Variety's Scores

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For 17,777 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: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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  1. The Cider House Rules
    A touching, old-fashioned charmer that ultimately satisfies.
  2. Liam
    This depiction of the trials and tribulations of a working-class Catholic family during the Depression is a far more intimate viewing experience than the similarly themed "Angela's Ashes."
  3. The Cat's Meow
    Playful and sporty, with just a small twist of the knife, The Cat's Meow is good, uncomplicated fun.
  4. Suddenly
    A delightfully unpredictable sleeper that proves new Argentine cinema really exists, Suddenly, by 26-year-old Diego Lerman, starts scary, moves through deadpan comic and comes out with a whimsical tenderness for its characters.
  5. Big Night
    This unlikely collaboration between actors Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott is extremely well directed, making for a smartly made, delightfully acted period piece whose sensibility neatly straddles art films and the mainstream.
  6. Off the Hook
    Building blocks of tale are not new, but there's an appealingly rough-hewn and convincing tone to the proceedings.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Downtown 81
    Extraordinary real-life snapshot of hip, arty, clubland Manhattan in the post-punk era.
  8. Tortilla Soup
    A warm-blooded winner with equal emphasis placed on taste buds and heartstrings.
  9. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    Heartbreaking yet truly inspirational.
  10. La Ciénaga
    An atmospheric and cumulatively impressive feature-length debut from Argentine writer-director Lucrecia Martel.
  11. History Lessons
    Offers radical sexual politics in a jester's surprise package of impudent humor and Situationist-style found-footage monkeyshines.
  12. Little Voice
    A small picture with a big heart.
  13. Swingers
    Engaging, refreshingly human in its humor and becomingly modest in its aspirations, this hip look at being out of it announces some promising new talent and will play well with young audiences looking for comfortable entertainment that doesn't feel manufactured.
  14. Princesa
    A thoughtful, restrained, refreshingly nonjudgmental melodrama that reflects on interesting questions regarding sexuality, identity and self-acceptance.
  15. Pauline and Paulette
    Heartfelt and heart-rending performances make all the difference in Pauline and Paulette, a delightfully bittersweet story.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bobby G. Can't Swim
    Gutsy, unconventional, bursting with raw urban energy, this surprisingly suspenseful drama portrays New York Hell's Kitchen residents whose lives are governed by the immutable circumstances of their tawdry existence.
  17. Evelyn
    The star plays Doyle as just rough enough around the edges to warrant the character's setbacks, but not so unpleasant that the twinkle in his eye is extinguished.
  18. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Opulently produced, fittingly enough, and quite entertaining as a surface ride through the up, down and somewhat up again life of one of the New Hollywood's most colorful characters.
  19. Won't Anybody Listen
    Richly satisfying both as subversive, music-biz primer and as gritty, true-life underdog story.
  20. The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack
    An unbeatably colorful life story.
  21. East Is East
    A sprightly acted, warm and often extremely funny ensemble comedy.
  22. The Triumph of Love
    Light, thoroughly entertaining comedy;
  23. The Bank
    Will connect with anyone who ever had a bad experience with a bank or finance company, and provides a satisfyingly loathsome character in Anthony LaPaglia's engaging protrayal of a corporate shark.
  24. Reykjavík
    A funny, touching, off-the-wall relationer that's one of the freshest helming debuts in world cinema this year.
  25. The Real Cancun
    Unabashedly tasteless, wholly trashy and, also, hugely entertaining.
  26. Zus & zo
    About as vigorous and intricate as a glossy romantic comedy can get without collapsing under the weight of its own merriment.
  27. Zhantai
    Thoughtful, melancholy drama.
  28. Personal Velocity: Three Portraits
    Impresses with the originality of its observation, storytelling techniques and filmmaking style.
  29. The Day I Became a Woman
    A powerful statement about the social oppression of women in today's Iran.
  30. The Closet
    A clever premise that's good for many laughs.
  31. The Turandot Project
    A real-life inspirational comedy that should beguile viewers regardless of their operatic taste (or distaste).
  32. A Time for Drunken Horses
    It is all the more heart-wrenching for being realistic. Its portrait of child labor brooks no sentimentality and no cliches.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Visit
    The top-notch cast never hits a false note.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Simian Line
    Though picture is at times undermined by a lack of unifying perspective, its glimmers of greatness are a testament to the talent involved.
  35. Birthday Girl
    Charmingly setting aside glamour for a turn at pure acting, Nicole Kidman zings up the already zingy script of Birthday Girl.
