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. House of Wax
    Direly predictable, with candle-drip pacing and a pervasive unpleasantness.
  2. Kingdom of Heaven
    Genuinely spectacular and historically quite respectable, Ridley Scott's latest epic is at its strongest in conveying the savagery spawned by fanaticism.
  3. Fighting Tommy Riley
    The winner by a knockout is Eddie Jones...Without Jones, pic is a standard drama on the sweet science with the usual tropes and a slight tweak on the usual conflicts.
  4. Jiminy Glick in Lalawood
    Too often depends on salty, adolescent one-liners that provide shock value guffaws but grow cumulatively wearisome.
  5. Mysterious Skin
    By turns spiky and lyrical, this unsettling drama will be anathema to many audiences, but is bound to be a provocative, talked-about release.
  6. The Great Role
    Predictable yet charming, The Grand Role is a crowd-pleasing dramatic comedy about love, friendship, role-playing and Jewish pride.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brothers
    The second collaboration between helmer Susanne Bier and scriptwriter Anders Thomas Jensen once again shows what skilled artists can do with a story that might have ended up filled with cliches.
  8. A Hole in One
    This oddball tale of a small-town gangster's troubled girlfriend hovers uncertainly on the edge of an absurdist universe.
  9. Up for Grabs
    A sly curve ball of a documentary best described as a sports-themed "Rashomon" with an O. Henry twist.
  10. Writer of O
    Hodgepodge of archival, re-enactment and staged fictive elements.
  11. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    More smile-inducing than laugh-aloud funny.
  12. xXx: State of the Union
    You'd half expect the Xbox logo to pop up on the credit roll for XXX: State of the Union, since what's on view is closer to a videogame than a movie. While that will be music to the ears of young gamers, it's noise to anyone hoping for a coherent action movie.
  13. 3-Iron
    A rarefied love story, conducted with no dialogue between the principals.
  14. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Strikingly crafted but rather empty drama.
  15. Death of a Dynasty
    The execution is so amateurish and the script so witless the filmmakers appear to be having a far better time than the audience.
  16. Funny Ha Ha
    A beautifully observant and wholly unpretentious film with roots more in Cassavetes than Sundance-style showbiz.
  17. The Holy Girl
    A mystifying film that holds the audience in suspense over where it's going and what it might mean for almost its entire running time.
  18. Ladies in Lavender.
    Full of delightful moments that throw into high relief the actors' craft.
  19. The Tunnel
    A cracking slice of old-fashioned, widescreen entertainment.
  20. Stalin's Wife
    Results are solid, if stylistically unspectacular.
  21. Another Road Home
    Fascinating.
  22. Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat
    Too underground in feel.
  23. The Interpreter
    Coolly absorbing without being pulse-quickening.
  24. A Lot Like Love
    In essence, British director Nigel Cole has brought a breezy arthouse sensibility to this tale of fated love.
  25. King's Ransom
    An innocuous abduction of viewers' time, if nothing else, King's Ransom is an appealingly cast but terminally bland farce.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Double Dare
    Viewers are left feeling that it's still a male-dominated profession, but that determined women like these might just effect some small change.
  27. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    By turns amazing, amusing and appalling.
  28. The Game of Their Lives
    Picturesque pic, however, lacks even a penalty kick's worth of tension and is paradoxically inert for a movie about guys running up and down the pitch for the glory of the U.S.
  29. Madison
    Inspirational but uninspired sports movie.
  30. The Man Who Copied
    Intermittently amusing.
  31. One Missed Call
    Combines scares and chuckles with good production values.
  32. Erosion
    Shady mood-piece profits greatly from enigmatic performance by Emmanuel Xeureb.
  33. Dead & Breakfast
    Offers plenty of splat with its slapstick. But this strenuous zombie yukfest is no more sophisticated than its nail-on-head title -- making it a joke no smarter than the movies it riffs on.
  34. Save the Green Planet!
    Though certainly not to everyone's tastes, this looney-tunes pic about a deranged serial killer who thinks he's helping Earth by killing off supposed aliens works on a variety of levels, from gruesome slapstick comedy through social critique to genuinely chilling Grand Guignol.
  35. The Amityville Horror
    Begins slavishly faithful to its low-key 1970s predecessor then sledgehammers auds with a numbing succession of shock edits and over-the-top horror effects.
  36. House of D
    David Duchovny scores considerably higher as director than as screenwriter.
  37. Down and Derby
    A modestly amusing family-friendly comedy about a miniature car race that brings out the worst in overzealous fathers who compete with each other through their children.
