Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,765 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: 9,125 out of 17765
  2. Mixed: 7,004 out of 17765
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17765
17765 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Enzo Avitabile Music Life
    Unlike Demme’s concert pics, this aims more for the process, yet brief scenes “in the old neighborhood” play out like cliches, and only Avitabile’s restlessness really lingers.
  2. Hellbenders
    Hellbenders becomes what it intends to burlesque, and that’s not so damn funny, even with 3D gimmickry.
  3. Haunter
    Director Vincenzo Natali (“Splice”) is more effective at sustaining clammy suspense than hiding all the holes in Brian King’s script. But top-billed Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) is effective enough to generate a rooting interest in the plucky protagonist of the piece, and to sustain interest when narrative logic turns fuzzy.
  4. Peaches Does Herself
    This high-grade concert film will enthrall fans and amuse more open-minded newbies, though it suffers from the most dynamic material being largely clustered in the pic’s front section.
  5. American Promise
    American Promise succeeds in touching on a wealth of subjects without overreaching.
  6. The Human Scale
    If Dalsgaard’s advocacy of Gehl’s utopian vision largely ignores the socioeconomic forces arrayed against it, the film should nevertheless enthuse pedestrians, bike riders and public-space proponents everywhere.
  7. Bounty Killer
    Cheerfully gory, derivative and silly, Bounty Killer aspires to nothing more or less than trashy fun for genre fans, and this umpteenth “Mad Max”-style dystopian actioner delivers on that modest but admirable score
  8. Cut to Black
    Although the film wears its dated genre affectations on its sleeve, the script avoids pretension, its hero’s believably alienated exhaustion overriding mere nostalgia.
  9. I'm in Love with a Church Girl
    The road to hell is paved with well-intentioned clunkers like I’m in Love with a Church Girl, a strenuously sincere but tediously schematic and heavy-handed attempt at cinematic proselytizing for Christianity.
  10. Boss
    The deafening Bollywood action comedy Boss, directed in broad, heavy strokes by Anthony D’Souza (“Blue”), is a relentless hard-sell star vehicle, a two-and-half-hour string of sledgehammer fighting and dancing sequences.
  11. Lost for Words
    Sufficiently sweet to serve as a date movie for all ages, Lost for Words comes across as almost subversively retrograde in its old-fashioned approach to charting the slow blossoming of a cross-cultural romance.
  12. 2 Jacks
    Slack narrative and abysmal dialogue render the vague generational satire meaningless to anyone unfamiliar with Tolstoy’s work (and depressing to those in the know).
  13. Saving Mr. Banks
    It’s a bit square, never particularly surprising, yet very rich in its sense of creative people and their spirit of self-reinvention.
  14. Life According to Sam
    A straightforward, solidly crafted inspirational tale.
  15. The Taiwan Oyster
    Disguised as a drunken cartwheel through expat paradise, Mark Jarrett’s striking feature juggles questions of mortality along its rowdy cross-country path.
  16. Seduced and Abandoned
    Spirited, highly amusing and endearingly shambolic.
  17. CZ12
    Taking more than a dozen credits, including helmer-scribe, Jackie Chan emerges a Jackie-of-all-trades and master of none.
  18. One Chance
    What keeps One Chance plugging along almost in spite of itself are the warmly engaging performances of Corden and Alexandra Roach.
  19. Carrie
    Director Kimberly Peirce’s intermittently effective third feature eschews De Palma’s diabolical wit and voluptuous style in favor of a somber, straight-faced retelling, steeped in a now-familiar horror-movie idiom of sharp objects, shuddering sound effects and dark rivulets of blood.
  20. Belle
    That the film still works as well as it does is due to not only its polished craftsmanship and disarming comedy-of-manners approach, but also its fascinating insights into the conflicted mindset of British society
  21. Escape Plan
    Mercifully free of tongue-in-cheek meta-humor, Escape Plan is a likably lunkheaded meat-and-potatoes brawler that never pretends to be more sophisticated than it is.
  22. Ghost Team One
    An aggressively obnoxious tone undermines a decent concept and appealing cast.
  23. Symphony of the Soil
    Koons Garcia has obviously opted for an upbeat approach: Choruses of scientists and farmers sing the praises of organic farming while John Chater’s camera visually devours the fruits, vegetables and livestock produced by healthy dirt.
  24. Torn
    Performances and presentation are solid enough, but the pic feels a bit undernourished, particularly once it closes on a note that’s well intentioned but provides no real resolution.
  25. Toad Road
    Though it can be taken at first glance as an archetypal “nothing happening” movie, there’s just enough going on here to suggest repeat viewings might reward curiosity.
  26. The Secret Lives of Dorks
    Winning performances by a number of fresh-faced newcomers are almost but not quite enough to recommend The Secret Lives of Dorks, a fitfully amusing, more often shrill and overstated teen comedy that, like its dweeby protagonist, tries too hard to impress.
  27. Our Day Will Come
    Once it’s evident that there’s hardly a point to all the random mischief — or that the point is precisely that there isn’t one — the idea of watching a pair of grown men inflect violence upon innocent bystanders feels awfully tedious
  28. CBGB
    Transforms the glory days of Hilly Kristal’s Bowery punk/No Wave club into exactly the sort of moldy sitcom one might expect from writer-director Randall Miller.
  29. Sweetwater
    Fancy-sounding dialogue and handsome widescreen lensing goes only so far to disguise the shallowness of the underlying material.
  30. The Snitch Cartel
    A snazzy, fast-paced pic that’s nonetheless somewhat enslaved by the get-rich-quick and crime-doesn’t-pay cliches that finally trip up the lowlife protags.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »