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. All the Pretty Horses
    A half-broken adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's great modern Western novel. Neither dull nor exciting.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jabberwocky (re-release)
    Long on jabber but short on yocks.
  3. Anywhere But Here
    With half a dozen roles to her credit, Portman is a natural performer who brings rough edges to any role she plays -- the movie is inconceivable without her.
  4. Reno: Rebel Without a Pause
    Nancy Savoca's workmanlike record of a La Mama stage performance taped last December finds the comic spinning some not-especially-interesting anecdotes about her bewildered actions that day, before turning toward more incisive political commentary.
  5. Double Jeopardy
    Despite fine casting...familiarity sets in and lack of surprises directly lessen what could have been emotionally gripping.
  6. Biker Boyz
    Never really busts out of second gear.
  7. The Slaughter Rule
    Strong performances, a few dramatically potent scenes and a vividly specific evocation of locale barely offset hackneyed and muddled elements in a script that plays like a first draft.
  8. Rebels with a Cause
    Encapsulates the turbulent times of the Students for a Democratic Society.
  9. How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
    While the direction is a little anonymous and could use some verve, the comedy-drama gets by thanks to a solid script, witty dialogue and engaging performances.
  10. Sunset Strip
    Interesting structure provides pic with plenty of opportunities for social satire, human comedy and chance encounters, but few setups are ever dramatically fulfilled.
  11. Once in the Life
    A film that ultimately feels stagebound and excessively talky, but which showcases an exceptional performance.
  12. The Forsaken
    Chalk it up as a middling B-pic that, with a bit more wit and style, could have been at least a cult item.
  13. Pola X
    An often intriguing, sometimes hypnotic work, but one that quickly starts to unravel in the final hour as it becomes clear there’s not much beneath the emperor’s clothes.
  14. Lan Yu
    Might spark controversy in mainland China, not only because it deals with a homosexual relationship between a member of the Chinese establishment and a peasant, but also because it touches on events such as the 1989 massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. However, pic is unlikely to raise eyebrows anywhere else.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shanghai Ghetto
    The material is more interesting than the film's rather dry mode of presentation, which is somewhat hampered by a dearth of archival footage.
  16. Catfish in Black Bean Sauce
    Too mild-mannered and fuzzily focused for its own good.
  17. Devils on the Doorstep
    Has all the classic faults of a picture not only directed by an actor but by an actor who is his own producer.
  18. Bats
    Smoothly maneuvering within the limitations of genre conventions, Bats emerges as a vigorously paced and surprisingly satisfying piece of work.
  19. A Shot at Glory
    Mediocre, dramatically flat picture.
  20. Return to Me
    A simplistic, highly contrived romantic comedy about the mysterious workings of fate.
  21. An American Rhapsody
    Calculated yet undeniably skillful melodrama.
  22. Flawless
    Schumacher takes a step in the right direction with Flawless, a small-scale, intimate serio-comedy.
  23. CyberWorld
    An OK mishmash.
  24. Long Time Since
    Intense but inscrutable tale involving a woman's gradual remembrance of a long-suppressed trauma.
  25. Brown Sugar
    As eye and ear candy, pic has its modest pleasures, beginning with the attractive Diggs and Lathan.
  26. Mansfield Park
    But there's little sense of a longer dramatic arc stretching across the characters: Rozema can't seem to hold a single tone for more than a few minutes, and she has too many other axes to grind besides just getting the story up on the screen.
  27. Bicentennial Man
    Columbus' approach is intended to cloak such topics as mortality and human identity in the warm glow of greeting card sentiment, which renders the prescription palatable for mass consumption but hopelessly diluted.
  28. The Story of Us
    The stylistic devices used, which recall early Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky, get increasingly tedious, disrupting not only the sequence of events but also squelching audience sympathy for the protagonists.
  29. Quitting
    What gives Quitting its freshness is its setting in a country that often denies it has such problems and the decision to anchor the film strongly within the Chinese family fabric.
  30. Breakfast of Champions
    Has some fine individual moments but fails to cohere into a grander, more substantial statement on the themes it aspires to tackle.
  31. Carman: The Champion
    Modestly engaging but thoroughly formulaic drama about a boxer turned preacher who returns to the ring to fund a community-outreach center.
  32. Rules of Engagement
    A broad and obvious approach to ambiguous material that's virtually all plot mechanics with little nuance or characterization.
  33. The Low Down
    The lowdown on The Low Down: charm 8, content 2.
  34. The Yards
    Entombs its characters so thoroughly in a prison of palpably predestined tragedy that one knows from the outset that the very worst that can happen most certainly will.
  35. Pandaemonium
    Never quite dull, neither does it ever find a viable rhythm, narrative arc or crux of emotional engagement.
