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. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    A self-described abstinence comedy that is funny, sexy and silly in equal measure.
  2. 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.
  3. Drift
    Lee crafts actions and situations that are credible without being particularly engrossing -- recognition doesn't necessarily translate into absorbsion.
  4. The Cherry Orchard
    Chekhov has never seemed such a long haul as in this awkward adaptation of The Cherry Orchard by veteran director Michael Cacoyannis, 77, who's assembled a good roster of names but ones that are not necessarily right for their roles.
  5. Big Bad Love
    A flawed and overlong but ultimately affecting account of one man's struggle to regain control of his life.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Maryam
    A lovely, intricate coming-of-age portrait set in a cross-cultural context.
  7. Mean Machine
    OK entertainment but nothing more.
  8. Monsoon Wedding
    Splashy, noisy and downright fun.
  9. Dragonfly
    Costner's earnest performance is a major plus for Dragonfly, keeping the picture grounded in some semblance of reality even as it becomes progressively more fantastical.
  10. Queen of the Damned
    Handsomely mounted, this direly conventional bit of vampire business is enlivened by flashes of humor and game performances. It isn't great entertainment or camp, but pic sets its ambitions so low, it can't help partially delivering on them.
  11. Return to Never Land
    Represents a passable follow-up to the venerable Peter Pan story and mercifully, at 72 minutes, is exactly half the length of the last attempt at same, Steven Spielberg's lamentable "Hook."
  12. Scratch
    Works best as a straightforward appreciation of the music. Though docu's structure wears out full viewer interest after an hour or so, few will come away with staid prejudices (i.e. that turntablism isn't "real" musicianship) intact.
  13. Wendigo
    A mostly superb bit of modern horror from the writer-director-editor previously responsible for the Frankenstein story "No Telling" and the urban vampire pic "Habit."
  14. Hart's War
    Absorbing in a low-key way but more dramatic where its secondary characters are concerned than its leads, and capped by climactic incidents that are less than entirely convincing.
  15. Crossroads
    Awfully lame bigscreen debut for pop diva Britney Spears.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Umberto D (re-release)
    The ending is happy, but the general effect of the film is disturbing, so compelling is De Sica's description of a man's solitude.
  17. Super Troopers
    A fairly sustained barrage of broad undergraduate humor and gross-out gags that should tickle young auds looking for unsophisticated laughs.
  18. John Q
    A shamelessly manipulative commercial on behalf of national health insurance.
  19. Much Ado About Something
    Utterly fascinating, playfully probing mystery story.
  20. Rollerball
    Sheer chaos on wheels, a hysterically edited jumble that defies belief at nearly every juncture.
  21. Big Fat Liar
    Though Muniz and Bynes make a somewhat likable team, their funniest skills are dampened by the material's insistent stupidity.
  22. Collateral Damage
    More than an embarrassment, it's an insult.
  23. Birthday Girl
    Charmingly setting aside glamour for a turn at pure acting, Nicole Kidman zings up the already zingy script of Birthday Girl.
  24. A Rumor of Angels
    Despite good acting from the entire cast, yarn is a bit dull and predictable, straining too hard to convey its spiritual message.
  25. Slackers
    Awful and subversively spunky at the same time.
  26. Loners
    Dryly funny and benevolently shrewd.
  27. In This Tricky Life
    A colorful, enjoyable ride most of the way but could have been even better if Beatriz Flores Silva's direction had more often risen above the functional and had not gotten a bad attack of conscience in the closing reels.
  28. Waydowntown
    Third outing for prairie auteur Gary Burns is his most ambitious, and most uneven, effort yet.
  29. Maelstrom
    A film whose charms are odd and indefinable by design.
  30. The Son's Room
    While devotees expecting Moretti's wry worldview may feel shortchanged, others will find this a profoundly moving experience, giving it fuel to cross borders into the arthouse niche.
  31. 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.
  32. Hey, Happy!
    Despite occasional bad-taste outrageousness, overall tone is surprisingly sweet, even lyrical and romantic at times.
  33. The Count of Monte Cristo
    A lavishly mounted and appealingly old-fashioned swashbuckler with nary a trace of wink-wink irony or revisionist embellishment.
  34. Beijing Bicycle
    Overplays its slim hand by a good two reels.
  35. A Walk to Remember
    A glossy teen-weepie romance that often plays like an inspirational indie skewed toward Christian niche market.
  36. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
    Consistently silly and intermittently laugh-out-loud funny spoof.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ha-Hesder
    Emerges as an intelligent portrayal of the repercussions of single-minded religious fervor, and of the way the willingness to suffer for a cause does not necessarily translate into selfless acts.
  38. Italian for Beginners
    The most nonconfrontational and thus accessible title in the Dogma lot to date, and will speak the international language of proletariat love to arthouse auds who go for such fare.
