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. Ocean's Twelve
    This smooth inside job benefits from heightened bonhomie among the players, fab Euro locations and a diminished obligation to stick to the heist genre boilerplate.
  2. A Tale of Two Sisters
    It manages to suspend disbelief without over-taxing the viewer's patience, and boasts at least one terrific performance, by actress Yeom Jeong-ah as a scary stepmom.
  3. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    The effect is often soporific.
  4. Freeze Frame
    Signals a talented newcomer in writer-director John Simpson and boasts a gripping central performance from popular British comedian Lee Evans.
  5. Bandido
    The filmmakers seem split between doing it straight and gleefully ripping up the genre, and never make up their minds.
  6. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Even if the film itself is relatively conventional, its exposure of a squalid city's most benighted neighborhood and its introduction of hope into nearly hopeless lives give it strong human interest value.
  7. Blade: Trinity
    Won't linger in the memory long, but gives pretty good action eye-candy while it's going.
  8. House of Flying Daggers
    The tangled tale of love and disguise is awesome in its action sequences but doesn't touch the heart to the same degree.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    After Midnight
    Ferrario has fun with antique footage and exhibits from the museum, but there's a lack of urgency or sufficient charm to engage.
  10. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    Though it never disguises its sympathies for Kasparov and contempt for a powerful corporation's machinations, documentary is finally a speculation on the limits of the human mind and how truth can never be fully known.
  11. Conspiracy of Silence
    Deery lays out a story devoid of subtlety, in which characters are too easily pigeonholed and issues exist only in absolutes.
  12. The Deserted Station
    Compelling underlying oddness may be enough to distinguish Deserted Station from similarly excellent humanistic Iranian fare.
  13. Jesus, You Know
    Visually glorious and sometimes moving, but comes coated with a thick hoarfrost of irony.
  14. I Am David
    An unusually intelligent adventure film scaled for younger viewers, which never leaves adults behind.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Green Butchers
    Will be either a turn-on or turn-off, depending on one's sense of humor.
  16. The Aryan Couple
    Picture's dubious brand of heroism, half-baked historical sense, simplistic dialogue, flat staging and barely formed characters make for sluggish sledding.
  17. Closer
    The caustic wit and brute force of Patrick Marber's acclaimed play come across with a softened edge in Mike Nichols' bigscreen version of Closer.
  18. AmnesiA
    The brooding, well-constructed drama gets considerable mileage out of the schizoid twin dynamic.
  19. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
    Superbly researched and constructed, pic is an improvement over last year's "The Weather Underground," which backed away from judging political terror on the left.
  20. Purple Butterfly
    An often remarkable, often infuriating lateral spin on genre material that desperately needs another sesh at the editing table.
  21. Easy
    Increasingly complicated comic maneuvers turn what should have been a hip look at sexuality into an antsy pic too busy to settle down.
  22. A Very Long Engagement
    Told with a blend of visual mastery and emotional intimacy, ambitious venture sustains a special melding of romance and pragmatism that should engage discerning audiences.
  23. Ae Fond Kiss...
    The flatness of several of the key performances badly lets down this promising material.
  24. Straight-Jacket
    A fey and frisky farce with a fabulous fashion sense, Straight-Jacket artfully balances broadly campy humor and ironically overplayed soap opera.
  25. Paper Clips
    Patiently told and lovingly made.
  26. Notre musique
    Recognizably Godard with its playfulness and wordplays, but deeply human at the same time.
  27. Christmas with the Kranks
    Ultimately something of a softball satire, its climactic evocation of the "true meaning" of the holidays is surprisingly touching.
  28. Alexander
    At best an honorable failure, an intelligent and ambitious picture that crucially lacks dramatic flair and emotional involvement.
  29. Fear and Trembling
    Classy, funny cross-cultural adventure is Alain Corneau's most accomplished and entertaining film since 1991's "Tous les matins du monde."
  30. National Treasure
    Tries to combine the suspense of old Saturday morning serials with the gusto of producer Jerry Bruckheimer's action pics. Falling short on both counts, this long, and long-winded, series of middling cliffhangers won't pump the adrenaline of action aficionados or -- the family crowd.
  31. Bad Education
    Superbly orchestrated, visually impressive.
  32. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    Possesses charm, as well as visual and musical appeal, on the bigscreen. But as with many short-form TV entities when sextupled in length, "SpongeBob" proves more palatable as scrumptious fast food than full-scale repast.
  33. Ya lyublyu tebya
    Clumsily drawn, poorly acted love triangle.
  34. Who Killed Bambi?
    Delivers only annoyance and impatience.
