Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. The Air I Breathe
    Stellar thesps gamely strive to elevate the one-note material, but gravity ultimately defeats them in this relentless downer.
  2. Lost in Beijing
    Money (and maybe a little bit of love) makes the world go around in Lost in Beijing, an involving, highly accessible portrait of an emotional menage a quatre in the modern-day Chinese capital.
  3. Alice's House
    If telenovelas were convincingly real, they would no doubt look like the tumultuous world of domestic strife and libido deftly limned in Alice's House. Documaker Chico Teixeira gives a light, natural feel to his small but fetching first feature.
  4. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
    Pitch perfect and brilliantly acted, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a stunning achievement, helmed with a purity and honesty that captures not just the illegal abortion story at its core but the constant, unremarked negotiations necessary for survival in the final days of the Soviet bloc.
  5. U2 3D
    The title says it all. Compact and exuberant, U2 3D may be no more than a pint-sized concert film with a lustrous surface, but the lensing is so vibrant and the music so buoyant, even nonfans may find their eyes popping and their heads bobbing.
  6. Summer Palace
    Fourth feature by Mainland helmer Lou Ye ("Suzhou River," "Purple Butterfly") shoots for metaphysical drama but ends up saying very little beneath all the poetic voiceovers, sexual encounters and political seasoning.
  7. Teeth
    A game, disarming lead performance from Jess Weixler, who won a jury acting prize at Sundance, goes some way toward making palatable this mish-mash, whose provocative nature could carve out a certain commercial niche.
  8. Cassandra's Dream
    Like a tragic overture played at the wrong tempo and slightly off-key, Woody Allen's London-set Cassandra's Dream sends out more mixed signals than an inebriated telegraphist.
  9. Cloverfield
    Despite its indie-flavored shooting style, first-rate visual effects, reasonable intensity factor, nihilistic attitude and post-9/11 anxiety overlay, this punchy sci-fier is, in the end, not much different from all the marauding creature features that have come before it.
  10. Mad Money
    Banking on the appealing chemistry of Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah -- with co-star Katie Holmes awkwardly upsetting the balance -- this strained heist comedy about three cash-strapped femmes is watchable enough for a few reels, but lacks the requisite wit and amoral energy to capitalize on its get-rich-quick premise.
  11. 27 Dresses
    Frothy, funny and formulaic, 27 Dresses is a pleasantly predictable romantic comedy that sees Katherine Heigl following “Knocked Up” with smooth moves at the wheel of her first starring vehicle.
  12. Taxi to the Dark Side
    Photos and video of torture at Bagram and Abu Ghraib are the most viscerally disturbing elements of Taxi to the Dark Side, but the way soft-spoken soldiers were transformed into beasts with the tacit approval of the higher-ups is just as profoundly chilling.
  13. Still Life
    Has almost zero plot but molto mood. It will appeal to the most faithful of the director's camp-followers and no one else.
  14. First Sunday
    A near-claustrophobic comedy that manages to be both predictable and preachy. Solid actors in supporting roles offer minor redemption.
  15. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
    A plodding patchwork of derivative fantasy-adventure, medieval production design, risible dialogue, unimpressive CGI trickery and haphazardly edited action sequences.
  16. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
    Won't do anything for adult auds, but this second bigscreen adventure from the popular VeggieTales franchise should easily win over tots with its reliable menu of silly songs, easily digestible morals and wholesome (if not always fresh) produce-based characters.
  17. The Business of Being Born
    Documentary seems best suited to cable: Lake's informal, Oprah-like concern invites the intimacy of home viewing. But the chick-chat approach in no way undermines the gravity of the problems the docu addresses.
  18. Woman on the Beach
    A wonderful, serious-minded romantic comedy-drama.
  19. One Missed Call
    This decent if derivative scare machine should benefit from a lack of genre competition.
  20. The Killing of John Lennon
    Anchored by a fearless, commanding lead perf by newcomer Jonas Ball as deranged assassin Mark David Chapman, The Killing of John Lennon is a harrowing, impressionistic, widescreen tour-de-force that unfolds with the propulsive urgency of a scrapbook thrown into a howling wind.
  21. Honeydripper
    The result is one of Sayles' best films. The music, a mix of blues, seminal rock and newcomer Gary Clark Jr.'s performance, will be an obvious draw, as will the performances by some leading African-American actors.
  22. The Orphanage
    A fastidiously grim ghost story that rattles the bones of the haunted-house genre and finds plenty of fresh (but not too bloody) meat.
  23. There Will Be Blood
    Boldly and magnificently strange, There Will Be Blood marks a significant departure in the work of Paul Thomas Anderson.
  24. AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
    Provides enough cheap thrills and modest suspense to shake a few shekels from genre fans before really blasting off as homevid product.
  25. Persepolis
    This autobiographical tour de force is completely accessible and art of a very high order.
  26. The Bucket List
    A feel-good film about death, a sitcom about mortality, "Ikiru" for meatheads. It's also a picture about two cancer patients confronting reality, and deciding how they want to spend their presumed last days, that has not an ounce of reality about it.
  27. The Great Debaters
    Tailor-made for maximum inspirational, historical and educational impact, The Great Debaters shines a bright spotlight on a remarkable example of black achievement long forgotten in the sorry history of the Jim Crow South.
  28. The Water Horse
    Though it strikes some predictable coming-of-age notes, this moving, well-wrought adventure should appeal to fans of "E.T." and Carroll Ballard.
  29. P.S. I Love You
    "Ghost" with a brogue, "The Notebook" without the burden of old people, this post-life comedy will have the sentimentally challenged weeping openly, while clutching desperately to the pants-legs of boyfriends and husbands who are trying to flee up the aisle.
  30. Charlie Wilson's War
    Charlie Wilson's War is that rare Hollywood commodity these days: a smart, sophisticated entertainment for grownups.
  31. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
    Graced with some extra star wattage courtesy of Helen Mirren and Ed Harris, this diminishing-returns sequel sends Nicolas Cage on another quest to strike it rich, get young auds excited about history and solve puzzles that are generally less stimulating than yesterday's Sudoku.
  32. Steep
    Like its sister films in the surfing-movie genre, the extreme-skiing movie Steep is less a documentary than a sales pitch -- not for a product or a place, but for a sport, one its practitioners feel requires pugnacious self-promotion.
  33. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Both sharp and fleet, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street proves a satisfying screen version of Stephen Sondheim’s landmark 1979 theatrical musical.
  34. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    Strums the genre for considerable laughs, with John C. Reilly playing the title balladeer from teen to senior citizen, generating enough goodwill to offset the flat sections and a decidedly juvenile streak.
  35. Alvin and the Chipmunks
    A harmless and frequently humorous trifle.
  36. I Am Legend
    Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, I Am Legend stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel.
  37. The Kite Runner
    While the largely unknown cast and subtitled dialogue may present a marketing challenge, they also create a feeling of authenticity in this poignant, intimate epic, which should attract a strong following among discerning audiences.
  38. Look
    Conceit often stretches -- and breaks -- the limits of what the tales can handle, though the implication of viewers as voyeurs gives pic a subversive edge.
  39. Youth Without Youth
    Attempting to harness multiple genres, pic is brought down by ponderous dialogue (much of it dubbed) and an inability to connect with its characters.
  40. Outlaw
    Both the pic's power and its problems stem from Love deliberately taking no moral position nor offering any solutions; he gives his audience what it wants at a gut level and doesn't wimp out at the end.
  41. The Perfect Holiday
    Neither perfect nor much of a holiday, more like a fruitcake passed around from arthritic aunt to demented uncle -- stale, predictable and made with fossilized ingredients.
  42. Nanking
    The horrific 1937-38 massacre of more than 200,000 Chinese during the early days of the Japanese occupation gets a polished presentation in Nanking.
  43. Atonement
    Rarely has a book sprung so vividly to life, but also worked so enthrallingly in pure movie terms, as with Atonement, Brit helmer Joe Wright’s smart, dazzlingly upholstered adaptation of Ian McEwan’s celebrated 2001 novel.
  44. Dirty Laundry
    Taking control of what would otherwise be a trite and preachy fable about the need for African American families to accept their gay brethren, Devine builds a jolly and touching character from the stock figure of a Georgia mom coming to terms with her disaffected gay son.
  45. The Golden Compass
    Impressively rendered but oddly uninviting adventure.
  46. Looking for Cheyenne
    Suspenseful, funny, touching, sexy and painlessly pertinent.
  47. Grace Is Gone
    Although clearly coming from an antiwar perspective, the story's emotional effectiveness and family grounding give the film a real shot at connecting with general audiences across the political spectrum.
  48. Revolver
    Guy Ritchie shoots a blank with Revolver, which replays the low-life criminal shtick from his first two features with an ill-advised overlay of pretension. The action, attitude and wise-guy talk all feel moldy this time around.
  49. The Walker
    Even if this isn't Schrader's best, it's hardly his worst.
  50. 'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris
    De Felitta seems a born documaker. He brilliantly constructs a tale born of a genuine love of jazz and a need to understand how Paris went from sensation to footnote in a generation.
  51. Man in the Chair
    As a showcase for rising young star Michael Angarano and Christopher Plummer, pic offers the pleasures of connecting Hollywood traditions and generations in the spirit of Peter Bogdanovich's films about and inspired by the movies.
  52. Juno
    An ultra-smart-mouthed comedy about a planned adoption that goes weirdly awry.
  53. Billy the Kid
    One of the more irresponsible eruptions in the current rash of populist nonfiction cinema.
  54. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    Most compelling in its attempts to re-create the experience of paralysis onscreen, gorgeously lensed pic morphs into a dreamlike collage of memories and fantasies, distancing the viewer somewhat from Bauby's consciousness even as it seeks to take one deeper.
  55. Awake
    Harold's thriller does have an attention-getting plot hook, but piles on too many narrative gimmicks to maintain suspense or credibility.
  56. Oswald's Ghost
    Oswald's Ghost impresses as a concise, intelligent and rigorously well-researched piece of work.
  57. Sex and Breakfast
    What tyro helmer Miles Brandman serves up is a tortured talkfest with a premise far less ripe than its title.
  58. Maurice Richard
    Boasts dazzling hockey action, but its off-ice piousness makes for tough sledding for non-Canucks.
  59. Protagonist
    The dangers of extremism and the virtues of uncertainty are the keys to the remarkable Protagonist, docu helmer Jessica Yu's exploration of four men's journey through dysfunction, obsession and redemption.
  60. Tony N' Tina's Wedding
    A rousing, hilarious Bacchanal of family togetherness, Roger Paradiso's brilliantly cinematic adaptation of the second-longest running play in Off-Broadway history might be the best of the recent rash of wedding pics.
  61. Badland
    A strenuously solemn film that wants to create some kind of American pastoral tragedy out of the nation's current angst with the war.
  62. The Savages
    Jenkins brings a rigor, intelligence and eye for the slightly absurd to the proceedings that is instantly disarming.
  63. Starting Out in the Evening
    Director Andrew Wagner draws topnotch work from a pro cast in Starting Out in the Evening, a wise, carefully observed chamber drama.
  64. Everything's Cool
    Can a movie about global warming genuinely be called lighthearted? If so, Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand's Everything's Cool comes as close as one imagines possible, essaying yet more inconvenient truths about the potential future of our planet in the same buoyant, irreverent style the filmmakers brought to their last activist docu, "Blue Vinyl."
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Midnight Eagle
    While key blockbuster elements (ticking bombs, intrepid reporters, lightweight politics) are all present, the film's brisk pacing can't hide the fuzzy logic of the tenuously structured, convoluted script.
  66. REC
    Lazily scripted, without even a pretense of character development or psychological depth, it offers nothing new for genre fans and no reason for mainstream auds to bite.
  67. August Rush
    Only auds immune to diabetic rushes should head for August Rush, though tolerant parents wanting wholesome entertainment for the kids will like it for its repetitive encouragement of creativity.
  68. Enchanted
    A full-blown musical that commutes between Disney's patented cartoon universe and the "real" world with cleverness and grace, this splashy production reminds one of nothing in the Disney canon so much as "Mary Poppins," not least due to the "star is born" aura that surrounds Amy Adams here, just as it did Julie Andrews 43 years ago.
  69. Hitman
    A Eurotrashy vidgame knockoff that misses its target by a mile. Numbingly unthrilling as it lurches from one violent encounter to another, the pic's dark roots in an electronic, non-dramatic medium are plain to see, and unsuspecting gamers lured to theaters will soon wish they were back home participating in the action themselves.
  70. I'm Not There.
    Stylistically audacious in the way it employs six different actors and assorted visual styles to depict various aspects of the troubadour's life and career, the film nevertheless lacks a narrative and a center, much like the "ghost" at its core.
