Variety's Scores

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For 17,835 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 17835
  2. Mixed: 7,032 out of 17835
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17835
17835 movie reviews
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  1. Empathy, Inc.
    A clever indie suspense that draws on fantasy-tinged notions of virtual reality and identity exchange to create an ingenious tale more in the realm of an intimately-scaled thriller than sci-fi.
  2. Earthquake Bird
    Westmoreland approaches the project every bit as respectful toward Japanese customs as Jones was, although only a percentage of her insights carry over to the film. They’re still there, mind you, but more difficult to detect.
  3. Waiting for the Barbarians
    Coetzee’s novel, with its measured, interiorized voice and sparse, incrementally devastating narrative, was never an obvious fit for film treatment. After a stiffly mannered, overwritten first act, however, Waiting for the Barbarians gradually gains in poetry and power, while Mark Rylance’s lead performance, as a liberal-minded colonial official undermined and overwhelmed by his tyrannical superiors, gives proceedings a quiet but firm moral core.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Polyester
    A fitfully amusing comedy of not so ordinary people.
  5. Vitalina Varela
    Costa’s elongation of time (made more acute since there’s rarely enough light coming from the screen to check your watch) combined with his habit of doling out a few narrative details without exploration, results in a film that distances spectators not already in his thrall.
  6. Blink of an Eye
    Waltrip’s earnest and forthright narration lends Blink of an Eye its intimacy and insight.
  7. 3 Days with Dad
    Ultimately, however, this tonally untidy yet incrementally affecting dramedy scores a cumulative impact by credibly and astutely depicting eruptions, disruptions and reconciliations during the long goodbye to a dying paterfamilias.
  8. Human Capital
    This “Capital” succeeds as a well-acted crisscrosser of a melodrama between two awkwardly entangled families in upstate New York. Where it falls well short is in attaining the level of biting social commentary Virzi drew from the same material.
  9. Giants Being Lonely
    The film asks us to indulge and share the privacy of its characters. That’s its moody, free-floating allure.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
    Fans of Winona Ryder will definitely want to catch her in an offbeat role as the town rebel in this teen-oriented smalltown saga; unfortunately, the rest of the production doesn't quite match up.
  11. Exotica
    There's demonstrable growth in his visual and narrative skills here but the writer/director isn't likely to expand his audience with the sometimes oblique, unnerving saga of interwoven lives whose paths cross with alternately comic and tragic results.
  12. The Disappearance of My Mother
    The Disappearance of My Mother is a successful piece of documentary filmmaking inasmuch as it’s entertaining and dextrously crafted. But its precise intent is unclear.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ffolkes
    The biggest attraction is the banter between Roger Moore and the various types with whom he comes in conflict during his preparations to save a hijacked supply ship.
  14. Sweetheart
    It’s good of its type — just not quite good enough to linger once the lights have come up.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Amazon Women on the Moon
    Amazon Women on the Moon is irreverent, vulgar and silly and has some hilarious moments and some real groaners too.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paris Blues
    Within its snappy, flashy veneer is an undernourished romantic drama of a rather traditional screen school.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Comancheros
    The Comancheros is a big, brash, uninhibited action-western of the old school about as subtle as a right to the jaw.
  18. Roger Waters: Us + Them
    A sonically superior if sometimes draggy affair that earns its stripes by affirming the timelessness of Waters’ thematic concerns and proving that fresh material doesn’t have to be the medicine we’re forced to swallow to hear the classics.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shivers
    A silly but moderately effective chiller about creeping parasites that systematically (and comically) 'infect' an entire highrise population with nothing less than sexual hysteria.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Babes in Toyland
    Walt Disney's first live-action musical, a lavish translation to the screen of Victor Herbert's operetta, Babes in Toyland, is an expensive gift, brightly-wrapped and intricately packaged. But some of the more mature patrons may be distressed to discover that quaint, charming Toyland has been transformed into a rather gaudy and mechanical Fantasyland. What actually emerges is Babes in Disneyland.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Strongest Man in the World
    The students of Medfield College unintentionally zap the laws of nature with unexpected and sometimes hilarious results.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
    Good looking production is above average family entertainment, enhanced to great measure by zesty, but never show-off, direction by Robert Butler, in a debut swing to pix from telefilm.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Journey of Natty Gann
    More a period piece of Americana than a rousing adventure, The Journey of Natty Gann is a generally diverting variation on a boy and his dog: this time it's a girl and her wolf.
  24. Fiddlin'
    Even filmgoers with little taste for these arcane sounds may enjoy the doc, if only for the chance to spend an hour and a half in the company of so many prodigies who’ve put down their phones in the service of taking up catgut.
  25. Bloody Marie
    Given their evident talent for packaging (as opposed to content), Hillege and van Driel might next consider doing something of a more purely genre-based nature, where depth or its lack thereof won’t matter much.
  26. Badland
    A solidly crafted piece of work that, despite its leisurely pacing, manages to infuse a respectable amount of fresh vigor into clichés and conventions common to shoot-’em-ups set during the post-Civil War era.
  27. Redoubt
    If it all made sense, would it still be art? Ironically, the trouble with Redoubt is that it’s not obtuse enough. It’s the first Barney film audiences won’t have trouble sleeping after — or through.
  28. Rookie of the Year
    A warm, comic "what if" yarn, it's rife with humor and sentimentality but is just one run away from the game-winning score.
  29. Line of Duty
    High on energy if low on credibility.
  30. Feast of the Seven Fishes
    This easily digestible “Feast” is unlikely to join the holiday viewing canon, but the particularity of its focus on the eponymous, American-fried immigrant tradition is welcome: Any Christmas film that teaches us how to correctly soak baccala is more useful than most.
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