Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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  1. Big Men
    Rachel Boynton’s extraordinary Big Men should come tagged with a warning: The side effects of global capitalism may include dizziness, nausea and seething outrage.
  2. Vehicle 19
    Neither particularly fast nor furious.
  3. Hatchet III
    There’s something curiously underwhelming about the blood-soaked mayhem on display in Hatchet III.
  4. What Maisie Knew
    Anchored by five strong performances, including a piercing turn by Onata Aprile in the 6-year-old title role, this beautifully observed drama essentially strikes the same sad note for 98 minutes, though with enough sensitivity and emotional variation to make the experience cumulatively heartrending rather than merely aggravating.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    More Than Honey
    Most striking in “Honey” are closeups of the bees in their hives, symbiotically working together in creating their new queen: Imhoof rightfully spends time detailing the extraordinary nature of bee social structure.
  6. Man of Steel
    The humorless tone and relentlessly noisy (visually and sonically) aesthetics leave much to be desired.
  7. Some Girl(s)
    Each member of the ensemble offers a vividly detailed performance resounding with emotional truth, delivering lengthy swaths of LaBute’s sometimes savagely furious, sometimes shocking funny dialogue with pitch-perfect degrees of intensity.
  8. Aliyah
    [An] intimate and dexterous debut feature.
  9. Pandora's Promise
    Some parts of the film are drily academic, but much of it is quite beautiful and artfully put together by the director.
  10. The Gardener
    A stimulating and highly accessible cinematic conversation.
  11. Grabbers
    A polished, watchable genre entertainment that nonetheless lacks the inspired dialogue and situations needed to make a memorable impression.
  12. Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    An entertaining, affectionate documentary created by three self-professed fanboys, which proves as nostalgic for the host himself as for a bygone broadcast era, before the reality-TV explosion allowed the inmates to fully take over the asylum.
  13. The Prey
    Gallic helmer Eric Valette (“State Affairs”) invests this giddily implausible crime yarn with a propulsive sense of energy.
  14. Monsters University
    Even when the story mechanics feel more than a bit secondhand, the exquisite interplay of vibrant pastel hues and almost photorealist textures (smoothly but not crucially enhanced in 3D) makes the film a continual pleasure to behold.
  15. Rapture-Palooza
    More irrelevant than irreverent, the unworthy script from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s” Chris Matheson might play to apocalyptically stoned college kids, but offers nothing in the way of broader social satire, suggesting the waste of a perfectly good Reckoning — not to mention the talents of a cast far funnier than the doom-and-gloom results suggest.
  16. Tiger Eyes
    For a certain type of contemplative teen girl, its sensitive handling of heavy material will surely prove affecting, though the picture sometimes veers too far to the sleepy end of low-key.
  17. Fame High
    Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy (“The Garden”) favors formulaic uplift over investigation, failing to offer a p.o.v. on whether young creative people should be driven as mercilessly as these. Lackluster videography further dulls the pic, which culminates in frustratingly fleeting glimpses of the students’ year-end performances.
  18. World War Z
    Emerges as a surprisingly smart, gripping and imaginative addition to the zombie-movie canon, owing as much to scientific disaster movies like “The China Syndrome” and “Contagion” as it does to undead ur-texts like the collected works of George Romero.
  19. The Purge
    The film’s thudding shocks and predictability dull its edge.
  20. Blackfish
    Righteous, captivating and entirely successful as single-issue-focused documentaries go, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s film draws on startling video footage and testimonies from former orca trainers, building an authoritative argument on behalf of this majestic species.
  21. The Rambler
    Bursting with cheap f/x, the pic is often tedious when not repugnant, but it’s hard to dislike.
  22. This Is the End
    This directing debut for co-writers Rogen and Evan Goldberg offsets its slightly smug premise with a clever sense of self-parody and near-cataclysmic levels of vulgarity.
  23. Wish You Were Here
    Despite its dubious inhabitants, the film consistently entertains by throwing the kinds of curves one should see coming but doesn’t.
  24. The Internship
    This big-hearted underdog comedy from director Shawn Levy is, much like its two leads, exceedingly affable and good-natured despite being undeniably long in the tooth.
  25. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
    Though Resnais’ gamble seems to have failed, it’s encouraging to see a director on the brink of 90 still willing to experiment in a way most helmers half his age wouldn’t dare.
  26. Dirty Wars
    It takes pains to make the political personal, forging the viewer’s identification with Scahill by making persistent use of his voiceover narration and keeping him oncamera throughout.
  27. Now You See Me
    Thanks to some accomplished hocus pocus and an appealing cast, this would-be “Ocean’s Eleven” of the magic world remains watchable throughout, even as it plods along without ever quite fulfilling its potential.
  28. Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
    Helmers Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin... don’t quite get to the issues behind the trio’s infamous performance at the historic Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow last year, but the young women’s vulnerability and defiance make for stirring viewing.
  29. Call Me Kuchu
    While a local filmmaker’s perspective may have brought more dimensions, the coverage of events here is impressive and on the mark.
  30. After Earth
    Shyamalan is clearly a director-for-hire here, his disinterest palpable from first frame to last. Nowhere in evidence is the gifted "Sixth Sense" director who once brought intricately crafted setpieces and cinematic sleight-of-hand to even the least of his own movies.
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