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. Guinevere
    Wonderfully acted and slickly mad. Acutely written with an eye to the motivations and ambiguities involved on both sides in such a relationship.
  2. Nine Queens
    A seductively structured and superbly acted suspenser that breathtakingly piles swindle upon scam without giving away the game until the very end.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    La Dolce Vita
    The performances are uniformly excellent. Mastroianni is perfect in the key role of the basically good and honest boy who succumbs to the sweet life. Ekberg is a revelation as the visiting star, while Furneaux almost runs off with the picture as the reporter's instinctive, possessive mistress. (Review of original release)
  4. Japanese Story
    Develops into a powerfully emotional experience thanks to a career-best performance by Toni Collette.
  5. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    An entrancing ensemble piece, directed with calm assurance, acted by a fine ensemble, and structured and scripted with wit and precision.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Shawshank Redemption
    Central to the film's success is a riveting, unfussy performance from Robbins. Freeman has the showier role, allowing him a grace and dignity that come naturally.
    • Variety
  7. Far From Heaven
    An accomplished marriage of elaborate style and content.
  8. Run Lola Run
    A highly accomplished, compact feature, which, while it may be light on depth, is rich in humor, rhythm, energy and inventiveness.
  9. The Shape of Things
    Very much in line with his maiden screen efforts "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors"...ends with a satisfying shudder of recognition at the extreme cruelty possible within human relationships, particularly those conceived by Neil LaBute.
  10. Since Otar Left
    The film is traditionally and effectively made; it also is superbly acted.
  11. You Can Count on Me
    A sensitive, intimate, enormously touching drama.
  12. Blissfully Yours
    A rare example of indie filmmaking produced outside the Thai studio system, Blissfully Yours takes the good-humored nonsense of director Apichatpong Weeasethakul's first feature, "Mysterious Object at Noon," several steps further into the realm of non-communicative minimalism.
  13. The Rainmaker
    As carefully constructed, handsomely crafted and flavorsomely acted as a top-of-the-line production from Hollywood's classical studio era, Francis Ford Coppola's screen version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker would seem to represent just about all a filmmaker could do with the best-selling author's patented dramatic formulas without subverting them altogether.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dead Man Walking
    An intimate chamber piece for two, superbly acted by Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, this is a mature, well-crafted movie.
  15. Gosford Park
    Taking advantage of a splendid cast, a sharply focused script and the fresh English setting, "Gosford Park" emerges as one of the most satisfying of Robert Altman's numerous ensemble pictures.
  16. Topsy-Turvy
    This beautifully crafted and lively romp around the 1880s stage world should enjoy its longest life as a vid classic.
  17. To Be and to Have
    Any negative stereotypes viewers might harbor about education in rural communities are sent packing by this magnificently lensed and cumulatively touching account from documaker Nicolas Philibert.
  18. Sense and Sensibility
    Crucially for such an elaborately dressed production, the characters all come thoroughly alive with their ready wits and pulsing emotions, overcoming the two-century gap with seeming effortlessness.
  19. Orgazmo
    Massively inventive and spiked with perversely wicked humor.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bad Lieutenant
    Abel Ferrara's uncompromising Bad Lieutenant is a harrowing journey observing a corrupt NY cop sink into the depths, with an extraordinary and uninhibited performance by Harvey Keitel in the title role.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Boys Don't Cry
    The poignant and candid Boys Don't Cry can be seen as a "Rebel Without a Cause" for these culturally diverse and complex times, with the two misfit girls enacting a version of the James Dean/Natalie Wood romance with utmost conviction.
  22. Fargo
    In the darkly humorous Fargo, iconoclastic filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen manage the precarious balancing act of respecting genre conventions and simultaneously pushing them to an almost surrealistic extreme. Very funny stuff.
  23. House of Sand and Fog
    A faithful, powerful and superbly acted adaptation of Andre Dubus III's international bestseller.
  24. Spider
    This slow but brilliantly sustained journey into madness is fronted by a remarkable performance from Ralph Fiennes and superb backup from Miranda Richardson in a triple role.
  25. Election
    Brandishes the sort of intelligent wit and bracing nastiness that will make it more appealing to discerning adults than to teens who just want to have fun.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    Bigger, sleeker and better than the first, sequel Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is a joyride of a movie that takes the winning elements of the year 2000 hit to the next level.
  27. American Beauty
    A script as fresh and distinctive as any produced in the States in recent memory.
  28. Best in Show
    A barkingly funny new "mockumentary" that does for those canine pageants what the helmer's 1996 "Waiting for Guffman" did for smalltown theatrics.
  29. Boogie Nights
    Darkly comic, vastly entertaining and utterly original.
  30. The Cooler
    Wayne Kramer's sexy and often humorous feature directorial debut surrounds its sweet center with the energy, flash and risk of the gambling capital. Sterling performances by William H. Macy and Maria Bello as the long-shot lovers and Alec Baldwin as a temperamental casino operator.
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