Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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 2.3 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. The Betrayal - Nerakhoon
    Though an admirable attempt to allow the characters to tell their own story in their own voices, docu may be a bit too freely associative, as it becomes difficult at times to identify individual characters... Picture's second half, which proceeds in a more linear fashion, is resolutely gripping.
  2. Bolt
    Bears some telltale signs of Pixar's trademark smarts, but still looks like a mutt compared to the younger company's customary purebreds.
  3. Lake City
    Moore and Hill's script plunges Spacek in a mawkish stew of banality and improbability composed of bits and pieces of earlier roles.
  4. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
    How many thrillers could put the outcome in the title and still provide as many white-knuckle moments as Harvard Beats Yale 29-29?
  5. Australia
    Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long.
  6. Quantum of Solace
    Stripped of "Royale's" humor, elegance and reinvented old-school stylishness, Quantum has little left except its plot, which is rudimentary and slightly barmy, in the line of the Roger Moore pics of the '70s and '80s.
  7. A Christmas Tale
    Largely thanks to the snappy editing, short scenes and a strong cast led by a matronly Deveuve and Amalric's enjoyable perf as the black sheep of the family, A Christmas Tale never devolves into a tedious two-and-a-half hours of self-examination. But it also never goes very far, either.
  8. Eden
    Picture loses its delicate edge when it builds to a prescribed dramatic flashpoint within an overly compressed timeframe
  9. We Are Wizards
    Meandering mindlessly, Wizards comes off as yet another humdrum Pottery artifact.
  10. Dostana
    Gay's the way, but the way's not really gay, in the fluffy and largely entertaining Dostana.
  11. The Dukes
    With Davi and Chazz Palminteri fronting a first-rate ensemble cast, and a tasty soundtrack of golden oldies, this unpretentious indie dramedy has much to recommend.
  12. How About You ...
    Comedic and sentimental beats are as predictable as the storytelling is sloppy.
  13. Slumdog Millionaire
    Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast.
  14. Role Models
    Laden with more than enough profane humor to warrant its R rating, this is nonetheless a formulaic crowd-pleaser.
  15. JCVD
    A French-language meta-movie parody par excellence, constitutes the headiest stretch of the beefy star's career since, well, ever.
  16. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    Opening half-hour has some of the best stuff in the movie, walking a precarious line between black irony and showing the war from a totally German viewpoint, without tipping over into gallows humor or parody.
  17. Gardens of the Night
    Well-meaning but underachieving drama.
  18. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    Lively and quite funny without being obnoxious, this follow-up smoothly mixes the original's New York Zoo escapees with a number of engaging new characters.
  19. Pray the Devil Back to Hell
    Gini Reticker's lucidly impassioned film, filled with strong, eloquent spokeswomen, garnered Tribeca's docu award.
  20. Repo! The Genetic Opera
    So over-the-top it's purple. At the same time, it's not too many lengths of intestine beyond some mainstream movies, "Sweeney Todd" being the most obvious comparison.
  21. Soul Men
    There's a nice chemistry between Mac and Samuel L. Jackson in this latest variant of the road movie, which contains comedic elements but actually works better as a drama.
  22. Otto; or, Up with Dead People
    Meandering at the same draggy pace as its titular gay zombie, eroto-horror-satire mixes movie-within-a-movie machinations with graphic sex scenes that will titillate anyone who's ever wanted to see someone shagging an open wound.
  23. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
    The way Kuenne presents the material, with an aggressive style that lingers less than a second on most shots, it's impossible not to feel emotionally exhausted.
  24. Eden Lake
    Eden Lake doesn't feel like torture porn so much as a rural-jeopardy thriller in extremis.
  25. The Haunting of Molly Hartley
    This softcore thriller runs strictly by the numbers.
  26. Splinter
    A spare, effective and genuinely frightening retro-nightmare.
  27. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    It would be too much to say that what Smith has come up with here is inspired, but it is pretty funny and very energetic.
  28. My Name Is Bruce
    Cheerfully embracing his status as cult B-movie genre megastar even as he sends it up, Bruce Campbell's sophomore directorial excursion, My Name is Bruce, is a big in-joke of definite if limited appeal.
  29. The Other End of the Line
    As cross-cultural bridge-builders go, picture is smart, funny and sweet enough to make you reassess your attitude next time you get reach tech support in New Delhi.
  30. What Just Happened
    A story very much by, about and for middle-aged men, and with the commercial limitations that implies, this intermittently amusing outing is graced by one of Robert De Niro’s more engaging performances of recent vintage.
  31. The First Basket
    A humorless, relentlessly ethnocentric docu about Jews in basketball.
  32. Let the Right One In
    Calling to mind the work of Anne Rice and Stephen King, atmospheric adaptation of Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist's bestseller is well directed by his countryman Tomas Alfredson ("Four Shades of Brown") and should click with cult and arthouse auds.
  33. Synecdoche, New York
    A wildly ambitious and gravely serious contemplation of life, love, art, human decay and death, the film bears Kaufman’s scripting fingerprints in its structural trickery and multiplane storytelling.
  34. Changeling
    Emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed, this true story-inspired drama begins small with the disappearance of a young boy, only to gradually fan out to become a comprehensive critique of the entire power structure of Los Angeles, circa 1928.
  35. I've Loved You So Long
    A movie that is utterly engrossing despite being, on the surface, about very little.
  36. Passengers
    Cruising somewhere between therapy drama and paranoid thriller, this middlebrow tone poem aims for ambiguity but often veers into soporific, suspending answers (and often, viewer interest) en route to an ending that explains all.
  37. Pride and Glory
    Feels like a film that should have been made at least 25 years ago. Or made as a period piece. Heavy, doom-laden and, unfortunately, entirely predictable.
  38. High School Musical 3: Senior Year
    While Ortega and fellow choreographers Charles Klapow and Bonnie Story stretch their imaginations, there's something almost lazy about the picture's underachiever script.
  39. Johnny Got His Gun
    Ably filmed by veteran stage producer-director Rowan Joseph, Bradley Rand Smith's theatrical script provides a bravura thespian workout for Ben McKenzie.
  40. Roadside Romeo
    Scores high on the tech front but considerably lower on script smarts.
  41. The Universe of Keith Haring
    Warmly affectionate yet curiously hollow, The Universe of Keith Haring is a straightforward biodoc about the Gotham-based artist and style-setter.
  42. Fear(s) of the Dark
    An omnibus of black-and-white animation with a couple exceptionally clever episodes tied together by an unnecessary recurring monologue.
  43. Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
    A documentary constructed from re-enactments, talking heads and no actual footage of the story it tells, but that still packs a knock-out punch.
  44. W.
    For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, W. is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically.
  45. The Elephant King
    The film may be too mainstream for arthouses, and too arty for the mall.
  46. Filth and Wisdom
    Ineptly written and helmed story of three Londoners, although quite bad, does have a few redeeming features.
  47. Max Payne
    Stylishly made, armed to the teeth and ludicrous in the extreme.
  48. Morning Light
    The film feels more like the ultimate scrapbook for the participants than the vicarious thrill the pair no doubt imagined for audiences.
  49. The Secret Life of Bees
    Like a mouthful of honey, The Secret Life of Bees is cloyingly sweet and gooey, and you're not quite sure you can swallow it undiluted.
  50. Sex Drive
    Since the new pic contains little that's genuinely amusing or minimally original, it likely will fail on its own merits.
  51. Frontrunners
    Ultimately, picture's fascination lies with the personalities and strategies of the candidates themselves.
  52. Body of Lies
    A mostly formulaic approach that becomes more disappointing as the yarn unwinds.
  53. Breakfast with Scot
    Suffused with the bargain-basement blandness of an Afterschool Special, Breakfast with Scot is the kind of gay-themed pic that won't ruffle the feathers of a granny in Manitoba, though it's bound to make more discerning auds groan.
  54. City of Ember
    A fabulously designed underground metropolis proves more involving than the teenagers running through its streets in City of Ember, a good-looking but no more than serviceable adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's 2003 novel.
  55. The Express
    Crowdpleasing and oh-so-predictable.
  56. Good Dick
    An annoying example of self-therapy posing as art.
  57. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Mike Leigh's mellowest work yet, and his most purely entertaining.
  58. Quarantine
    A modestly inventive, sporadically exciting thriller that nonetheless proves too faithful to its central conceit for its own good.
  59. Dung che sai duk
    The temptation of artists to fiddle with their earlier works brings predictably mixed results in Ashes of Time: Redux.
  60. Choose Connor
    Once Choose Connor ventures into the larger political arena, it begins to work against itself.
  61. Nights and Weekends
    Some may find the result boring or unpolished, but there's poetry -- not to mention a fair dose of comedy -- in the mix.
  62. Call + Response
    Remarkably informative yet gracelessly constructed, jumping between documentary and concert footage at random.
  63. Lower Learning
    Too raunchy for kids, too sophomoric for adults, this underachiever comedy targets the narrow demographic of disgruntled educators.
  64. RocknRolla
    A cleverly constructed, sensationally stylish and often darkly hilarious seriocomic caper.
  65. Rachel Getting Married
    Brimming with energy, elan and the unpredictability of his "Something Wild," Jonathan Demme's triumphant Rachel Getting Married may just lay the wedding film to rest, being such a hard act to follow.
  66. Religulous
    To the film's credit, Maher never engages in Michael Moore-style gotcha tactics, but rather asks questions that raise more questions, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. To believers expecting a blind hatchet job, this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries.
