Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Erleuchtung garantiert
    Ochsenknecht and Wohler are a strong double act, displaying exemplary comic timing and making the brothers a problem-plagued but likable pair.
  2. The Legend of Leigh Bowery
    An engrossingly detailed if perhaps inevitably enigmatic portrait of the elusive, outrageous provocateur.
  3. He liu
    The three principal actors fit their roles like gloves, and the handsome camerawork (by Liao Peng-jung) is a major asset. There's no music, just natural sounds on the track. Except for a shot in which the microphone boom is clearly visible, the film is highly professional in every aspect.
  4. Divided We Fall
    Confronts an incendiary topic head-on with grace, style, compassion and exquisitely practical wit.
  5. Lilo & Stitch
    Has a casual, freewheeling nature in contrast to the creeping grandiosity of some of Disney's A-list animated titles.
  6. Drumline
    Brimming with heart and humor -- Drumline is a formulaic crowdpleaser set in the competitive world of university marching bands at predominantly black universities.
  7. Festival in Cannes
    Jaglom's quickest and funniest picture in years and the most accessible.
  8. Con Air
    Apart from not knowing to quit while it's ahead, Con Air provides quite an exciting flight prior to its crash and burn.
  9. 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.
  10. Harvard Man
    Wildly uneven yet perversely coherent ode to the lure of sexual and chemical experimentation, the precariousness of sanity and the sheer suggestible power of paranoia.
  11. Intolerable Cruelty
    A thoroughly entertaining comedy about love, lawyers and fat divorce settlements. While a slight imbalance in the romantic formula stops it just short of truly soaring, the crackling dialogue and buoyant wordplay make this a delightful throwback to classic screwball comedies.
  12. Superstar
    A pleasant surprise...more directorial personality here than most "SNL"-derived features get...the cheerily absurd, color-saturated atmosphere recalls John Waters' "Hairspray."
  13. Go Further
    Unquestioning agitprop for vegetarianism, hemp fiber, solar energy, sustainable organic living and other causes espoused by actor-activist Woody Harrelson.
  14. The Butterfly
    A solidly entertaining, cross-generational two-hander, The Butterfly strikes the right balance between humor and observational bite.
  15. Entrapment
    Preposterous whimsy that sort of gets by thanks to lustrous settings, slick production values and, especially, its ultra-attractive stars.
  16. Hidalgo
    Tells an old-fashioned boys' adventure yarn in an equally old-fashioned way.
  17. Shrek
    This spirited and often very funny lark accomplishes something that most films in the bygone Hollywood studio era used to do but is remarkably rare in today's world of niche markets: It offers entertainment equally to viewers from 4 to 104.
  18. All or Nothing
    The wealth of behavioral detail and observational humor make for some rewarding drama that will resonate with many viewers.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rundown
    Cements the Rock's status as a contempo action hero with a bigscreen future.
  20. Iris
    A triumph on the casting side but less so dramatically, Richard Eyre's Iris fails to do full justice to its subject.
  21. Hulk
    This impeccably crafted piece of megabuck fantasy storytelling aims to pull off the tricky feat of significantly reworking the superhero format while still providing the expected tentpole-type entertainment thrills for the international masses.
  22. America's Heart and Soul
    Features 20-odd valiant souls treasuring their freedom and overcoming obstacles while skycams soar over purple mountains' majesty and an acrobatic pilot does loop-de-loops over fruited plains.
  23. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    As a rich, gum-chewing matron who tools around in her canary-yellow Rolls-Royce, Flanagan is the picture's real scene-stealer.
  24. Monsoon Wedding
    Splashy, noisy and downright fun.
  25. Incident at Loch Ness
    Constructed Chinese-box style as a series of films within films, with a faked one about the Loch Ness monster at the center, "Incident" will have maximum impact for the first auds to catch it before its sly central joke gets out.
  26. Gloomy Sunday
    The iconic '30s song "Gloomy Sunday" gets a distinctive celluloid setting in this well-played, cleverly scripted pic in which music and character are inextricably combined.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dirty Dancing
    Good production values, some nice dance sequences and a likable performance by Grey make the film more than watchable, especially for those acquainted with the Jewish tribal mating rituals that go on in the Catskill Mountain resorts.
  28. The Center of the World
    A fairly sexy, serious-minded drama hobbled by its lack of real conceptual ambition.
  29. Your Friends & Neighbors
    Like Mamet, LaBute's approach is precise, stylized and detached, and he also follows Mamet the director in positioning his characters close to the camera, as if they were addressing the audience directly, without much depth of field -- or air to breathe.
  30. Roger Dodger
    fFts into that weird, dialogue-heavy quasi-genre that includes "In the Company of Men" and "The Business of Strangers" where high-stakes sexual power games mix with cutthroat office politics.
  31. Happy Accidents
    A lighthearted yarn designed to stand out by virtue of its intricate structure and trippy time-travel element. But the fanciful material wears thin pretty quickly, the air leaking out of the balloon long before party's over.
  32. Pay It Forward
    An unusual film that intelligently avoids numerous potential pitfalls even if its central earnestness is ultimately inescapable.
  33. Saved!
    The spirited comedy ultimately kneels before an all-embracing deity, which could appease the God squad provided they get through all the wickedly funny zealot-bashing that comes first.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pretty in Pink
    A rather intelligent (if not terribly original) look at adolescent insecurities.
  35. 25th Hour
    Lapses into melodramatic self-importance and gratuitous stylistic flourishes that take the audience out of the action -- are outweighed by the steadily amplified emotional power of this ultimately moving drama.
  36. Chasing Amy
    Much of the dialogue is good, and Smith does a decent job of presenting the emotional fallout from every major participant's p.o.v.
  37. Mallrats
    While admittedly ragged and ribald, it's a picture with an innate charm and honesty that should win over audiences.
  38. Walking Tall
    Moves along at a clip and provides a terrific action lead for Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson.
  39. The Recruit
    The whole picture may be hokey, but the first part is agreeably so, the second part not. At the very least, one comes away with a new appreciation of the difficulty of inner-office romance at the CIA.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wag the Dog
    Glib cynicism isn't a tremendously appealing quality, but in Wag the Dog it at least has the benefit of comic precision and polished handling.
  41. The Brown Bunny
    An astonishing improvement on the original version. With 27 minutes excised, pic emerges from its mind-numbing undergrowth as a memorable -- if still highly specialized -- exercise in personal, '70s-style American filmmaking, with a cohesive feel and rhythm that marks Gallo as a distinctive indie talent.
  42. Sexy Beast
    Often enjoyable, massively uneven Brit ganglander with an almost surreal approach to the genre.
  43. Beverly Hills Ninja
    This sweet saga of an underachiever who makes good is surprisingly appealing and sure to broaden the portly comic's fan base.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening
    Has a poignant emotional core in the truthful description of its characters' despairing lives.
  45. We Were Soldiers
    Gibson has the closest thing to a John Wayne part that anyone's played since the Duke himself rode into the sunset, and he plays it damn well.
  46. Mulan
    A rich dramatic tapestry lightly stained by some strained comedy, rigorous political correctness and perhaps more adherence to Disney formula than should have been the case in one of the studio's most adventurous and serious animated features.
  47. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    Arresting at first but gradually trails off under the weight of its hyper-derivativeness and anxiety to please.
  48. I'm Not Scared
    While another director might have imbued the story of a Sicilian boy awakened to his parents' involvement in child abduction with more emotional weight and thematic depth, Salvatores' classically illustrative treatment should open arthouse doors for the visually sumptuous production.
  49. Fade to Black
    Smartly directed by Pat Paulson and Michael John Warren and nicely lensed.
  50. A Silent Love
    Largely plays down the ethnic stereotyping to deliver a carefully observed, fundamentally human roundelay about the wonders and horrors of looking for someone to love.
  51. White Oleander
    Never rising above routine episodic storytelling, White Oleander nonetheless retains something of its source novel's ravaged emotional surface and cool, observant manner.
  52. Magnolia
    A remarkably inventive and audacious film that almost overcomes its flaws.
  53. Cast Away
    Meticulous, sumptuous production design, and striking visuals compensate for the lack of dramatic momentum in a film that arguably stretches narrative form to its limits.
  54. Contact
    Beautifully crafted and legitimately involving once it locks onto a dramatic track, film benefits from remaining mysterious about how far it intends to go in pursuing its themes, but also suffers from long-windedness and preachy final-reel explicitness as to its message.
  55. What Lies Beneath
    A thriller that tries aggressively, but not entirely successfully, to deliver the goods of three genres -- suspense, supernatural and horror.
  56. A Bug's Life
    Entertaining in a very showbizzy way.
  57. Monsters, Inc.
    Clever and jokey in a vaudeville sort of way, but lacks the heart and sheer imagination of the company's best work for Disney, "Toy Story 2" and "A Bug's Life."
  58. Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
    As engaging and stimulating as the man himself.
  59. Voices of Iraq
    With Iraqis pointing cameras at each other, the result is cheerier than might be expected.
  60. Three Kings
    An impudently comic, stylistically aggressive and, finally, very thoughtful manner.
  61. Big Daddy
    While the loyal male-teen aud core will not be disappointed with the spate of gags just for them, story contains solid date-movie material.
  62. George of the Jungle
    Not quite inspired lunacy, the film has a game, likable quality.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rain Man
    It's a mature assignment for Cruise and he's at his best in the darker scenes.
  64. Bandits
    The disparate but highly skilled leading trio of Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett keeps this road movie engaging even when it veers giddily onto the shoulder.
  65. The Boxer
    Intelligently conceived and well- acted, this compact, straightforward drama about two ordinary people caught in the ongoing political crossfire packs enough punch to command audience interest, but won't light up critics or the B.O. to the extent achieved by the team's previous outings, "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father."
  66. Vampires
    The pleasures are modest but consistent in John Carpenter's Vampires, a part-Western, part-horror flick that doesn't aim too high but nails the range it occupies.
  67. Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
    A calm, rational and utterly devastating point-by-point analysis.
  68. Little Lili
    Works as both an adaptation and a movie in its own right
  69. The Patriot
    Has some emotional pull and isn't stuffy and dull.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dumb and Dumber
    A flat-out celebration of stupidity, bodily functions and pratfalls. Yet the wholeheartedness of this descent into crude and rude humor is so good-natured and precise that it's hard not to partake in the guilty pleasures of the exercise.
  71. Robot Stories
    Greg Pak understands the short form well, mercifully avoiding blatant O'Henry twists while pulling off neat reversals of expertly set-up genre expectations.
  72. The Inheritance
    Arresting and fascinating.
  73. Something's Gotta Give
    Jokes about impotence, menopause and other middle-aged maladies reside where a screenplay ought to live.
  74. Kal Ho Naa Ho
    Another slam-dunk from vet producer Yash Johar.
  75. Wet Hot American Summer
    Nearly half over before it finds a consistent groove, let alone a decent hit-to-miss joke ratio.
  76. Gozu
    Unclassifiable cult figure Takashi Miike's films invariably have their share of weirdness and perversity, but Gozu arguably outweirds all previous efforts in the prolific Japanese director's eclectic canon.
  77. White Chicks
    As lowbrow comedies go, it pretty much delivers.
  78. Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius
    This exceedingly long-winded but classy drama could appeal to the same strain of infrequent, regional moviegoers looking for righteous entertainment that flocked to "The Passion of the Christ."
  79. My Flesh and Blood
    One leaves My Flesh and Blood with admiration for the lenser's craftsmanship, and for her ability to remain an unobtrusive observer during moments of extreme emotional turmoil.
  80. Paper Clips
    Patiently told and lovingly made.
  81. Cachorro
    Taking a seed of an idea and nurturing it into a fable about moral hypocrisy, Bearcub substantiates prolific Spanish helmer Miguel Albaladejo's rep for well-observed, character-based dramas with an offbeat twist and a potent emotional undertow.
  82. Intermission
    Borderline grungy but highly entertaining comedy-drama.
  83. 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.
  84. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
    The film's chief shortcoming is perhaps its failure to convey a stronger, more atmospheric sense of the repressive 1970s Catholic school environment that breeds the titular boys' rebellion and wild flights of fancy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jurassic Park
    Spielberg's scary and horrific thriller may be one-dimensional and even clunky in story and characterization, but definitely delivers where it counts, in excitement, suspense and the stupendous realization of giant reptiles.
  86. A Man Apart
    Diesel makes a violent bid to align himself with the Clint Eastwood-Charles Bronson-Steve McQueen tradition, but he lacks the charisma, emotional strength and humor to do so.
  87. Vengo
    Music has always played a vital role in the films of Tony Gatlif, and in Vengo it finally threatens to take over, submerging the frail, familiar vendetta plotline.
  88. Enduring Love
    Adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1997 novel takes a surprising number of liberties with the text, given the author's stature, but his name on the credits as associate producer would suggest his stamp of approval.
  89. Any Given Sunday
    (Stone's) most accessible and purely enjoyable film in years.
  90. In Praise of Love
    The film offers a frequently obscure but (for fans) always watchable look at history, memory and -- in the most rarefied sense -- love.
  91. Girls Will Be Girls
    Day-glo garish Girls Will Be Girls puts a rude spin on "Valley of the Dolls"-type Hollywood melodramas, to frequently hilarious if disjointed effect.
  92. Basic
    The teasing tale is told with such dispatch it will carry willing audiences along; genre staples of action, macho attitude and corruption through the ranks are delivered intact.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Working Girl
    This is not a laugh-out-loud film, though there is a lighthearted tone that runs consistently throughout, Griffith's innocent, breathy voice being a major factor.
  94. Primary Colors
    A modern immorality tale with a keen, observant edge.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monty Python and the Holy Grail
    Basically an excuse for set pieces, some amusing, others overdone.
  96. Tarnation
    Getting so close to real-life mental illness, via footage that spans many years, renders Tarnation a uniquely potent experience.
  97. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    Though it never disguises its sympathies for Kasparov and contempt for a powerful corporation's machinations, documentary is finally a speculation on the limits of the human mind and how truth can never be fully known.
  98. The Man Who Bought Mustique
    A memorable portrait of an unbearable personality.
  99. The Road Home
    Takes the simplest of stories and weaves a seductive, extremely moving portrait of a young woman’s unshakable love.
  100. Cop Land
    The increasingly broad strokes with which the story is painted serve to simplify rather than deepen it, and to make it seem more artificially constructed than need be.
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