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. Melissa P.
    Though it’s a rare Italian film told from a female p.o.v., “Melissa P.” is pseudo-feminist at best.
  2. 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.
  3. Aristide and the Endless Revolution
    A vital if less than objective slice of film journalism on the U.S.'s troubled history in the Third World.
  4. 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.
  5. Gilles' Wife
    Told primarily via body language and facial expressions with a minimum of dialogue, beautifully observed, emotionally intense tale is an ambitious and rewarding outing for Frederic Fonteyne.
  6. The Syrian Bride
    Ambitious screenplay by helmer Eran Riklis (best known outside Israel for "Cup Final") and former journalist Suha Arraf puts plenty of human flesh on its characters, who span the religious and cultural spectrum of Golan Heights dwellers.
  7. Undertaking Betty
    An enjoyable and entertainingly cast fable about love, death and fitting revenge, "Plots With a View" (AKA Undertaking Betty) strikes a near-miraculous balance between the silly and the morbid.
  8. Pride & Prejudice
    A movie for the age, and a keeper for the ages, Pride & Prejudice brings Jane Austen's best-loved novel to vivid, widescreen life, as well as making an undisputed star of 20-year-old Keira Knightley.
  9. Derailed
    This murky psychological suspenser manages the tricky feat of being as predictable as it is finally preposterous.
  10. Zathura: A Space Adventure
    Its unwieldy title notwithstanding, Zathura: A Space Adventure is arguably the best adaptation of a Chris Van Allsburg book to date.
  11. 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.
  12. Ellie Parker
    Without Watts, Scott Coffey's feature-length expansion of his identically titled short wouldn't amount to much.
  13. 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.
  14. Cape of Good Hope
    Although by now routine, the intertwining of separate story strands is solidly structured, and the different mini-narratives resolved in unsurprising yet satisfying ways.
  15. Niagara Motel
    A blue chip cast is wasted in the painfully unfunny ensemble comedy Niagara Motel.
  16. Good Morning, Night
    Numerous filmmakers have attempted to dramatize the terrorist activity that gripped Italy in the 1970s, but few have done so with the unsettling power of Marco Bellocchio's Good Morning, Night.
  17. The Comedians of Comedy
    Amiably slapdash docu about The Comedians of Comedy tour mixes on-stage performances, backstage bull sessions and downtime tomfoolery to generally satisfying and frequently hilarious effect.
  18. Duane Hopwood
    Writer-director Matt Mulhern confidently anchors his drama-comedy about an alcoholic Atlantic City pit boss with good writing and sharp dialogue. Script never treats characters as less than human.
  19. La sierra
    Result is a loose personal piece of reportage that places people over ideas and larger issues, and reveals the pic's severe limitations long before a surprisingly upbeat ending.
  20. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Mildly engaging but very far from being for 50 Cent what "8 Mile" was for Eminem, this lurchingly structured story of survival against the odds looks to get off to a strong start thanks to the singer's large following.
  21. The Swenkas
    Ronde demonstrates a painterly eye and ripe affection for these people, but as with "Jerusalem, My Love" he maintains a too-polite, worshipful distance from his subjects.
  22. 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.
  23. Jarhead
    Part absurdist drama, part personal observational commentary and part hormonal explosion, all seen through the filter of previous war pics, Sam Mendes' third feature has numerous arresting moments but never achieves a confident, consistent or sufficiently audacious tone.
  24. Brooklyn Lobster
    Character's multiple mid-life crises could make this genuinely engaging drama especially appealing to older viewers.
  25. The Dying Gaul
    Despite a reliable cast led by Scott, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard, the human impact is ultimately lost in a too calculated scenario.
  26. Gay Sex in the 70s
    Magnificent photographs, archival news footage, and location-shot porn add texture and immediacy to Joseph Lovett's fascinating memoir of the sexually explosive 12-year period (1969-1981).
  27. I Love Your Work
    Wallow in Hollywood hipster self-absorption.
  28. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
    For all the film's provocations and documentation, however, Greenwald never seems get to the heart of the matter: that it is the consumer who makes Wal-Mart powerful.
  29. Christmas in the Clouds
    Combo of gorgeously shot Western settings (mostly in snowbound Idaho), memorably mismatched characters, and light-touch social commentary.
  30. Derailroaded
    As discomfortingly fascinating as listening to a couple's heated argument at a table near yours in a restaurant.
  31. The Legend of Zorro
    Bigger, louder and considerably less charming than its predecessor…Still, there are enough crowd-pleasing moments amid the frenetic action.
  32. Prime
    Despite a comic Yiddishe mama turn by Meryl Streep and a sensitively nuanced performance by Uma Thurman in a convincing changeup from her recent kickass action roles, Prime remains an oddly juiceless older woman-younger man romance, with a Freudian twist.
  33. 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.
  34. 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.
  35. New York Doll
    A charmer whose lack of profane language or images renders it unexpectedly viable for general broadcast.
