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. Two Sons of Francisco
    The unlikely success story of superstar Brazilian country music duo Zeze di Camargo and Luciano receives a polished if highly manipulative treatment in Two Sons of Francisco.
  2. The Groomsmen
    Burns' always impressive sense of place lends authenticity to the pals' perambulations, and the stellar cast brings a welcome overabundance of personality to regrettably one-note roles.
  3. My Grandmother's House
    Studded with moments of character-driven charm, with sparky 6-year-old Marina Pastor a particular joy to watch.
  4. Who Needs Sleep?
    A comprehensive, personal and surprisingly engaging look at how film crews routinely work hours far beyond anything that can be considered safe, healthy or conducive to a balanced life.
  5. Buzz
    Film traverses Buzz's career with reasonable depth, helped by good-quality trailers from several pics. However, one suspects there are a lot more stories Buzz could tell in a more rigorous format.
  6. The Dogwalker
    Though central dynamic is a familiar one -- old coot and young lost soul thrown together -- perfs, understated script and well-judged direction avoid too-obvious sentimentality or melodrama. Nonetheless, overall story arc is fairly predictable, and deliberate pacing sometimes risks dullness.
  7. Home
    Though no "Love and Diane," this modest film nevertheless reveals the fragility of hope in survivalist mentalities pre-programmed to expect the worst.
  8. The Decay of Fiction
    The attention given to constructing each shot makes for a hypnotic visual experience, while lack of a progressive narrative telescopes film's running time into infinity.
  9. Be with Me
    A curate's egg of a movie that starts intriguingly but becomes increasingly frustrating.
  10. Hard Scrambled
    Picture's retro feel is rendered pleasing overall by scribe's linguistic flair and the enjoyable cast.
  11. Hair High
    While his static backgrounds and stuttering character movement aren't likely to win over traditional animation fans, Hair High reps the high end of this "Sick 'n' Twisted"-type toonery.
  12. Conventioneers
    Filmmakers' own left-leaning sympathies are occasionally felt around the margins, but Conventioneers achievement lies in its honoring the sincerity and passion on both sides.
  13. The Magic Gloves
    Sporadically charming and quite amusing, but torpidly paced.
  14. Four Eyed Monsters
    Fascinating if overly self-involved Slamdance entry is among the few U.S. pics that deliberately smudges the line between non-fiction and invention as it tells how Crumley and Buice meet online and develop a relationship.
  15. The Empire in Africa
    Infused with a strong sense of moral outrage, The Empire in Africa provides more heat than light while attempting to explain the motives and methods of combatants who waged the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone.
  16. The Tiger and the Snow
    Like an Iraq-war mirror image of "Life Is Beautiful," actor-director Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow re-runs the successful structure and comic persona of the 1998 Oscar-winning film in a trippy fantasia about a poet who follows his love to hell and, in this happier ending, back.
  17. Guru
    Strongly cast, long-limbed yarn contains some of Ratnam's best stuff in its first half but script weaknesses mar the later going and film's overall impact.
  18. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    Sixty years after World War II, descendants of a prominent Nazi responsible for implementing Hitler's policies in Slovakia reignite debate over their heritage in emotional docu 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him.
  19. From Other Worlds
    Picture's leaps into the fantastic and rampantly farcical tend to be overextended, but finally don't detract from what is a well-judged, light entertainment.
  20. East of Havana
    The temptations of allowing a promotional video to seep inside a genuine non-fiction study nearly overtake East of Havana and its look at a bubbling hip-hop culture in Cuba.
  21. Black Friday
    Despite its large cast and complex criss-crossing from past to present, the movie rarely catches fire as an involving human drama.
  22. Eklavya: The Royal Guard
    The pic often plays like a Cliffs Notes version of a longer movie: Pacing and continuity aren't choppy, but there's enough material here for a full-length drama that would go deeper into the characters and their backgrounds. Eklavya is good as it is, but lacks tragic heft.
  23. The Go Master
    Perhaps the least accessible of Tian's films, this serenely elliptical poser will elude all but the most devoted arthouse auds.
  24. Private Fears in Public Places
    Despite a perfect cast of Resnais regulars plus the master's own impeccable crafting, the characters fail to grip, and with approximately 50 short scenes, development comes in fits and starts.
  25. Syndromes and a Century
    By the end, nothing much has happened, but all the same, picture casts a witchy kind of spell with its deep-breath pacing and undertow of unspecified malaise.
  26. The Treatment
    This offbeat charmer succumbs to the same airless artificiality that has claimed many recent efforts in the genre.
  27. Day Night Day Night
    Context and psychological insight are the major casualties of Day Night Day Night, a dramatically limited but strangely powerful portrait of a young would-be terrorist.
  28. Amu
    Admirably idealistic but dramatically awkward.
  29. A Man of No Importance
    Despite fine work from his actors and smooth technical polish, the more provocative elements of the tale arise awkwardly and grate against the early section's almost whimsical nature.
  30. Beyond Hatred
    Verite docu Beyond Hatred movingly accompanies the family of Francois Chenu, a gay man murdered by three skinheads in 2002, down the road to forgiveness.
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