  71. The Mist
    Much nastier and less genteel than his best-known Stephen King adaptations ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile"), Frank Darabont's screw-loose doomsday thriller works better as a gross-out B-movie than as a psychological portrait of mankind under siege, marred by one-note characterizations and a tone that veers wildly between snarky and hysterical.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Christmas
    A rare holiday treat, a package that's both thoughtfully selected and sure to please its intended recipients.
  73. Nina's Heavenly Delights
    Stereotypes abound, dialogue is conventional and pace scattered. Still, resulting stew is pleasant.
  74. Yiddish Theater: A Love Story
    Its extremely narrow focus on the death throes of an art form, rather than the art itself, limits its appeal.
  75. Beowulf
    For all its visual sweep and propulsively violent action, this bloodthirsty rendition of the Old English epic can't overcome the disadvantage of being enacted by digital waxworks rather than flesh-and-blood Danes and demons.
  76. Eleven Men Out
    A non-pandering crowd-pleaser whose character quirks and small stabs at poignancy feel refreshingly earned.
  77. Love in the Time of Cholera
    Despite a magnificent performance by Javier Bardem, the film not only falls short of the novel's magic, but fails to generate much of its own.
  78. Margot at the Wedding
    This study of a disastrous reunion of two sisters feels more like a collection of arresting scenes than a fully conceived and developed drama.
  79. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    Sprinkles in charming moments but ultimately doesn't evoke enough wonderment to overcome its tongue-twisting title and completely win over adults along with kids.
  80. Redacted
    Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing "fictional documentary" -- inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad -- has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can't make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form.
  81. Smiley Face
    A sterling space cadet performance by Anna Faris floats the genial if slight pothead comedy Smiley Face, a distaff "Dude, Where's My Car?"
  82. Southland Tales
    Rarely has a picture been so self-consciously designed to be a culturally meaningful touchstone, and fallen so woefully short, as Southland Tales.
  83. No Country for Old Men
    A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor, No Country for Old Men reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent.
  84. Fred Claus
    Alternates between unpleasantness and Hallmark-sweet sappiness.
  85. Lions for Lambs
    Amounts to a giant cry of "Americans, get engaged!" wrapped in a star-heavy discourse that uses a lot of words to say nothing new.
  86. P2
    What "Psycho" did for the shower, P2 tries very hard to do for the parking garage, spending most of its time below ground, and below an adequate level of convincing dread.
  87. Saawariya
    A really small movie done up in a big, moody package, Saawariya entices, fitfully springs to life but finally outstays its welcome by a good half-hour.
  88. War Dance
    While the pic may be targeting Westerners who want to feel less awful about genocide and global negligence, it's hard to imagine War Dance appealing to that crowd -- or any other.
  89. Holly
    Though treading a firm, clear-eyed line between education and exploitation, the well-acted and technically proficient drama -- too chaste to scandalize, too dark for general audiences -- works as a mobilizing tool for its cause.
  90. The Life of Reilly
    With equal measures of prickly wit, gleeful pride and bemused gratitude, Charles Nelson Reilly looks back at his life, and invites his audience to share the view, in this thoroughly engaging filmization of his one-man stage show.
  91. Electric Apricot
    Generates enough mild humor to keep the spoof rolling, but lacks the commitment and scope.
  92. Steal a Pencil for Me
    Fortunately, helmer Michele Ohayon ("Cowboy del Amor") treats her tricky subject matter with sufficient sensitivity to keep doc from ever seeming offensively flip or overly sentimental.
  93. My Name Is Albert Ayler
    My Name is Albert Ayler brings a sense of logic and humanity to a man whose music was as unsettling as it was untethered to the tenets of jazz.
  94. Fat Girls
    Wins no points for delicacy. Still, it does score some laughs.
  95. American Gangster
    Absorbing, exciting at times and undeniably entertaining, and is poised to be a major commercial hit. But great it's not.
  96. Bee Movie
    Amiable but no more, Bee Movie puts a hiveful of potent talent at the service of a zig-zigging, back-of-an-envelope story that's short on surprise and originality.
  97. Martian Child
    Knockout performances by John Cusack and child actor Bobby Coleman help legitimize a whimsical but sententiously moralizing script.
  98. Sharkwater
    As an eco-political inquiry, the film is compelling even if its grounding in scientific fact could be more solid.
  99. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    The wrenching tale has something for anyone who likes their melodrama spiked with palpable tension and genuine suspense.
  100. Bella
    Mexican-born helmer Alejandro Monteverde's debut will be remembered as a curious case of a mediocre film that wows crowds.
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