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. Vertical Limit
    Remains exciting as long as it stays on the mountains.
  2. Eight Legged Freaks
    This update of 1950s drive-in sci-fiers finds the right balance between icky, funny and scary, with sheer energy compensating for a script that could have used more parodic panache.
  3. And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen...
    A good-looking but slim confection that's short on the multi-characterisation and sense of entwined destinies that mark the great Lelouch sagas.
  4. Hart's War
    Absorbing in a low-key way but more dramatic where its secondary characters are concerned than its leads, and capped by climactic incidents that are less than entirely convincing.
  5. Domestic Disturbance
    Although decked out with a legitimate star and handsome production carpentry, pic takes no greater interest in creating three-dimensional characters or fleshing out a credible storyline than does the run-of-the-mill straight-to-video thriller.
  6. Legally Blonde
    The mildly engaging silliness of its premise is never transformed into something more substantial, and the attempt at a fine-tuned "Clueless"-like tone is only sputteringly achieved.
  7. Only the Strong Survive
    Less an historical flashback than a present-tense valentine.
  8. Alex & Emma
    A desperately slight romantic comedy marked by contrived romance and little comedy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hoosiers
    An involving tale about the unlikely success of a smalltown Indiana high school basketball team that paradoxically proves both rousing and too conventional.
  10. Sordid Lives
    When Sordid Lives does what it does best -- showing Southern gals in the full flight of rabid self-denial -- it's as screamingly funny as this subgenre can get.
  11. Haiku Tunnel
    While it plays more like stage or TV sketch-comedy shtick than film material, this modest, visually unimposing production remains entertaining thanks to its ironic observations and winning sense of folly.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One from the Heart (re-release)
    A hybrid musical romantic fantasy, lavishing giddy heights of visual imagination and technical brilliance onto a wafer-thin story of true love turned sour, then sweet. (review of original release)
  13. Sylvia
    Still, there is an estimable integrity to the respect and fidelity with which the film regards its subjects, as well as an honesty in its attempt to illuminate the essences of these difficult people.
  14. Apt Pupil
    A creepy, well-acted story of contagious evil, Apt Pupil has more than enough chilling dramatic scenes to rivet the attention but suffers from some hokey contrivances and underlying insufficiencies of motivation.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Tenant
    A tale of a paranoid breakdown of a little bureaucratic clerk that wastes no time in trying to be clinical. It has a humorous tang, underlying the macabre. (Review of original release)
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    When Harry Met Sally...
    Rob Reiner directs with deftness and sincerity, making the material seem more engaging than it is, at least until the plot machanics begin to unwind and the film starts to seem shapeless.
  17. Deliver Us from Eva
    Well-cast relationship comedy-drama is played too broadly in the early going, but gradually settles into a more appealing groove as a glossy date-movie.
  18. Thirteen Days
    Reasonably intelligent, well-crafted and dramatically understated.
  19. The Gingerbread Man
    There is a trumped-up quality to the action climaxes that is disappointingly perfunctory, and the story's final revelation is simultaneously far-fetched and unsurprising.
  20. Blue in the Face
    A piecemeal collection of barely connected scenes and characters, stitched together with videotaped comments from a cross-section of Brooklyn residents.
  21. Crazy in Alabama
    The opposition of the two dramas winds up in gratifyingly moral and philosophical territory.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Men of Honor
    Those in search of positive role models and films detailing little-known aspects of black and military history, or stressing the value of tenacity and hard work, pic has something to offer.
  23. Albino Alligator
    Spacey makes an honorable and intelligent helming debut with less-than-dazzling material.
  24. The Singing Detective
    Potter's genius for wrapping black humor, poignancy and fantasy in utterly original story concepts lends this "Detective" an immediate fascination that doesn't begin wearing off for some time.
  25. Possession
    LaBute has had middling success at best, having come up with a passably engaging time-jumping romantic melodrama that at least grapples seriously with one of the novel's most potent themes.
  26. About a Boy
    Pleasant and engaging, rather than laugh-out-loud funny or emotionally involving.
  27. Joe Somebody
    Pretty formulaic stuff: bland self-empowerment tinged with warm fuzzies in all the right places. But what makes this "Somebody" something is Pasquin's deft touch and understanding with the material.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Under solen
    A celebration of traditional, detailed filmmaking.
  29. Okraina
    Lutsik takes aim at reckless capitalism --- as well as the increasing Westernization of Russian filmmaking --- with a disquieting allegory that in both themes and aesthetic is an audacious throwback to pre-WWII Soviet cinema formalism.
  30. Decasia
    Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc, compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score.
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