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 Beauty Academy of Kabul
    In an act of "selfless service," a group of American women, backed by industry giants like Clairol and Vogue, open a beauty school in war-ravaged Afghanistan. The anomalies are manifold: Gun-toting soldiers patrolling the streets are visible through the windows as rookie beauticians busily snip, perm and tweeze.
  2. Lonesome Jim
    There's a slightness to the mildly eccentric material here that leaves the whole enterprise in danger of fluttering away.
  3. Mardi Gras: Made in China
    An obviously sincere but didactically repetitive documentary.
  4. L'Enfant (The Child)
    Those masters of small-scale realism, Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, have created yet another beautifully acted, exquisitely observed morality tale in The Child.
  5. The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch
    An affectionate, energetic documentary, it targets the existing fans of Busch's Broadway and off-Broadway exploits, but is likely to win a lot of converts, too -- largely through Busch's endearing personality.
  6. Stoned
    The film's sputtering dramatic engine, underwhelming perfs, and absence of music by the Stones themselves may leave the key younger demographic wondering what all the fuss is about.
  7. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
    Entirely comfortable as the crude character he has honed in countless stand-up routines and TV appearances, Larry the Cable Guy sustains a level of likeability that enables him to get away with a lot more than he has any right to. But, he remains very much an acquired taste.
  8. Surge of Power
    There are potentially funny ideas, but the barely-there script, performances and direction go for a deadpan tenor that's not supported by much actual wit.
  9. Puzzlehead
    In his intriguing take on the Frankenstein myth, first-time scripter/helmer James Bai establishes an entire alternate universe with consummate mastery only to fail to coax a convincing performance out of his lead actor.
  10. American Gun
    Lacks focus and momentum as it attempts to interweave diverse story strands into a cautionary tapestry.
  11. V for Vendetta
    Suffers from many of same problems as last two installments of producers Andy and Larry Wachowski's "Matrix" franchise: indigestible dialogue, pacing difficulties and too much pseudo-philosophical info.
  12. Find Me Guilty
    Part mob-trial thriller, part "dese 'n' dose" extended standup routine, character-rich pic plays like vintage Lumet, mining the grim comedy from life-and-death legal wranglings in the manner of "Dog Day Afternoon," "Prince of the City" and "The Verdict."
  13. 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.
  14. Thank You for Smoking
    Playing a Big Tobacco lobbyist, Aaron Eckhart puts his golden news-anchor good looks and smooth conviction to better use than in any pic since his breakthrough film, "In the Company of Men."
  15. Take My Eyes
    Handles the subject of domestic violence with intelligence and compassion.
  16. Don't Tell
    More than in her previous tales of dysfunctional families like "Marriages," she (Comencini) lightens the weight of angst with well-designed subplots, secondary characters and moments of tender humor.
  17. Don't Come Knocking
    Strikes some resonant chords but also hits notes that simply don't ring true and are borderline risible at times
  18. The Devil's Miner
    An unforgettable journey through hell under the earth, where Satan is worshipped as king. Straight-as-an-arrow filmmaking raises this docu above the crowd.
  19. Iluzija
    Superbly modulated yet unrelentingly grim, Mirage builds upon a remarkable performance from young Macedonian newcomer Marko Kovacevic to tell the tragic tale of a talented schoolboy driven to violence through neglect and manipulation.
  20. The Big Question
    Intriguing and surprisingly witty.
  21. Beyond Honor
    Though it can't hide occasionally crude dramatics, pic is an undeniably bold and daring tragedy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hate Crime
    An apt follow-up to the two Matthew Shepard-themed movies that aired on TV in 2002.
  23. The Beautiful City
    Fascinating glimpse into wholly different body of laws, engrossingly evolving script and standout performances.
  24. Failure to Launch
    An especially slight romantic comedy whose modest charms are derived largely from its supporting players.
