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. Amazing Grace
    Picture reflects the no-nonsense storytelling skills of prolific helmer Michael Apted, whose career-long mix of feature and documentary work holds him in good stead once more.
  2. Gray Matters
    Scripter/helmer Sue Kramer's awkward freshman outing eventually coasts on the genuine charm of its leads. A strong vehicle for Heather Graham, who has never looked lovelier, "Gray" scores most convincingly in its reinvention of Carole Lombardian sexual screwiness as head-spinning gender confusion.
  3. Starter for 10
    Showcasing the considerable talents of ubiquitous thesp James McAvoy ("The Last King of Scotland," "Penelope") and several other up-and-coming Brit actors, picture garnishes fairly standard college-set plot with wit, warmth and unexpected turns.
  4. Glastonbury
    While one can appreciate helmer's resistance to a conventional, chronological overview, what emerges is a long, structureless muddle that does justice to neither the stellar acts nor changing countercultural times event has encompassed.
  5. Cocaine Angel
    Pitch-perfect central perf (by scribe and co-producer Damian Lahey), total lack of dramatic artifice and surreally situational humor make for a minor-key vignette of unmistakable, if unstable, authenticity.
  6. Breach
    Just as somber as "The Good Shepherd," the most recent domestic spy drama, but more tightly focused, Breach absorbingly zeroes in on how the FBI nailed the most damaging turncoat in American history.
  7. Bridge to Terabithia
    Some literal-minded attempts at magical realism are redeemed by the film's emotional texture, winning chemistry between the tyke leads and scrupulous adherence to a childlike point of view.
  8. Ghost Rider
    Though the superhero's fans have long awaited his close-up, the Devil's bounty hunter -- complete with a burning skull for a head and a killer motorcycle in flames --materializes in a movie that never measures up to his infernal potential.
  9. Antibodies
    Not content with a straight psychological police procedural, Alvart mixes in distracting -- and unconvincing --Biblical symbolism in a curious bid for weightiness.
  10. Avenue Montaigne
    A well-oiled script is nicely served by a multigenerational cast, a bittersweet and consistently entertaining mainstream comedy that tackles the big themes of Life and Art with unpretentious brio.
  11. Close to Home
    Mixes humor, tragedy, tenderness and political acumen into a well-observed coming-of-age format.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
    Central performance by Mirjana Karanovic is instantly endearing. Unfortunately, film coasts on thesp's ability to evoke sympathy and leaves her stranded in this yarn that's all setup and little payoff.
  13. Eklavya: The Royal Guard
    The pic often plays like a Cliffs Notes version of a longer movie: Pacing and continuity aren't choppy, but there's enough material here for a full-length drama that would go deeper into the characters and their backgrounds. Eklavya is good as it is, but lacks tragic heft.
  14. Daddy's Little Girls
    Chockfull of cathartic moments, Perry's storytelling is best when it defies convention. Like the black man's Frank Capra, Perry tells stories in which every conflict is a test of faith and every victory a testament to the American underdog. Instead of following the proven formulas of screenwriting books, he earnestly shepherds his own messy structure.
  15. Music and Lyrics
    Grant carries the day as the fortysomething lad still living off his youth and just about getting away with it.
  16. Bamako
    Rather miraculously, picture succeeds in painlessly educating its viewers about global politics and economics while it describes contemporary Africa with freshness and clarity.
  17. Hannibal Rising
    This upmarket slasher is a well-produced but slow-moving thriller that never quite roars to life.
  18. Norbit
    Murphy's story lacks even the basic form that held most of "The Nutty Professor" together.
  19. The Last Sin Eater
    Michael Landon Jr.'s respectfully sincere but only fitfully involving film.
  20. Samoan Wedding
    The big, burly Samoan Wedding is a shrewdly written, impeccably timed and audaciously played romantic comedy.
  21. Black Friday
    Despite its large cast and complex criss-crossing from past to present, the movie rarely catches fire as an involving human drama.
  22. Notes on Marie Menken
    Handsome tribute is paid to the eponymous experimental filmmaker in Notes on Marie Menken, the fourth feature by Austrian docu helmer Martina Kudlacek, who previously made "In the Mirror of Maya Deren."
  23. Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
    Excerpted interviews with WWII and Vietnam veterans suggest that every war is hell, yet it is the specificity of the Iraq War combatants' reminiscences that makes their writing resonate so profoundly.
  24. Burning Annie
    Pic relies on nerdy world-weary irony to carry the day, but doesn't convincingly draw its characters.
