Variety's Scores

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For 17,828 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: 9,160 out of 17828
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17828
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17828
17828 movie reviews
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  1. Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt?
    It’s hard to imagine anyone, however, having a “Eureka!” experience watching these lame movies, this latest least of all.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
    Only saving grace is the satire pic’s opening titles, a clever lampoon of theatre trailers and advertising pitches, including a mid-credit title card that boasts, ‘This space for rent’. There’s also a tongue-in-cheek parody of disaster pic music, sung in a deep basso voice, but that’s over in about two minutes. Thereafter it’s all downhill, rapidly.
  3. Meet the Spartans
    Lazy, lame and painfully unfunny, Meet the Spartans is yet another scrambled-genre parody.
  4. Dirty Love
    Few pretty actresses have so thoroughly discarded their vanity in an outright vanity piece as Jenny McCarthy does in Dirty Love, so it's unfortunate for her this exercise in comic self-abnegation, which she wrote for herself, falls so awfully flat.
  5. State Property
    Result is fairly good-looking video shot down by a hackneyed script, atrocious acting and a total lack of redeeming social value.
    • 8 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Mangler
    With its clunky narrative and lack of solid scares or gory effusions until the obligatory all-stops-out climax, pic ends up with little to excite fans of “Elm Street”-style shockers or Hooper’s own “Poltergeist.”
  7. The Price of Air
    Wallows in the deviant proclivities of the rich, wearing its rancor like a merit badge.
  8. 365 Days: This Day
    It’s piping hot trash.
  9. The Haunting of Sharon Tate
    The movie’s petty folly — its failure of imagination and morality — is that it actually goes out of its way to turn the Manson murders into schlock horror.
  10. Among Ravens
    Nicely shot, atrociously written, shoutingly acted and intrusively scored (to classical selections and the heavy synth accompaniment of Fall on Your Sword), this roundelay of misery drowns itself in cliche after cliche.
  11. Transylmania
    Fangs aside, it sticks with the same basic menu of T&A and lowbrow humor.
  12. Septic Man
    Jack’s predicament is both revolting and claustrophobic, but he never emerges as any kind of hero or villain, just a passive victim, which makes the pic’s most off-putting quality its endless tedium.
  13. Reality Queen!
    It’s very hard to satirize things that are already inherently ridiculous, and mockumentary Reality Queen! has the misfortune of being even more vacuous — not to mention less funny — than the empty-calorie celebrities it parodies.
    • 7 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Baby Geniuses
    A thoroughly misguided, unfunny film that proves you shouldn't beat a dead horse.
  15. Grizzly II: Revenge (1983)
    “Grizzly II” never finds a rhythm — not even a giddily camp one.
  16. Miss March
    Miss March is overall a raggedy, unfocused affair that wastes both directors' acting talent and feels like too much work between the laughs.
  17. Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?
    There are bad movies, and then there are worse movies, and then there are full-bore misfires such as Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?
  18. Screwed
    Latenight cable TV filler disguised as a feature film.
  19. The Hottie & the Nottie
    Paris Hilton has already ushered a remarkable three features into the Internet Movie Database's "Bottom 100." The Hottie and the Nottie will make it an even four.
  20. War of the Worlds
    When it comes to customer satisfaction, does Amazon’s refund policy apply to stuff like this?
  21. The Abduction of Zack Butterfield
    Woefully amateurish psychological thriller.
  22. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers
    By turns pointless and pointlessly mean-spirited.
  23. Prince of Swine
    Incompetent on every level, from its haphazard staging to its amateurish sound mix.
  24. Lumina
    There’s ambition exceeding your grasp, and then there’s Lumina.
    • 5 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Two of a Kind
    Aside from the presence of the two stars, Two of a Kind has all the earmarks of a bargain-basement job.
  26. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
    Six just wants to shock, though his imagination is so primitive that the effort is strained and a bit pathetic. Initially abrasive, the whole enterprise grows simply tedious well before the now-epically-scaled titular phenom is unveiled in the prison yard.
  27. Vulgar
    Inexplicably mixing lamer-than-lame "bad taste" comedy with yea worse traumatized-assault-victim histrionics, pic's only entertainment value lies in viewer weighing whether pic is primarily a.) offensive b.) amateurish c.) pathetic or d.) a cry for help.
  28. Strippers
    Amateurish, undramatic and bereft of any sense of pacing.
  29. Melania
    Melania is a documentary that never comes to life. It’s a “portrait” of the First Lady of the United States, but it’s so orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial. Is it cheesy? At moments, but mostly it’s inert. It feels like it’s been stitched together out of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show.
    • 4 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Smokey and the Bandit Part 3
    Filmmakers, including first-time theatrical director Dick Lowry, have wisely returned to the non-stop car-chasing destruction derby of the first movie. But the sense of fun in that original is missing and the countless smashups and near-misses are orchestrated randomly.
  31. Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
    "Hillary’s America” is a slow-motion seizure of ideological rancor, served up in the filmmaker’s trademark style of wide-eyed schoolbook infamy. The only novelty here is that there’s been a subtle shift of emphasis in the D’Souza vision. It’s now really all about him.
  32. The Singing Forest
    Provides scant entertainment value, intentional or otherwise.
  33. Bio-Dome
    Neither the script nor direction lives up to the concept, and the picture evolves into a "Bio"-degradable hash rather than a zany sendup of potent issues and serious intents gone awry.
  34. Death of a Nation
    In Death of a Nation, Dinesh D’Souza is no longer preaching to the choir; he’s preaching to the mentally unsound. That’s how detached from reality his “philosophy,” his armchair rage, and his passionate and consuming desire to be a radical-right shill have become.
  35. Chaos
    Chaos may not quite be "the most brutal, horrifying film ever made," as its garish ads promote. But it does contain moments as thoroughly sickening as any in Herschell Gordon Lewis' or Lucio Fulvi's bloody exploiters.
  36. Lost
    Schlocky yet resourceful.
  37. Carlito's Way: Rise to Power
    Conspicuously underwhelming.
  38. Niagara Motel
    A blue chip cast is wasted in the painfully unfunny ensemble comedy Niagara Motel.
  39. Undertaking Betty
    An enjoyable and entertainingly cast fable about love, death and fitting revenge, "Plots With a View" (AKA Undertaking Betty) strikes a near-miraculous balance between the silly and the morbid.
  40. Stryker
    Slapdash but strangely likeable.
  41. Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus
    Film's pared-down look has a stylish simplicity.
  42. One Last Ride
    Though it lacks the sheer, depraved intensity of similarly themed pics like "The Gambler," Ride shares much of the sunlit sadness of "Save the Tiger," also populated by desperate, middle-aged men plying their trade in Los Angeles' garment district.
  43. Erosion
    Shady mood-piece profits greatly from enigmatic performance by Emmanuel Xeureb.
  44. The Mistress of Spices
    Beautiful but lifeless, poetic but unelevated, The Mistress of Spices reps a brave but flawed attempt at that most unforgiving of contemporary genres, magical realism.
  45. 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.
  46. The L.A. Riot Spectacular
    A comedy that's vulgar, disturbing, distasteful and violent, but so is injustice and civil unrest.
  47. Dog Lover's Symphony
    Dog Lover's Symphony feels as if an alien species had been studying Hollywood movies for 50 years and tried to make one themselves.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shockproof
    While never credible, story does point up the standard melodramatics and good playing to keep it all interesting. (Review of Original Release)
  49. Believe in Me
    Even with ties to the true story of high school hoops coach Jim Keith and his unlikely triumph with a 1960s Oklahoma high school girls' squad, the hackneyed, overlong Believe in Me is much too similar to a recent flood of inspirational basketball pics to distinguish it.
  50. The Tripper
    A mostly dull-blade exercise that offers little to think or scream about.
  51. The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams
    Undone by a thorough lack of visual craft.
  52. The Trials of Darryl Hunt
    Advocacy cinema at its most searingly direct, The Trials of Darryl Hunt is a powerful and unsettling chronicle of the 20-year struggle to free a man twice convicted of a crime he didn't commit.
  53. Bordertown
    Bordertown straddles two realms: the worthy and the kitsch. The flimsy conspiracy theories floated here, coupled with pic's trite thriller plotting, risk trivializing the atrocities while it obfuscates their causes.
  54. Trick 'r Treat
    Trick ‘r Treat neatly apportions scary and campy elements while cleverly interlacing four storylines on Halloween night in an Ohio hamlet.
  55. Berkeley
    Dull casting and cliche-ridden writing drain everyone of vividness.
  56. Sex and Breakfast
    What tyro helmer Miles Brandman serves up is a tortured talkfest with a premise far less ripe than its title.
  57. Eleven Men Out
    A non-pandering crowd-pleaser whose character quirks and small stabs at poignancy feel refreshingly earned.
  58. Maurice Richard
    Boasts dazzling hockey action, but its off-ice piousness makes for tough sledding for non-Canucks.
  59. 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.
  60. Kiss the Bride
    Formulaic gay comedy delivers its share of grins on the way to an (arguably) unexpected ending.
  61. The Tiger's Tail
    Playing dual roles as a rich Irish businessman riding the economic boom and his down-and-out twin, Gleeson animates Boorman's amusing Prince and the Pauper screenplay, which sports a dark social underbelly that puts Ireland's rich-poor divide centerstage
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Plumm Summer
    Montana-set, reality-inspired picture feels like an homage to a bygone era of moviemaking: It takes its time to build character and story, there's hardly a CG effect in sight, and there's nothing high-concept about it.
