Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. Wheel of Time
    Taken strictly as a docu about a key Buddhist ritual, Wheel of Time is a perfectly pleasant, educational film, featuring pretty pictures, exotic locations and interview footage with the Dalai Lama himself. As a Werner Herzog film, it's flat and disappointing.
  2. King of the Corner
    Lacks the stylistic attention to psychological distress that might have lent it maximum impact. Instead, the pic is amiable, kinda charming, visually routine, and incisive in individual sequences.
  3. Rebound
    Scores a few chuckles while following a familiar game plan.
  4. Dark Water
    Well-crafted but thoroughly unsuspenseful.
  5. Fantastic Four
    A wildly uneven, sporadically slapdash action-adventure that amuses in fits and starts.
  6. Steve + Sky
    Promising frosh helmer Felix van Groeningen exhibits a fresh eye, though his script is full of too many self-consciously Tarantino-ish verbal digressions that serve to distract from the story, and self-conscious quirks he mistakes for character development.
  7. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
    Ultimately, pic feels very much like a romanticized, outsider's view of the South that willfully seeks out the culture's strangest, most weirdo aspects for other outsiders' gleeful delectation.
  8. Happy Endings
    A protracted parade of woefully familiar motifs from the Amerindie playbook, Happy Endings comes off like an undernourished Paul Thomas Anderson wannabe.
  9. Last Days
    Result is dead-on depiction of the hedonistic rock lifestyle, punctuated by sequences of haunting beauty but also quasi-religious imagery that borders on tacky.
  10. Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off-screen
    A definitive docu on the elusive Edgar G. Ulmer is a practical impossibility, which is why Michael Palm chooses to highlight questions rather than facts. But Edgar G. Ulmer -- the Man Off-Screen neither fully illuminates the tales nor finely sifts through the evidence to discover the truths behind the myth-making.
  11. Tony Takitani
    Ultimately, this is a striking-looking film -- consciously recalling the paintings of Edward Hopper in its architectural use of space -- which, like its protag, is a little short on real feeling.
  12. The Skeleton Key
    Stirring up a humid Gothic mood and amassing a gifted roster of actors, The Skeleton Key is unable to ward off the nasty spirits of formula screenwriting.
  13. 2046
    The overall effect simply underlines the central weakness of the pic: that the neo-kitschy futuristic scenes don't add much to the real-life '60s relationships.
  14. Asylum
    Overly plotted erotic drama.
  15. The Goebbles Experiment
    A man whose name has become a byword for pure evil gets a disarming makeover in The Goebbels Experiment. Far from being the horror show expected from its title, Lutz Hachmeister's cool, almost anti-dramatic docu paints a portrait of an insecure manic-depressive solely through extracts from Joseph Goebbels' own voluminous diaries.
  16. Supercross
    Completely disposable yet rousing on its own crude, testosterone-saturated terms.
  17. The Brothers Grimm
    The tilt here toward a hyperactive, buddy-movie action-adventure with loud comic archetypes is a poor fit for a film that relies on fairy tale icons and themes.
  18. The Baxter
    May find a following among those who stand in awe of the names Sandler, Ferrell and Spade. But Showalter pushes too far: Nerdiness, after all, can be only so attractive.
  19. Formula 17
    While it has about as much depth and nuance as the bubblegum Sino-pop tunes that pepper its soundtrack, Formula 17 is a fresh, sweet-natured affair with an attractive young cast that should play to the gay-teen niche.
  20. The Man
    Functional if thoroughly uninspired movie. Because it clings to the comedy-action template of "48 Hrs.," pic feels like it could have been made 15 years ago.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Campfire
    Juggles several storylines that include the personal and political, but is unable to get beyond soap-opera shtick.
  22. Kamikaze Girls
    Wears out its welcome at 100 minutes, but could find an audience in the West as a latenight attraction at gay fests.
  23. The Future of Food
    Genetically-modified (or GM) fruits and vegetables are a topic of raging debate in scientific and ecological circles, so it's a shame writer-director Deborah Koons Garcia opts to show only one side of the argument.
  24. Cry_Wolf
    Almost totally reliant on red herrings and the viewer's nervous reflexes.
  25. Flightplan
    Largely undone by a script that self-destructs in the third act of an otherwise well-made thriller.
  26. Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow
    The movie plays like a career summation in which the 68-year-old writer-director has simply run out new ideas.
  27. Venom
    Acquits itself well enough. Gratuitously gory and derivative to the core, Venom manages to deliver some effective frights in between large swaths of voodoo gibberish.
  28. Roll Bounce
    Funky disco-era throwback never fully jells with a surprisingly intense central tale of father-son estrangement, strongly acted by Chi McBride and 18-year-old rapper-thesp Bow Wow.
  29. Novo
    A bizarre combo of upscale French erotica studded with good-humored kinky sex scenes.
  30. The Gospel
    A creaky melodrama that wants to be a musical.
  31. Two for the Money
    Despite nice touches, pic meanders in the middle and ends flatly.
  32. Before the Fall
    An intermittently gripping story about an idealistic young boxer who becomes disillusioned with the Third Reich during his elite training, Napola is finally KO'd by an overdose of Nazi fetishism.
  33. A Tale of Two Pizzas
    In scope, depth, rhythm and gags, "Pizzas" seems best suited to the small screen.
  34. Elizabethtown
    Although rich in screwball silliness and sharp one-liners, film lacks the narrative drive one finds in the classic comedies of Preston Sturges, Frank Capra and Billy Wilder, whom Crowe always seems to try to emulate.
  35. Finding Home
    Impeccably crafted but dramatically turgid.
  36. Loggerheads
    A respectably crafted, earnest ensemble drama.
  37. Saw II
    New pic lets the air out by divulging the startling mystery that concluded the original. Add this to problematic juggling of police procedural and group-in-distress storylines, and Lions Gate has what looks like a sequel rushed for Halloween.
  38. The Weather Man
    Aiming for an Alexander Payne-style synthesis of wry comedy and unflinching character study, pic has been made with the utmost sincerity, but the frankly lugubrious material and barely compensating spasms of humor are all but impossible to warm to.
  39. Chicken Little
    Lives up to its name by serving up a fraction of what audiences are used to getting in this department from PixarPixar and DreamWorks -- little originality, little humor and little ingratiating characterization.
  40. Bee Season
    The film is ice cold, never finding a way to invite the viewer into the story, and Richard Gere doesn't convince as a Jewish biblical scholar.
  41. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
    Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic showcases the comic-actress in her familiar on-stage persona as a blithely self-involved Jewish American Princess whose penchant for perky vulgarity can be explosively funny or unnervingly shocking.
  42. Breakfast on Pluto
    Despite numerous surface pleasures, including a beguiling pop soundtrack and presence of rising star Cillian Murphy in the lead role, dramatic shortcomings spell a mixed overall reception.
  43. Zizek!
    A little bit of Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek goes a long way. In the verbose profile documentary Zizek! there's a lot of esoteric, eccentric theories, and little context within his globetrotting life.
  44. In the Mix
    A pleasantly tuned vehicle for R&B star and budding actor Usher.
  45. The Libertine
    Starting out seductive but ending up tiresome, debuting director Laurence Dunmore's pic is an honorable misfire.
  46. The Boys of Baraka
    Feels achingly sad and frustratingly incomplete.
  47. The Family Stone
    Keaton embodies the formidable Stone matriarch with an offhand sense of humor that cuts like a knife.
  48. The White Countess
    This final production from the team of James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant is itself adrift in more ways than one, with a literate but meandering script by "The Remains of the Day" novelist Kazuo Ishiguro that withholds emotional payoffs to an almost perverse degree.
  49. Hoodwinked!
    Little Red Riding Hood gets a cheeky CGI makeover in Hoodwinked!, a fast-paced, fitfully clever 3-D-animated feature that will entertain tykes.
  50. The Ringer
    Sometimes veering close to being a promotional film for the Special Olympics, pic will be applauded by the disability community and its advocates but quickly ignored by longtime fans of the Farrellys and Knoxville.