  39. State Property
    Result is fairly good-looking video shot down by a hackneyed script, atrocious acting and a total lack of redeeming social value.
  40. Snow Dogs
    Small children will be amused by the frenetic antics of Cuba Gooding Jr. Grownups, however, will be far less enchanted.
  41. The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr
    It’s a film about the excruciating pursuit of money and self-gratification, which Hyams makes strangely analogous to the everyday workplace, suggesting that the conflicts and aggressions being worked out in the no-holds-barred ring are merely a more primal expression of what anyone who works any kind of job encounters daily.
  42. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    A little Sergio Leone here, a little "Sleepy Hollow" there, a grand helping of late royal-era Gaul with its wigs and finery, and, uh, martial arts-style confrontations galore are all deftly melded in Brotherhood of the Wolf.
  43. E-Dreams
    Plays out in quite a different offscreen context than did last year's similarly themed sleeper "Startup.com."
  44. Orange County
    A fine group of comic performers manages to keep the screen worth looking at despite the obsessively one-note nature of this curious matchup between MTV Films and producer Scott Rudin.
  45. The Accidental Spy
    After several years of transition, Jackie Chan finally gets the mix right in The Accidental Spy, an entertaining meld of far-flung locales and criminal shenanigans that sees the 47-year-old action star comfortably combining the twin demands of action and maturity.
  46. Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story
    A sibling survivor story of uncommon personal and political breadth.
  47. Impostor
    Imposter is a penny-pinched "Blade Runner," a stubbornly unexciting ride into the near future.
  48. Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
    Takes a beautifully lensed look at the work of Scottish "landscape sculptor" Andy Goldsworthy, whose unique creations -- composed of icicles, leaves, sticks, rocks, etc. -- are often as not simply swept away by the next tide or wind gust.
  49. Charlotte Gray
    A bland and dour screen version of Sebastian Faulks' highly engrossing bestseller.
  50. I Am Sam
    An especially insipid example of the Hollywood message movie.
  51. Dark Blue World
    Sverak's sheer technical finesse, and ability to spin on a dime between comedy and tragedy, the personal and the historical, makes Dark Blue World succeed where other similarly themed movies, from "Battle of Britain" to "The Blue Max," seem heavy-handed by comparison.
  52. Black Hawk Down
    Goes down like stiff medicine, leaving one feeling exhausted relief when it's finally over.
  53. Gosford Park
    Taking advantage of a splendid cast, a sharply focused script and the fresh English setting, "Gosford Park" emerges as one of the most satisfying of Robert Altman's numerous ensemble pictures.
  54. Monster's Ball
    Burning with a quiet intensity, Monster's Ball is bolstered by a poetic, intelligent sensibility not seen in an American film since Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line."
  55. The Shipping News
    Seems to be playing the author's music, but like a string quartet that plays a half-beat off.
  56. Ali
    Just about everything Mann has chosen to present is valid, substantial and convincing, but by the end, the feeling persists that while certain essences have been grasped, only part of the story has been told.
  57. The Majestic
    A thick slice of bogus inspirational cheese that only makes itself look bad by recycling so many golden movie memories.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kate & Leopold
    A time-travel romantic comedy whose best elements -- Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman -- overcome distracting plot holes, loose threads and assorted contrivances to make for a mostly charming and diverting tale.
  59. A Beautiful Mind
    Consistently engrossing as an unusual character study and as a trip to the mysterious border-crossing between rarified brilliance and madness, this serious-minded but lively film is distinguished by an exceptional performance by Russell Crowe.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Song for Martin
    A moving love story with two exquisite central performances.
  61. How High
    A genially haphazard but frequently amusing neo-stoner comedy that plays like "Cheech and Chong Go to Animal House."
    • Variety
  62. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
    Moppet appeal of the present feature rests in three can't-miss concepts -- cool gadgets, the desire to see grownups disappear and space travel. Pic delivers on all three points and doesn't have to do a whole lot more.
  63. Little Otik
    An unsettling piece of filmmaking whose grimly vivid images are guaranteed to give impressionable viewers nightmares.
  64. Joe Somebody
    Pretty formulaic stuff: bland self-empowerment tinged with warm fuzzies in all the right places. But what makes this "Somebody" something is Pasquin's deft touch and understanding with the material.
  65. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
    Looks to please the book's legions of fans with its imaginatively scrupulous rendering of the tome's characters and worlds on the screen, as well as the uninitiated with its uninterrupted flow of incident and spectacle.
  66. Kandahar
    A visually exalting, emotionally horrifying view of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
  67. Lantana
    A wonderfully acted, acutely observed psychological drama.
