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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Player
    Mercilessly satiric yet good-natured, this enormously entertaining slam dunk quite possibly is the most resonant Hollywood saga since the days of "Sunset Blvd." and "The Bad and the Beautiful."
    • Variety
  2. The Spanish Prisoner
    The picture is a devilishly clever series of reversals that keeps you guessing to the very end.
  3. Nurse Betty
    Few actresses can convey the kind of honesty and humanity that Zellweger does here -- it's hard to imagine the film without her dominant, thoroughly credible performance.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    You've Got Mail
    The most successful version yet of this familiar premise.
  5. The End of the Affair
    A faithful adaptation that captures the haunting spirit and religious nature of the 1951 novel.
  6. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    This intelligent, engaging indie sets out to find a few answers and in the process introduces a clutch of interesting, very human characters.
  7. Cremaster 3
    Matthew Barney delivers his masterpiece in Cremaster 3, unquestionably the 35-year-old sculptor-performance artist-filmmaker's most linear, most narratively inclined work to date.
  8. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    T3 delivers the goods. A hard-hitting, straight-ahead sci-fi actioner with none of the pretentions and ponderousness that have put at least a portion of the public off of "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Hulk."
  9. My Architect
    This fascinating portrait of an eccentric visionary and his chaotic triple family life is an accomplished, enormously satisfying non-fiction work.
  10. Stone Reader
    A debut of enormous craft, surety and resourcefulness -- a superlative, soul-baring non-fiction work that will generate torrential word-of-mouth among auds lucky enough to catch it.
  11. Tadpole
    A smart sex comedy that successfully swims upstream to spawn and score.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Robin Hood (re-release)
    Film is done in the grand manner of silent-day spectacles with sweep and breadth of action, swordplay and hand-to-hand battles between Norman and Saxon barons.
  13. Wonder Boys
    Massively inventive, Wonder Boys is spiked with fresh, perverse humor that flows naturally from the straight-faced playing.
  14. Timecode
    If the satire feels familiar, and the dramatics often contrived, there's rarely a moment here when something funny, intense or cleverly interconnected doesn't keep one's synapses firing on overdrive.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
    Crass, broad, irreverent, wacky fun - and absolutely hilarious from beginning to end.
  16. A Few Good Men
    Expert story construction and compelling thesping and direction make all the narrative elements pay off as if calculated by a precision instrument in which all the parts are working perfectly.
  17. Venus Boyz
    An utterly fascinating, beautifully crafted exploration of the world of drag kings -- women who dress, perform and/or live as men.
  18. Children Underground
    Belzberg's unsparing camera sometimes portrays a level of cruelty that tests viewers' tolerance, but her fearless aesthetic is also a measure of the film's brilliant indictment of any society that can allow its most vulnerable to slip into oblivion.
  19. Frailty
    A resoundingly old-fashioned and well crafted study of evil infecting an American family, Frailty moves from strength to strength on its deceptive narrative course.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Basic Instinct
    Grade-A pulp fiction. This erotically charged thriller about the search for an ice-pick murderer in San Francisco rivets attention through its sleek style, attractive cast doing and thinking kinky things, and story, which is as weirdly implausible as it is intensely visceral.
  21. Step Into Liquid
    An awe-inspiring survey of global surf culture, with the power to crush the post-"Gidget" decades of Hollywood stereotyping of surfers and surfing.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Howards End
    Perhaps the best film made during the 30-year partnership of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.
  23. Insomnia
    Gripping, highly dramatic thriller that more than confirms the distinctive talent of young Brit helmer Christopher Nolan.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Fisher King
    The Fisher King has two actors at the top of their form, and a compelling, well-directed and well-produced story.
  25. An Ideal Husband
    Shines like a freshly minted coin in Oliver Parker's adaptation.
  26. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
    Errol Morris delivers a compelling, thoughtful and entirely involving documentary in The Fog of War.
  27. Office Space
    Imagine a live-action version of the "Dilbert" comic strip with a touch of Hal Hartley's deadpan absurdism, and you're ready for the frequently uproarious "Office Space."
  28. LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton
    The balance between feeling and distance is never a contradiction here but, rather, the dynamic that makes this film an especially humanistic entry in the Maysles canon.
  29. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
    There are some unsatisfactory elements–slow spots occur during the middle stretch, the mild anti-establishment stance is getting to be a bit cliche and one never knows whether E.T.’s mortal illness is physical or psychological in nature, or both. But, as with “Close Encounters,” the truly lovely and moving ending more than makes up for everything. Chalk up another smash for Spielberg.
  30. Teacher's Pet
    A doggone hilarious cartoon extravaganza...virtually bursts at the seams with a supersized abundance of witty wordplay, silly songs and inspired sight gags.
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