  51. Rumor Has It...
    As muddled in most respects as its title, Rumor Has It... begins with an intriguing premise...but it devolves into a bland romance spiced with too little comedy.
  52. The New World
    Malick's exalted visuals and isolated metaphysical epiphanies are ill-supported by a muddled, lurching narrative, resulting in a sprawling, unfocused account of an epochal historical moment.
  53. That Man: Peter Berlin
    Pic offers standard mix of digitally shot interview material with the elusive main subject himself, with archive footage and talking heads to assess Berlin's impact on gay culture.
  54. End of the Spear
    Although overly earnest and often stilted, the film should find great favor principally among religious auds.
  55. Bubble
    Likeable if unexciting little tale.
  56. Blossoms of Fire
    Results at times seem as much p.c. travelogue as serious docu inquiry.
  57. Following Sean
    As fascinating as it is frustrating.
  58. Annapolis
    James Franco and Tyrese Gibson scowl and strut and should make the hearts of teenage girls all atwitter, and that's about the only audience that won't see most of the punches telegraphed well in advance.
  59. When a Stranger Calls
    A modestly clever concept gets indifferent execution in When a Stranger Calls, another bigger-yet-blander remake of an allegedly "classic" '70s shocker.
  60. A Good Woman
    Has a script that plays more like a period romancer studded with occasional Wilde-isms and gets uneven treatment from a mixed Anglo-American cast.
  61. Curious George
    Pitched toward the youngest of kids -- roughly ages zygote to 4 -- with direct-to-video quality animation, plotting and backgrounds.
  62. The Tenants
    Keeps grimly glued to its one-note premise, relieved by nary a glimmer of humor, surprise or personality.
  63. Final Destination 3
    In the story's one major stroke of invention, the usual premonitions of death have been replaced with a set of photos.
  64. The Pink Panther
    Neither the disaster one might have suspected nor a fully realized madcap farce; rather, Steve Martin's foray as Inspector Clouseau exhibits bursts of wild-and-craziness, but hardly enough to sustain even its relatively brief running time.
  65. Freedomland
    Despite a few raw moments, pic feels like a Lifetime movie with a marquee cast.
  66. Madea's Family Reunion
    Tyler Perry offers another blithely unbalanced mix of low comedy, sudsy sentiment and spiritual uplift in Madea's Family Reunion.
  67. Running Scared
    There's no denying that viewers not prepared for the relentless stream of nasty personalities, profane invective and bone-crunching violence are in for a very long sit.
  68. Neighbour No. 13
    Scores big in the first few minutes with its atmospheric lensing of the protag's literal separation into two distinct characters, but then settles into a standard psycho-killer payback drama.
  69. She's the Man
    As insistent as its heroine to get its point across, She's the Man gathers up enough energy and likeable goodwill that it almost skirts past some extremely strained passages in which Bynes plays out being a boy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hate Crime
    An apt follow-up to the two Matthew Shepard-themed movies that aired on TV in 2002.
  71. Stay Alive
    Despite some hackneyed qualities, helmer William Brent Bell's good-looking if undistinguished cast and the seemingly fresh twist on an old tale should lure the usual fans of mayhem, murder and the medieval.
  72. Basic Instinct 2
    Those hoping for either a sizzling -- or an unintentionally hilarious -- good time will be disappointed by this inexplicably dull sequel.
  73. Simon
    Eddy Terstall's mild brand of humor and predictable throat-catching weepiness works strictly along boob-tube illness-of-the-week lines, with plentiful shots of topless women.
  74. When Do We Eat?
    Success depends on the degree to which Jewish auds connect with the broadly drawn stereotypes; gentiles and others are sure to pass over this culturally specific comedy altogether.
  75. One Last Ride
    Though it lacks the sheer, depraved intensity of similarly themed pics like "The Gambler," Ride shares much of the sunlit sadness of "Save the Tiger," also populated by desperate, middle-aged men plying their trade in Los Angeles' garment district.