  63. Rogue
    A competent horror yarn filmed in eye-catching Aussie outback locations.
  64. Two Tickets to Paradise
    Utterly drab and desperate for laughs.
  65. 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."
  66. Local Color
    Alas, even the soft-hearted may find this formulaic yarn of a young man's apprenticeship to a cantankerous artist too rosy-hued and treacly.
  67. The Velveteen Rabbit
    A low-key charmer that's bound to enchant small children and amuse their parents during many hours of repeat viewings.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Powder Blue
    The heartstring-pulling contrivances of the film, set during Christmastime, go way over the top.
  69. Carriers
    Carriers has moments of genuinely communicable horror.
  70. Across the Hall
    Creepy but uneven.
  71. Wash Dry and Spin Out
    A pathetically conceived drama that wastes the serious theme of how emotionally and sexually inadequate men abuse others.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ambush
    Thoughtful and mostly very watchable picture, with its emphasis on how war dehumanizes the individual soldier.
  73. Da wan
    Pic is an obvious but highly accessible entertainment that manages to josh its subjects without being condescending to either Eastern or Western auds.
  74. 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.
  75. The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein
    While refraining from excess melodrama or overt preachiness, pic makes no secret of its dismay at this chapter in American history.
  76. Going By
    Pleasantly watchable.
  77. Pursuit of Happiness
    As weak and banal as its thoroughly uninvolving central character.
  78. Under the Moonlight
    Though its subject has curiosity value, its critical view of religious institutions is compromised by an ending that evidently was necessary for the film to be made and released at all.
  79. Carman: The Champion
    Modestly engaging but thoroughly formulaic drama about a boxer turned preacher who returns to the ring to fund a community-outreach center.
  80. The Mesmerist
    Plays like a mercilessly extended version of an uninspired "Saturday Night Live" sketch.
  81. The Captive
    An elegant but empty and frustrating meditation on desire, obsession, love and possession, The Captive intellectualizes those subjects almost beyond the level of art-film parody.
  82. Dirt Boy
    Intelligent, low-key suspenser.
  83. Blindness
    The ability not to see the obvious in both a literal and a metaphoric sense imbues the indie feature Blindness with dramatic potency.
    • 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.
  85. Hotel Room
    Spanish writer-director Cesc Gay and Argentine co-director Daniel Gimelberg cook up one or two agreeably tart episodes in this uneven pic, but ultimately, it plays like "Four Rooms" without a budget.
  86. Man of the Year
    Ensemble proves improvisationally capable, but film overall is rather conventional, a Hollywood idea of an experimental film presented with a heavy serving of showbiz-type cynicism.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Golden Age
    Bunuel's anger at society, particularly its attitude on morality, seems not only dated today, but laugh provoking. [Review is of a 1964 screening at Lincoln Center, NY, first showing of pic in the US.]
  88. Sorority Girls' Revenge
    Midnight moviegoers aren't so desperate that they will opt for such trailer trash.
  89. Too Tired to Die
    Has a jaunty, cosmopolitan air that proves appealing for considerable stretches, and Chin's love of cinema and mostly humorous approach to weighty themes will win points with buffs who have seen the same films the director has.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Baraka (re-release)
    Words can't do justice to the visual masterpiece Baraka.
  91. Khab-e sefid
    Gentle, touching tale.
  92. The Big Empty
    Hobbled by uninspired stabs at cleverness and surreal narrative curlicues, The Big Empty goes nowhere, replete with a question mark of an ending that isn't worth answering.
  93. Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?
    Pic's busy direction and bright performances partly compensate for a script that goes in too many directions at the same time.
  94. Going Down
    There seems to be no bottom to Going Down, a lame also-ran in the rapidly declining teen gross-out comedy genre.
  95. Hansel & Gretel
    Pity the children for whom this is their intro to the world of Grimm, for while pic stays to basic outline of the original story in opening and closing sections, the large middle is stuffed with badly staged slapstick and painful stabs at hip dialogue in an arch attempt to cater to modern kids.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Female Trouble (re-release)
    Camp is too elegant a word to describe it all.
  97. Tube
    A check-your-brains-at-the-door, almost non-stop actioner that finally wins the viewer over with its sheer single-mindedness.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Night and the City (re-release)
    Jules Dassin, in his direction, manages extraordinarily interesting backgrounds, realistically filmed to create a feeling both of suspense and mounting menace.
  99. Big Girls Don't Cry
    A moderately successful attempt to ape the standard Hollywood teen movie.
  100. 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.
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