  25. The Hills Have Eyes
    Besides proving to be a faithful mimic of Craven's filmmaking, Aja pours on the gore. But where Aja's version really leaps beyond Craven's both atmospherically and on the violence scale is in the second hour.
  26. The Shaggy Dog
    This fur-fetched tale is bearable family viewing.
  27. Ask the Dust
    Highlighted by a strong and sensual performance from Salma Hayek as the doomed heroine, elegant pic's muted quality and the central character's vexingly contrary behavior will keep auds from connecting with characters who themselves have trouble establishing bonds.
  28. Duck Season
    This slight but appealing film's funky eccentricity feels a little contrived at times.
  29. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
    Though it's decidedly for perverse palates, some kind of cult audience seems assured for this one-note onslaught, which exercises a bizarre fascination despite its excesses.
  30. Evil
    Evil is not, as the title would suggest, a horror film, at least not a conventional one. Based on the autobiographical novel by Jan Guillou and set in the mid-1950s, the film relates the experiences of a troubled young man who's enrolled into a hidebound private school.
  31. Game 6
    Game 6, the first screenplay by one of America's great living novelists, Don DeLillo, is poorly served by Michael Hoffman's flat, soporific direction.
  32. Shakespeare Behind Bars
    There's no denying the pic's overall impact as a compelling study of art as a source of transcendence. And it will come as no surprise if this well-crafted doc eventually serves as source material for a dramatic feature.
  33. 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.
  34. 16 Blocks
    Not that it ever rises to the level of Sidney Lumet's Gotham police pics ("Serpico," "Prince of the City"), but 16 Blocks does raise the banner for the tradition of the textured urban cop drama, spurred by action but made substantial by characters at crossroads.
  35. Aquamarine
    Result is an unusually likeable family-friendly comedy.
  36. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    A heady spirit of spontaneity permeates the proceedings, suggesting the entire pic, much like the concert it documents, was conceived, planned and completed in a single burst of creative enthusiasm.
  37. Ultraviolet
    Pic is hermetically sealed in a synthetic wrapping that's so total -- Sony's top-flight high-def cameras, visibly low-budget CG work, exceptionally hackneyed and imitative action and dialogue --that it arrives a nearly lifeless film.
  38. Deep Sea
    Imax 3-D process has lost its original novelty, and little is done in Deep Sea to find new and exciting ways of using the medium.
  39. Merry Christmas
    A period drama marbled with humor, bold gestures and bittersweet consequences.
  40. Woman Is the Future of Man
    Taken as a film about muddling along, "Woman" never bores the viewer with indecisive filmmaking. Basically, it's an elegant jeu, played and constructed with an almost Gallic lightness heightened by Jeong Yong-jin's bursts of music, all bouncy piano and pizzicato.
  41. Doing Time for Patsy Cline
    Overall the charm of the film works its spell, and director Kennedy shows confidence in juggling understated comedy and gently sentimental drama.
  42. Our Brand Is Crisis
    Proves as entertaining as the earlier "The War Room," which also featured Carville, but is more somber.
  43. Sorry, Haters
    Penn looks bewildered in a role that simply doesn't track, but Kechiche rises to the occasion. Stanzler's helming, shot blandly in digital vid, amounts to point-and-shoot.
  44. Al otro lado
    Viewers unaware of the music --hugely popular among Mexicans -- and the often intensely nationalist sentiments behind it, may blanch at the open chauvinism and celebration of outlaw lifestyles. But part of the pic's strength is its presenting the cultural strain as it is, without comment.
  45. Tsotsi
    Powered by a pounding soundtrack of dance hall Kwaito music, the pic has vital, urban energy similar to the Brazilian crossover "City of God" but with a tauter, more conventional storyline.
  46. Madea's Family Reunion
    Tyler Perry offers another blithely unbalanced mix of low comedy, sudsy sentiment and spiritual uplift in Madea's Family Reunion.
  47. 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.
