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. New Guy
    Does a lot with little, milking a single location and minimal dialogue for deadpan humor, tension, and macabre payoff.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jeepers Creepers II
    Substantially better than its predecessor, even while staying strictly within the genre's well-defined boundaries.
  3. Zhou Yu de huo che
    Chinese thesp Gong Li goes for a striking career makeover in Zhou Yu's Train, a sensual, slickly packaged slice of Euro-style metaphysical cinema centered on a free-thinking woman and the two men in her life.
  4. Under the Tuscan Sun
    Lane transforms this seriocomic saga of a devastated American divorcee who impulsively purchases a Tuscan villa, thereby changing her life, into a spellbinding display of emotional transparency.
  5. Malevolence
    Eventually pic turns into a formula slasher over-indebted to the usual "Texas Chainsaw" and "Halloween" models. But until then, Mena's direction (if not his script) suggest he's ready for bigger-budget assignments.
  6. Ted Bundy
    Looks set to unsettle as many conservative auds as it will delight nihilistic film buffs.
  7. Lost Highway
    Although uneven and too deliberately obscure in meaning to be entirely satisfying, result remains sufficiently intriguing and startling to bring many of Lynch's old fans back on board for this careening ride.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Woman Is a Woman
    Only intermittently bright. Too much homage to Yank musicals and comedies point up the lack of polish.
  9. Alien: Resurrection
    As a series of action set pieces, the movie is frequently gripping and always highly watchable. However, when the movie strays into weirder territory --- where, one feels, Jeunet's heart really lies --- there's a growing feeling of inadequacy.
  10. Postmen in the Mountains
    Too slim to make much impression outside fests, this nevertheless reps another solid outing by former art director Huo Jianqi.
  11. Human Traffic
    Well cast, engagingly played and directed with a stylistic pedal to the metal, Human Traffic is a lot of energy adding up to very little.
  12. Raising Helen
    An undemanding dramedy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    After Midnight
    Ferrario has fun with antique footage and exhibits from the museum, but there's a lack of urgency or sufficient charm to engage.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Treasure Planet
    The film's total appeal may be undercut by a script that rarely feels inspired.
  15. Blue Crush
    All the trappings of an energetic, extreme-sports adventure, but ends up more of a creaky "Pretty Woman" retread, with the emphasis on self-empowering schmaltz and with the big-wave surfing that gives pic its title seemingly an afterthought.
  16. Being Julia
    A minor affair, a confection based on dalliances and the way a set of sophisticated theater people handle them, that lacks true distinction.
  17. Secondhand Lions
    May score higher with parents than the kids they bring in tow. Writer-director Tim McCanlies' ("Dancer, Texas Pop. 81") feel-good celebration of youth and old age enriching each other is carefully leavened with humor.
  18. Jesus, You Know
    Visually glorious and sometimes moving, but comes coated with a thick hoarfrost of irony.
  19. Around the World in 80 Days
    Takes plenty of liberties with the material and never generates much genuine excitement, but provides an agreeable ride without overloading it with contemporary filmmaking mannerisms.
  20. American Pie
    Cheesy homage to a level of horniness Austin Powers could only imagine will be a dream movie for many a teenage boy.
  21. The Fighting Temptations
    Paper-thin plot serves as a pretext for rousing gospel numbers in The Fighting Temptations, which straddles styles and eras to get everybody's toes tapping.
  22. Malcolm X
    The picture comes up short in several departments, notably in pacing and in giving a strong sense of why this man became such a legend.
  23. Kiss the Girls
    Replete with smart, capable characters and crimes so bizarre that they lend the film a suspiciously lurid nature, this tony suspenser is hampered by the presence of a villain who is all too obvious from the very beginning.
  24. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    The picture's constant forward movement and breezy sense of amusement about itself provide a certain mild sort of diversion.
  25. Van Helsing
    The sense of evil overkill is entirely representative of the picture itself, which repeatedly looks ready to blow all its fuses due to sensory overload.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Take
    Makes its points effectively, but could have benefited from a burst of creativity.
  27. The Powerpuff Girls
    Small children who will accept it as rock-'em, sock-'em excitement with a touch of gender-specific empowerment, and hipper teens and grown-ups who can appreciate the whole thing as a semisatirical hoot.
  28. Danny Deckchair
    Thanks to amiable lead performances from Miranda Otto and Rhys Ifans, this not very original Aussie comedy about a man making a fresh start in life is a pleasant enough time-waster.
  29. Stander
    Takes a notorious true story about a loyal soldier-turned-bank robber, and pumps it up into charged if uneven entertainment.
  30. After Freedom
    Compensating for the technical faults is the writer-director's unmistakable and undiluted need to express the issues he feels are at the heart of his community.
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