Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. People Say I'm Crazy
    Fascinating and frustrating in nearly equal measure.
  2. Story of the Eye
    Evaluating this project in conventional feature terms is a lost cause; relevant contexts are purely avant-garde and pornographic. Suffice it to say that helmer's careful attention to framing camera, music and content signal primary allegiance to Art rather than Smut.
  3. September Tapes
    Gritty, engaging.
  4. The Cloud of Unknowing
    In service of an eerie Japanese ghost story, the spooky atmospherics prove surprisingly compelling.
  5. Imelda
    A balanced, evenhanded film about a subject who has always managed to provoke intemperate reactions.
  6. Freeze Frame
    Signals a talented newcomer in writer-director John Simpson and boasts a gripping central performance from popular British comedian Lee Evans.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
    One of the film's strengths is its abundant performance footage.
  8. The Letter: An American Town and the 'Somali Invasion'
    An especially dramatic, if needlessly frantic, work of polemical reportage on racism in America.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Other Side of the Street
    A diverting, if unspectacular, Brazilian drama centered on an aging female detective.
  10. Eros
    What might have been a cinephile's wet dream turns out instead to be seductive, stimulating and sodden, in that order, in the three-chapter reflection on love and desire.
  11. Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man
    Confusing lack of historical set-up considerably dims the potential luster of a great true story: Helmer Alberto Negrin relies instead on competently rendered but cliche-ridden melodrama of nasty Nazis and suffering Jews.
  12. Stalin's Wife
    Results are solid, if stylistically unspectacular.
  13. A Man's Gotta Do
    A cut above the average Aussie crazy-clan comedy.
  14. Lustre
    Uneven but affecting.
  15. Human Error
    Benefits from blend of live actors with computer-generated effects and backgrounds. Feature doesn't add up to much more than an enjoyable novelty.
  16. Chain
    Links narrative fiction filmmaking to avant-garde with vision and authority.
  17. Screen Door Jesus
    Winner of the Golden Starfish fiction competition at the Hamptons fest, pic's gutsy, madly ambiguous unleashing of a mixed bag of religious reactions attests to a genuine sense of regionalism.
  18. The Optimists
    Explores another courageous, little-known chapter in the saga of resistance and heroics during World War II.
  19. The Time We Killed
    The Time We Killed reps avant-garde vet Jennifer Todd Reeves' most ambitious work yet, a dense-packed feature-length black-and-white journey into a beautifully restless mind.
  20. Derailroaded
    As discomfortingly fascinating as listening to a couple's heated argument at a table near yours in a restaurant.
  21. The Swenkas
    Ronde demonstrates a painterly eye and ripe affection for these people, but as with "Jerusalem, My Love" he maintains a too-polite, worshipful distance from his subjects.
  22. 39 Pounds of Love
    Dani Menkin's documentary tracks his odyssey, which by nature is hard to be cynical about. Still, the feature feels padded even at 70 minutes.
  23. Trudell
    More hagiography than history, Heather Rae's long-in-production portrait of Native American activist and poet John Trudell has the uncritically admiring feel of authorized biography.
  24. Workingman's Death
    Pic reps a sequel of sorts to his 12-part "Megacities" about poor folk in separate burgs, and comes soaked in good old-fashioned humanist respect for the dignity of labor, but eventually grows a little monotonous.
  25. Standing Still
    Surfing the crowd in Altman-lite style, pic skims the surface entertainingly but goes limp in its stabs at seriousness, especially in the final scenes, which all but drown in emotional confrontations and hasty happy endings.
  26. Killer Diller
    Premise is formulaic and execution is predictable, but Brock maintains a lively pace while eliciting first-rate work from thesps.
  27. Police Beat
    Distinctive, physically ravishing indie is a natural for fests, but it's questionable whether this sometimes involving, sometimes obscure pic will have appeal beyond the specialty market.
  28. How I Killed a Saint
    Though weak in the drama department, the story of a brother and sister who love each other but have different political ideas and personal agendas effectively captures the tension of the time.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    La tropical
    Offers a rarely seen view of the barrio in Havana and demonstrates the importance of dance and music in dealing with pervasive racism and crippling poverty.
  30. Heading South
    Cantet's anticipated follow-up to "Time Out" supplants that pic's important issues with unexamined attitudes toward sex and the tropics.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »