Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Golf in the Kingdom
    In this shoestring outing, Susan Streitfeld ("Female Perversions") opts for an unsettling mix of low-tech cinematic tricks and temporal reshufflings to simulate the process of enlightenment to sometimes laudable, usually ludicrous effect.
  2. The Smurfs
    Adorable and annoying, patently unnecessary yet kinda sweet, it's a calculated commercial enterprise with little soul but an appreciable amount of heart.
  3. House of Boys
    Thesping is more engaging than accomplished, as Anderson's constant smile cracks around the edges and Northover's dourness is a bit overdone.
  4. Good Neighbors
    A romantic-comedy-cum-serial-killer-movie that bends genre to the point of snapping.
  5. Sleep Furiously
    Picture's tone is far more poetic than polemical.
  6. True Adolescents
    The result is Sam (Mark Duplass, "The Puffy Chair" and "Humpday"), a 34-year-old unemployed rocker whose mediocre musicianship is matched only by his abysmal people skills; he's like Jack Black without any energy or confidence.
  7. El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
    The immaculately crafted documentary doesn't reveal much about Adria the man, other than that he insists on quiet in his kitchen.
  8. Point Blank
    Unlike John Boorman's trippy 1967 L.A. noir of the same title, frenetic Gallic suspenser Point Blank provides few existential thrills but plenty of heart-racing action as it follows one man's marathon dash to save his kidnapped wife from execution.
  9. The Interrupters
    James captures candid counseling sessions and heated tussles with equal dynamism, but never quite earns his 164-minute running time.
  10. The Guard
    A crusty jewel of a performance by Brendan Gleeson goes a long way toward enlivening an otherwise routine tale of murder, blackmail, drug trafficking and rural police corruption in The Guard.
  11. The Future
    For all the superficial hilarity of July's approach, a much sadder streak runs deep through the entire film, reinforced by Jon Brion's score (more tones than melody). Still, it's curious that this is the feeling she chooses to leave us with in the end.
  12. The Devil's Double
    The life story of Latif Yahia, body double to Saddam Hussein's diabolically unhinged son Uday, makes for slick action-movie fodder in The Devil's Double, a rocket-powered thriller.
  13. Cowboys & Aliens
    While Cowboys & Aliens offers little in the way of sociological insight (except perhaps giving the white man a taste of his own resource-stealing medicine), it's still a ripping good ride.
  14. Attack the Block
    Brit comedian-TV presenter Joe Cornish emerges fully formed as an exciting new writer-helmer with his enormously appealing debut feature, Attack the Block.
  15. Crazy, Stupid, Love
    Old-fashioned as that might sound, there's a fresh, insightful feel to this multigenerational love story.
  16. Captain America: The First Avenger
    As Marvel heroes go, Captain America must be the most vanilla of the lot.
  17. Fire in Babylon
    This triumph-of-the-underdogs tale is enjoyable in the retelling, despite its repetitious hammering of the message.
  18. Sarah's Key
    Working in a classical style and genre that rep a far cry from his previous work ("Pretty Things," "Gomez and Tavares, "UV"), Pacquet-Brenner's direction is always respectful if never entirely subtle.
  19. The Myth of the American Sleepover
    A movie that tries and fails to channel the indelibly dreamy mood of Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides." Well-intentioned but derivative and only intermittently engaging, the suburban Michigan-set indie hits at least as many false notes as true ones.
  20. A Little Help
    This tale of a Long Island dental hygienist dealing with various family crises is likable enough, but never really distinctive in character delineation, tone, atmosphere or plotting.
  21. Friends with Benefits
    The raunchy premise here is just a smokescreen for the sort of squarely moralistic, altar-bound comedy of which even Jane Austen would approve.
  22. Daylight
    Some movie buffs will be amused to note slight but perceptible plot similarities between Daylight and, of all things, "The Tall T," Budd Boetticher's classic 1957 Western. To their credit, the filmmakers more or less acknowledge the influence in the closing credits.
  23. Impolex
    Reveling in its provocative absurdity, Impolex is a madly uncommercial head-scratcher that will strike a dream-logic chord in some viewers and leave others in a "My kid could do better than that" mood.
  24. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    Mawkish, clunky and unenlightening about female suffering in this or any generation.
  25. Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish
    Hearing the majestic iambic pentameter rendered in the sharply rising and falling cadences of colloquial Yiddish proves wackily charming, but the lack of correlation between the two plots makes the result feel unfocused.
  26. The Undefeated
    Slickly produced and blatantly manipulative, Bannon's hagiographic tribute is a celebratory cavalcade of career highlights and glowing testimonials that doubtless will please Palin's devoted followers, appall her fiercest critics -- and, perhaps, occasionally surprise the undecided.
  27. Hood to Coast
    Expertly constructed, impressively lensed and surprisingly entertaining.
  28. Girlfriend
    The bittersweet Girlfriend features Down syndrome actor Evan Sneider in its starring role, and he gives one of the better performances in writer-director Justin Lerner's obviously well-intended and affectionately made first feature.
  29. Tabloid
    Errol Morris' Tabloid is bonkers in all the best possible ways -- a welcome return to perverse portraiture after a lengthy sojourn in the realm of more serious-minded subjects.
  30. Life, Above All
    It's an absorbing, vividly inhabited tale nonetheless, never exploiting its horrors but rather treating them as tough local realities.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »