Variety's Scores

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For 17,777 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 2.4 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: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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  1. Tabu
    Even more than in "Our Beloved Month of August," Miguel Gomes begins Tabu in a seemingly ridiculous vein and unexpectedly shifts to something surprisingly enriching and poetic.
  2. Saving Grace B. Jones
    Most of what Stevens has concocted here is hard to take, notably the characters' curious relationship with the rain that threatens to drown Missouri, and serves as a soggy metaphor. Sometimes it only rains in half the frame; sometimes people coming out of downpours are wet, sometimes they're not; sometimes they're wet and it's not raining.
  3. Consuming Spirits
    This labor of love from do-it-all animator Chris Sullivan has the same rough-edged, cantankerous charms as the characters that populate it. Narrative alone is too uneven to captivate fully for the picture's two-hour-plus duration, though there's so much to see that "Spirits" should nonetheless prove a draw for adult audiences.
  4. Let Fury Have the Hour
    A curiously warm-and-fuzzy hindsight interpretation of artistic aggression, delivered by the artists themselves.
  5. Trashed
    Presented and narrated with warmth and welcome moments of humor by thesp Jeremy Irons, often seen wearing a hat that looks salvaged from a recycling bin, the picture delivers a judicious mix of human interest and useful statistics that will make it accessible to middle-class audiences.
  6. Django Unchained
    An immensely satisfying taste of antebellum empowerment packaged as spaghetti-Western homage... A bloody hilarious (and hilariously bloody) Christmas counter-programmer.
  7. Yelling to the Sky
    Strong on texture but taxingly light on narrative.
  8. Jack Reacher
    Reacher is a brawny action figure whose exploits would have been a good fit for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone back in the day, but feel less fun when delegated to a leading man like Tom Cruise. The star is too charismatic to play someone so cold-blooded, and his fans likely won't appreciate the stretch.
  9. The Art of Flight 3D
    Like most of the skiing and surfing documentaries that have come before it, the picture oversells its subject, the virtues of which are obvious. But armchair athletes will get a charge out the pure sensations here.
  10. Saving America's Horses: A Nation Betrayed
    Clearer, more thoughtful editing would have greatly enhanced the effectiveness of this sometimes-revelatory documentary.
  11. The Rabbi's Cat
    This feature-length 3D adaptation of Sfar's comicbook series shares many of the same virtues and problems of his solo, live-action helming debut, the biopic "Gainsbourg," in that it is often colorful, witty and inspired, but also too episodic, and lacks a strong ending.
  12. Wagner & Me
    For Fry, the music's complexity, ambiguity, innovation and humanity far surpass Wagner's personal limitations. He may not convince his viewers of the rightness of his conclusions, but he certainly makes a fervent case for the triumph of art over biography.
  13. Delhi Safari
    The picture all too obviously recycles bits and pieces from "Madagascar," "The Lion King" and other made-in-America toons. Unfortunately, much gets lost in the translation.
  14. Promised Land
    By manipulating their story to advance the cynical notion that you really can't trust anyone, the filmmakers inadvertently beg the question why their own motives should be so above suspicion.
  15. Les Miserables
    Yet for all its expected highs, the adaptation has been managed with more gusto than grace; at the end of the day, this impassioned epic too often topples beneath the weight of its own grandiosity.
  16. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
    A costumer that's well named for being pleasant and conventional but little more.
  17. On the Road
    Evocatively lensed, skillfully made and duly attentive to the mercurial qualities of its daunting source material, Walter Salles' picture pulses with youthful energy but feels overly calculated in its bid for spontaneity, attesting to the difficulty and perhaps futility of trying to reproduce Kerouac's literary lightning onscreen.
  18. Stand Up Guys
    Veering between buddy movie and action-thriller, Stand Up Guys is a mildly raunchy, modestly entertaining geriatric comedy.
  19. Any Day Now
    A stellar performance by Alan Cumming as the cross-dressing crooner-cum-caretaker is the picture's most marketable asset.
  20. Save the Date
    The film features a lead performance by Lizzy Caplan, who might be mistaken here for a graduate of the Zooey Deschanel School of Dramatic Arts.
  21. Elza (Le bonheur d'Elza)
    Suffused with buoyant, sunlit sensuality, like its free-flying heroine, Elza confounds logic while seducing the senses.
  22. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
    Jackson and his team seem compelled to flesh out the world of their earlier trilogy in scenes that would be better left to extended-edition DVDs (or omitted entirely), all but failing to set up a compelling reason for fans to return for the second installment.
  23. Tchoupitoulas
    Filmed over the course of nine months' worth of night shoots, the resulting coverage is hypnotically immersive.
  24. Talaash
    This thoroughly engrossing, highly anticipated picture boasts assured direction by sophomore helmer Reema Kagti, a well-constructed script by Kagti and fellow femme writer Zoya Akhtar, and strong thesping by familiar Bollywood luminaries Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukerji.
  25. Silent Night
    Trouble is, apart from some modestly inventive carnage and an undeniably humorous hambone turn by Malcolm McDowell, there's really nothing here to make genre fans dash through the snow (or maneuver through traffic) to megaplexes before the low-budget, high-concept Canadian production's Dec. 4 homevid release.
  26. What a Man
    The leads jell well but the film overcompensates to justify their union, surrounding them with broadly drawn secondary characters presented in an uncertain, inconsistent comic tone.
  27. Certainty
    Valerie Harper essays a Catholic twist on her yakkety yenta "Rhoda" persona, while Giancarlo Esposito, as the wise, hip priest heading the retreat, is called upon to bring believability to a film low in that commodity.
  28. This Is 40
    Judd Apatow's instincts have rarely been sharper, wiser or more relatable than in This Is 40, an acutely perceptive, emotionally generous laffer about the joys and frustrations of marriage and middle age.
  29. Waiting for Lightning
    A slickly produced, unabashedly celebratory picture about professional skateboarder Danny Way.
  30. Lay the Favorite
    Rebecca Hall's enjoyably bubbly lead performance lends the picture an occasional frisson of amusement.
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