Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Alien Girl
    Offering a smorgasbord of violence with liberal sprinklings of sex, Russian import Alien Girl delivers wearisome brutality but little finesse.
  2. How Do You Know
    This wrong-headed dramedy peddles forced warm-fuzziness and insincere sentiment on the backs of an all-star cast.
  3. Due Date
    So infuriating is Ethan that Due Date very nearly loses us, too, at the outset, but over time, the bearded boor manages to win everyone over, audience included.
  4. Unstoppable
    Given the linear, one-track nature of the plot, Scott and Bomback prove surprisingly effective at delivering a well-rounded experience, going out of their way to fill in the personalities of their two leads.
  5. Saw 3D
    That Saw 3D is relentlessly repugnant will delight the franchise's fans and surprise almost no one. The best that can be said for the picture, gamely directed by longtime "Saw" cutter Kevin Greutert, is that it offers little in between the traps, which are more creatively vicious than they've ever been.
  6. White Material
    Structurally, White Material unfolds like a novel, undoubtedly partly due to the work of Denis' co-scripter, author Marie N'Diaye. That said, it's still very much a Denis film, not just in the complexity of the characters and their motivations -- Huppert shoulders the narrative effortlessly, her strength and direction unwavering -- but in the framework and editing.
  7. Love and Other Drugs
    A jagged little pill that, in the end, goes down too smoothly.
  8. Yogi Bear
    A bland and innocuous small-fry outing that retains a measure of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon's charm, though scarcely enough to justify the time, expense and visual-effects trickery it must have taken to inflate an endearing 2D cartoon into a dopey 3D extravaganza.
  9. Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench
    A surprise, a delight and a whimsical experiment.
  10. Nothing Personal
    Largely thanks to Verbeek's performance, full of physical grace notes and small details, she manages to involve the audience, even though her character is more a movie creation than one based in real psychology. Rea, largely giving his usual mumbling Oirish perf, proves a selfless support, and provides an anchor to the movie.
  11. Heartless
    There's more mood than matter here, but suspenseful atmospherics effectively distract from minor plot holes.
  12. Tiny Furniture
    What it doesn't have, to its credit, is a neat conclusion. In the end, the film appears to suggest that Aura likely will feel free to keep searching for herself, repeating mistakes and making new ones, because she has all the time in the world.
  13. Somewhere
    The ever-perceptive writer-director further hones her gifts for ruefully funny observation and understated melancholy with this low-key portrait of a burned-out screen actor.
  14. The King's Speech
    While far from easy, both roles provide a delightful opportunity for Firth and Rush to poke a bit of fun at their profession.
  15. Rabbit à la Berlin
    Cunningly fashioning found footage into a rabbit's-eye view of events, Polish helmer Bartek Konopka creates a chillingly apt political allegory in Rabbit a la Berlin.
  16. Beijing Taxi
    Throughout, the drivers are framed against the various cityscapes they traverse, though their philosophical views on what is unfolding around them differs with age and temperament.
  17. Tangled
    Tangled is snappily paced and easy enough to get wrapped up in, propelled by a set of jaunty, serviceable songs from venerable composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater.
  18. Burlesque
    An overwrought, underwritten hootchy-kootchy tuner that desperately wants to be "Cabaret," but lacks the edge and historical context to pull it off.
  19. Hemingway's Garden of Eden
    Garden of Eden sends sleek, half-nude bodies glumly cavorting through lush Riviera landscapes in a paradigm of unintentional camp.
  20. The Company Men
    The pain feels cushioned and secondhand, the characters are not terribly sympathetic or interesting other than for their misfortune, and the film shows little interest in analyzing the situation other than to point fingers at greedy CEOs.
  21. The Tourist
    Like a beautifully tailored suit that starts to smell funny after a few minutes, this sumptuous but stultifying lark sets up a quasi-Hitchcockian intrigue between two strangers abroad, but smothers any thrills or sparks in a haze of self-regard.
  22. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    Director David Yates spins the series' most expansive, structurally free-form chapter yet -- lumbering and gripping by turns, and suffused with a profound sense of solitude and loss.
  23. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    This f/x-heavy third adaptation of the Christian-themed fantasy series feels routine and risk-averse in every respect, as if investment anxiety had fatally hobbled its sense of wonder.
  24. Rabbit Hole
    Grief may be the topic under examination, but humor -- incisive, observant and warm -- is the tool with which it's dissected in Rabbit Hole, a refreshingly positive-minded take on cinema's ultimate downer: overcoming the death of a child.
  25. The Tempest
    A Tempest so kitschy, yet curiously drab and banal.
  26. The Fighter
    If The Fighter feels like kind of a mess, lurching from one scene to the next as if the film itself has taken a few hits to the head, that's not entirely a bad thing.
  27. The Warrior's Way
    A visually inspired multi-genre amalgamation, a borderline-surreal folly that suggests a martial-arts action-adventure co-directed by Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini.
  28. All Good Things
    The more the film implicates David, the more it distances itself and the viewer, playing out in the emotionally detached but sensationalistic, overripe manner of a tabloid freakshow.
  29. TRON: Legacy
    While 21st-century effects and a cutting-edge dance score make this a stunning virtual ride, the underlying concept feels as far-fetched as ever.
  30. True Grit
    Rather than a case of the Dude doing the Duke, Bridges' irascible old cuss is a genuine original who feels larger than the familiar saga that contains him.
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