  67. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    A filthy-rich fantasy for these cash-strapped times, Beverly Hills Chihuahua features the voices of Drew Barrymore and much of the industry's top Latino talent in a live-action talking-dog lark that should please young pups.
  68. Blindness
    Meirelles' slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago's prose.
  69. Flash of Genius
    Moderately inspiring in the way such true-life stories of "the indomitable human spirit" are always constructed to be.
  70. An American Carol
    Conservatives score a few political points but aren't very funny in An American Carol, a cheesy spitball directed at the very large target of a Michael Moore-like filmmaker.
  71. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    Cleverly titled but noxious British comedy.
  72. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    This is the kind of sparsely plotted comedy that depends on compelling characters, but it stars two young actors defined by ironic detachment.
  73. Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
    This amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny project is best suited to smallscreen exposure.
  74. Just Buried
    Bloody and irredeemably misanthropic, Canadian funeral farce Just Buried nonetheless has enough charm to make for a sporadically enjoyable if wildly uneven entry in the growing body of cheeky corpse comedies initiated by Hitchcock's "The Trouble With Harry."
  75. Ballast
    A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports Ballast, an extraordinary debut by editor-writer-director Lance Hammer.
  76. The Lucky Ones
    It's hard to find the genuine heartfelt moments in The Lucky Ones.
  77. Fireproof
    Cameron is genuinely compelling as Caleb.
  78. Forever Strong
    The performances are credible across the board, excessive sentimentality is largely avoided, and the sequences devoted to rough-and-tumble rugby match-ups are expertly shot and edited.
  79. Smother
    Diane Keaton can still sink her actorly teeth into a wacked-out character, and Vince Di Meglio's screwball comedy provides her with one of her best purely comedic roles since "Annie Hall."
  80. Eagle Eye
    The picture's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act.
  81. Miracle at St. Anna
    This is a sloppy stew in which the ingredients of battle action, murder mystery, little-kid sentiment and history lesson don't mix well.
  82. Choke
    Palahniuk's antic absurdism is duly present, but the hurtling pace and barely-underlying nihilism that transferred to screen so vividly in "Fight Club" aren't much in evidence here.
  83. Nights in Rodanthe
    Hardly groundbreaking, but for those with an appetite for an increasingly rare gust of unapologetic romance, well, as they say, any port in a storm.
  84. The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela
    Likeable if rambling first feature by Icelandic helmer Olaf de Fleur Johannesson ("Africa United") evinces the helmer's background in documaking, and reps a kind of quasi-doc itself with real-life trannies riffing on their own personas.
  85. Humboldt County
    Its low-key charms are considerable enough to engage venturesome ticketbuyers.
  86. Obscene
    The case for publisher Barney Rosset's place as a hero in post-war America's battle for freedom of expression is persuasively argued in Obscene.
  87. Shoot on Sight
    A disappointingly stilted melodrama masquerading as a political thriller.
  88. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
    Deeply influential, even to his enemies, Atwater's career is viewed here with fascination and some sympathy.
  89. Elite Squad
    A one-note celebration of violence-for-good that plays like a recruitment film for fascist thugs.
  90. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
    A quiet work with Ozu-like structure and concerns, but remains more an intellectual exercise than one from the heart.
  91. Appaloosa
    Harris' first directorial outing since his impressive and entirely different "Pollock" biopic bears echoes of many genre predecessors, especially Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo" -- but echoes they remain.
  92. Battle in Seattle
    Picture's ambition, cogency and decent performances make up for its uneven aspects. Woody Harrelson has some especially good moments as a cop.
  93. The Duchess
    A serviceable picture that offers all the sumptuous visual pleasures of a historical costume drama, yet little in the way of actual history.
  94. Hounddog
    An indigestible gumbo of Southern Gothic ingredients seasoned with snake oil, biblical hash and thoroughly unpalatable spice.
  95. Lakeview Terrace
    Delivers fairly tense and engrossing drama before succumbing to thriller convention.
  96. Ghost Town
    Smartly supernatural, and featuring sensational performances by Ricky Gervais and Tea Leoni, Ghost Town is a "Topper" for our times.
  97. Igor
    With its belabored gags, misfired pop-culture references and garish visuals crammed together like so many disjointed body parts, this manic kidpic cranks up the annoy-o-meter early on and rarely lets up.
  98. My Best Friend's Girl
    Manages to distract auds from the predictability of the plot with fusillades of profanely funny dialogue and some playfully sexy chemistry generated by Cook and Hudson.
  99. All of Us
    The women's personalities and strengths command attention, their stories neatly dovetailing with the study's hypotheses. But when the film suddenly, almost subversively, shifts gears, and the questioner becomes the questioned, the pic's dynamic changes radically.
  100. Fraulein
    Staka’s interested in subtleties and looks at the different coping mechanisms of immigrants, from Ruza’s overly efficient life to Ana’s carefree existence.
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