  25. The Decomposition of the Soul
    A thorny subject is handled with care in this meticulous reconstruction of life inside the East German police state, as boiled down to the experiences of just two ex-inmates -- one man and one woman --- of a notorious Stasi prison. Overall effect is poetically thought-provoking, not depressing.
  26. Because I Said So
    An exercise in canned cuteness, Because I Said So pushes its normally appealing stars, Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore, over the edge of sitcom hysteria.
  27. The Messengers
    Though the Pangs prove culturally adaptive on a visual level, they seem completely clueless as to the tonal modalities of Mark Wheaton's admittedly undercooked, all-American script.
  28. The Situation
    Undeniably topical but the lack of emotional investment in its characters renders it more intelligent than engaging.
  29. Fired!
    Modestly amusing in fits and starts, Fired! proves most potent when on-screen interviewees are playing for keeps, not for laughs.
  30. Puccini for Beginners
    While it tips its hat to screwball comedy, Puccini for Beginners owes more to contemporary sitcom. It also has way more in common with "Sex and the City" than "The L Word." None of that is entirely a bad thing in a film that never really soars but has enough breezy humor.
  31. Constellation
    Exceptionally strong cast is pictures beating heart.
  32. East of Havana
    The temptations of allowing a promotional video to seep inside a genuine non-fiction study nearly overtake East of Havana and its look at a bubbling hip-hop culture in Cuba.
  33. In the Pit
    Leo Heiblum's pulsating music and Samuel Larson's dense, fascinating sound editing rewardingly compliment Rulfo's electrifying visuals.
  34. Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
    Although the outcome is public record, picture is undeniably gripping as it reveals a distressing degree of voter complacency.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tazza: The High Rollers
    Writer-director Choi Dong-hoon, whose grifter dramedy "The Big Swindle" was an unheralded gem two years ago, considerably ups the ante in his second feature, a long-limbed yarn centered on a bunch of ruthless professional gamblers. But involving characters and devil-may-care tone make the long running time hardly a stretch.
  36. An Unreasonable Man
    A basically admiring if critical portrait, documentary by Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skrovan (strangely, both standup comics and TV comedy writer-producers) finds more than enough absorbing material to hold interest through nearly three-hour runtime.
  37. Room 314
    Pic feels like a cross between an anthology of ambiguous short stories and a string of acting-class exercises. Thesping is first-rate across the board.
  38. Blood and Chocolate
    The entire star-crossed scenario is conveyed with the narrative simplicity of a musicvideo, lingering in an almost fetishistic manner on sensual details (boxes of chocolates, a blood-red ribbon) while compressing important elements of the story into clumsy montages.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Catch and Release
    A so-so romantic dramedy.
  40. Epic Movie
    If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, big studio Hollywood hitmakers should consider themselves lauded to the max in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Selzer's Epic Movie, the latest (and epically unfunny) entry in the movie parody franchise.
  41. Smokin' Aces
    Smokin' Aces blows some cool smoke rings until it makes the very un-cool mistake of overstaying its welcome.
  42. Seraphim Falls
    Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shockproof
    While never credible, story does point up the standard melodramatics and good playing to keep it all interesting. (Review of Original Release)
  44. Funny Money
    Greif obviously ascribes to the Blake Edwardian school of comedy, laying out gags with commendable topographical precision. But, unlike Edwards' unique mixture of sophistication and slapstick, Funny Money falls squarely in the tradition of pure farce, itself an anomaly in this age of aggressively abrasive personality comedies.
  45. G.I. Jesus
    A bold, often clumsy, but always intriguing piece of work.
  46. From Other Worlds
    Picture's leaps into the fantastic and rampantly farcical tend to be overextended, but finally don't detract from what is a well-judged, light entertainment.
  47. China Blue
    Bleakly Dickensian as all this sounds, much of China Blue is charming, because its subjects are.
  48. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    Sixty years after World War II, descendants of a prominent Nazi responsible for implementing Hitler's policies in Slovakia reignite debate over their heritage in emotional docu 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him.
  49. The Hitcher
    In the absence of actors with the tremendous presence of Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, picture loses its raison d'etre. Yet, directed by video helmer Dave Meyers with a certain fastidious distance from its plentiful gore, picture is also insufficiently over-the-top or corny to incite gleeful audience feedback.
  50. Regular Lovers
    Regular Lovers evokes the '60s pretty well just through dialogue and rhythm -- better, in fact, than Bernardo Bertolucci's more reverently detailed "The Dreamers." However, the film's slow tempo induces the feeling one is living through the whole of 1968 in one sitting.
  51. The GoodTimesKid
    Building his dry comedy out of a basic confusion of names, an Army recruitment slip and one man's curiosity, Jacobs creates a droll, meandering and defiantly uncommercial film.
  52. Alpha Dog
    Writer-director Nick Cassavetes' sprawling dramatization recklessly blurs the line between reconstruction and reality in ways that are admittedly interesting, if more than a little artistically suspect.
  53. Primeval
    It's not exactly good, but it's not bad, and far from boring.
  54. Stomp the Yard
    The dancing is more dynamic than the plotting in Stomp the Yard, an energetic if formulaic underdog tale about warring black fraternities specializing in an intensely competitive style of step dancing.
  55. God Grew Tired of Us
    Although shot over a longer period of time than "Lost Boys," God Grew Tired is a softer, less complex version of essentially the same story, far less troubling in its explorations and implications than "The Lost Boys," but with far greater commercial potential.
  56. Tears of the Black Tiger
    Fun, if finally too silly.
  57. Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    Looks, sounds and fascinates like an exceptional episode of a true-crime TV series.
  58. Guru
    Strongly cast, long-limbed yarn contains some of Ratnam's best stuff in its first half but script weaknesses mar the later going and film's overall impact.
  59. Ever Since the World Ended
    Continually tickles the mind while leaving a heavy lump in the chest, establishing and sustaining a unique low-key tone of mystery and dread.
  60. Comedy of Power
    While the picture may be too subtle and oblique in places for more general audiences, it remains enjoyable as a sardonic glimpse of unspoken codes at the intersection of politics and business.
  61. Happily N'Ever After
    Colorful, crowd-pleasing toon.
  62. Freedom Writers
    It takes the bold approach of being earnest, honest and unafraid to be called naive. As a result, it's extremely affecting.
  63. Code Name: The Cleaner
    This is an especially limp star vehicle that delivers a few widely spaced moments of frivolity before what should be a quick mop-up trip to the DVD aisles.
  64. Thr3e
    Indeed, you could argue that weighty questions about the nature of evil and the allure of sin figured more prominently in the similarly titled "Se7en," one of several other, better suspensers dimly echoed here.
  65. Pan's Labyrinth
    There's plenty of blood -- both literal and figurative -- coursing through the veins of Pan's Labyrinth, a richly imagined and exquisitely violent fantasy from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.
  66. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    The seductive, sensory prose of Patrick Suskind's bestseller, "Perfume," reaches the screen with loads of visual panache but only intermittent magic.
  67. Miss Potter
    Renee Zellweger, in another Blighty role, struggles to make Beatrix credible.
  68. The Dead Girl
    More ambitious than her 2002 debut, "Blue Car," Moncrieff's new film maintains her focus on women, expanding to include a range of ages, circumstances and psychologies. Picture's drama, however, is deliberately fractured into a quintet of stories that vary considerably in their overall impact.
  69. Factory Girl
    The wild, unhinged life of Andy Warhol's favorite "superstar," Edie Sedgwick, is refashioned in Factory Girl as a tame biopic with little feel for the 1960s New York Underground.
  70. The Flying Scotsman
    Helmer Douglas Mackinnon does what he can to make the most of emotional bullet points and gloss over the lack of connective tissue.
  71. Arthur and the Invisibles
    Haplessly blends live-action and visually repellent computer-animated work.
  72. The Tiger and the Snow
    Like an Iraq-war mirror image of "Life Is Beautiful," actor-director Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow re-runs the successful structure and comic persona of the 1998 Oscar-winning film in a trippy fantasia about a poet who follows his love to hell and, in this happier ending, back.
  73. Notes on a Scandal
    The riveting interplay between Dench and Cate Blanchett draws blood with every scene, thanks to a precision-honed script and Eyre's equally incisive direction.
  74. Children of Men
    Picture more than delivers on the action front -- not in bang-for-your-buck spectacle but in the kind of gritty, doculike sequences that haul viewers out of their seats and alongside the main protags.
  75. Black Christmas
    It's debatable whether the original 1974 "Black Christmas" is, as its most rabid fans claim, the mother of all slasher movies. But there can be no argument regarding the scant merits of its slapdash, soporifically routine remake, suitable only for the least discriminating of gore hounds.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Good Shepherd
    Robert De Niro's second film as a director adopts a methodical approach and deliberate pace in attempting to grasp an almost forbiddingly intricate subject, with a result that is not boring, exactly, but undeniably tedious.
