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. Last Holiday
    Most successful when it is engaging, not uproarious. Glossy amusement is an updated remake of a well-regarded 1950 Brit comedy-drama starring Alec Guinness, improbably retrofitted as a star vehicle for Queen Latifah.
  2. April's Shower
    The joys of farce are fumbled in April's Shower, star-director-writer Trish Doolan's arch and undernourished comedy about a bridal shower turned on its head by the bride's lesbian past.
  3. Manderlay
    The subject being race relations, Manderlay is bound to stir considerable debate in intellectual circles, but given the director's abstract style and use of characters to enact an agenda, it's a discussion that will exclude the general public, who will ignore it as they did "Dogville."
  4. Winter Passing
    Family drama appears content to present the situation without going for anything remotely close to the emotional jugular. Result is unsatisfying and even dreary, despite some fine work from Zooey Deschanel and a becalmed Will Ferrell.
  5. Sorry, Haters
    Penn looks bewildered in a role that simply doesn't track, but Kechiche rises to the occasion. Stanzler's helming, shot blandly in digital vid, amounts to point-and-shoot.
  6. The Shaggy Dog
    This fur-fetched tale is bearable family viewing.
  7. Game 6
    Game 6, the first screenplay by one of America's great living novelists, Don DeLillo, is poorly served by Michael Hoffman's flat, soporific direction.
  8. American Gun
    Lacks focus and momentum as it attempts to interweave diverse story strands into a cautionary tapestry.
  9. Mardi Gras: Made in China
    An obviously sincere but didactically repetitive documentary.
  10. Stoned
    The film's sputtering dramatic engine, underwhelming perfs, and absence of music by the Stones themselves may leave the key younger demographic wondering what all the fuss is about.
  11. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
    Entirely comfortable as the crude character he has honed in countless stand-up routines and TV appearances, Larry the Cable Guy sustains a level of likeability that enables him to get away with a lot more than he has any right to. But, he remains very much an acquired taste.
  12. The Benchwarmers
    Under Dennis Dugan's rote direction, Schneider winds up playing straight man to Spade, who once again relies on his snarky coward shtick, and Heder, who comes across like someone doing a bad imitation of ... well, Heder himself in "Napoleon Dynamite."
  13. Phat Girlz
    Mo'Nique, a vet standup and sitcom performer whose sassy, brassy shtick isn't nearly enough to support material this insubstantial.
  14. Scary Movie 4
    Scary Movie 4 finds horror parody overshadowed by ho-hum groin blows, C-list celebrity cameos, slapstick child abuse, soon-to-be-forgotten hip-hop personalities, plus scatalogical and gay jokes; real laughs are few.
  15. The Wild
    Uninspired character animation and obnoxious banter aside, The Wild is ultimately done in by the persistent stench of been-there-seen-that.
  16. American Dreamz
    Combining a gallery of targets including President Bush, "American Idol," the Iraq War and the overarching theme of a nation of citizens held in the thrall of phony dreams, pic and its ambitions are undermined by insistent cartoonishness and comic ineptitude.
  17. Silent Hill
    In the end, Silent Hill degenerates into an overblown replay of all those "Twilight Zone" and Stephen King stories in which outsiders stumble upon a time-warped location from which there's no escape.
  18. Abominable
    Abominable goes completely over the top into an Ed Wood-meets-"Rear Window" subspecies of giddy, gory amateurish abandon.
  19. La Mujer de Mi Hermano
    Soapy melodrama and a small-screen cast undermine the first-time director's efforts.
  20. The Sisters
    Even a magnificently inspired Maria Bello proves insufficiently daring to save Richard Alfieri and Arthur Allan Seidelman's Chekhov-based chamber piece Sisters from pretentious psychodrama.
  21. Guys and Balls
    A by-the-numbers ensemble dramedy that hits every underdog and gay-fish-out-of-water cliche on the nose.
  22. See No Evil
    Throats are ripped, heads are crushed and limbs are severed with brutal efficiency throughout See No Evil, but that's not nearly enough to dispel the sense of deja vu that pervades this generic slasher thriller.