  36. Otomo
    Not a cheerful watch: It's a shocking portrayal of rampant racism.
  37. Duets
    Lack of much substance or dramatic payoff makes the whole significantly less than sum of its parts.
  38. Mystery, Alaska
    Relies on ensemble allure, with mixed results.
  39. The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland
    Too tepid to interest anyone old enough to operate a TV remote control.
  40. Bounce
    Simultaneously contrived and genuinely felt.
  41. Secret Ballot
    An enjoyable absurdist comedy.
  42. Gun Shy
    A textbook case in which the parts are greater than the whole.
  43. Home Movie
    A modest charmer.
  44. The Musketeer
    A handsome but ho-hum swashbuckler that springs to life only during a few spirited scenes of acrobatic swordplay.
  45. The Sea
    Though solidly crafted, with a host of well-etched performances, film is unable to establish a consistent, engaging tone.
  46. Mango Yellow
    Like characters out of some Carnival hell, a macho butcher and his born-again wife, a forlorn barmaid, a sinister sadist and the gay manager of a flophouse called the Hotel Texas run in and out of each other's lives in a film as sloppy, sluttish, scruffy and vital as they are.
  47. The Crimson Rivers
    Adequately entertaining but not particularly memorable.
  48. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    This dank, gloomy essay into the supernatural tries hard to create an intriguing mood in which fate guides the lives of its wounded protagonists, but few will be interested in the outcome.
  49. The Captive
    An elegant but empty and frustrating meditation on desire, obsession, love and possession, The Captive intellectualizes those subjects almost beyond the level of art-film parody.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fever Heat [re-release]
    Lacks the suspense, characterization and deft direction of the predecessor "Rififi."
  51. The Mothman Prophecies
    Director Mark Pellington hardly lets a moment pass without suggesting some bad vibes creeping onto the edges of the screen, but he's let down by Richard Hatem's script, based on John A. Keel's book, which delivers an ounce when it promised a gallon.
  52. Knockaround Guys
    Young male auds should warm to its cool criminal ethos, sharp dialogue, charismatic cast and wry humor.
  53. Kwik Stop
    A screwball road movie set in a middle-of-nowhere town, Kwik Stop suggests "It Happened One Night" as reimagined by David Lynch or Hal Hartley.
  54. The Astronaut's Wife
    Aggressively stylish but dramatically flaccid.
  55. The Event
    Middling drama about euthanasia, worked out through a sprawl of underdeveloped characters.
  56. King of the Jungle
    Story's spurts of violence are designed to tear Seymour's world apart , but Rosenfeld's scripting and directing choices tend to lessen impact of a potentially gut-wrenching urban tale.
  57. Southlander: Diary of a Desperate Musician
    A slackly paced but modestly diverting trifle, with cameos by recording artists Beck, Beth Orton and Hank Williams III to elevate the hipper-than-thou quotient.
  58. Summer Catch
    Haphazard mix of boisterously crude comedy, romantic entanglements, class-conscious clashes and intensely competitive hardball.
  59. Holy Smoke
    Original in every sense.
  60. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    Respectably crafted to avoid lurid excess, feature is nonetheless a bit potboilerish in its pileup of sexy, violent, duplicitous circumstances that plague the consciences of latter-day clergymen.
  61. Time and Tide
    An almost plotless effort that features charismatic stars and plentiful scenes of finely choreographed mayhem.
  62. The Country Bears
    Toddlers and pre-teens will be entertained, and parents will be pleasantly surprised, by this more-than-just-bearable musical road movie.
  63. Maid in Manhattan
    Gets into trouble when it reaches for laughs.
  64. Pushing Tin
    Unfortunately, story's tension climaxes a half-hour before the film is over, and thereafter dissipates much of the charge and good will generated up to that point.
  65. Gasoline
    Playing like a moribund hybrid of "Thelma and Louise" and "The Trouble With Harry," lesbian-themed thriller Gasoline lacks sex drive.
  66. My Kingdom
    An intriguing spin on the British crime genre that's more a series of strong performances than a fully worked-out character drama.
  67. Biggie and Tupac
    Broomfield's shaggy p.o.v. always troubles -- blurring the lines between tabloid and serious reportage, morbid curiosity and hard facts, objectivity and amusing, quasi-amateur stuntsmanship.
  68. Cinemania
    An unsparing, if light-touched, look at obsession, denial and where to find the cheap seats in Manhattan.
  69. Millennium Actress
    Contains some brilliant invention between duller stretches.
  70. The Red Violin
    Fails on a number of counts, mostly because the individual stories aren't very gripping.
  71. A Perfect Murder
    The dilemma in this Perfect Murder is its singular failure at creating a rooting interest for a character or situation.
  72. Fantasia 2000
    Like a light buffet of tasty morsels rather than a full and satisfying meal; all the episodes are more or less agreeable, but as a whole it lacks a knockout punch, one dynamite sequence that will galvanize viewers.
  73. Blast from the Past
    A time-warp comedy that starts out kinda "Pleasantville" and gets pretty Tepidsville, Blast From the Past expends scant imagination or style on a fun premise that seems an open invitation to both.
  74. Two Weeks Notice
    An affable but undernourished romantic comedy that fails to match the freshness of the actress-producer and writer's previous collaboration, "Miss Congeniality."
  75. Cuba feliz
    Not quite a documentary, it's more like a musical travelogue that doesn't quite sustain feature length and seems ideally suited to a shorter TV version for music webs.
  76. The Shipping News
    Seems to be playing the author's music, but like a string quartet that plays a half-beat off.
  77. Baby Boy
    Can be taken to task for its overt point-making, lackluster style and some late-on dramatic contrivances seemingly dragged in to provide a little violence.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Golden Age
    Bunuel's anger at society, particularly its attitude on morality, seems not only dated today, but laugh provoking. [Review is of a 1964 screening at Lincoln Center, NY, first showing of pic in the US.]
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (re-release)
    Good action caper.
  80. Hackers
    There is a great deal more style than substance here. The special effects experts and the other members of the technical crew do their considerable best to give their various hacking sequences the look of warp-speed sci-fi fantasy.
  81. Primal Fear
    The major jolt is saved for the very end but, like much else in the film, it is overexplained and underlined when more simplicity and quiet would have provided the revelation with the power of a depth charge.
  82. The Last Days of Disco
    Whit Stillman's stiff directorial approach ill suits the sensual ambiance of the club scene so intently depicted, and the mostly self-conscious, uptight characters seem to have made a left turn out of "Metropolitan" and walked through the wrong door to turn up in this flamboyant druggie scene.
  83. Clay Pigeons
    Visual flourishes (handsomely lensed by Eric Edwards on Utah locales standing in for Montana) are polished but derivative, with too many time-lapse sky views, reminiscent of Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho."
  84. Rounders
    Intermittently engaging but dramatically slack, this tale...is more interesting around the edges than it is at its core, thanks to the dull nature of the lead character played by Matt Damon.
  85. Analyze This
    The gradual dilution of fresh humor is further undercut by a queasy sense that the picture, in the end, is quietly endorsing all the psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo that it has been poking fun at all along.
  86. 102 Dalmatians
    A pale reworking of its predecessor.
  87. Welcome to Collinwood
    Anthony and Joe Russo place too much faith in the ability of their talented thesps to carry the day over precariously thin material.
  88. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    A lightweight, modestly engaging yarn sporting reductive mystical and philosophical elements that are both valid and borderline silly.
  89. Bittersweet Motel
    Well-made if not particularly insightful docu should be catnip to Phishheads, while the previously unconverted are likely to stay that way.
  90. Heist
    While staccato dialogue and edgy confrontations have always been the wordsmith's forte, the precision-tooled mechanics of an elaborate crime caper have not, and the physical direction here could use some muscle.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uptown Girls
    Light, occasionally charming and reasonably well-crafted.
  92. Human Nature
    Charlie Kaufman's clever screenplay bears many traces of the same brand of originality and eccentric imagination that graced his work on "Being John Malkovich," although even at an hour-and-a-half the conceit is stretched almost too thin for audience sustenance.
  93. The Gatekeeper
    Actor-turned-director John Carlos Frey, who also stars, knows how to push the right sentimental buttons in what ultimately amounts to a pedestrian actioner, a cliched compendium of Anglo villains and Mexican martyrs.
  94. Unknown Pleasures
    As lethargic as the characters it portrays, the film requires greater staying power than many audiences will possess.
  95. Buffalo Soldiers
    Had the young Jack Nicholson played such a character during the height of the Vietnam War, it would have been easy to go along for the ride. But skilled as Phoenix is at pulling off the individual scenes of Elwood's shenanigans, the actor doesn't come across as embodying rebellion to the marrow of his bones, which renders his scams arbitrary and disagreeably irresponsible.
  96. Two Men Went to War
    Solidly crafted, strongly cast pic doesn't hit a thoroughgoing comic tone.
  97. Hard Rain
    A waterlogged would-be thriller deep-sixed by its misguided notion of high concept. [12 January 1998, p. 63]
    • Variety
  98. Center Stage
    Unfortunately, Center Stage is directed and shot (by Geoffrey Simpson) in a way that doesn't let the audience feel the exhilarating pull of the dance world.
  99. The Hunted
    Routine, superficial manhunt stuff.
  100. Maestro
    Josell Ramos' docu expounds the joys of clubbing to the uninitiated while regaling aficionados with testimonials about brilliant pioneer deejays and the invention of the tweeter cluster.
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