Variety's Scores

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:
17779 movie reviews
  1. An aptly gorgeous-looking Manhattan meller whose quartet of sexy actors proves no less attractive than the well-mounted picture as a whole.
  2. A broad African-Amerian family comedy that manages to avoid many of the more predictable cliches of the genre, yet also leaves out the warmth and, too often, the laughs.
  3. Charged with alternating currents of teen angst, sardonic wit, nervous dread and impudent sensuality, Daydream Nation suggests "Juno" as reimagined by David Lynch, or a funnier, sunnier "Donnie Darko."
  4. The troubled actor delivers a performance very few could pull off as a depressed father who begins communicating through a hand puppet, but Foster doesn't know how to manage it or navigate the script's seismic tonal shifts, and ends up producing a film that's deeply strange, yet incapable of leaving an impression.
  5. Try as she might, Hudson can't turn Darcy into a three-dimensional character: She's astonishingly easy to dislike, but not nearly amusing enough in what could have been an unforgettable camp performance.
  6. A sluggish, charmless misfire in which even the most appealing players -- must try too hard to make anything close to an engaging impression.
  7. Dylan Dog isn't a terrible movie, just one that feels like a tepid mishmash of secondhand concepts, never developing a distinctive atmosphere or unique personality of its own.
  8. An adorable cast ought to provide some appeal for tweens and tykes, though interest should gradually dwindle the closer one gets to actual prom-going age.
  9. Ultimately too underdeveloped and slight to have much impact, though the helmer's impressionistic uses of image and sound are appealing.
  10. Less a movie than a ill-advised lab experiment in which classic children's stories are injected with Bond-movie stylings, inane wisecracks and martial-arts mayhem, this manic misfire takes storybook revisionism to ever more irritating ends.
  11. Thor delivers the goods so long as butt is being kicked and family conflict is playing out in celestial dimensions, but is less thrilling during the Norse warrior god's rather brief banishment on Earth.
  12. With no emotional or stylistic hooks, there's not much compelling viewers to engage with what's happening onscreen.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monte Hellman's first feature film in 21 years is one of his finest and deepest, a twin peak to his 1971 masterpiece, "Two Lane Blacktop."
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Benefits from sensitive, restrained thesping, most notably by Ed Harris, and leaves one feeling blandly inspired.
  13. This offbeat effort proves more admirable for its ambition than anything else, as the uneasy mix of satire, allegory, grittiness and redemption never quite jells.
  14. Mildly amusing.
  15. Filtering the world's oldest paintings through the latest in cinematic technology, Werner Herzog delivers a one-of-a-kind art-history lesson in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
  16. A devil-may-care adventurer and three vastly different gals emigrate from the Low Countries to New Zealand in the romantic epic Bride Flight, a glossy European meller that switches between the '50s, the '60s and the present
  17. Dramatically spellbinding and intellectually stimulating, picture abstractly manipulates multiple layers of representation to shattering effect.
  18. Inoffensive but mostly undistinguished "Ancient Aliens"-type concoction.
  19. Another lumpy mix of broadly played ethnic comedy, deadly serious soap operatics, and aggressively rousing religious uplift. Picture may help him reconnect with faithful fans.
  20. The filmmakers clearly value their public, crafting a splendid period swooner that delivers classic romance and an indelible insider's view of 1930s circus life.
  21. Virtually dialogue-free, the film opts for an almost perverse minimalism; even the camera is limited to the topography within the kids' purview.
  22. Club's entertainment value suffers at the expense of trying to capture the events as they happened -- an ill-advised endeavor, considering everything.
  23. A consistently amusing and not entirely vacuous stunt.
  24. Incendies vaults Denis Villeneuve to the status of serious director.
  25. This at first slow-moving and then wildly kinetic actioner possesses a cool classicism that will appeal to offshore audiences as well as those at home.
  26. This superhero spin on a largely Eastern legend will appeal primarily to Asian genre aficionados on homevid.
  27. A highly satisfying low-budget horror-thriller from helmer/co-writer Jim Mickle.
  28. The film captures a wealth of spectacular and wrenching conflicts, and even if its ability to spin a story out of the footage falls somewhat short of the gold standard set by "March of the Penguins," it's nonetheless a remarkably cohesive piece of work.

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