Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. The Pink Panther 2
    Serves up enough goofy pranks and fractured wordplay to keep the series purring along.
  2. Confessions of a Shopaholic
    As a young lady who can't say no to a beautiful dress or accessory, Isla Fisher is not to be denied, and her irrepressible comic personality overcomes a number of the film's impediments.
  3. The International
    Graced with well-chosen location eye candy, Tom Tykwer's biggest production to date is proficient but lacks the added tension and characterization to put it anywhere near the top tier of contempo action suspensers.
  4. Fanboys
    End result feels like an uneven cross between an amateur "Project Greenlight" pic and such recent comedies as "Superbad" and "Pineapple Express," in which indie directors brought a certain edge to material that might once have felt more at home under the National Lampoon label.
  5. The Objective
    With a low-budget look, cliched dialogue, a stale plot and so-so acting, this supernatural thriller is unlikely to achieve the phenomenal success of its fabled predecessor.
  6. Taken
    Neeson growls his way through the functional dialogue as an unstoppable killing machine in impressive, cold-eyed style.
  7. The Uninvited
    Weak even by the standard of uninspired recent Asian-horror remakes, The Uninvited is more likely to induce snickers and yawns than shudders and yelps.
  8. New in Town
    It doesn't help that Zellweger, in an unfortunate attempt to make the aud appreciate her character's uptightness, spends many of the early scenes moving about as stiff as a flagpole in January.
  9. Service (Serbis)
    Brillante Mendoza’s latest opus that revels in shock value.
  10. Shadows
    Overlong, ponderous and occasional risible.
  11. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
    Senesh was a budding writer, and her poems and diary entries add flavor to an already dramatic tale in Roberta Grossman's Blessed Is the Match.
  12. The Lodger
    What needed to be a taut, structurally sound psychothriller instead malfunctions from the start.
  13. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
    First-time helmer Patrick Tatopoulos (who designed creatures for all three pics) offers a satisfyingly exciting monster rally that often plays like a period swashbuckler.
  14. Donkey Punch
    Shows the sort of edge in places that will be appreciated by horror fanboys of all ages, but is mostly too overwrought and over-the-top.
  15. Inkheart
    Despite abundant talent on both sides of the camera and a bevy of eye-catching supernatural beasties, this f/x-heavy story of a literature-loving father and daughter battling dark forces unleashed from the pages of a rare tome doesn't conjure much in the way of bigscreen magic.
  16. Outlander
    Not helped by a wooden perf from Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien who accidentally imports a real alien to eighth-century Earth.
  17. Of Time and the City
    Result is by turns moving, droll and charming, and niftily assembled, but not necessarily that profound.
  18. Chandni Chowk to China
    As with many a Bollywood epic, you can bring the kids, your lunch, your cell phone, your unfiled taxes. There's so much here, and in such heaping, lengthy portions, you could probably weave a sari before the end credits.
  19. Cherry Blossoms
    A successful novelist whose films bear the expansive plotting and telling character detail of the page, Doerrie never seems in any particular hurry to tell her tales, preferring the journey to the destination.
  20. Hotel for Dogs
    Ultimately warm and furry, with a wet nose buried in gross receipts.
  21. My Bloody Valentine
    At heart an unabashedly retro work, reveling in the cliches and conventions of the slasher horror pics that proliferated in the early 1980s.
  22. Notorious
    A rock-solid biopic with a foolproof rise-and-fall storyline and a warmly nuanced performance by Jamal Woolard.
  23. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
    An almost shockingly amateurish one-note-joke comedy.
  24. Bride Wars
    A shrill, mechanical comedy.
  25. The Unborn
    Whereas Japanese horror movies have been criticized for not making sense, The Unborn errs on the opposite extreme, coming off all the more ridiculous for over-explaining itself.
  26. Just Another Love Story
    Contrived excess is rarely as entertaining as it is in the ironically titled Just Another Love Story, a furiously overheated romantic thriller from Danish writer-helmer Ole Bornedal.
  27. Silent Light
    Reygadas' typically arresting widescreen visuals and the presence of non-pro actors speaking in German-derived Plautdietsch makes for an initially hypnotic combination, but the spell breaks its hold well before the end of the picture's inflated running time, signaling an endurance test for all but the most ascetic arthouse auds.
  28. Defiance
    A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
  29. Good
    Considering its theme and setting, there's something very wrong with a Good that seems merely competent, uninspired and a bit old-hat.
  30. Revolutionary Road
    A near-perfect case study of the ways in which film is incapable of capturing certain crucial literary qualities, in this case the very things that elevate the book from being a merely insightful study of a deteriorating marriage into a remarkable one.
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