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. Last Life in the Universe
    It recovers from an opening that's a little oblique to grow progressively more seductive as the two lost central characters become entwined.
  2. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
    The film lacks the accompanying media spotlight that boosted the Moore release and therefore appears unlikely to reach beyond a liberal audience with an already vehement aversion to Fox News' partisan coverage.
  3. Stander
    Takes a notorious true story about a loyal soldier-turned-bank robber, and pumps it up into charged if uneven entertainment.
  4. Code 46
    An intriguing but only partly successful co-mingling of film noir and sci-fi.
  5. Little Black Book
    Lacks so much as a single fresh idea; it lacks an entertaining way of presenting its stale ideas, too.
  6. Open Water
    A tour-de-force thriller that deftly transforms its low-budget limitations into spectacular assets.
  7. Collateral
    Occupying a dramatic, philosophical and sensory twilight zone that casts a considerable spell, this intensely focused piece soars not only on the director's precision-tooled style but also on the outstanding interplay between leads Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.
  8. L'autre monde
    First hour is an often gripping look at the realities of modern Islam ("You can do anything you want, as long as it's not in public," says a soldier's wife), before silliness takes over.
  9. They Came Back
    An interesting if overly earnest look at what would happen if cemeteries just emptied out one fine morning.
    • Variety
  10. Festival Express
    An instant ancillary classic for music fan.
  11. Gozu
    Unclassifiable cult figure Takashi Miike's films invariably have their share of weirdness and perversity, but Gozu arguably outweirds all previous efforts in the prolific Japanese director's eclectic canon.
  12. Thunderbirds
    The story rarely gets fired up to "maximum thrust," to use the rocket-speed parlance of its heroes.
  13. The Village
    A watchable film for awhile that unravels in a muddled last act likely to send many opening-weekend filmgoers home head-scratching and grumbling.
  14. Intimate Strangers
    Consistently entertaining exploration of how much -- or how little -- is required to overcome obstacles to self-actualization should be welcome wherever auds crave a good story told with nuance and flair.
  15. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
    Gleefully upends expectations and delivers an energetic comedy tracing two guys'all-night search for the perfect White Castle burger.
  16. The Manchurian Candidate
    Structurally and thematically similar to John Frankenheimer's original but entirely different in style, feel and nuance, this political thriller about a brainwashed soldier being positioned for the White House provides a delectable network of dramatic tripwires that teases the mind and quickens the pulse. This is brainy popcorn fare.
  17. Proteus
    Proteus has enough erotic and exotic content to win back some of the arthouse viewers previously beguiled by Greyson's "Lilies." But pic lacks that gem's lush aesthetics and impassioned complexity, ending up a tad remote.
  18. The Burial Society
    Screen chemistry and production crackle are lacking from this "Usual Suspects" wannabe.
  19. Daughters of the Sun
    A plea for attention to despicable conditions of female servitude in contempo Iran.
  20. She Hate Me
    A scabrous, provocative and often funny social satire about the American dream, Spike Lee's flawed but fascinating She Hate Me addresses everything from corporate malfeasance to the African AIDS epidemic, barely catching its breath in-between.
  21. Garden State
    Feels too piecemeal and ultimately inconsequential.
  22. Los Angeles Plays Itself
    Los Angeles may be the most photographed city in the world, but it has never have been captured with such complex layers of meaning and fascination as in Thom Andersen's remarkable Los Angeles Plays Itself.
  23. Orwell Rolls in His Grave
    A marvel of passionate succinctness.
  24. This Old Cub
    More a slavish tribute than objective portrait. As a result, competent but innocuous Feature begins to overstay welcome at the 60-minute mark.
  25. Catwoman
    The lure of Halle Berry as the leather-clad feline should help this mangy misfire claw out a decent opening before a quick slink to DVD.
  26. Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
    As engaging and stimulating as the man himself.
  27. A Home at the End of the World
    Driven by soulful performances and by a genuine sense of wonder for the unpredictable permutations of love and family.
