Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. The Yellow Sea
    Gushing more blood and possessing more stamina than any number of Hollywood hack-'em-ups, writer-director Na Hong-jin's pulse-pounding, mordantly funny genre piece is at times messily convoluted, yet serious and full-bodied enough to achieve a genuinely tragic dimension.
  2. Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
    The late Chogyam Trungpa's very colorful life makes for a most engaging narrative here.
  3. A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    Part personal quest, part testimonial and part fund-raiser, A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps fulfills disparate agendas for helmer Dina Rosenmeier, a mildly resentful daughter wondering why her humanitarian mother prioritized orphaned Indian children over her own offspring.
  4. Answers to Nothing
    Stitching together a quilt of stories involving disparate Angelenos in the mode of "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts" and myriad other crisscrossers, this somber drama is well crafted and watchable but lacks the distinctive story content, style and standout performances to become more than a serviceable reboot of familiar ideas.
  5. Lads & Jockeys
    A must for the equine-inclined, and a candid look at fearful ambition.
  6. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    An inventive, meaty distillation of Le Carre's 1974 novel, picture turns hero George Smiley's hunt for a mole within Blighty's MI6 into an incisive examination of Cold War ethics, rich in both contempo resonance and elegiac melancholy.
  7. W.E.
    Burdened with risible dialogue and weak performances, picture doesn't have much going for it apart from lavish production design and terrific, well-researched costumes -- and it's in focus, which is more than can be said for the script.
  8. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    An exquisitely realized adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel. In a rigorously subtle performance as a woman coping with the horrific damage wrought by her psychopathic son, Tilda Swinton anchors the dialogue-light film with an expressiveness that matches her star turn in "I Am Love."
  9. The Big Fix
    Alternately gutsy and preachy, specific and scattered, the righteously angry pic risks alienating those who could be galvanized by its proof of Big Oil's corrupting omnipotence.
  10. Outrage
    Focusing on the absurdly ultraviolent tit-for-tat tussles among a trio of Tokyo crime families, the film is a beautifully staged marvel that confidently reasserts Kitano's considerable cinematic gifts.
  11. The Lady
    This handsomely mounted picture is, at nearly 2 1/2 hours, far too long and indigestible for a film whose protagonist spends most of her screen time under house arrest.
  12. We Bought a Zoo
    We Bought a Zoo is an odd bird, warm-blooded but largely lifeless.
  13. The Iron Lady
    Fuzzy-headed biopic, which glosses over the former British prime minister's politics in favor of a glib, breakneck whirl around her career and marriage.
  14. Knuckle
    As anthropology lessons go, Knuckle is strong stuff, and it's easy to accept Palmer's conclusion that the problem he's showing us may well have no solution.
  15. Romantics Anonymous
    A delicious comedy-romance with a sweet-toothed twist from Gallic director Jean-Pierre Ameris ("Lightweight").
  16. The Artist
    A love letter to silent cinema sealed with a smirk, The Artist reteams director Michel Hazanavicius with dapper "OSS 117" star Jean Dujardin for another high-concept homage, delivering a heartfelt, old-school romance without the aid of spoken dialogue or sound.
  17. Hugo
    In attempting to make his first film for all ages, Martin Scorsese has fashioned one for the ages. Simultaneously classical and modern, populist but also unapologetically personal, Hugo flagrantly defies the mind-numbing quality of most contempo kidpics.
  18. The Muppets
    An unexpected treat. Bright and perky, cheeky but never mean-spirited.
  19. Dzi Croquettes
    Resembling an all-male late-20th-century version of the Ziegfeld Follies, the cabaret group Dzi Croquettes used an empowering sexuality to counter Brazil's military dictatorship. Dzi Croquettes -- the Documentary is Tatiana Issa and Raphael Alvarez's pleasure-packed exploration of the group's impact.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Lie
    Thinly amusing tale with not-especially-appealing characters.
  21. In Heaven Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery
    Her (Wauer) attempt to relieve uncomfortable events with happy stories makes for a disturbing superficiality, and a "make your own Jewish grave" student project is plain offensive. Score is omnipresent and insufferable.
  22. The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch
    Euro-financed production throws large chunks of change at a corporate espionage saga spanning several continents, yet most of the money seems to have landed in locations, with too little allocated to the script and stunt departments.
  23. Eames: The Architect & The Painter
    Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey's sprightly documentary weighs its subjects' unique accomplishments and widespread influence while probing a relationship more complex than its sunny public face indicated.
  24. Happy Feet Two
    Though it retains the buoyant musical stylings and splendid visuals that made its predecessor so distinctive, this chatterbox of a sequel loses its way with a raft of annoying side characters for which the slender narrative framework provides far too indulgent a showcase.
  25. Rampart
    While the film is drenched in atmosphere and packs a verbal and visceral punch, its relentless downward spiral makes for an overdetermined, not entirely satisfying character study.
  26. A Dangerous Method
    This complex story from the early days of psychoanalysis engrosses and even amuses as it unfolds through a series of conversations, treatment sessions and exchanged letters.
  27. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    All the more disappointing, then, that a story so pregnant with dramatic possibilities should wind up feeling like such an unconsummated opportunity. Drawn from Stephenie Meyer's polarizing, weirdly compelling fourth novel, the film is rich in surface pleasures but lacks any palpable sense of darkness or danger.
  28. Dragonslayer
    The film observes a guy verging on poverty or riches with a bounty of beautiful imagery and fresh angles on skateboarding culture.
  29. 11-11-11
    One and one (and one and one and one and one) never quite add up to two in Darren Lynn Bousman's 11-11-11, a rather anemic entry in the biblical-prophecy horror subgenre.
  30. A Novel Romance
    Grotesquely straining to ridicule and validate its hero simultaneously, A Novel Romance will disappoint even Guttenberg diehards.
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