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. Life as We Know It
    It's a predictable date-night diversion.
  2. Nowhere Boy
    A respectable but surprisingly conventional feature-debut effort from Brit artist-turned-helmer Sam Taylor-Wood.
  3. My Soul to Take
    This dumb, derivative teen slasher movie would be uninspiring coming from any writer-director, let alone one with several genre classics under his belt.
  4. It's a Wonderful Afterlife
    It's a Wonderful Afterlife is a movie to make Frank Capra roll over in his grave from indigestion.
  5. Inside Job
    Charles Ferguson's sophomore film Inside Job is the definitive screen investigation of the global economic crisis, providing hard evidence of flagrant amorality -- and of a new nonfiction master at work.
  6. Letters to Father Jaakob
    The director's magisterial control over the proceedings makes something fresh and heartrending out of predictable material, particularly for older, thoughtful audiences.
  7. Marwencol
    Hogancamp is a complex character, and Marwencol introduces the man in layers, creating an incomplete yet sympathetic portrait specialty audiences and hipsters can agree on.
  8. As Good as Dead
    A muddled script, spatially confounding direction and four thesps seemingly acting in four different movies are only a few of the problems with the misbegotten political thriller As Good as Dead.
  9. Case 39
    This ludicrous outing from helmer Christian Alvart ("Pandorum") and scribe Ray Wright ("The Crazies") takes its psycho-satanic babble much too seriously, and should elicit more laughs than frights.
  10. Chain Letter
    Yields few surprises, compensating with de rigueur false scares, unmemorable deaths and the kind of improbably exaggerated gore.
  11. The Social Network
    Continues Fincher's fascinating transition from genre filmmaker extraordinaire to indelible chronicler of our times.
  12. Let Me In
    "Cloverfield" director Matt Reeves hasn't ruined the elegant Swedish vampire story by remaking it. If anything, he's made some improvements, including the addition of a tense action-horror sequence in the middle of the film.
  13. Freakonomics
    This frisky adaptation of the Steven Levitt-Stephen Dubner bestseller on human behavior by the numbers adds up to a revelatory trip into complex, innovative ideas and altered perspectives on how people think.
  14. Barry Munday
    Uneven but modestly diverting.
  15. Douchebag
    Dickler's acting debut is memorably repellent, even if the movie he's in -- a fitfully engaging story about two estranged brothers on a road trip -- often feels forced and unconvincing, even on its modest, intimately scaled terms
  16. Hatchet II
    Outrageously over-the-top gore doubtless will scare off all but the heartiest genre aficionados.
  17. Ip Man
    Ip Man will be manna for those who like their kung fu straight and wireless, their villains Japanese and their heroes unconflicted Chinese patriots.
  18. Leaving
    Tightly wound and crafted, with robust performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and recurrent Spanish Don Juan Sergi Lopez, the picture offers a rough, no-frills take on a story as old as France itself.
  19. Hot Summer Days (Chuen sing yit luen - yit lat lat)
    Bubbles along with a jaunty but unoriginal blend of the sweet, tart, cute and weepy.
  20. Speed-Dating
    Though it follows the reductive paradigms of men-on-the-make laffers, the low-budget, flatly shot picture rarely turns nastily shrill or swaggeringly stupid in tone; redemption and/or sanity is usually waiting in the wings.
  21. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    Has Gordon Gekko gone soft? The answer is, sort of -- a development that takes some of the bite out of Oliver Stone's shrewdly opportunistic, glibly entertaining sequel, which offers another surface-skimming peek inside the power corridors of global finance.
  22. You Again
    Manages to squander three generations of formidable actresses.
  23. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
    Though visually stunning and blessed with immaculate 3D work, film is fatally bogged down by tackling an essentially ridiculous premise (gladiator-attired owls fight genocide) with stony solemnity, and by subsisting on a note of sustained menace and terror in what is ostensibly a children's film.
  24. Buried
    In purely cinematic terms, Buried, set in late 2006, is an ingenious exercise in sustained tension that would make Alfred Hitchcock turn over in his grave.
  25. Howl
    Intelligent and highly respectful of its central character and his titular landmark poem, HOWL is an admirable if fundamentally academic exploration of the origins, impact, meaning and legacy of Allen Ginsberg's signal work.
  26. Enter the Void
    Not clever enough to be truly pretentious.
  27. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Exhilarating, heartbreaking and righteous, Waiting for Superman is also a kind of high-minded thriller: Can the American education system be cured?
  28. Tibet in Song
    Choephel, who narrates the film in English, is ultimately more musicologist than filmmaker, and yet the docu's very existence is something of a miracle.
  29. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    Fitfully amusing and nearly saved by its distinguished cast.
  30. Jack Goes Boating
    Displaying a girth that will give hope to overweight romantics everywhere, Hoffman knows his character inside and out and invites the viewer close to this limited, good-hearted fellow.
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