  28. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
    Over-plotted and at times incoherent but never dull, this is a stylishly designed, highly entertaining bloodbath full of offbeat comedy and inspired musical moments.
  29. Ju-on: The Grudge
    A haunted-house one-trick pony.
  30. The Bourne Supremacy
    The action is confusing at first and the hyperventilated editing style at times goes beyond the pale, so pic ultimately emerges as an erratic but not unworthy sequel to its gritty, genre-invigorating predecessor.
  31. Free Radicals
    An often compelling drama, marbled with dry humor and flecked with the supernatural, that provides food for thought but doesn't quite reach the brass ring.
  32. Nola
    Screwball elements feel overly theatrical -- one can almost see the actors waiting calmly in the wings for their breathless entrances.
  33. Make a Wish
    Enough to keep pic entertaining, though not enough to ultimately make it more than a routine genre effort.
  34. Zhou Yu de huo che
    Chinese thesp Gong Li goes for a striking career makeover in Zhou Yu's Train, a sensual, slickly packaged slice of Euro-style metaphysical cinema centered on a free-thinking woman and the two men in her life.
  35. A Cinderella Story
    Lusterless trifle.
  36. Maria Full of Grace
    Writer-director Joshua Marston's strikingly confident debut maintains an unblinking focus and sustains an almost unbearable level of tension.
  37. I, Robot
    A humans vs. robots saga that feels machine-made, I, Robot looks to have been assembled from the spare parts of dozens of previous sci-fi pictures.
  38. Flavors
    Likeable, credible actors, snappy dialogue and a determinedly upbeat tone should work well on cable and score with Indian diaspora auds. But pic lacks density and spontaneity necessary to lift it out of its carefully posed and plotted set-ups and onto a bigscreen.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
    One of the film's strengths is its abundant performance footage.
  40. Let's Get Frank
    A fascinating portrait of an era, as well as of a unique public servant.
  41. The Door in the Floor
    A thoughtful, melancholy story of love, loss, pain, betrayal and the lingering after-effects of tragedy, The Door in the Floor is an intelligent, impeccably acted, unsentimental drama.
  42. Planet Earth: Dreams
    Mendel's visuals consistently fall short of the strange oneiric quality of Foreman's strategically normal-seeming dialogue, with its subtly irregular pauses and repetitions, its austere ellipses and enigmatic insistences.
  43. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    Pic itself is a long haul, at nearly 2½ hours; yet one needn't be a fan of Metallica or heavy metal to be engrossed throughout.
  44. The Inheritance
    Arresting and fascinating.
  45. Sleepover
    A frenetic, featherweight trifle aimed at tweener femmes.
  46. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    Generates enough inspired lunacy to sail past the arid stretches and provide a welcome splash of breezy, at times jaw-droppingly bizarre summer fun.
  47. Riding Giants
    Offers a highly engaging immersion into a culture of larger-than-life characters driven by their thrill-seeking instincts.
  48. King Arthur
    Impressively made and well acted by an exceedingly attractive cast, this dark tale of ceaseless conflict is adult entertainment and will likely disappoint viewers expecting a "Camelot"-like love triangle.
  49. Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi
    Sweet if slight Israeli comedy.
  50. America's Heart and Soul
    Features 20-odd valiant souls treasuring their freedom and overcoming obstacles while skycams soar over purple mountains' majesty and an acrobatic pilot does loop-de-loops over fruited plains.
  51. The Clearing
    Classy, decorous and well acted, directorial debut by Hollywood producer Pieter Jan BruggePieter Jan Brugge is nicely crafted but too buttoned up to generate more than polite interest, much less the urgent excitement a kidnapping story might be expected to trigger.
  52. Before Sunset
    A savvy sequel that should speak to anyone who's let that one great love slip away.
  53. De-Lovely
    Benefits greatly from Kevin Kline's outstanding performance as the ultra-sophisticated songwriter whose resilient marriage anchored a complicated double life.