  48. Dirty
    The cop genre receives a shot of adrenaline in helmer Chris Fisher's Dirty, a no-nonsense dramatic response to the LAPD Rampart scandals of the '90s.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Fish
    Blessed with stellar performances, especially by lead Cate Blanchett as an ex-junkie looking for a fresh break, this sophomore feature by Australian director Rowan Woods marks a strong return after his powerful debut, "The Boys" (1998).
  50. Unknown White Male
    Bruce's efforts to retrace and recover his life after his memory loss contain all the drama and uncertainty of a fine psychological drama.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Orpheus
    Pic is somewhat cerebral, being mainly helped by the fresh playing of the cast, especially Yank actress Dawn. Color is excellent, and director Marcel Camus gives this movement. (Review of Original Release)
  52. Forgiving Dr. Mengele
    An impressively polished documentary by Bob Hercules and Cheri Hughes. Perhaps even more thought-provoking than its co-helmers intended, pic is bound to spark conversations and debate.
  53. Trudell
    More hagiography than history, Heather Rae's long-in-production portrait of Native American activist and poet John Trudell has the uncritically admiring feel of authorized biography.
  54. Workingman's Death
    Pic reps a sequel of sorts to his 12-part "Megacities" about poor folk in separate burgs, and comes soaked in good old-fashioned humanist respect for the dignity of labor, but eventually grows a little monotonous.
  55. Kirikou and the Wild Beasts
    Animation, like dialogue and narration, is simple and direct. Messages of the value of teamwork, pride in shared labor, self-reliance and resourcefulness are nicely embedded into compact, suspenseful adventures.
  56. Street Fight
    Curry's courage in the face of police harassment and what seems a very real threat of something worse is amazing.
  57. Date Movie
    Arguably the lamest of all the free-wheeling genre parodies that have taken flight since "Airplane!," Date Movie is stupefyingly unfunny in its attempts to mock romantic comedies, celebrities, reality TV shows and anything else that pops into the heads of its creators.
  58. Eight Below
    An easy watch, thanks to the splendors of frosty scenery and furry canines.
  59. Freedomland
    Despite a few raw moments, pic feels like a Lifetime movie with a marquee cast.
  60. Battle in Heaven
    Both intensely exciting for its cinematic inventions and terribly uninvolving on emotional and dramatic levels.
  61. Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor
    Russian-made pic displays pro technique and visual imagination on a par with, if not better than, Hollywood frighteners, but with a distinctive Slavic accent.
  62. The Second Chance
    The crisply made feature delivers an involving if not always persuasive portrait of religious leaders in conflict.
  63. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
    An ace performance by 26-year-old Julia Jentsch ("The Edukators," "Snowland"), as the quietly determined Munich student who was beheaded for distributing counter-propaganda leaflets in 1943, gives pic a focused dramatic power.
  64. Winter Passing
    Family drama appears content to present the situation without going for anything remotely close to the emotional jugular. Result is unsatisfying and even dreary, despite some fine work from Zooey Deschanel and a becalmed Will Ferrell.
  65. Love
    The action is compelling, the film good looking, the acting first rate and the circumstances -- people from neglected nations in an alienating if not hostile urban landscape -- is moving.
  66. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    More intriguing on paper than when it actually unspools onscreen. Kevin Willmott's small-scaled but ambitious picture is well-researched, sometimes amusing and not unintelligent.
  67. Desert Wind
    Far from encouraging "Survivor"-style competitiveness, the desert setting serves as a serene Club Med-type backdrop to the all-male bonding.
  68. Curious George
    Pitched toward the youngest of kids -- roughly ages zygote to 4 -- with direct-to-video quality animation, plotting and backgrounds.
  69. 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.
  70. Firewall
    Firewall begins slowly, exhibits hints of promise in the middle and then descends into silliness.
  71. 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.