  36. Paradise Now
    Handsomely shot in widescreen, mostly on actual West Bank locations, and well-played by the cast, pic lays out the issues in an accessible but rather too over-correct way, seemingly eager to please all parties at the expense of real passion.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Passenger (re-release)
    Nicholson plays the character with personal flair, as penetrating as Antonioni's handling of the film. (Review of Original Release)
  38. Three... Extremes
    Plenty of vile little secrets and ghastly urges are explored in the stylishly made Asian-fusion horror triptych.
  39. America Brown
    Name cast, occasional deft touches and nifty contrast between the two locales cannot overcome script's terminal awkwardness.
  40. little man
    Pic can be taken as either inspirational or cautionary, but either way rivets attention on the efforts of both medical science and Conn herself to keep the little guy alive.
  41. Ballets Russes
    Enormously absorbing.
  42. 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
    Intellectually demanding and non-commercial film should be embraced in the festival and arthouse circuits by film students and viewers interested in postmodern, deconstructionist cinema.
  43. Doom
    It's really not all that bad. Ultra-derivative bigscreen transplant of one of the most successful (and controversial) games ever made plays like a mutant cross between a biotech thriller and a zombie movie, with all the alien autopsies, blood-gushing protuberances and meaningless scientific jargon that come with the territory.
  44. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    Modestly engaging but mostly unexceptional.
  45. Shopgirl
    Martin hits all the right notes while subtly conveying both the appealing sophistication and the purposeful reserve of Ray. But he cannot entirely avoid being overshadowed by Dane's endearingly vulnerable, emotionally multifaceted and fearlessly open performance.
  46. Stay
    An ultra-arty "The Sixth Sense" that deliberately inhibits comprehension of the story until the very end -- and arguably continues to inhibit it even then -- pic features certifiably talented people on both sides of the camera collaborating on a project that probably shouldn't have been undertaken in the first place.
  47. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
    Once again making a diverting but insubstantial movie look better than it is, Downey, with haggard charm to burn, is winning all the way. Kilmer is riotous at times as an impeccably groomed, businesslike guy keen to assert his orientation at every opportunity.
  48. After Innocence
    A powerfully affecting documentary.
  49. White King, Red Rubber, Black Death
    A stunning indictment of Belgium's brutal colonization of the Congo in the late 19th century, Brit documaker Peter Bate's White King, Red Rubber, Black Death illustrates how European exploitation in Africa caused irreparable damage to the continent.
  50. Emmanuel's Gift
    Sincere but fairly soft piece of ennobling journalism that gives a positive spin to some of Africa's seemingly intractable problems.
  51. Innocence
    This genuine curio maintains its mystery to the end.
  52. Protocols of Zion
    Entertaining and substantial enough to attract at least a portion of the Michael Moore audience.
  53. Kids in America
    Josh Stolberg launches a scalding attack on the stodgy conservatism of the American public school system, only to end up stacking the deck in egregiously smirky and simple-minded ways.
  54. The Roost
    Debuting helmer Ti West taps into the realist-horror spirit of mentor and exec producer Larry Fessenden, and makes a scarier pic than any by his master.
  55. The Optimists
    Explores another courageous, little-known chapter in the saga of resistance and heroics during World War II.
  56. Naked in Ashes
    A respectful, illuminating appreciation of a few of the estimated 13 million yogis in India.
  57. The Time We Killed
    The Time We Killed reps avant-garde vet Jennifer Todd Reeves' most ambitious work yet, a dense-packed feature-length black-and-white journey into a beautifully restless mind.
  58. Ushpizin
    An enjoyable seriocomic tale of a poor couple whose holiday-time miracle becomes a test of faith.
  59. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    At first seems like a pleasantly pat piece of verite advocacy for convention-breaking unions. But it gets really interesting once said relationship unexpectedly dissolves in ugly fashion, offering real-life voyeuristic appeal a la "Capturing the Friedmans."
  60. Domino
    Satisfying neither as character study nor as straight-ahead actioner.
  61. 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.
  62. The Fog
    Unfortunately, interest lags between the grisly deaths, and, worse, none of the characters generates rooting interest.
  63. Where the Truth Lies
    Atom Egoyan's most mainstream and genre-oriented picture in his 20-year career applies a thick noir lacquer to a jumbled, time-jumping tale of a young female journalist prying the facts out of the aging entertainers and their cronies.
  64. North Country
    An emotionally potent story told with great dignity.
  65. Finding Home
    Impeccably crafted but dramatically turgid.
  66. Innocent Voices
    While the respectable result is a more meaningful film than just about anything Mandoki worked on during his 17 years in Hollywood ("Angel Eyes," "Message in a Bottle"), pic suffers from an overindulgence of triumph-over-adversity cliches and a meandering narrative.
  67. Loggerheads
    A respectably crafted, earnest ensemble drama.
  68. Nine Lives
    Though the episodic structure results in a whole not quite equal to some of its parts, pic is an unusually tender, perceptive character study buoyed by stellar performances from a who's who of talented (and many underused) actresses.