  35. Bright Future
    Occupies wavelengths too remote to be tuned in by audiences other than diehard Asian esoterica enthusiasts.
  36. Little Lili
    Works as both an adaptation and a movie in its own right
  37. Noel
    Goes down like sour eggnog on Christmas Eve.
  38. Seed of Chucky
    Simply isn't funny or frightening enough to expand its appeal beyond core fan base.
  39. After the Sunset
    While After the Sunset is never exactly dull and is smartly cut to a brief running time, it never quickens the pulse.
  40. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    Second time round, Bridget is still fat, funny and endearing -- but "all a bit, um, familiar, actually."
  41. Kinsey
    Lively, sometimes funny and, inevitably, provocative.
  42. Veer-Zaara
    Though it doesn't quite match recent classics like "Kabhi khushi kabhie gham" in sheer technique and production sheen, in-depth star casting and thorough entertainment values make this a must-see for Bollywatchers.
  43. Finding Neverland
    An impeccably made and genuinely moving account of how Scottish author J.M. Barrie came to write "Peter Pan."
  44. Way Off Broadway
    Both extremely familiar and, despite frequent references to Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles, cinematically and dramatically dull.
  45. Master of the Game
    There's a provocative premise at the heart of Master of the Game, but uneven acting, indifferent direction and melodramatic dialogue blunt pointed ironies.
  46. New Guy
    Does a lot with little, milking a single location and minimal dialogue for deadpan humor, tension, and macabre payoff.
  47. Overnight
    There's a stunning rags-to-rags morality tale hidden in this two-hour mess of a movie.
  48. The Polar Express
    This visually impressive yet emotional frigid fable could perhaps more accurately be tagged "The Bipolar Express."
  49. Callas Forever
    Main body of the movie is weighed down by flat, expository dialogue and a lot of pedestrian filming. However, Zeffirelli's shooting of the "Carmen" sequences, which make up a sizable chunk of the film and are far and away the pic's most exhilarating sections, are graceful and fluid.
  50. Fade to Black
    Smartly directed by Pat Paulson and Michael John Warren and nicely lensed.
  51. Brother to Brother
    The film's transitions between periods are not entirely seamless and its discourse often becomes didactic. However, the depth and intelligence it brings to issues of black politics and sexuality could help carve an appreciative theatrical audience in upscale gay and/or urban niches.
  52. Intoxicating
    After a long, glum slide, pic becomes an unconvincing story of redemption.
  53. Cachorro
    Taking a seed of an idea and nurturing it into a fable about moral hypocrisy, Bearcub substantiates prolific Spanish helmer Miguel Albaladejo's rep for well-observed, character-based dramas with an offbeat twist and a potent emotional undertow.
  54. Alfie
    A breezy, sexy romp with a conscience that reflects in obvious but interesting ways on societal changes over the intervening 38 years.
  55. The Incredibles
    As deliriously smart escapist fare, The Incredibles is practically nonpareil.
  56. Scumrock
    Actors who can't act, musicians who can't play, and storylines that go absolutely nowhere.
  57. Ali G Indahouse
    An extremely silly, grossly scatological but often amusing picture that plays like Dumb & Dumber meets Spike Lee in London.
  58. Farmingville
    Sincere but unexceptional.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening
    Has a poignant emotional core in the truthful description of its characters' despairing lives.
  60. A Silent Love
    Largely plays down the ethnic stereotyping to deliver a carefully observed, fundamentally human roundelay about the wonders and horrors of looking for someone to love.
  61. Voices of Iraq
    With Iraqis pointing cameras at each other, the result is cheerier than might be expected.
  62. It's All About Love
    The director doesn't display the spirit of a natural entertainer; while intellectual notions abound, he never grabs the audience by the hand to pull them into the tale emotionally.
  63. Malevolence
    Eventually pic turns into a formula slasher over-indebted to the usual "Texas Chainsaw" and "Halloween" models. But until then, Mena's direction (if not his script) suggest he's ready for bigger-budget assignments.
  64. Enduring Love
    Adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1997 novel takes a surprising number of liberties with the text, given the author's stature, but his name on the credits as associate producer would suggest his stamp of approval.
  65. Birth
    While it veers heavily toward pretentiousness, this striking metaphysical mystery is intensely compelling, conjuring a mood between European high-arthouse and the unsettling psychological horror of "Rosemary's Baby."
  66. Saw
    A crude concoction sewn together from the severed parts of prior horror/serial killer pics.