  38. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    Colorful, sometimes endearing but highly uneven picture.
  39. Torremolinos 73
    Somewhat wacky tale, based on real events, is kept anchored in reality through attention to detail and by first-rate central perfs.
  40. The Year of the Yao
    Slickly entertaining documentary.
  41. The Girl from Monday
    Unconvincingly attempts to update the futurist dystopian traditions of Orwell, Huxley and William Gibson.
  42. Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man
    Confusing lack of historical set-up considerably dims the potential luster of a great true story: Helmer Alberto Negrin relies instead on competently rendered but cliche-ridden melodrama of nasty Nazis and suffering Jews.
  43. Winning Girls Through Psychic Mind Control
    Track record of helmer Barry Alexander Brown, and scads of clever writing from scripting producer Dan Harnden, should help this little gem find a home, although it is probably too intimate and original to win more than a cult following.
  44. Palindromes
    Like the symmetrical word that supplies its title, the mordant comedy-drama recovers ground to become a boldly intriguing if not entirely satisfying subversion of American family values.
  45. State Property 2
    Slicker, funnier and more professional than its predecessor, State Property 2, with Damon Dash at its helm tones down the original.
  46. 15: The Movie
    15 is Asian Kid Rebels 101. So predictable it could almost be a parody of the genre -- though that would require a sense of humor above and beyond the self-reflexive comedy on display here.
  47. Sahara
    Saddled with more industry/celebrity baggage than a high-class safari voyage, Sahara is a rousing and only occasionally ridiculous adventure yarn.
  48. Fever Pitch
    The Farrelly brothers are growing up, which in this case isn't a bad thing. With a tacked-on ending made necessary by the Boston Red Sox's improbable World Series run last fall, Fever Pitch proves a charming romantic comedy against "A Beautiful Mind"-type framework.
  49. Kung Fu Hustle
    Devoid of genuine inspiration or involving character development.
  50. Eating Out
    Rude, heavily contrived, pretty funny, just remotely connected to real-world youth life.
  51. Winter Solstice
    Story of a still-grieving widower and his two troubled teenage sons is distinguished by its emotional integrity, sustained mood of aching melancholy and superbly understated performances.
  52. Smile
    Well-meaning but dramatically lopsided tearjerker bogs down in generic teen angst and domestic squabbling.
  53. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    Repetitive and needlessly prolonged tale does build to an inspired final scene, but it's too little, too late.
  54. The Friend
    After a tedious start building up the boys' lives and friendship, feature bow by Elmar Fischer becomes deeply engrossing in its second half, as the viewer learns of the hero's anguish and doubts.
  55. Major Dundee (re-release)
    More evident than ever the film is inherently a deeply flawed work that was far from fully realized in both script and shooting.
  56. Eros
    What might have been a cinephile's wet dream turns out instead to be seductive, stimulating and sodden, in that order, in the three-chapter reflection on love and desire.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Hole in My Heart
    Dark, provocative and disturbing, the new film by Lukas Moodysson is definitely not for all tastes but solidifies his standing as the most interesting director working in Scandinavia today.
  58. Voices in Wartime
    A history of verse is laid alongside that of warfare, and the ways in which they are braided together proves fascinating.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    First Love
    While engaging, pic eventually betrays itself as having a trivial attitude to its chosen subject, with a climactic scene that is genuinely, but inappropriately, amusing.
  60. David Hockney: The Colors of Music
    Hockney designed 11 operas, so buffs will be in seventh heaven here; but docu's potential audience extends to anyone interested in the creative process and life's ironies -- music lover Hockney has gone deaf from a genetic condition that surfaces in middle age.
  61. In Satmar Custody
    Potentially shocking expose is weakened by one-sided reportage that leaves too many questions unanswered.
  62. Sin City
    For geeks, action freaks and sensation-seeking teenage boys of all ages, the price of admission will provide a one-way ticket to hard-boiled heaven.
  63. Dust to Glory
    With its exceptional multicamera coverage and dynamic editing, pic provides an amazing ride across the dusty roads and stunningly varied terrain of what could be the world's most demanding vehicle race.
  64. Girl Play
    The live event was hopefully more engaging than this dull adaptation.
  65. Control
    Crowd-pleasing, darkly comic joyride.
  66. Look at Me
    Punchy dialogue, excellent thesping and a real feel for the universal tuning fork of great classical music make this a prime candidate for international arthouse play.
  67. Beauty Shop
    A sunny and sassy comedy that somehow manages to breathe fresh life into familiar stereotypes and stock situations.