  54. Spider-Man 2
    The pleasure is doubled in Spider-Man 2. Crackerjack entertainment from start to finish, this rousing yarn about a reluctant superhero and his equally conflicted friends and enemies improves in every way on its predecessor and is arguably about as good a live-action picture as anyone's ever made using comicbook characters.
  55. The Path to Love
    Has stubborn charm, suggesting onward-and-upward career prospects for helmer/coscenarist Remi Lange.
  56. The Notebook
    A determined and often affecting romance that doesn't speak down to audiences.
  57. The Intended
    Another ferocious perf by Janet McTeer and an atmospheric Malaysian jungle location are nearly lost in the DV muddiness of period drama The Intended.
  58. Time of the Wolf
    Haneke demonstrates profound insight into the essence of human behavior when all humility is pared away, raw panic and despair are the order of the day, and man becomes more like wolf than man.
  59. Two Brothers
    Combo of some stunning animal direction (courtesy of ace trainer Thierry Le Portier) and exotic period setting somewhere in French colonial Indochina charms when the quadripeds stalk the action but creaks when the bipeds open their mouths.
  60. White Chicks
    As lowbrow comedies go, it pretty much delivers.
  61. Fahrenheit 9/11
    Pic fails to provide any hard facts or make any incriminating connections that a reasonably informed person doesn't already know about, so intellectually Moore is largely preaching to the converted in this blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet.
  62. Ghostlight
    Neither fish nor fowl, slick yet strangely rudderless Ghostlight sounds interesting in description but lacks fascination in actual viewing.
  63. The Hunting of the President
    Content is engrossing (if so fast-paced that uninformed viewers might easily get lost), but packaging is sometimes questionable.
  64. Facing Windows
    Only partially succeeds in interweaving questions of family loyalty with historical memory and the fate of Italian Jews in WW2.
  65. Seducing Doctor Lewis
    Though harmless and amusing, this Quebecois comedy set in an impoverished fishing village is a bit too festooned with provincial humor and a bit too short on memorable perfs or feel-good climaxes to break out commercially beyond French-speaking Canadian territories.
  66. Father and Son
    Irritatingly devoid of irony, the film has an unintentional but unmistakable homoerotic subtext.
  67. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
    Contains interesting ideas, but often those ideas are not fully realized.
  68. The Terminal
    This buoyant, optimistic fable seems to share in the late Ronald Reagan's optimism for America. It does so with the help of a gifted comic ensemble led by Tom Hanks.
  69. What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?
    Pic's not-so-hidden agenda is to promote the fusion of science and New Age religion, making it a close cousin to ventures as Bernt and Fritjof Capra's "Mindwalk."
  70. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
    Gleefully commingles slapstick and scatology, satire and sentiment, in a free-wheeling farce aimed at making auds laugh until they're thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
  71. À cause d'un garçon
    Non-formulaic character interactions, a uniformly strong cast and deft handling by vet TV helmer Fabrice Cazaneuve render a refreshing take on youthful coming-out.
  72. Grand Theft Parsons
    A likably laid-back spin about the bizarre fate of rock 'n' roll legend Gram Parsons' corpse. Inspired by a true story, pic travels down familiar genre highways, but quirky humor and an apt soundtrack make for a pleasant enough journey.
  73. Around the World in 80 Days
    Takes plenty of liberties with the material and never generates much genuine excitement, but provides an agreeable ride without overloading it with contemporary filmmaking mannerisms.
  74. Anonymous
    Although occasionally witty, even with its abundant lashings of sex, both pic and selfish, narcissistic hero grow tiresome over surprisingly brief running time.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Sister Maria
    A tender, achingly poignant portrait of the Austrian actress Maria Schell, My Sister Maria is a valentine from her younger brother Maximilian.
  76. Word Wars
    There's a pronounced lack of emotional pay-off that likely will derail any attempts to position Word Wars as an aud-friendly crowd-pleaser with breakout potential comparable to "Spellbound."