  36. Much Ado About Something
    Utterly fascinating, playfully probing mystery story.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Elling
    A darkly funny, very human comedy.
  38. Undisputed
    With Undisputed, writer-director Walter Hill is back in contention as one of Hollywood's last defenders of the muscular, no-nonsense genre movie.
  39. Pistol Opera
    Too abstract and self-referential for the average action fan's comprehension. But buffs will be delighted by a package that finds the near-80-year-old helmer giddily tipping hat to the genre conventions, themes and over-the-top aesthetics that long since lent him mad-visionary status.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pépé le Moko (re-release)
    Interesting movement holds through the entirety. Life in the native quarter, with its squalor and intrigues, is particularly well presented and photographed.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caravaggio
    Much of the joy of the film is to be found in the way Jarman and his team recreate the look and color of the original paintings.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quadrophenia (re-release)
    Sting, as the weekend super-Mod whose image collapses when he's revealed to work as a bellhop, cuts a slick dash in the dancehall sequences.
  43. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    No-frills talking head docu eschews vintage photos and period footage, rendering visually static pic of greatest interest to history buffs, fests and the tube.
  44. Josie and the Pussycats
    Sensationally exuberant, imaginatively crafted and intoxicatingly clever.
  45. Born Romantic
    Highly enjoyable when all its gears are clicking, but rarely as good as it should be.
  46. The Lady and the Duke
    History comes alive with verve and cold-sweat suspense in The Lady and the Duke.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Big Carnival
    Billy Wilder's direction captures the feel of morbid expectancy that always comes out in the curious that flock to scenes of tragedy.
    • 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.
  49. The Backyard
    This underground scene makes other "extreme sports" look as harmless as tiddlywinks.
  50. Late Marriage
    As wrenching as it is funny.
  51. Stuart Little 2
    Slight but lively sequel. Aimed squarely at moppets with piddling attention spans.
  52. Stevie
    A forceful, affecting experience.
  53. The Hurricane
    In what's easily his most zealous and fully realized performance since "Malcolm X," Washington elevates the earnest, occasionally simplistic narrative to the level of a genuinely touching moral expose.
  54. Power Trip
    Made with deft evenhandedness, Paul Devlin's accomplished film plays almost like a fictional drama, containing suspense, comedy and some colorful characters.
  55. Lumumba
    An impassioned, at times thrilling re-creation of the birth of the country that became Zaire and is now known as Congo again.
  56. Cookie's Fortune
    May or not be Robert Altman's best film in years, but it is certainly his most pleasurable.
  57. The Princess and the Warrior
    Eminently stylish, visually striking romantic thriller.
  58. Confusion of Genders
    Despite a few potholes of ennui along the way, pic has enough entertainment value to cross borders and titillate auds with its plentiful nudity and uninhibited sexual mores.
  59. Waking Ned Devine
    Bannen and the gawky Kelly, whose screen chemistry is vital to the film's success, make a delightful pair of stumbling shysters, and Jones' script weaves a sizable tapestry of other characters to flesh out the village.
  60. Margarita Happy Hour
    Emerges a surprisingly in-depth, wistful look at outgrowing a youth-only subculture.
  61. Mondays in the Sun
    A tough-but-tender movie driven by perfectly modulated performances, an accomplished script and naturalistic dialogue, all at the service of an oft-told message about overcoming circumstances.
  62. The Endurance
    Conveys enough of the stirring true-life drama recounted in Butler's other Shackleton docu to satisfy ticketbuyers who demand substance even in larger-than-life entertainment.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gimme Shelter
    Captures that petulant omnisexuality that made many adults consider Jagger a threat to their daughters, sons and household pets alike.
  64. The Pledge
    Nicholson is outstanding as he gradually but tellingly sketches in aspects of a man driven by a mission that outstrips his instincts as a professional lawman.
  65. Finding Forrester
    Provides a platform for Sean Connery to deliver a definitive, career-summation performance.
  66. Erin Brockovich
    Snappy and unusually funny under fundamentally serious circumstances, without being contrived or sitcomy.
  67. A Decade Under the Influence
    An entertaining, deeply respectful assessment of the directors and actors who rode the countercultural wave of the 1970s.
  68. The Tailor of Panama
    Classy, articulate and richly humorous.
  69. Thomas in Love
    A funny and original film set in a future when communications are even more refined than they are now.