  77. Night at the Museum
    This rambunctious, "Jumanji"-style extravaganza is a gallery of special effects in search of a story; rarely has so much production value yielded so little in terms of audience engagement.
  78. We Are Marshall
    Full of good intentions, We Are Marshall has a game plan that's hard to fault, but as with any playbook, a scheme is only as good as how well it's executed.
  79. Venus
    Genuinely funny, randy and moving by turns, breezily enjoyable throughout.
  80. Curse of the Golden Flower
    Zhang Yimou's strangest and most troubled film, abounds in hysterical, mannered Tang Dynasty-era palace intrigue and dehumanized CGI battle sequences.
  81. Letters from Iwo Jima
    Taken together, "Flags" and "Letters" represent a genuinely imposing achievement, one that looks at war unflinchingly -- that does not deny its necessity but above all laments the human loss it entails.
  82. The Painted Veil
    Intelligent scripting, solid thesping and eye-catching location shooting aren't enough to make a compelling modern film of The Painted Veil.
  83. Rocky Balboa
    The time away from the ring has done Rocky and the franchise some good, although it takes pic a good long while to gather momentum and clout before a surprisingly satisfying third-act heavyweight bout.
  84. Matthew Barney: No Restraint
    Whatever audiences might have wanted to know about sculptor-filmmaker Matthew Barney but were too embarrassed to ask is revealed in accessible documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint.
  85. Dreamgirls
    Finally. After "The Phantom of the Opera," "Rent" and "The Producers" botched the transfer from stage to screen, Dreamgirls gets it right. Bill Condon's adaptation of the 1981 show about a Motown trio's climb to crossover stardom pulls off the fundamental double-act those three musical pics all missed: It stays true to the source material while standing on its own as a fully reimagined movie.
  86. The Good German
    For actor and director, the project seems like trying on a new coat, and it doesn't fit either of them.
  87. Breaking and Entering
    Entirely respectable in every way, it nonetheless has a very cool body temperature and thus likely will inspire polite admiration rather than excitement among viewers.
  88. Charlotte's Web
    Nowhere to be found is any dramatic surprise, heightening of the pulse or genuine pulling of heartstrings. Gary Winick's direction consists of button pushing, and the mechanics are palpable at every step.
  89. Eragon
    Appropriating all the external trappings of big-budget fantasy but none of the requisite soul, this leaden epic never soars like the CG-rendered fire-breather at the core of its derivative mythology.
  90. The Pursuit of Happyness
    The Pursuit of Happyness is more inspirational than creatively inspired -- imbued with the kind of uplifting, afterschool-special qualities that can trigger a major toothache.
  91. The Secret Life of Words
    Sarah Polley gives a wonderfully searching performance, as a woman in a state of extreme isolation, in The Secret Life of Words, a compellingly claustrophobic drama set mostly aboard an oil rig.
  92. Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here)
    There is an undeniable quirky appeal to the creative world of Daniel Smith, though those who hope a behind-the-scenes look will explain his motivation or personality won't find the enigma resolved here.
  93. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
    Richly layered picture dramatizes a landmark doctor/patient showdown, chronicles a classic case of transgenderism and reveals how aspects of Schreber's story prefigured Nazism.
  94. Resilience
    Arthouse audiences who welcome challenging material will find sustenance in film's fractured narrative and unflinching characterizations.
  95. Automatons
    An unwieldy mix of self-conscious camp and heavy-handed allegory, Automatons plays like a cheesy '50s no-budget sci-fier with serious delusions of grandeur.
  96. Apocalypto
    Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that Apocalypto is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power.
  97. Blood Diamond
    Africa's enduring sorrow is ripe for drama, but Blood Diamond is, finally, a fitting metaphor for the gems: Potentially brilliant from a distance, but upon closer inspection, one likely will see the flaws.
  98. The Holiday
    A lavishly overstuffed gift basket of a movie.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unaccompanied Minors
    It's a crowdpleaser -- at least for crowds aged about 6 to 12.
  100. Off the Black
    Anchored by a terrific performance from Nick Nolte as a grizzled umpire who gets an unexpected second chance at fatherhood, this easygoing comedy-drama plays out slowly but assuredly, infusing a conventional story about a blossoming relationship with welcome reserves of honesty and humor.
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