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. God's Fiddler: Jascha Heifetz
    Once Heifetz becomes a household name, Rosen struggles mightily to milk drama not from his musical genius, but from his relatively unremarkable personal life.
  2. The Greening of Whitney Brown
    This simplistic story of bucolic redemption has few pretensions to depth, ambiguity or realism, relying on its name cast, sprightly lead and a helluva horse to attract family audiences.
  3. The Love We Make
    The former Beatle, a longtime Maysles friend, could have found no better documentarian.
  4. Jack and Jill
    Yet the picture's general stupidity, careless direction and reliance on a single-joke premise that was never really funny to begin with are only the most obvious of its problems.
  5. Arthur Christmas
    Arthur Christmas embraces this unconditional faith and rewards it with creative explanations and a brisk computer-animated adventure clever enough to become essential yuletide viewing.
  6. Immortals
    Navigating the film's mounting erotic bloodlust proves tedious, until the show-stopping final battle between gods and Titans in one chamber, Theseus and Hyperion in another, at which point logic melts away completely and the pic's raison d'etre emerges -- namely, to justify staging a fight scene for the ages.
  7. Barbershop Punk
    Topolski and his story are so engaging that the resulting discord of voices and agendas can't drown out the voice of the little guy questioning the system.
  8. Dog Sweat
    Great for ADD-style viewing but not for advancing Iranian cinema's currently challenged profile.
  9. Letters from the Big Man
    Surely the least excitable beauty-meets-Bigfoot film ever made.
  10. Shame
    A mesmerizing companion piece to his 2008 debut, "Hunger," this more approachable but equally uncompromising drama likewise fixes its gaze on the uses and abuses of the human body, as Michael Fassbender again strips himself down, in every way an actor can, for McQueen's rigorous but humane interrogation.
  11. Haywire
    Paring down narrative and character concerns in favor of a breathtaking application of pure thriller technique, Soderbergh's latest picture is a lean, efficient exercise tossed off with his customary sangfroid and wickedly dry sense of humor.
  12. London Boulevard
    The result is a superficially handsome crime thriller that doesn't tick, although it's got a pretty, jeweled face, and some clever scripting by William Monahan (scribe of "The Departed"), making his directorial debut here.
  13. Into the Abyss
    These days, true-crime docs are a dime a dozen, and yet, returning to the "In Cold Blood" analogy, Into the Abyss dares to plumb the dark hole in America's soul. Herzog's investigation may not work as an anti-death-penalty editorial, but its findings are undeniably profound.
  14. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    When this "Enemy Within" settles into key action sequences, such as a stunning nighttime ambush or a daytime battle against Fabio, it becomes wildly entertaining.
  15. Cook County
    Despite a few continuity problems, this rough-edged, low-budget drama impresses with spot-on performances, perfect-pitch dialogue and an overall sense that something bad might happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.
  16. The Conquest
    Picture takes genre helmer Xavier Durringer ("Chok-Dee") back to his theater roots, with most of the narrative mayhem and laughs coming from the picture's sharp dialogue and strong work by seasoned thesps, who just manage to avoid caricature.
  17. J. Edgar
    Any movie in which the longtime FBI honcho features as the central character must supply some insight into what made him tick, or suffer from the reality that the Bureau's exploits were far more interesting than the bureaucrat who ran it -- a dilemma J. Edgar never rises above.
  18. Cherkess
    Despite much verbal huffing and puffing, rifle waving and scimitar rattling, Cherkess proceeds with an astounding lack of action.
  19. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    This vulgar romp is a generally harmless, heartwarming affair, a cinematic Christmas cookie almost sweet and flaky enough to cover the fact that it's laced with hash, cocaine and assorted bodily fluids, blood included.
  20. 5 Star Day
    Buday's astrology-themed romantic comedy boasts a promising premise, convincing chemistry between its attractive leads and fine thesping by a defensively edgy Jena Malone. But the uneven script, repetitive tropes and over-indulgence of actorly bits slow the pace, tipping youthful casualness into complacency.
  21. Killing Bono
    Taking liberties with journalist Neil McCormick's memoir to create narrative tension, screenwriters Simon Maxwell and prolific scribe team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("The Commitments") overstuff the story with subplots and trite character arcs.
  22. Stuck Between Stations
    Real people may not be this glib and witty, but Rosen and Lister-Jones sell us on Casper and Becky nonetheless.
  23. The Other F Word
    The Other F Word is a raucous, eye-opening, sad and unexpectedly wise look at veteran punk rockers as they adapt to the challenges of fatherhood.
  24. The Last Rites of Joe May
    Despite all this boilerplate gangster-with-a-heart-of-gold stuff, there's an emotional payoff to "Joe May" that feels solid and right.
  25. Young Goethe in Love
    As its English-language title indicates, Philipp Stoelzl's yarn is clearly modeled on "Shakespeare in Love." But though it lacks that film's delirious wordplay, this German cousin is well plotted and impressively mounted.
  26. The Son of No One
    In this case, Montiel's awkward appropriation of gritty crime-drama conventions results in a film that's contrived and implausible, at times absurdly so.
  27. Rid of Me
    Bracingly original, alarming and droll, the righteously ribald Rid of Me should prove a breakthrough for helmer James Westby and his producer and leading lady, Katie O'Grady.
  28. Another Happy Day
    Mistaking over-the-top dysfunctional family cruelty for comedy and drama, Another Happy Day tries and fails to channel "Rachel Getting Married" in its protracted tale of a wedding-party weekend that turns predictably from scabrous to redemptive.
  29. Tower Heist
    During the heist itself, the suspense is palpable, if only because Christophe Beck's funky score blares its horns so insistently, one can't help but feel anxious. But the laughs don't follow.
  30. RA. One
    Much of the film is marked by a sense of dead air, owing to the fact that there's not a lot of story, but nevertheless, per Bollywood conventions, a lot of time to fill.
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