  72. The Ister
    Tyro helmers David Barison and Daniel Ross have sunk their teeth into a heady intellectual stew, and results are invigorating thanks to the filmmakers' inspired linkage of images and ideas and commentaries from three of the world's leading philosophers.
  73. London
    For those who enjoy fashion-model-looking twentysomethings yelling at each other in bathrooms while doing too much cocaine, voila! Heaven is a place called London.
  74. Neil Young: Heart of Gold
    The concert film has never looked or sounded classier than Jonathan Demme's superbly crafted Neil Young: Heart of Gold.
  75. Through the Fire
    Upbeat Urbanworld documentary prizewinner, full of strong personalities and crisply edited court action.
  76. A Year Without Love
    An Argentine writer dying of AIDS searches for a medical cure and some human warmth in the hospitals and S&M clubs of Buenos Aires in dignified, thoughtful drama A Year Without Love.
  77. Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus
    Film's pared-down look has a stylish simplicity.
  78. 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.
  79. 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.
  80. Something New
    Wispy at best, this romantic comedy from a first-time director and screenwriter feels as if whole chunks have been left on the cutting-room floor, with what remains mustering intermittent charm thanks to the attractiveness, if not chemistry, of Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker.
  81. The Tenants
    Keeps grimly glued to its one-note premise, relieved by nary a glimmer of humor, surprise or personality.
  82. Cowboy del Amor
    Richly amusing and sporadically insightful as it offers an up-close-and-personal view of Ivan Thompson, a self-proclaimed "cowboy cupid" who plays matchmaker between American men and Mexican women.
  83. The Tollbooth
    Lack of perspective and shaky comic tone plague Tollbooth -- sinking it in a morass of whiny cliches.
  84. La scorta (re-release)
    Ricky Tognazzi's La Scorta topped the Italian box office charts for weeks, thanks to its skill in capturing the country's current political climate in an entertaining action film format. (Review of Original Release)
  85. Who Gets to Call It Art?
    Lively, intelligent collage, both richly complex and immediately accessible.
  86. Bubble
    Likeable if unexciting little tale.
  87. 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.
  88. Big Momma's House 2
    So episodic and flat it should be a letdown even to those amused by the original.
  89. Nanny McPhee
    Under the surface, the movie has a streak of Roald Dahl-style darkness that dilutes the sugar.
  90. Dai si gin
    An interesting idea comes over only half-formed in Johnnie To's Breaking News, an effective Hong Kong crimer that partly returns to the realistic style of some of his late '90s dramas, but never properly knits its theme of media manipulation into pic's punchy thriller format.
  91. Imagine Me & You
    A slick but slight Brit pic, chockfull with tart one-liners and pretty posh people, with one major twist: The romantic leads are both women.
  92. Little Jerusalem
    In what is arguably her best performance since "Van Gogh," Zylberstein brings Mathilde to life with grace and fervor.
  93. Manderlay
    The subject being race relations, Manderlay is bound to stir considerable debate in intellectual circles, but given the director's abstract style and use of characters to enact an agenda, it's a discussion that will exclude the general public, who will ignore it as they did "Dogville."
  94. Roving Mars
    Helmer George Butler correctly gauges his film's strengths, with the search for life in the universe becoming a heartfelt tribute to a couple of robots.
  95. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
    Cheating flagrantly, helmer Michael Winterbottom has pulled off the trick -- sort of -- with the wickedly playful Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.
  96. Go for Zucker
    Picture lets loose an experienced cast of vets on a well-honed script that has broad appeal.
  97. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
    Though it risks political incorrectness every step of the way, film is more a pleasant laugher than a sharp-edged satire.
  98. Why We Fight
    Picture sets the gold standard for political documentaries.
  99. End of the Spear
    Although overly earnest and often stilted, the film should find great favor principally among religious auds.
  100. Underworld: Evolution
    Overall package is potent. A few rock-the-house scenes of slam-bang derring-do -- are nothing short of sensationally exciting.
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