic flourish, and acted by an exceptional ensemble cast.
  13. A Long Way Down
    It’s worse than tacky, trivializing depression for a handful of easy laughs and pop-psychology platitudes.
  14. Vampire Academy
    Mead’s six Vampire Academy books (there’s also an ongoing spinoff series, “Bloodlines”) are relatively brainy and complex within their young-adult subgenre, but their virtues have been reduced to a derivative hash here.
  15. The Attorney
    The pacing gradually accelerates after a leisurely first act, so that The Attorney easily sustains interest, and often stirs emotions.
  16. Demi-Soeur
    French actress-writer-director Josiane Balasko plunges in with all the finesse of a hopped-up Pollyanna, her simplistic interpretation of an impaired sexagenarian coming close to outright parody.
  17. Mars at Sunrise
    Suliman (“Paradise Now,” “The Attack”) dominates the screen as Khaled, utterly compelling in and out of jail, his magnificent perf tying up cinematic loose ends.
  18. Cavemen
    An utterly unevolved romantic comedy, “Cavemen” tries to split the difference between raunchy and sweet and fails miserably on all counts.
  19. The Grand Budapest Hotel
    A captivating 1930s-set caper whose innumerable surface pleasures might just seduce you into overlooking its sly intelligence and depth of feeling.
  20. Love & Air Sex
    This more broadly appealing project feels daringly frank on the subject of sex. But as is frequently the case with the most saturnalian comedies, it’s actually quite conservative when it comes to allowing its characters to follow through on their uninhibited talk.
  21. The Babadook
    This meticulously designed and directed debut feature from writer-director Jennifer Kent (expanded from her award-winning short, “Monster”) manages to deliver real, seat-grabbing jolts while also touching on more serious themes of loss, grief and other demons that can not be so easily vanquished.
  22. The Dance of Reality
    At more than two hours, The Dance of Reality unquestionably has its longueurs, but on balance it is alive with enough images and ideas for several movies — as if Jodorowsky were afraid he might have to wait 20 more years before making another.
  23. RoboCop
    It’s a less playful enterprise than the original, but meets the era’s darker demands for action reboots with machine-tooled efficiency and a hint of soul.
  24. Mr. Peabody & Sherman
    The narrative’s time-travel element allows for plenty of fluffy, fleet-footed action.
  25. The LEGO Movie
    Phil Lord and Christopher Miller irreverently deconstruct the state of the modern blockbuster and deliver a smarter, more satisfying experience in its place, emerging with a fresh franchise for others to build upon.
  26. A Field in England
    Clearly, Wheatley is bored with the paint-by-numbers approach of his horror contemporaries, but has swung so far in the opposite direction here, the result feels almost amateurishly avant garde at times, guilty of the sort of indulgences one barely tolerates in student films.
  27. Jai Ho
    There’s nothing easier to like than a tear-jerking, action-packed melodrama that knows no shame. But a minimal amount of skill and sensitivity are required.
  28. Charlie Victor Romeo
    The screenwriter/playwrights have processed the characters’ last words in ways that imbue them with as much humanity as possible.
  29. Peter Brook: The Tightrope
    There’s no doubting Brook and the performers’ commitment to their craft, even if the end result is somewhat repetitive.
  30. Jobriath A.D.
    While the subject remains something of an enigma offstage, this absorbing and deftly crafted documentary compels interest throughout.
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