  68. Odessa... Odessa!
    Glacial in its pacing but beautifully, mournfully evocative of its subjects' ethnic/psychic exile.
  69. Oldboy
    A wild, intensely cinematic ride into two men's burning desire to get even.
  70. Guess Who
    If only as much thought went into the script for this listless comedy as its marketing calculus.
  71. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
    Well-wrought individual scenes and sharply focused acting provide Rebecca Miller's third feature with a measure of gravity, but too much abrupt, even melodramatic behavior and undigested psychological matter leave nagging dissatisfactions.
  72. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    Smart assembly of terrific archive footage is matched by spirited interviews with the tough old broads today.
  73. Nina's Tragedies
    An amiable, but cluttered dramedy.
  74. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    Lame and inoffensive.
  75. Mondovino
    Consistently fascinating material provides an uncommonly eloquent, provocative statement against globalization that's sure to stimulate thinking audiences.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beyond the Sea
    Manages to be at once historically elucidating and personally compelling.
  77. Ice Princess
    The most sparkling aspect to Ice Princess is Juliana Cannarozzo, a real-life, nationally ranked skater.
  78. The Ring Two
    Half-intriguing, half-tedious.
  79. Melinda and Melinda
    Radha Mitchell stirs memories of complex Allen heroines from Annie Hall on down, even if the action is dispersed via a larger ensemble cast which he currently favors.
  80. Fifty-Fifty
    Schizo manages to keep it fresh.
  81. Steamboy
    Dry storytelling and boy's-toys mechanics will stop this from being the next "Spirited Away"-style crossover hit.
  82. The Rider Named Death
    Instead of using its hot-button issues as a present-day hook, sticks with a 19th century mindset which it accompanies with elegant turn-of-the-century decors.
  83. Milk and Honey
    Dexterously scripted, darkly humorous.
  84. 16 Years of Alcohol
    The highly directed film adopts a semi-impressionistic approach more European than British in flavor, aided by a terrific central performance by Kevin McKidd and painterly lensing by John Rhodes.
  85. After the Apocalypse
    A numbingly pretentious approach to a moldy premise -- a handful of strangers interacting amid rubble in wake of WWIII.
  86. Hostage
    What sends this initially tense thriller over the precipice is a plot scheme that never knows when enough is enough.
  87. Robots
    It's meant as high praise to say that, very early in Robots, the extraordinary starts to seem perfectly ordinary.
  88. The Upside of Anger
    Increasingly exhibits a desire to amuse and distract rather than go deep, which ultimately generates disappointment in light of its announced intentions.
  89. Millions
    Maintains a bankable charm and innocence even when overdrawn on the special effects side.
  90. In My Country
    An unquestionably sincere but dramatically stillborn outing by veteran John Boorman.
  91. Mail Order Wife
    This black comedy on the making of a documentary about mail-order wives finally breaks down under the weight of its twists and turns, but mostly maintains a creepy fascination with its scuzzy characters.
  92. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    Given a lift by its folksy soundtrack of toe-tapping Ceili dance tunes, the film is handsomely produced and engaging enough, but never more than that due to a weak dramatic arc and soft conflicts in Nicholas Adams' script and to John Irvin's functional direction.
  93. Don't Move
    In his second outing as a director, top thesp Sergio Castellitto (also playing the surgeon) takes the viewer on an emotion-filled ride and brings a violently masculine perspective to the story. However, it is Penelope Cruz who gives the film's knockout performance.
  94. Dot the I
    But behind its slick veneer and the glibness of its preposterous premise and dark twists, there's a yawning absence of charm or substance in this London-set love triangle, as well as a lack of chemistry between its three leads.
  95. Off the Map
    Campbell Scott's latest foray behind the camera most excels as a subtly observed study of how the dynamics within a close-knit family can shift over time.
  96. The Buffalo Boy
    Sports a stronger narrative spine than is usual in Vietnamese rural dramas and a less fragile tone in its deployment of landscape and character.
  97. Sheriff
    Equal parts colorful character study and real-world procedural, docu by Daniel Kraus retains interest throughout, even if it delivers just partial insight into the man, job and milieu.
  98. Be Cool
    A staggeringly flat sequel that trades filmdom for the music bizbiz and could hardly be less cool.
  99. The Jacket
    A movie as lacking in personality as its amnesiac protagonist.
  100. The Pacifier
    If auds swallow this odoriferous exercise in calculated career repositioning, they'll swallow anything.
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