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. Submarine
    Rises above the genre's tired, cookie-cutter competition, presenting familiar elements, such as preternaturally articulate teens preoccupied with virginity, through fresh eyes.
  2. The Abduction of Zack Butterfield
    Woefully amateurish psychological thriller.
  3. We Are the Night
    "Night" trades politics for acrobatics, the film's kinetically edited action sequences filling the void left by sketchy character development.
  4. Cost of a Soul
    As is, the emotional elements explored by Cost of a Soul, and the devices it employs, seem trite and occasionally shoplifted from better-told tales.
  5. Tuesday, After Christmas
    Again, Muntean and his script collaborators offer exceptionally naturalistic dialogue.
  6. Kung Fu Panda 2
    Once again, the DreamWorks team demonstrates that humor is the primary weapon in its arsenal.
  7. The Hangover Part II
    The rote professionalism on display verges on cynicism, and despite some occasional sparks, this ranks as a considerable disappointment.
  8. Life 2.0
    A disturbing but nonjudgmental study of online addiction and the lure of manufactured identities.
  9. The Big Uneasy
    Well-intended and informative, but also unfocused, unwieldy and a little smug, picture pales in comparison to the really first-rate films on the subject ("When the Levees Broke," "Trouble the Water").
  10. The Tree of Life
    Result is pure-grade art cinema destined primarily for the delectation of Malick partisans and adventurous arthouse-goers.
  11. Make Believe
    A charming, affectionate and often elegantly executed study of teenage magicians, their craft and the social shadows they step out of when they do their stuff.
  12. The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls
    A documentary that has you falling in love with two of the crazier people you've never met.
  13. The Big Bang
    A borderline unintelligible, scattershot attempt at Lynchian neo-noir that takes intellectual and aesthetic risks it has no reasonable hope of pulling off. And yet train wreck that it may be, it's completely watchable, at times garishly eye-catching, and certainly the only film in theaters that features Snoop Dogg comparing himself to Alfred Hitchcock.
  14. Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
    An unremarkable documentary about Harper Lee and her single literary masterwork, Hey, Boo features what the French call a "structuring absence," that of Lee herself.
  15. Go for It!
    Serves up a bland recycling of cliches and archetypes from just about every youth-skewing, dance-centric picture to hit the megaplexes since "Flashdance."
  16. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    Serves as a welcome corrective, reviving the fun, feather-light frivolity that any film based on a Disneyland ride ought to exhibit.
  17. Midnight in Paris
    Like a swoony lost chapter from "Paris, je t'aime" agreeably extended to feature length.
  18. L'amour fou
    Shy on the celebrity-gawking (and celebrity input) that marks many fashion documentaries, and neither gossipy nor an objective appreciation of his impact and legacy, picture is a successful portrait on its own terms, save one: It's unlikely to excite much theatrical interest.
  19. The High Cost of Living
    Although there are moments when lead thesps Zach Braff ("Scrubs", "Garden State") and Isabelle Blais just about pull off the implausible conceit, the picture still suffers from major problems of tone as well as stilted camerawork and editing.
  20. How to Live Forever
    The prospects, advisability and potential methods of prolonging human life are examined in an engagingly multifaceted manner in How to Live Forever.
  21. Hesher
    The problem with the script by Susser and David Michod, working from a story by Brian Charles Frank, is that Hesher's uncouth behavior is so aggressively pushed to single-minded, crudely exploitative effect.
  22. The First Grader
    The uplifting true story of world's oldest primary school student, The First Grader reels you in with its human-interest hook, but packs an even more vital agenda: enlisting Kenyan locals to share little-known details of their nation's independence.
  23. Everything Must Go
    While the film is neither entertaining nor profound, Ferrell makes it watchable at least.
  24. Priest
    Not exactly an unholy mess, but still a rather too pious retread of classic sci-fi/action/horror riffs that lacks originality or pizzazz.
  25. Forks Over Knives
    One of the more convincing, radical and politically volatile documentaries to come out of the burgeoning good-food genre.
  26. Harvest
    A venerable cast of Broadway vets interminably wanders through the clan's Connecticut mansion with no apparent goal, carrying the remains of never fully explained resentments.
  27. An Invisible Sign
    A tone of fanciful absurdity is maintained throughout.
  28. There Be Dragons
    Dragons may not be perfect, but it plays to the helmer's strengths, demonstrating an increasingly rare sense of scope and pageantry best served by the bigscreen.
  29. Passion Play
    Perversely eccentric and frequently inert, screenwriter Mitch Glazer's directorial debut, Passion Play, will benefit from some of the well-known names attached, but the near-painful hipness of the production will yield poisonous word of mouth.
  30. Hobo with a Shotgun
    One must grudgingly admire director Jason Eisener's willingness to go over the top and beyond, and the film certainly delivers what it promises.
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