  70. One Day in September
    Never less than gripping as an account of what happened and what went terribly wrong.
  71. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    It succeeds emotionally in the cause of what seems to be its primary aim, to advance an attitudinal change in Australians not normally sympathetic to the aboriginal cause.
  72. Derrida
    An affectionate but aptly complex view of one of our epoch's great philosophers.
  73. The Sum of All Fears
    Director Phil Alden Robinson -- has done just about everything he can do to build a sleek, involving and -- for a few minutes -- terrifying movie that can get viewers past the young Ryan factor.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Accidental Tourist
    Slow, sonorous and largely satisfying.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Again
    Engaging film style is buoyed by an infectious sense of fun and punctuated by wild and woolly character turns.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    That Obscure Object of Desire
    A gem-like, almost hypnotic, tale of an older man's obsession with a young woman.
  77. ABC Africa
    Kiarostami shoots Africa with an uncanny verisimilitude, coming close here to his idea of a "poetic cinema" indebted more to poetry and music than the theatrical novelistic storytelling tradition.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Ringers
    Cronenberg handles his usual fondness for gore in muted style.
  79. On the Run
    Fluid camerawork, a resonant music score and tightly wound editing combine to produce a superior suspense film with a conclusion that is somewhat reminiscent of the final acts of Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and of Joseph Losey's "The Criminal."
  80. After the Life
    It certainly wraps the trilogy on a very powerful, emotionally draining note. It's refreshing to see the precision and audacity with which Belvaux and his excellent cast succeed in imbuing the increasingly familiar story with completely new angles, insights and nuances.
  81. The Deep End
    Taking film noir material and turning it inside out visually and morally, The Deep End is an absorbing, beautifully made melodrama that succeeds on formal levels more than it does with suspense or emotion.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tumbleweeds
    Has what it takes to becomes the year's first heartfelt sleeper.
  83. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    Marvelously involving family saga.
  84. Babí léto
    The trio is so individually and collectively charismatic that the film eventually neglects fully fleshed-out narrative in favor of sublime characterization.
  85. Quo Vadis?
    Bright, glossy, grandly scaled and dramatically stolid, 79-year-old writer-director Jerzy Kawalerowicz's longtime dream project mixes earnest religiosity with the depraved cruelty of Nero's Rome in the classic De Mille tradition.
  86. Charlotte Sometimes
    The deft shading he (Byler) elicits from his thesps is of a piece with his dramatics and his understated, artful approach to compositions and movement.
  87. Big Animal
    A rueful yet gentle fable about the price of individuality and the value of dignity that preserves the intellectually stimulating spirit of Kieslowski's best work while tapping into a universally understandable vein of low-keyed absurdist comedy.
  88. The Deep End of the Ocean
    Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams give such magnetic performances that they elevate the film way above its middlebrow sensibility and proclivity for neat resolutions.
  89. Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
    It's a pungent study of fads, trends and the way everything once genuine ends up being homogenized and exploited beyond recognition by corporate America -- a fine companion piece to Stacy Peralta's "Dogtown and Z-Boys," but with a more raw, punkish aesthetic.
  90. Rana's Wedding
    Though shot from the Palestinian P.O.V., the Dutch/Palestinian Film Foundation co-production is remarkably balanced, offering a convinced message of hope for the future.
  91. 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.
  92. Swimming Pool
    Working predominantly in English for the first time, the French director has crafted an absorbing tale about the merging of fiction with reality, propelled by contrasting performances from Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier.
  93. Two Family House
    For all the pic’s sentimentality, De Felitta refuses to back away from some unpleasantly realistic touches.
  94. High Heels and Low Lifes
    An entertaining chick pic for all ages and sexes.
  95. Daughter from Danang
    An intelligent, well-observed and ineffably poignant study of an Amerasian woman's attempt to trace her roots by journeying back to Vietnam.
  96. Dr. Dolittle 2
    Even more family-friendly than its immensely popular predecessor.
  97. Go Tigers!
    Arguably the best sports-oriented documentary since "Hoop Dreams."
  98. The Man Who Wasn't There
    The Coen brothers tread into James M. Cain territory with The Man Who Wasn't There, but with less tasty results than either Cain or the Coens themselves at their best.
  99. Bones
    A sly mix of haunted house melodrama, slasher pic mayhem and retro-blaxploitation iconography, spiced with dollops of grisly, dark comedy.
  100. The Emperor's New Groove
    Light, taut and compact, the zippy adventure is sometimes much too hip for the room.
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