Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Halloween (2007)
    Leaves nothing to the imagination: Michael Myers is always right there in plain sight, committing mayhem sans suspenseful buildup or mystique.
  2. Trade
    Little more than a slipshod, trashy, sometimes exploitative thriller.
  3. The Comebacks
    An exceptionally lame genre parody that plumbs depths of ineptitude heretofore charted only by the marginally less abysmal "Date Movie."
    • Variety
  4. Southland Tales
    Rarely has a picture been so self-consciously designed to be a culturally meaningful touchstone, and fallen so woefully short, as Southland Tales.
  5. The Air I Breathe
    Stellar thesps gamely strive to elevate the one-note material, but gravity ultimately defeats them in this relentless downer.
  6. Witless Protection
    If you need a GPS unit to find your own backside, you'll be laughing uproariously at Witless Protection, a movie that's far more interesting politically than dramatically -- or, God knows, comically.
  7. Chapter 27
    Jared Leto gained some 70 pounds. Seemingly following his lead, the pic itself is heavy, lethargic, and exasperating.
  8. Sex and Death 101
    A promising concept is gradually run into the ground in Sex and Death 101, a would-be black comedy that lacks both laughs and gravity.
  9. Frontier(s)
    Can a movie be an adrenalin-fueled, blood-gushing thrill ride and still be as boring as dirt? Apparently. The French answer to "Hostel" and "Saw" -- Frontier(s) is a 100-minute hemorrhage that doesn't bring anything to the operating table of torture-porn but more gore, cruelty and misery.
  10. Hancock
    The effects are snazzy, even if they pass by quite quickly, and there's enough going on to keep audiences watching, if not entirely happy. Smith, Theron and Bateman capably handle the main roles, but such is the skimpiness of the scenario that no further characters make any impact.
  11. Miss Conception
    Miscast and miscalculated, Miss Conception hopes to collect on Hollywood's recent baby-on-board craze, delivering instead the least credible take on human pregnancy since Arnold Schwarzenegger gave birth in "Junior."
  12. The Promotion
    A stillborn would-be comedy.
  13. Two Tickets to Paradise
    Utterly drab and desperate for laughs.
  14. Beer for My Horses
    A '70s-style redneck romp aimed at folks who felt intellectually challenged by the complex narrative stratagems of "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo."
  15. Hell Ride
    All this sounds like a surefire recipe for knowing, trashy fun, but something got burnt in the oven.
  16. Death Race
    As hard as metal and just as dumb, Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race couldn't be further from producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's goofy, bloody 1975 original, "Death Race 2000."
  17. The Spirit
    Plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air.
  18. Mirrors
    Softcore horror at best, failed allegory at worst, Mirrors reflects little beyond Splat Pack auteur Alexandre Aja's desire to push his genre into less punishing and more profitable territory.
  19. Hounddog
    An indigestible gumbo of Southern Gothic ingredients seasoned with snake oil, biblical hash and thoroughly unpalatable spice.
  20. Igor
    With its belabored gags, misfired pop-culture references and garish visuals crammed together like so many disjointed body parts, this manic kidpic cranks up the annoy-o-meter early on and rarely lets up.
  21. Max Payne
    Stylishly made, armed to the teeth and ludicrous in the extreme.
  22. An American Carol
    Conservatives score a few political points but aren't very funny in An American Carol, a cheesy spitball directed at the very large target of a Michael Moore-like filmmaker.
  23. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    Cleverly titled but noxious British comedy.
  24. Crossing Over
    The way the picture dwells almost exclusively on cinematically exploitable elements -- gangbanger crime, prostitution, honor killing, terrorism paranoia -- gives it a sordid patina that even the classy, able thesps can't offset.
  25. The Lodger
    What needed to be a taut, structurally sound psychothriller instead malfunctions from the start.
  26. Bride Wars
    A shrill, mechanical comedy.
  27. New in Town
    It doesn't help that Zellweger, in an unfortunate attempt to make the aud appreciate her character's uptightness, spends many of the early scenes moving about as stiff as a flagpole in January.
  28. The Objective
    With a low-budget look, cliched dialogue, a stale plot and so-so acting, this supernatural thriller is unlikely to achieve the phenomenal success of its fabled predecessor.
  29. The Perfect Sleep
    Unfortunately, Alter's often inventive work is kneecapped by a deliriously nonsensical script, which misses the mark as both over-the-top parody and straight-faced homage, and could have been intended as either.
  30. Land of the Lost
    The result is a movie with an exceedingly narrow target audience that should test Will Ferrell's appeal among boys maybe ages 12-14 -- about the only demo likely able to endure this laborious mess.