  69. Summer Storm
    Routine in some aspects, but compensates via psychologically sharp writing and performances.
  70. The President's Last Bang
    South Korean cinema finally gets its first full-blown political satire with The President's Last Bang, a virtuoso slice of sustained black humor.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harlan County U.S.A. (re-release)
    The stars of the film are the men and women of Harlan County, portrayed here not as patronized mountain folks but as human beings. (Review of Original Release)
  72. The Dark Hours
    The Dark Hours surmounts some of the problems of its weak dialogue through a commanding performance by lead Kate Greenhouse and some grisly, genre-style violence.
  73. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
    A labor of love made over the course of seven years that crucially matches the energy and passion Langlois himself embodied, this deep-dish account of the life and times of the longtime head of the Cinematheque Francaise will enthrall buffs.
  74. Land of Plenty
    Rocky but respectable Land of Plenty proves the helmer often does better with low budgets, fast schedules and young collaborators. Slushy final 10 minutes nearly trashes with triteness the good work that precedes it.
  75. Good Night, and Good Luck.
    A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry.
  76. The Gospel
    A creaky melodrama that wants to be a musical.
  77. In Her Shoes
    While the director's avid fans may be disappointed, upscalish mainstream auds, particularly women, will eat up this well-acted, emotionally focused adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's popular novel.
  78. Two for the Money
    Despite nice touches, pic meanders in the middle and ends flatly.
  79. Waiting...
    The wait for laughs lasts the entire length of Waiting ..., first feature from writer-director Rob McKittrick that aims to be a "Clerks"-type comedy set in a chain restaurant but ends up somewhere below a "Porky's" sequel.
  80. The Aggressives
    Documaker Daniel Peddle also works as a casting director, and so it is small wonder his crisp, concise, intimate portrait of six very different, self-styled "aggressives" -- women who stress their masculine sides -- should reveal in each a curious integrity and beauty.
  81. 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.
  82. Dandelion
    A perceptive character drama both delicate and tragic.
  83. Never Been Thawed
    Comes off as lame and unfocused as its draggy dramatis personae.
  84. A Tale of Two Pizzas
    In scope, depth, rhythm and gags, "Pizzas" seems best suited to the small screen.
  85. The Squid and the Whale
    Pic makes up in strong performances and wry observation what it sometimes lacks in narrative drive. Result is a perceptive (and unexpectedly moving) portrait of lives in crisis.
  86. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    Park and co-helmer Steve Box stay faithful to the cozy core ingredients that made the clay duo's kudo-reaping shorts and Park's previous pic, "Chicken Run," so well loved. "Curse" delivers a wholesome morsel, happily not too cheesy, that families will nibble on as a treat.
  87. Zombie Honeymoon
    Zombie Honeymoon scores simultaneously as romantic, tragic, grotesque and screamingly funny
  88. Capote
    The mesmerizing performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the celebrated writer dominates every scene, while director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman's penetrating study enthralls in every aspect.
  89. The Greatest Game Ever Played
    Offers an inspiring story, lush visuals and accessible characters to give a black-hat-white-hat view of class struggle in America and England.
  90. Into the Blue
    Not a thriller so much as an extremely violent swimsuit calendar, the lushly lensed but dramatically waterlogged Into the Blue is too infatuated with its scantily clad stars to make sense of all the drug dealers, boat looters and bloodthirsty sharks trying to hunt them down.
  91. Serenity
    What makes Serenity refreshing is its avoidance of CGI, which gives the pic a much more human dimension; the evident chemistry between the cast; and a humor that doesn't rely simply on flip one-liners.
  92. Carlito's Way: Rise to Power
    Conspicuously underwhelming.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Going Shopping
    Item may draw curious women looking to cool their heels, say, while out shopping, but straight men can be expected to stay away in droves and Jaglom regulars will probably wait for the DVD.
  94. Little Manhattan
    Resting almost entirely on the shoulders of its young leads, both they and the pic lack the sparkle to sustain what seeks to be a whimsical premise but, except for a few moments, proves ponderous instead.
  95. MirrorMask
    Emerges as an overproduced novelty pic that looks and feels more like a company promo reel than an engaging piece of storytelling.
  96. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Even more than in "Far From Heaven," Moore's housebound wife is a study in pent-up brilliance, with extraordinary devotion to her family.
  97. The War Within
    An honorable but failed attempt to dramatize the dynamics that propel a basically good man to become a suicide bomber, The War Within contains provocative points inside a dull package.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Once Upon a Time in the West (re-release)
    Henry Fonda and Jason Robards relish each screen minute as the heavies, and Charles Bronson plays Clint Eastwood's 'man with no name' role. (Review of Original Release)
  99. Sueño
    Brimming with fanciful ideas about life, romance and the rejuvenating power of music, Sueno sings a lovely tune but chokes on its own banal lyrics.
  100. Santo Domingo Blues
    Alternating between New York clubs by night and the colorful streets and countryside of Santa Domingo by day, pic captures the spirit of the music and the nation that gave birth to it.
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