  67. Ray
    Bursting at the seams with music, Taylor Hackford's ambitious film provides a good sense of the pioneering entertainer's extraordinary journey and brings it to life with plenty of colorful detail.
  68. This Girl's Life
    May not be a complete success, but it is in some ways that rarest of commodities in American movies: It is a movie about sex and sexuality, in its many perversions and permutations, done without falling back on an exploitatively comic or violent scenario.
  69. 800 Bullets
    An uneven but exuberantly anarchic comedy homage to the spaghetti Western.
  70. Magnifico
    A wholesome family movie with a moppet star and tearjerker ending, Magnifico milks the sentiment like an industrial dairy machine on overdrive.
  71. Home of the Brave
    di Florio emerges with a serenely powerful, handcrafted film that navigates into a place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called "the tangled discords of our nation."
  72. Sideways
    A beautifully observed, small-scale study of personal foibles, romantic uncertainty and two sides of the sadly predictable male animal.
  73. Stella Street
    A hip comic curio.
  74. Happy Hour
    Fortunately bypassing a re-run of "Days of Wine and Roses" but finding little inspiration to freshen an old concept, this tragedy about a lover and a friend helplessly watching the writer's fade-out comes up short of its potential impact.
  75. Undertow
    A deep-fried piece of Southern Gothic that wears its unpleasantness like a merit badge.
  76. The Manson Family
    Its own mythology aside, this flamboyant, graphic and disturbing quasi-docu reenactment of a notorious chapter in U.S. counterculture life is a fascinating if peculiar accomplishment.
  77. Lightning in a Bottle
    Undeniably powerful on the bigscreen.
  78. Postmen in the Mountains
    Too slim to make much impression outside fests, this nevertheless reps another solid outing by former art director Huo Jianqi.
  79. The Machinist
    An intense, precision-controlled psychological mystery built around a very creepy lead performance by Christian Bale.
  80. The Grudge
    Viewers of this Sam Raimi-produced, sub-"Amityville" scarefest are likely to hold the real grudge.
  81. Surviving Christmas
    An almost mirth-free, poorly conceived comedy destined to offer Ben Affleck bashers satchels full of new ammunition.
  82. Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain... Begins to Die
    Preaches purely to the converted.
  83. Sex Is Comedy
    A not terribly creative movie about the creative process.
  84. The Dust Factory
    A muddled metaphysical allegory that isn't nearly sunny enough to camouflage its darker undercurrents.
  85. P.S.
    Laura Linney’s beautiful performance is most of the story in p.s.
  86. Riding the Bullet
    A ponderous, incoherent horror mishmash that turns King's short story into utter nonsense.
  87. The Final Cut
    Striking visuals help, but pic won't make the final cut with either genre fans, who've seen it all and better before, or the arthouse crowd, who will sneer at pic's cliches.
  88. Moolaadé
    This richly textured parable feels every inch the work of a master.
  89. Eulogy
    Nine very good actors are wasted, if not embarrassed, by the thoroughly unconvincing shenanigans perpetrated by first-time writer-director Michael Clancy, while a tenth -- Zooey Deschanel -- somehow manages to float ethereally above it all with her dignity intact.
  90. Being Julia
    A minor affair, a confection based on dalliances and the way a set of sophisticated theater people handle them, that lacks true distinction.
  91. Hair Show
    An anemic sitcom pilot dragged out to an excruciating 108-minute running time.
  92. Saints and Soldiers
    Well mounted, frequently gripping.
  93. Shall We Dance
    An unabashedly old-fashioned entertainment loaded with traditional dancing and music.
  94. Team America: World Police
    Goes the extra mile to piss off everybody -- which includes gleefully destroying renowned Hollywood liberals, literally and figuratively.
  95. In the Face of Evil: Reagan's War in Word and Deed
    Archival material -- especially rare B&W Soviet footage -- is a knockout, though the assembly of talking heads, nearly all Reagan loyalists, is predictable and uninspired.
  96. The Scandal
    A 10-course treat for the eyes and ears.
  97. Vera Drake
    Mike Leigh is at the peak of his powers with Vera Drake, a compassionate, morally complex drama that stands easily alongside his best work, "Secrets & Lies" and "Topsy-Turvy."
  98. Around the Bend
    Self-consciously mannered yet fitfully interesting, Around the Bend gets the most mileage it can from the eccentric, low-key charisma of Christopher Walken.
  99. Vodka Lemon
    A little gem that takes a potentially grim subject and mines it for maximum humor and insight.
  100. Yes Nurse! No Nurse!
    Pic maintains a likable, breezy tone throughout but looks increasingly threadbare of real inspiration or originality as it proceeds.
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