  31. Downloading Nancy
    On a moment to moment basis, however, picture continuously skirts very close to the ludicrous in its advanced-stage grimness and outre forms of torture foreplay.
  32. I Love You, Beth Cooper
    Peaks early -- like, during the first three minutes -- and rapidly goes downhill from there.
  33. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
    The movie simply doesn't deliver -- living hard, selling hard and, before it's over, finally dying hard.
  34. The Final Destination
    With an array of gory mayhem only marginally enhanced by 3-D and a plot as developed as a text message, The Final Destination may finally sound the death knell for New Line's near-immortal horror franchise.
  35. The Marc Pease Experience
    The finished product appears particularly stale, with an unfunny script that squanders its game cast, including a valiantly emotive Jason Schwartzman in the title role.
  36. Case 39
    This ludicrous outing from helmer Christian Alvart ("Pandorum") and scribe Ray Wright ("The Crazies") takes its psycho-satanic babble much too seriously, and should elicit more laughs than frights.
  37. Breaking Point
    Overplotted and underwhelming, Breaking Point is the type of movie that finds it necessary to invent a far-reaching legal/political conspiracy just so one guy can redeem himself by overthrowing it.
  38. To Save a Life
    Just as representations of human sexuality on film are often unpleasantly twisted by the grotesqueries of the porn industry, so, too, are filmic representations of religious conversion homogenized by the faith-based entertainment industry. Case in point: Debutante director Brian Baugh's To Save a Life.
  39. Swimfan
    A chiller resolutely without chills, in which even the pool water always seems heated. And inasmuch as the pic never owns up to its own trashiness, it's not even enjoyable camp.
  40. Blackwoods
    Tries to salvage its dopey premise with frantic final-reel plot contortions.
  41. The Brothers
    Pic's complete lack of cinematic verve, along with bland tech work, do much to drain the juice out of what should have been a fierce, fun battle of the sexes.
  42. 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.
  43. Analyze That
    The novelty value is completely gone the second time around.
  44. Ordinary Sinner
    Its central theme being the struggle between Christianity and homophobia -- though what's onscreen is far too vanilla in both content and execution to spark much enthusiasm.
  45. Dancing at the Blue Iguana
    An exercise in improv-derived filmmaking that simply proves once again that there's no substitute for a good script.
  46. States of Control
    Oblique and impenetrable under its glossy surface.
  47. Sidewalks of New York
    Not just instantly forgettable, but beginning to fade from memory even as its images still play across the screen.
  48. South of Heaven, West of Hell
    A quasi-metaphysical revenge Western that remains as elusive as a distant mirage on a long, dusty trail.
  49. Eye of the Beholder
    A mixed-genre detective pic, thriller and love story that shifts gears too often and doesn't know when to end.
  50. One Man's Hero
    Suffers greatly from both a visibly constrained budget and an extraordinarily dated feeling.
  51. Scarlet Diva
    A repetitious, borderline-silly vanity project.
  52. The Little Vampire
    A mildly entertaining but dramatically messy kidpic.
  53. The Next Best Thing
    Likely lack of much critical enthusiasm or positive word-of-mouth will induce quick theatrical falloff, with better news likely down the line for rental merchants.
  54. Whiteboyz
    Too many scenes play like actors acting rather than life being lived as pic lurches around with ragged variations in tone.
  55. Grizzly Falls
    Lame stuntwork and subdued thrills indicate not just a low-budgeter, but a blindness to what target aud demands.
  56. The Wisdom of Crocodiles
    Starts intriguingly but ends up thrashing around as a toothless wonder.
  57. Isn't She Great
    Isn't even unintentionally funny enough to qualify as guilty pleasure a la "Valley of the Dolls."
  58. Lakeboat
    So fractured and so awkwardly staged that end result is an uninvolving film that’s dramatically inert and artistically shapeless.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Performance
    Co-director Nicolas Roeg’s lensing is tricky, the characters gamey, the dialog dull, performances flat, impact none.
  60. Greenfingers
    This shameless knockoff marches lock-stepped through moves that were already looking as tired as the Macarena.
  61. Waydowntown
    Third outing for prairie auteur Gary Burns is his most ambitious, and most uneven, effort yet.
  62. Pursuit of Happiness
    As weak and banal as its thoroughly uninvolving central character.
  63. Maybe Baby
    A wannabe romantic comedy with miscast leads and a script in desperate need of a good editor.
