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. In Between Days
    Revealing without being especially compelling, In Between Days offers a bleak, rigorously naturalistic portrait of an Asian-American teenager's physical and emotional dislocation.
  2. Gandhi, My Father
    Classy production values and a textured lead performance by Darshan Jariwala are undercut by a lack of real drama in Gandhi My Father.
  3. Moving McAllister
    Ben Gourley packs this excursion with enough contrived quirkiness and latent angst to win over the college crowd, but adds nothing particularly insightful about his generation.
  4. Nina's Heavenly Delights
    Stereotypes abound, dialogue is conventional and pace scattered. Still, resulting stew is pleasant.
  5. Steal a Pencil for Me
    Fortunately, helmer Michele Ohayon ("Cowboy del Amor") treats her tricky subject matter with sufficient sensitivity to keep doc from ever seeming offensively flip or overly sentimental.
  6. Man in the Chair
    As a showcase for rising young star Michael Angarano and Christopher Plummer, pic offers the pleasures of connecting Hollywood traditions and generations in the spirit of Peter Bogdanovich's films about and inspired by the movies.
  7. Yiddish Theater: A Love Story
    Its extremely narrow focus on the death throes of an art form, rather than the art itself, limits its appeal.
  8. War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
    Overlapping with other recent documentaries, picture nonetheless presents a stimulating argument.
  9. Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise
    Helmer Bruce David Klein's near-reverential treatment is a nice contrast to the rough-and-tumble of tour life.
  10. Smart People
    Dysfunctional family seriocomedy is well cast, but characters and conflicts lack the sharper definition of similar recent exercises like "Little Miss Sunshine," "The Upside of Anger" and Noah Baumbach's films.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The First Saturday in May
    Picture successfully elaborates on the sorts of color pieces that traditionally precede the race on television.
  12. The Favor
    A pair of beautifully mismatched lead performances elevate a predictable drama to unexpected resonance in The Favor.
  13. Operation Filmmaker
    Picture raises pithy questions sure to provoke animated discussions pro and con. Credit Davenport for a mostly unbiased presentation that presents her own disenchantment in a balanced manner.
  14. Before I Forget
    If you've pondered how to order a round of fellatio as one orders a pizza or wondered what gay gentlemen of a certain age talk about, this touching glimpse of faded beauty and looming decrepitude fits the bill.
  15. American Teen
    Undeniably entertaining for its zippy presentation.
  16. CSNY/Déjà Vu
    Making music, making fun of themselves and making as much political hay as possible, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young set out to alleviate the public allergy to Iraq War films with CSNY Deja Vu, a doc that seems quite likely to effect a cure.
  17. My Mexican Shivah
    Culture shock often proves the stuff of comedy, but the sight of a silver-studded, sombrero-topped mariachi band breaking into a rousing rendition of "Hava Nagila" transports diversity into the realm of the surreal.
  18. Humboldt County
    Its low-key charms are considerable enough to engage venturesome ticketbuyers.
  19. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
    Deeply influential, even to his enemies, Atwater's career is viewed here with fascination and some sympathy.
  20. Just Buried
    Bloody and irredeemably misanthropic, Canadian funeral farce Just Buried nonetheless has enough charm to make for a sporadically enjoyable if wildly uneven entry in the growing body of cheeky corpse comedies initiated by Hitchcock's "The Trouble With Harry."
  21. Nights and Weekends
    Some may find the result boring or unpolished, but there's poetry -- not to mention a fair dose of comedy -- in the mix.
  22. Dostana
    Gay's the way, but the way's not really gay, in the fluffy and largely entertaining Dostana.
  23. The Caller
    Frank Langella's note-perfect, tour-de-force turn as a man elegantly shaping his own demise is nicely counterpointed by a shambling Elliott Gould as a bird-watching private eye.
  24. Brothers at War
    Provides some interesting perspectives but also veers dangerously close to vanity project.
  25. New York
    As the industry reshapes itself, this drama by helmer Kabir Khan -- with its bold, righteous, anti-Bush administration bent -- could cut out a new constituency for a genre usually devoted to purely escapist entertainment.
  26. Wolke Neun
    Overall tone lies somewhere between Mike Leigh and Ken Loach in performances and look, with a modest tech package.
  27. Chelsea on the Rocks
    A skittery, rambling but often absorbing portrait.
  28. Do Knot Disturb
    Vet helmer David Dhawan's big-budget sitcom is a major, slumdogging step in the right direction, with nosebleed-inducing production values, infectious musical sequences and some astoundingly beautiful actors.
  29. Phyllis and Harold
    Evocatively fleshed out with surprisingly iconic homemovies, passionate love letters and well-chosen pop tunes, Kleine's homegrown Jewish "Madame Bovary" escapes the navel-gazing boundaries of the personal-diary docu by the sheer force of its evocation of bygone sensuality.
  30. Why Did I Get Married Too?
    Married offers a positive, if melodramatically heightened, portrait of upper-middle-class African-American life, one broadly appealing enough to satisfy even the Nancy Meyers set, if only they'd give it a chance.
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