Variety's Scores

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For 17,837 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: 9,166 out of 17837
  2. Mixed: 7,034 out of 17837
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17837
17837 movie reviews
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  1. Rambo
    Stallone (who looks fit but mostly keeps his shirt on) has no intention of bogging the action down, but it's still a notably cheerless exercise, without knowing winks or stabs (pardon the expression) at humor. It is in all respects, rather, a completely workmanlike effort.
  2. Vivere
    Piles heavy emotional baggage on a slender story frame. Pic looks ravishing, featuring a nocturnal road trip through a cool kaleidoscopic landscape of shifting colors peopled by three commanding thesps of different generations whose interlocking stories form a cohesive whole.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Romulus, My Father
    Warmly felt but haltingly told meller Romulus, My Father holds the attention with fine perfs and exquisite lensing, but never really grips the imagination.
  4. The Bank Job
    An engrossing if underwhelming period thriller.
  5. Never Back Down
    Best part, though, is the cast: Everyone's a model, everyone beats each other half to death, and no one looks as if they've ever suffered so much as a coldsore.
  6. The Grand
    Safer, more conventional and closer to broad TV sketch humor than Christopher Guest's comedies of manners, The Grand never quite recoups in laughs what it loses in spontaneity.
  7. The Hammer
    This inordinately likable and consistently funny boxing saga-cum-romantic comedy doesn't so much ridicule the "Rocky"-type inspirational sports fable as gently deflate its heroic overdrive.
  8. Meet the Browns
    Often plays more like "Tyler Perry's Greatest Hits" as it recycles various elements from the writer-director's earlier works.
  9. Body of War
    By documenting the difficult life of their paraplegic subject, helmers Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue succeed in personalizing some of the war's grim statistics, but the purview of their portrait feels too limited for the pic to play widely.
  10. Pathology
    Like its characters, the picture is too clever for its own good, allowing the meticulously researched scenario to be undone by implausible behavior and gaping plot holes.
  11. Chaos Theory
    The lead performers, the brighter fillips in Daniel Taplitz’s screenplay and Marcos Siega’s (“Pretty Persuasion”) assured direction make this a pleasing item overall.
  12. Rogue
    A competent horror yarn filmed in eye-catching Aussie outback locations.
  13. Mister Lonely
    Less outre than "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," Korine's most lavishly produced pic to date begins as a sweet-tempered tale of social misfits-turned-celebrity impersonators, but falls short of its ambition to say something meaningful about the obsessive nature of celebrity culture.
  14. Son of Rambow
    A sweetly raucous adventure. Widely quoted comparisons to "Billy Elliot" and Tim Burton overstate the case for what is really a modestly eccentric entertainment.
  15. Surfwise
    Somewhat forced happy ending aside, the pic holds together well.
  16. What Happens in Vegas
    This two-seated star vehicle for top-billed Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz wrings a respectable number of laughs from a formulaic scenario about attracted-opposites who bicker and back-stab their way toward happily-ever-aftering.
  17. Pineapple Express
    This rambunctious paean to pot retains the trademark Apatow sweetness even as it careens from messy vulgarisms to even messier violence.
  18. Mamma Mia!
    Scribe-creator Catherine Johnson (also in her first screen outing) and theater-opera vet Lloyd can't seem to find the right tone or style for their globally celebrated material.
  19. Tropic Thunder
    Apart from startling, out-there comic turns by Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise, however, the antics here are pretty thin, redundant and one-note.
  20. Quantum of Solace
    Stripped of "Royale's" humor, elegance and reinvented old-school stylishness, Quantum has little left except its plot, which is rudimentary and slightly barmy, in the line of the Roger Moore pics of the '70s and '80s.
  21. The Order of Myths
    Order of Myths looks good, and its characters are memorable. It's important to know that the "traditions" extolled by both sides of Mobile involve keeping people apart. But it's not clear at all that Brown is bringing them together.
  22. Trouble the Water
    Though tinged with the sheer gumption and personal resolve of amateur vidmaker and would-be rapper Kimberly Roberts, this is ultimately a minor doc contribution to the bulging library of Katrina-related films and TV reports.
  23. Traitor
    Brandishes physical verisimilitude and intelligent seriousness but proves unable to really get inside its chameleon-like central character.
  24. Save Me
    The first feature from new gay-focused production company Mythgarden, is a welcome exception in that it effectively dramatizes the issues without caricaturing or pillorizing either party.
  25. Moving Midway
    Uniquely Southern documentary has become surprisingly timely this election year.
  26. Battle in Seattle
    Picture's ambition, cogency and decent performances make up for its uneven aspects. Woody Harrelson has some especially good moments as a cop.
  27. The Duchess
    A serviceable picture that offers all the sumptuous visual pleasures of a historical costume drama, yet little in the way of actual history.
  28. Lakeview Terrace
    Delivers fairly tense and engrossing drama before succumbing to thriller convention.
  29. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    A filthy-rich fantasy for these cash-strapped times, Beverly Hills Chihuahua features the voices of Drew Barrymore and much of the industry's top Latino talent in a live-action talking-dog lark that should please young pups.
  30. The Express
    Crowdpleasing and oh-so-predictable.
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