  64. The Rising Place
    An ultra-touchy-feely race-relations, civil-rights drama as imagined by theme-park organizers, with every character painted in broad strokes in a story that eagerly tugs at every available heartstring -- and rings false at every turn.
  65. Boys and Girls
    As generic as its title.
  66. Showtime
    A shrill, strained and shallow riff on a tired idea.
  67. Pokémon 4: The Movie
    Supposedly, Pokemon can't be killed, but Pokemon 4Ever practically assures that the pocket monster movie franchise is nearly ready to keel over.
  68. The Four Feathers
    There is no one to become attached to in The Four Feathers, no interest or sympathies appealed to or engaged.
  69. Virus
    Curtis and Pacula are thoroughly convincing in thinly written roles.
  70. Monkeybone
    It's equal parts wacky, sappy and sniggery.
  71. The Suburbans
    A mediocre ensemble comedy-drama that's not particularly funny, involving or even nostalgic.
  72. One Night at McCool's
    Feels like a film from several years ago, one of the many made in the wake of "Pulp Fiction" that tried and failed to be as clever as its progenitor.
  73. The Blackout
    Ferrara has made a film that's always visually arresting, but one that lacks emotional and dramatic sense -- a recurrent weakness in his work.
  74. Focus
    A stilted, heavy-handed parable about fascistic intolerance.
  75. Maze
    Morrow displays keen attention to physical detail, but starring both behind and in front of the camera looks to have been a mistake here.
  76. Lucky Break
    Chained to the floor by a script that isn't particularly funny, direction that goes for realism rather than stylization and an almost complete lack of comic timing.
  77. The Bachelor
    A remarkably mirthless and inept romantic comedy.
  78. Half Past Dead
    In recent years, Steven Seagal has been steadily losing any firm standing as even a B-grade actioner icon, and by the genre's most basic standards, he now displays a visible fatigue and lack of interest that proves deadlier than any of his hero's skills.
  79. Laurel Canyon
    The dramatic trajectory is frightfully obvious, the characters tediously one-dimensional, the dialogue banal.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Stardom
    The irony is that this film about the superficiality of celebrity-crazed Western society is itself somewhat superficial.
  81. The Cell
    A slender story that's not particularly suspenseful or involving, resulting in a movie that's a feast to the eye but not much for the intellect.
  82. Assassination Tango
    On just about every level -- as a thriller, as a romance and as a character study of a complicated man nearing the end of his professional life -- the film fails, and the meandering, sub-Cassavetes approach is likely to be a turnoff for all but the most indulgent viewers.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Year That Trembled
    Fails to generate much excitement, due to the blandness of the characters and some murky storytelling.
  84. Outside Providence
    A disappointingly rote entry in the '70s teen nostalgia sweepstakes.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    Formulaic, humdrum and sometimes unintentionally laughable.
  86. Autumn in New York
    Not a bad picture, just utterly banal.
  87. Reindeer Games
    With a far-fetched script that might barely have passed muster at the B units in the old studio days, this Dimension release will command a certain up-front attention due to cast topliners.
  88. U-571
    The submarine goes deep but the story never does in U-571, a good old-fashioned WWII picture that is exciting in only the most superficial way.
  89. The Medallion
    At times plays as if it were aimed at children, but more often simply seems to be aiming blind at whatever genre cliche the five credited writers fix upon in any given scene.
  90. Blue Streak
    A dull afterthought and a sorry vehicle for the comic expression of Martin Lawrence.
  91. The Closer You Get
    Another tale of out-of-it working-class men cooking up a harebrained scheme to improve their lot in life.
  92. Full Frontal
    Arid, self-consciously arty and emotionally uninvolving.
  93. Willard
    Strictly for the birds.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Vampire's Kiss
    Cage's over-the-top performance generates little sympathy for the character, so it's tough to be interested in him as his personality disorder worsens.
  95. Carnage
    Audience patience undergoes a far more brutal butchering than anything onscreen in Delphine Gleize's wildly over-reaching feature debut, Carnage.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Boxing Helena
    The numerous sex scenes are good and steamy.
  97. Mission: Impossible II
    Even more empty a luxury vehicle than its predecessor, M:I 2 pushes the envelope in terms of just how much flashy packaging an audience will buy when there's absolutely nada inside.
  98. Rennie's Landing
    The more Marc Fusco and co-writer Michael Garrity's script aims for cleverness, the more it unravels.
  99. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    Be prepared to laugh less at a lot more of the same thing in this overbearing but underwhelming sequel.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Order
    Commits the first cardinal sin of cinematic horror -- it's boring and doesn't have a single scary moment.
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