Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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 2.4 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. Outlaw
    Both the pic's power and its problems stem from Love deliberately taking no moral position nor offering any solutions; he gives his audience what it wants at a gut level and doesn't wimp out at the end.
  2. The Perfect Holiday
    Neither perfect nor much of a holiday, more like a fruitcake passed around from arthritic aunt to demented uncle -- stale, predictable and made with fossilized ingredients.
  3. Nanking
    The horrific 1937-38 massacre of more than 200,000 Chinese during the early days of the Japanese occupation gets a polished presentation in Nanking.
  4. Atonement
    Rarely has a book sprung so vividly to life, but also worked so enthrallingly in pure movie terms, as with Atonement, Brit helmer Joe Wright’s smart, dazzlingly upholstered adaptation of Ian McEwan’s celebrated 2001 novel.
  5. Dirty Laundry
    Taking control of what would otherwise be a trite and preachy fable about the need for African American families to accept their gay brethren, Devine builds a jolly and touching character from the stock figure of a Georgia mom coming to terms with her disaffected gay son.
  6. The Golden Compass
    Impressively rendered but oddly uninviting adventure.
  7. Looking for Cheyenne
    Suspenseful, funny, touching, sexy and painlessly pertinent.
  8. Grace Is Gone
    Although clearly coming from an antiwar perspective, the story's emotional effectiveness and family grounding give the film a real shot at connecting with general audiences across the political spectrum.
  9. Revolver
    Guy Ritchie shoots a blank with Revolver, which replays the low-life criminal shtick from his first two features with an ill-advised overlay of pretension. The action, attitude and wise-guy talk all feel moldy this time around.
  10. The Walker
    Even if this isn't Schrader's best, it's hardly his worst.
  11. 'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris
    De Felitta seems a born documaker. He brilliantly constructs a tale born of a genuine love of jazz and a need to understand how Paris went from sensation to footnote in a generation.
  12. 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.
  13. Juno
    An ultra-smart-mouthed comedy about a planned adoption that goes weirdly awry.
  14. Billy the Kid
    One of the more irresponsible eruptions in the current rash of populist nonfiction cinema.
  15. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    Most compelling in its attempts to re-create the experience of paralysis onscreen, gorgeously lensed pic morphs into a dreamlike collage of memories and fantasies, distancing the viewer somewhat from Bauby's consciousness even as it seeks to take one deeper.
  16. Awake
    Harold's thriller does have an attention-getting plot hook, but piles on too many narrative gimmicks to maintain suspense or credibility.
  17. Oswald's Ghost
    Oswald's Ghost impresses as a concise, intelligent and rigorously well-researched piece of work.
  18. Sex and Breakfast
    What tyro helmer Miles Brandman serves up is a tortured talkfest with a premise far less ripe than its title.
  19. Maurice Richard
    Boasts dazzling hockey action, but its off-ice piousness makes for tough sledding for non-Canucks.
  20. Protagonist
    The dangers of extremism and the virtues of uncertainty are the keys to the remarkable Protagonist, docu helmer Jessica Yu's exploration of four men's journey through dysfunction, obsession and redemption.
  21. Tony N' Tina's Wedding
    A rousing, hilarious Bacchanal of family togetherness, Roger Paradiso's brilliantly cinematic adaptation of the second-longest running play in Off-Broadway history might be the best of the recent rash of wedding pics.
  22. Badland
    A strenuously solemn film that wants to create some kind of American pastoral tragedy out of the nation's current angst with the war.
  23. The Savages
    Jenkins brings a rigor, intelligence and eye for the slightly absurd to the proceedings that is instantly disarming.
  24. Starting Out in the Evening
    Director Andrew Wagner draws topnotch work from a pro cast in Starting Out in the Evening, a wise, carefully observed chamber drama.
  25. Everything's Cool
    Can a movie about global warming genuinely be called lighthearted? If so, Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand's Everything's Cool comes as close as one imagines possible, essaying yet more inconvenient truths about the potential future of our planet in the same buoyant, irreverent style the filmmakers brought to their last activist docu, "Blue Vinyl."
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Midnight Eagle
    While key blockbuster elements (ticking bombs, intrepid reporters, lightweight politics) are all present, the film's brisk pacing can't hide the fuzzy logic of the tenuously structured, convoluted script.
  27. REC
    Lazily scripted, without even a pretense of character development or psychological depth, it offers nothing new for genre fans and no reason for mainstream auds to bite.
  28. August Rush
    Only auds immune to diabetic rushes should head for August Rush, though tolerant parents wanting wholesome entertainment for the kids will like it for its repetitive encouragement of creativity.
  29. Enchanted
    A full-blown musical that commutes between Disney's patented cartoon universe and the "real" world with cleverness and grace, this splashy production reminds one of nothing in the Disney canon so much as "Mary Poppins," not least due to the "star is born" aura that surrounds Amy Adams here, just as it did Julie Andrews 43 years ago.
  30. Hitman
    A Eurotrashy vidgame knockoff that misses its target by a mile. Numbingly unthrilling as it lurches from one violent encounter to another, the pic's dark roots in an electronic, non-dramatic medium are plain to see, and unsuspecting gamers lured to theaters will soon wish they were back home participating in the action themselves.
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