  23. Dead Man's Shoes
    Film plays as a quirky Brit riff on everything from U.S. slasher pics to revenge oaters but without Meadows' usual psychological complexity.
  24. The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress
    The title alone should alert auds that The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress is a hatchet job on the controversial politico known as "The Hammer."
  25. The Conrad Boys
    Justin Lo is -- in descending order of competence -- producer, director, editor, writer and star of debut feature The Conrad Boys. He should've hired a better actor for the lead, but then this low-budget indie would lack its vanity project raison d'etre.
  26. Click
    Adam Sandler's recent low-key phase continues with this cleverly conceived but conspicuously unfunny comedy.
  27. Say Uncle
    The politics of homophobia and child molestation receive a badly misjudged tweaking in Peter Paige's writing-directing debut, Say Uncle.
  28. Lady in the Water
    A ponderous, self-indulgent bedtime tale. Awkwardly positioned, this gloomy gothic fantasy falls well short of horror.
  29. The Wicker Man
    Any provocative questions LaBute might have wanted to raise are totally obscured as the rising tide of absurdity gradually overwhelms the entire enterprise.
  30. Le petit lieutenant
    Seems so determined to reproduce the drudgery of police work, it's boring for the first hour, and only marginally more exciting for the second.
  31. Broken Bridges
    It's obviously intended as a star vehicle, but Broken Bridges turns out to be a rattletrap jalopy for country music performer Toby Keith.
  32. Haven
    A seesaw chronology and generally chaotic approach plagues Haven, an overly ambitious, multicharacter love story-cum-underworld revenge drama set on a fleetingly exotic island.
  33. All the King's Men
    Overstuffed and fatally miscast, All the King's Men never comes to life.
  34. Jackass Number Two
    This stunningly shameless follow-up to the 2002 theatrical sleeper (and homdevid mega-seller) offers more of the same -- a lot more -- while repeatedly upping the ante in terms of offensiveness. Which, of course, should greatly -- and profitably -- please is target aud.
  35. American Blackout
    If all that Ian Inaba's latest Guerilla News Network missive, American Blackout, wants to do is get left Democrats worked up into a lather of righteous anger at crafty Republicans, it does so at the expense of speaking to any other group of Americans. As such, docu is extremely limited and almost without purpose except as an organizing tool for party foot soldiers.
  36. The Grudge 2
    Story is incidental here, as auds merely anticipate the scares.
  37. The Prestige
    Clearly, director Nolan is aiming for something else. But the delight in sheer gamesmanship that marked his breakout "Memento" doesn't survive this project's gimmickry and aspirations toward "Les Miserables"-style epic passion.
  38. Death and Texas
    Audiences won't show much clemency toward Death & Texas, an uneasy (and very unfunny) marriage of sports culture satire and death penalty polemic.
  39. The Return
    Forgettable PG-13 pic will particularly strike fans of harder-edged recent horror pix as much ado about not much.
  40. The Fountain
    Suffered from production fits and starts and reportedly has been cut down from a longer running time to a still tedious and repetitious hour and a half.
  41. Turistas
    The "Hostel" similarities may strike some as too close for comfort, not only in plot outline but also in general mix of xenophobia, sexploitation, sadism and gore.
  42. Two Weeks
    Picture veers unsteadily between melodrama and light comedy, with no confidence in either.
  43. Eragon
    Appropriating all the external trappings of big-budget fantasy but none of the requisite soul, this leaden epic never soars like the CG-rendered fire-breather at the core of its derivative mythology.
  44. Night at the Museum
    This rambunctious, "Jumanji"-style extravaganza is a gallery of special effects in search of a story; rarely has so much production value yielded so little in terms of audience engagement.
  45. Code Name: The Cleaner
    This is an especially limp star vehicle that delivers a few widely spaced moments of frivolity before what should be a quick mop-up trip to the DVD aisles.
  46. Thr3e
    Indeed, you could argue that weighty questions about the nature of evil and the allure of sin figured more prominently in the similarly titled "Se7en," one of several other, better suspensers dimly echoed here.
  47. Blood and Chocolate
    The entire star-crossed scenario is conveyed with the narrative simplicity of a musicvideo, lingering in an almost fetishistic manner on sensual details (boxes of chocolates, a blood-red ribbon) while compressing important elements of the story into clumsy montages.