  68. In Search of Peace
    It's a timely, noble undertaking ill-served by a dry, history-textbook style that is at once too much and not enough.
  69. Piñero
    Hectic, sketchy and finally dull.
  70. Iris
    A triumph on the casting side but less so dramatically, Richard Eyre's Iris fails to do full justice to its subject.
  71. Not Another Teen Movie
    A nail in the coffin if not the heart of teen comedies.
  72. The Royal Tenenbaums
    Underachieves in its own way by trapping an expansive, probing story in a brittle, highly artificial style that constricts character and emotional development.
  73. Vanilla Sky
    The picture has vitality, a fine cast and excellent craft
  74. Behind the Sun
    Consummately crafted and stunningly shot in magnificent locations deep in Brazil's remote northeastern badlands, the film unapologetically courts the commercial curve of the international arthouse arena with its rustic exotica and sensory overload of poetic imagery, giving it something of a grandiose air.
  75. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
    "It's the ultimate Dogme movie, before the birth of Dogme," is how 79-year-old Lithuanian-born independent mainstay Jonas Mekas describes peaceful, enthralling assemblage encompassing home movie footage from last three decades of his life.
  76. In July
    Highly engaging, beautifully played romancer.
  77. Princesa
    A thoughtful, restrained, refreshingly nonjudgmental melodrama that reflects on interesting questions regarding sexuality, identity and self-acceptance.
  78. Baran
    A fine cast brings the believable, sometimes humorous characters to life and gradually draws the viewer into a well-crafted, well-paced story.
  79. Segunda piel
    Starts out slow but ends up engaging both heart and mind, despite occasional slips into straight melodrama.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Uprising
    It is a Holocaust story from a different angle, not the traditional depiction of a concentration camp or a rescue effort.
  81. Last Orders
    Delicately handled and superbly textured, this fine adaptation of Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel deals with all the really big subjects: love, friendship, death, life.
  82. Eban and Charley
    Sometimes spare to a fault (especially scriptwise), low-key effort nonetheless holds attention with its naturalistic, nonsensationalized approach.
  83. The Business of Strangers
    While it could have used a punchier final act that distilled its themes more cogently and conclusively, this intelligently scripted drama about power and its many channels nonetheless delivers thanks to Stettner's stylish visual sense and, most of all, to the smart, commanding performances of leads Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles.
  84. No Man's Land
    As a tyro auteur, Tanovich has a heavy-handed way of delineating characters and situations that makes this well-meaning film awfully familiar at times.
  85. Ocean's Eleven
    An all-star remake of the all-star original, Ocean's Eleven is a lark for everybody concerned, including the audience. Breezy, nonchalant and without a thing on its mind except having a little fun.
  86. Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel
    Even in a more fluid package, this mix of camp comedy and bathos would seem artificial.
  87. B-52
    Filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky needs nothing more than the cold facts surrounding this awesome weapon to get across a message about the importance of peace.
  88. Texas Rangers
    Has the frustrating feel of a rousing, epic oater sadly compromised.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Rain
    Richard Chamberlain is highly effective as a young lawyer caught up in a case of an aborigine murdered by some others in town.
  90. The Independent
    Would have worked better with a few more ersatz coming-attraction trailers and considerably less filler. More than likely, it would have worked best of all as an hourlong special on Comedy Central.
  91. The Affair of the Necklace
    A staggeringly misguided stab at making the past come alive by people who have absolutely no feel for period filmmaking. Banal at best and laughable at worst.
  92. Behind Enemy Lines
    An unembarrassed, high-octane demonstration of the virtues of a U.S. military with a mission, the latest war pic from 20th Century Fox -- a studio with a proud tradition in this field -- couldn't be better timed to fit the popular mood.
  93. Trouble Every Day
    Over-long, under-written and needlessly obscure instead of genuinely atmospheric.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bangkok Dangerous
    Enjoyable in an undemanding way, and with a few interesting flourishes.
  95. In the Bedroom
    Beautifully acted by a diverse ensemble, this Good Machine production is carefully crafted and deliberately paced.
  96. Black Knight
    Arriving so soon after "A Knight's Tale" -- and the 25th-anniversary reissue of the classic "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Black Knight is a textbook example of too much, too late.
  97. Sidewalks of New York
    Not just instantly forgettable, but beginning to fade from memory even as its images still play across the screen.
  98. The Devil's Backbone
    Though it fails in its final reels to capitalize on its early promise, picture is still stylish, accomplished and tremendously enjoyable fare.
  99. Spy Game
    Serves up a judicious blend of showy action, political intrigue, ticking-clock suspense and intramural CIA one-upsmanship for mainstream entertainment.
  100. Out Cold
    A few minutes of good snowboarding footage -- all in the first reel, alas -- after which it's strictly downhill, bunny-slope style.
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