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. Racing Dreams
    The perceptively balanced "Dreams" transitions seamlessly from domestic drama to 70-mph heats.
  2. Solitary Man
    A movie of no small generosity: It offers audiences the pleasures of a screenplay whose every acerbic line is firmly rooted in character, and it hands Michael Douglas one of his best roles in years.
  3. Two in the Wave
    The demoralizing slide of the relationship between Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, from artistic comrades-in-arms during the thrilling creation of the nouvelle vague to name-calling enemies from the early '70s onward, is charted in overly academic and constricted fashion in Two in the Wave.
  4. Robin Hood
    Impressively made and serious-minded to a fault, this physically imposing picture brings abundant political-historical dimensions to its epic canvas, yet often seems devoted to stifling whatever pleasure audiences may have derived from the popular legend.
  5. Letters to Juliet
    Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan's script relentlessly piles on goopy conversation-stoppers like "Do you believe in destiny?" and "I didn't know that true love had an expiration date."
  6. Just Wright
    Painting by numbers often gets a bad rap: While it takes little originality to fill in the romantic-comedy blanks, even a simple, competent job can sometimes feel like a breath of fresh air.
  7. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
    Eschewing character arcs and talking heads in favor of a more poetic approach, this lyrical exercise in avant-garde entomology is the work of an intuitive filmmaker with an often hypnotic sense of composition.
  8. Here and There
    Slight, extremely likable picture, a sly variant on recent immigrant movies like "The Visitor" and "Goodbye Solo."
  9. Touching Home
    Despite the tale's real-life basis and a solid Ed Harris as their fictive equivalents' alcoholic dad, Touching Home emerges as a formulaic triumph-over-odds tale with too little distinguishing detail.
  10. Looking for Eric
    As in many of Laverty's scripts, problems of overall tone and character development aren't solved by Loach's easygoing direction, though when it works, "Eric" has many incidental pleasures.
  11. Metropia
    The characters at first seem photorealistic, but their faces barely move. There are good, basic sci-fi ideas in the script, but they're not satisfyingly developed.
  12. Iron Man 2
    Isn't as much fun as its predecessor, but by the time the smoke clears, it'll do.
  13. Happiness Runs
    Sherman's personal wounds feel fresh, which makes for a superficially beautiful but otherwise bitter story.
  14. The Lightkeepers
    Such predictable pap is generally better suited for romance novels or Lifetime movies. Here, it's elevated somewhat by a decent cast.
  15. Mother and Child
    An insightfully observed and exceptionally acted ensemble piece precisely about what the title suggests.
  16. Multiple Sarcasms
    Timothy Hutton's fine, loose-limbed perf as a man adrift lifts Multiple Sarcasms, frosh scribe-helmer Brooks Branch's male menopause apologia, out of cliche-ridden territory -- at least temporarily.
  17. Ocean of Pearls
    This mix of tepid hospital intrigue plus underdeveloped cultural/relationship conflicts feels like a routine TV episode stretched to feature length, with little dramatic urgency or cinematic style to render its good intentions compelling.
  18. OSS 117 - Lost in Rio
    Jean Dujardin pulls off a charming, Peter Sellers-esque performance as he bumbles his way through retro cloak-and-dagger intrigue, displaying his character's uncanny ability to insult anyone -- and, especially in this episode, women and Jews -- who's not 100% Gallic, male and a diehard Charles de Gaulle fanatic.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Babies
    Babies is refreshing in its methods, impressive in its scope and remarkable in its immediacy. That said, it's also an occasionally frustrating documentary that deprives the viewer of the comforts of exposition and cultural context.
  20. Trash Humpers
    Pity the festival-going fool who stumbles unawares into Harmony Korine's patently abrasive, deliberately cruddy-looking mock-documentary Trash Humpers. All others -- that is, those familiar with Korine's anti-bourgeois oeuvre and know what they're in for -- will have a glorious time.
  21. The Infidel
    The Infidel takes some all-too-predictable detours into moralizing and sentimentality, but remains consistently sharp as long as it sticks to its acerbic tone and saucy comic sensibility.
  22. Road, Movie
    A modestly amusing dramedy that is all the more pleasant for its fleeting detours into cheeky fantasy.
  23. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
    Paul Viragh's script is too bitty to hold it all together, and filigrees of technique fail to disguise the weaknesses in helmer Mat Whitecross' first solo flight.
  24. The Trotsky
    Both cartoonish and cerebral, and studded with in-jokes referencing multicultural life in "la belle ville" and classic cinema, the colorful pic stretches its premise a bit thin over nearly two hours.
  25. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    While the 1984 film has aged, its now-familiar jolts still pack more punch than this pic's recycled ones, which sometimes register so tepidly as to cause snickers.
  26. Furry Vengeance
    This undistinguished picture qualifies as an endangered species. As a digital babysitter, however, it may prove sufficiently efficient to generate fair-to-middling homevid sales.
  27. The Good Heart
    A picture too simplistic and sentimental for art seekers and too rough for general audiences.
  28. Harry Brown
    Bleak, gripping, sporadically exciting drama.
  29. Mercy
    Its modesty is what makes its very real virtues -- a tart, literate script, an adroit balance of humor and pathos, a memorable onscreen collaboration between star-scribe Scott Caan and his father James -- so cumulatively impressive.
  30. Please Give
    Keener, so deliciously nasty in Holofcener's "Lovely and Amazing," is no less engaging here in what is, surprisingly, the film's least bitchy role.
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