  48. Because I Said So
    An exercise in canned cuteness, Because I Said So pushes its normally appealing stars, Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore, over the edge of sitcom hysteria.
  49. Burning Annie
    Pic relies on nerdy world-weary irony to carry the day, but doesn't convincingly draw its characters.
  50. Coffee Date
    Full of unlikely misunderstandings.
  51. My Brother
    A heavy-handed redemption story.
  52. Race You to the Bottom
    It's a bad heterosexual date movie (more a date-gone-wrong), has too limited a gay angle for that demographic, and is about characters who are not particularly likable as individuals or as a couple.
  53. Are We Done Yet?
    Supposedly based on "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," but has about as much to do with that frothy Cary Grant confection as a Yugo has to do with a 1948 Buick Roadster.
  54. Pathfinder
    Like "300" and "Apocalypto," this latest bit of historical balder-dash stands in direct defiance of proven action-movie formulas, trusting its brutal concept and striking visuals to overcome a lack of star power.
  55. Redline
    A demolition derby starring some of the most expensive cars on Earth, Redline portrays a world so drenched in wealth it gives off a stench.
  56. Lucky You
    The result is dull and lifeless.
  57. Slow Burn
    What begins as a moderately interesting set of interconnected mysteries involving race and identity soon grows eye-rollingly laborious, not to mention increasingly derivative of Christopher McQuarrie's "Usual Suspects" script.
  58. The Wedding Weekend
    Trite, sententious and generally unfunny.
  59. Even Money
    Standard-issue directorial approach is perfectly in keeping with a script whose natural berth is on the tube.
  60. Bug
    A ranting, claustrophobic drama that trades in shopworn paranoid notions, William Friedkin's overwrought screen version of Tracy Letts' play assaults the viewer with aggressive thesping and over-the-top notions of shocking incident, all to intensely alienating effect.
  61. The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams
    Undone by a thorough lack of visual craft.
  62. Eagle vs Shark
    Result is still innocuously mild and inconsequential.
  63. One to Another
    A bland, perverse round-robin of teen angst.
  64. Klimt
    Billed as a phantasmagoria rather than a biopic, Klimt falls into the philosophical conundrum it attempts to resurrect -- whether portrait and allegory can coexist. Notwithstanding moments of great beauty, in this case the answer is clearly "no."
  65. Skinwalkers
    Plays more like '70s drive-in fare than a monster mash of recent vintage.
  66. Who's Your Caddy?
    An instantly forgettable trifle.
  67. Bratz
    Bratz’s references and parodies are consistently on-target, if always way too over-the-top. Every line of dialogue could plausibly take an exclamation point.
  68. Hot Rod
    Those hoping for feature-length doses of Samberg's "Lazy Sunday" wit will have to settle for just plain lazy, as Hot Rod aims low and still manages to miss its target.
  69. If I Didn't Care
    Featuring a strong central perf by Bill Sage, a raincoated detective turn by Roy Scheider and the upscale autumnal serenity of the Hamptons, If I Didn't Care remains a stylistic exercise in elegant gratuitousness.
  70. September Dawn
    The didactic presentation, grim speechifying and tacked-on love story all signify a less-than-healthy regard for the audience's intelligence.
  71. The Last Legion
    Seriously hampered by glaring inconsistencies of tone and intent, and often feels like a series of highlights carved out of a much longer epic.
  72. Shoot 'Em Up
    Good taste is the first fatality in this gonzo thrill-seeker, sure to offend mainstream dispositions, yet too stylistically audacious to dismiss outright.
  73. Mr. Woodcock
    There's more genuine humor to be gleaned from saying "Woodcock" over and over again than from watching Mr. Woodcock, a wan comic effort barely elevated a few notches by Billy Bob Thornton's passive-aggressive villainy.
  74. Good Luck Chuck
    Dane Cook sells out arenas with his stand-up act, and Jessica Alba is, well, Jessica Alba, but once "Chuck" exhausts their devoted bases, this doesn't promise to bring much good luck to Lionsgate.
  75. Feel the Noise
    Trifling time-killer.
  76. Reservation Road
    A dramatic situation that should be wrenching is mostly tedious in Reservation Road.
  77. Berkeley
    Dull casting and cliche-ridden writing drain everyone of vividness.
  78. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    Without the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett continue the role that launched her to stardom, there would be little to recommend this latest of many cinematic and television accounts of the celebrated monarch's life.
  79. Fred Claus
    Alternates between unpleasantness and Hallmark-sweet sappiness.
  80. Lions for Lambs
    Amounts to a giant cry of "Americans, get engaged!" wrapped in a star-heavy discourse that uses a lot of words to say nothing new.
  81. P2
    What "Psycho" did for the shower, P2 tries very hard to do for the parking garage, spending most of its time below ground, and below an adequate level of convincing dread.
  82. War Dance
    While the pic may be targeting Westerners who want to feel less awful about genocide and global negligence, it's hard to imagine War Dance appealing to that crowd -- or any other.
  83. Awake
    Harold's thriller does have an attention-getting plot hook, but piles on too many narrative gimmicks to maintain suspense or credibility.
  84. Sex and Breakfast
    What tyro helmer Miles Brandman serves up is a tortured talkfest with a premise far less ripe than its title.
  85. The Perfect Holiday
    Neither perfect nor much of a holiday, more like a fruitcake passed around from arthritic aunt to demented uncle -- stale, predictable and made with fossilized ingredients.
  86. Youth Without Youth
    Attempting to harness multiple genres, pic is brought down by ponderous dialogue (much of it dubbed) and an inability to connect with its characters.
  87. One Missed Call
    This decent if derivative scare machine should benefit from a lack of genre competition.
  88. Mad Money
    Banking on the appealing chemistry of Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah -- with co-star Katie Holmes awkwardly upsetting the balance -- this strained heist comedy about three cash-strapped femmes is watchable enough for a few reels, but lacks the requisite wit and amoral energy to capitalize on its get-rich-quick premise.
  89. First Sunday
    A near-claustrophobic comedy that manages to be both predictable and preachy. Solid actors in supporting roles offer minor redemption.
  90. Elite Squad
    A one-note celebration of violence-for-good that plays like a recruitment film for fascist thugs.
  91. Over Her Dead Body
    Even the weakest "Desperate Housewives" episode packs more heat than this tepid romantic comedy-fantasy, whose basic plot gimmick has been done as far back as "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir."
  92. Shrooms
    By-the-numbers item, in which five American college students literally get wasted while tripping out on magic mushrooms in rural Ireland, is OK vid fodder with few real scares and not an ounce of originality.
  93. Fool's Gold
    A listless romantic comedy that, almost out of desperation, turns a little more violent than necessary near the end.
  94. Be Kind Rewind
    It's a quick trip from whimsy to silliness in Be Kind Rewind, a notably ephemeral work by Michel Gondry, whose flights of fancy can't overcome the egregious illogic of the premise.
  95. 10,000 BC
    Conventional where it should be bold and mild where it should be wild, 10,000 BC reps a missed opportunity to present an imaginative vision of a prehistoric moment.
  96. Shutter
    A blandly cast and crafted remake of the same-titled 2004 Thai pic that itself emulated J-horror norms, which seemed a lot fresher back then.
  97. Meet Bill
    A labored screwball comedy about disenchanted people of privilege yearning for fulfillment, pic is full of leaden hijinx directed and played with all the subtlety of a myocardial infarction.
  98. Nim's Island
    A picturesque adventure-comedy that quickly capsizes under the weight of its obnoxious slapstick, pedestrian dialogue and general unwillingness to rise above stock ideas and situations.
  99. The Ruins
    Ultimately less dependent on suspense or even scares than on squirm-inducing grossouts, this tale of Yank hardbodies vs. carnivorous creepers should flower briefly in hardtops, then spread like an invasive weed in ancillary.
  100. The Life Before Her Eyes
    A femme-centric drama about the aftermath of a high school massacre, profoundly confusing "In Bloom" arrives at some very tenuous moral conclusions that might alienate much of its supposed target audience.
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