  77. Imagining Argentina
    Fails on almost every level…the film only succeeds in trivializing this shameful era.
  78. Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
    Rick McKay's exceptional new documentary Broadway: The Golden Age presents a veritable avalanche of interviews with some of the biggest names in the history of the American theater, preserving for posterity their wise words and disarming anecdotes.
  79. The Chronicles of Riddick
    May not quite gain entry to the hallowed pantheon of interstellar cheese of a "Battlefield Earth," but it's not far behind.
  80. The Stepford Wives
    Another "remake" that merits the title in name only, The Stepford Wives isn't the "troubled" disaster that media reports have suggested it might be, yet nor do its oddly matched parts ever congeal into a fully formed creation.
  81. Garfield
    Only very small children still easily impressed by interaction of human actors and CGI quadrupeds will be amused by Garfield.
  82. Napoleon Dynamite
    An absurdist piece about a rural community of clueless cretins who careen through life like poorly played pinballs, Napoleon Dynamite represents the definition of the comedy of condescension and ridicule.
  83. Imelda
    A balanced, evenhanded film about a subject who has always managed to provoke intemperate reactions.
  84. The Story of the Weeping Camel
    The film spins a beguiling web of detail that builds to a surprisingly throat-clutching finish.
  85. Deadline
    Potent docudocu by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson makes a strong case against capital punishment by pointing up the fallibility of the justice system, while offering an inspiring portrait of one politico who actually seems guided foremost by conscience.
  86. The Corporation
    A surprisingly cogent, entertaining, even rabble-rousing indictment of perhaps the most influential institutional model for our era.
  87. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    Visually dazzling and considerably darker than the prior incarnations, the story suffers from a slightly disjointed feel that will prove less accessible to those not intimately familiar with every corner of author J.K. Rowling's world.
  88. I'll Sing for You
    Educational value aside, pic is exciting for its extended performance sequences, with the most notable finding Traore and Farke strolling with guitars through the acoustically amazing atrium of an abandoned mud schoolhouse.
  89. Firedancer
    Film struggles to balance its past-present memory drama and a rather standard take on an American immigrant family. Although accented by fine cinematic flourishes, pic is harmed by an abrupt conclusion and technical glitches.
  90. Carlos Castaneda: Enigma of a Sorcerer
    Though interviews here are primarily with former camp followers and pic was made by one, overall perspective is just critical enough to satisfy both New Age types and curious skeptics.
  91. Bukowski: Born into This
    Makes a compelling case for raising him (Bukowski) from cult status to the top rank of 20th century U.S. literary figures -- while providing ample evidence of a very colorful life and times.
  92. Soul Plane
    Begins as a high-spirited romp before running out of gas and ideas about halfway up the tarmac.
  93. Saved!
    The spirited comedy ultimately kneels before an all-embracing deity, which could appease the God squad provided they get through all the wickedly funny zealot-bashing that comes first.
  94. The Mother
    A portrait of a contempo British family drifting apart because of generational differences, The Mother ends up an uneasy brew of too many competing tastes and themes.
  95. The Day After Tomorrow
    A disarmingly pulpy, eye-popping disaster movie during its first half, and an increasingly dull survival melodrama during its second.
  96. Union Square
    Its unvarnished look at life in the slow lane exerts a hypnotic fascination that could hook reality mainliners.
  97. Wake
    Though the characters are not particularly interesting in themselves, their dynamic remains consistently engrossing.
  98. Frankie and Johnny Are Married
    Beyond the participants' friends and co-workers, it's hard to imagine an audience for this professionally packaged exercise in navel gazing.
  99. The Five Obstructions
    Though billed as a documentary, The Five Obstructions doesn't easily fall into any category. Perhaps it's best described as a game, in which a pair of Danish film directors from different generations spar with one another in a highly civilized, and surprisingly entertaining, fashion.
  100. Raising Helen
    An undemanding dramedy.
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