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. Contagion
    Without fully rounded characters, it's hard to care who lives or dies in what amounts to an extended procedural on how disease prevention organizations might respond to such a scenario.
  2. Love Crime
    Picture initially suggests a sort of Gallic "Damages," with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier in the Glenn Close and Rose Byrne roles, but the corporate catfight soon gives way to a cleverly designed whodunit.
  3. Saving Private Perez
    The horrific events in Mexico are proving fertile ground for black comedy, and though Saving Private Perez is certainly not the blackest, it may well be the funniest.
  4. Apollo 18
    Despite stretches of skillfully sustained suspense, Apollo 18 ultimately comes across as little more than a modestly clever stunt.
  5. Shark Night 3D
    Unlike his "Snakes on a Plane," director David R. Ellis' sharks-in-a-lake thriller displays little sense of its scenario's camp potential. Gore, too, is in short supply on account of the pic's PG-13 rating, which renders the attack scenes nearly toothless.
  6. Bodyguard
    Indian helmer Siddique delivers a middling melange of action, romance, music and slapstick in his hotly anticipated Hindi version of "Bodyguard."
  7. The Debt
    The remake ups the adrenaline factor, and features strong performances across the board, yet feels bogged down by a weighty love triangle and a subject that merits more than the old-school good vs. evil approach.
  8. Seven Days in Utopia
    Provides little more than a pleasantly passable Christian sports parable delivered as a sort of Texan golfer's version of "The Karate Kid."
  9. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
    An inventive marriage of ancient China and Agatha Christie, Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame is a lavishly overwrought historical whodunit.
  10. Burke and Hare
    The film struggles to match the original Ealing's quality benchmark, and its unapologetically old-fashioned sensibility may have trouble connecting with contempo audiences.
  11. Warrior
    An improbably effective and affecting mix of raw emotions and exciting smackdowns.
  12. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
    Both evocative and faithful in its depiction of the famed French singer's lascivious life, "Gainsbourg (vie heroique)" offers up a feast of memorable chansons and an almost endless parade of drop-dead-gorgeous muses.
  13. Iron Crows
    Virtually an experimental film -- the humanity is rich, but pure image and sensation are what makes it tick.
  14. Stripped Down
    Lacks the delicate tonal control and subtle smarts required for such an intended half-surreal exercise.
  15. Chasing Madoff
    Chasing Madoff is a useful reminder that all is far from well with our financial institutions, which continue to lobby for less regulation rather than more. But the human element of the film is so weirdly distracting it often deflects from its primary target.
  16. Tales from the Golden Age
    Though Mungiu's presumed two shorts have the most individual feel, the other helmers -- Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Hoefer, Razvan Marculescu and Constantin Popescu, all feature novices -- show a plethora of styles within the so-called "Romanian New Wave."
  17. Special Treatment
    Again co-written by and co-starring writer-thesp Richard Debuisne, picture has some of the duo's trademark sharp dialogue but again fails to fully come together on a narrative level.
  18. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy
    Despite the preposterous, kissing-your-sister premise of A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy, a very likable cast and some terrific sketch-style comedy should please (if not deeply satisfy the lustful yearnings of) audiences lured by the film's title.
  19. Redemption Road
    A lightly enjoyable road picture about a circuitous road to redemption, Black, White and Blues offers simple, down-home pleasures while spinning an undeniably familiar but emotionally satisfying tale.
  20. Higher Ground
    A satirical yet sensitive portrait of life in an evangelical Christian community, Higher Ground marks a startlingly bold directing debut for actress Vera Farmiga.
  21. The Family Tree
    Suffers from severe problems of tone, a surfeit of undeveloped plot points and characters, and bland direction.
  22. Brighton Rock
    Joffe's first feature never shakes off the feel of a telepic with above-average production values, and its unsteady lead performances and often garish stylistic touches make a muddle of the source material's psychological acuity.
  23. Colombiana
    The Olivier Megaton-directed Colombiana may not be the brainiest of actioners, but one of the merits of producer Luc Besson's latest brainchild is that fanboys worldwide will come away with a scrap of horticultural knowledge as well as a pretty good time.
  24. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
    A cheap-looking, vaguely depressing echo of Robert Rodriguez's well-loved kidpic trilogy, assembled with minimal imagination or effort.
  25. 5 Days of War
    Set during the brief, brutal 2008 flare-up between Russia and Georgia, the drama has some exhilarating moments, but they're dampened by concessions to conventionally bloviating music, overly theatrical dialogue and inadvertently comic slo-mo.
  26. One Day
    On a moment-by-moment basis, Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess make this long-arc love story viable, sometimes even vital. But the structural conceit proves more reductive than expansive, the big picture too overdetermined to really sweep the viewer away.
  27. Conan the Barbarian
    The well-executed picture solves the biggest challenge facing those hoping to breathe new life -- however nasty, brutish and short -- into the 79-year-old franchise by finding an actor capable of filling Ah-nuld's shoes.
  28. A Horrible Way to Die
    Where helmer Adam Wingard's prior "Pop Skull" used a jittery style to convey its delusional, possibly meth-addled protagonist's mindset, here, too much handheld camera wobble and wavering image focus only alienate the viewer from this somewhat sluggish tale.
  29. Programming the Nation?
    Being pissed off isn't enough to convince in a film that reveals very little that's new; the picture's personalized approach and kitchen-sink structure don't help, either.
  30. The Journals of Musan
    Though it cries out for trimming, "Musan" is a welcome, substantive marker on the current cinema landscape.
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