  76. The Sentinel
    A half-hearted exercise in political paranoia, The Sentinel unravels its wrong-man scenario with business-like efficiency and an impressively jittery visual scheme, but falls far short of providing visceral or emotional thrills.
  77. The Notorious Bettie Page
    A superficial look at the '50s sex icon, picture feels like it was researched via press clippings rather than attempting a fresh rethinking of its era and provocative subject.
  78. Nathalie...
    An intellectual-cum-sexual teaser whose twist is apparent far too early on.
  79. Stick It
    Bridges gives the movie its only genuine pulse as a gym coach known for his hard and manipulative ways.
  80. The Celestine Prophecy
    Celestine Prophecy demands all skepticism be left in the lobby. That's a leap few may be willing to take -- few beyond those millions who bought the book, that is.
  81. Erosion
    Shady mood-piece profits greatly from enigmatic performance by Emmanuel Xeureb.
  82. RV
    RV works up an ingratiating sweetness that partially compensates for its blunt predictability and meager laughs.
  83. The Da Vinci Code
    Director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman have conspired to drain any sense of fun out of the melodrama, leaving expectant audiences with an oppressively talky film that isn't exactly dull but comes as close to it as one could imagine with such provocative material.
  84. The Lost City
    A handsomely produced, deeply passionate, but seriously flawed historical epic whose reach far exceeds its grasp. Somewhere inside this overlong, sometimes engaging, often tedious affair, there may be a solid, 100-minute movie.
  85. Art School Confidential
    Despite a soulful leading performance from Max Minghella, pic feels insubstantial, echoing without equaling both the coolly ironic edge and heart of "Ghost World" and the incisive art-world outsider portrait of the director's docu feature, "Crumb."
  86. Hoot
    Squeaky-clean, family-friendly opus.
  87. One Last Thing...
    Plays closer to an after-school special (with HBO-standard dialogue) than a satisfying feature film.
  88. Just My Luck
    Helmer Donald Petrie seems at times to be making the modern-day equivalent of a Doris Day comedy, setting the pic in a lacquered fantasy New York, piling on cutesy-coy dialogue and mining a fluffy premise for all manner of far-fetched cleverness.
  89. The Mistress of Spices
    Beautiful but lifeless, poetic but unelevated, The Mistress of Spices reps a brave but flawed attempt at that most unforgiving of contemporary genres, magical realism.
  90. Russian Dolls
    Viewers who thought the protags were superficial and annoying first time around will find little to change their minds here, but original pictures fans will probably embrace the now-scattered group's marginally more mature dilemmas centered on work and romance.
  91. Mouth to Mouth
    Emerges an uneven, occasionally vivid, ultimately unsatisfactory treatment of themes that should've packed more punch.
  92. The Break-Up
    Sporadic rays of sunshine emanate from the broad and gifted supporting cast, but the core story is almost relentlessly unpleasant, like sitting through a dinner party where the host couple does nothing but bicker.
  93. Psychopathia Sexualis
    Psychopathia Sexualis exists in the gray area between ponderous stylization and campy affectation.
  94. Agnes and His Brothers
    A Teutonic version of "American Beauty" with added dysfunctionality.
  95. The Lake House
    Never quite sure what it wants to be -- a magical-mysterious love story, a psychodrama, a sprawling family saga, or an uneasy combination of these.
  96. Loverboy
    A classic case of "Better if you didn't read the book" cinema, Loverboy emerges an OK character study of an abnormally possessive mother.
  97. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    There is a sense of bloat and where-do-we-go-from here aimlessness to this unconscionably protracted undertaking.
  98. Beowulf & Grendel
    Director Sturla Gunnarsson seems aware of the savagery intrinsic to the story, but is unable to mine it deeply, proving too genteel in the end to make a genuinely creepy or disturbing film.
  99. Edmond
    Despite agreeably short running time and committed performances, Edmond is rendered inert by its stagy atmosphere and failure to fully mine the depths of its protagonist's complex psyche.
  100. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    Uma Thurman, a female superhero with emotional problems and dating issues, doesn't so much fight the forces of evil as battle the wit-starved movie's torpor -- indeed, her perf suggests what the entire film might have been.
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