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. Manufactured Landscapes
    This landmark glimpse into China's modern-day industrial revolution becomes something more -- a profound, open-ended meditation on man's physical impact on his environment.
  2. White Palms
    An uncommonly resonant sports drama in which a talented yet troubled gymnast comes to terms with a turbulent past.
  3. DOA: Dead or Alive
    So insubstantial that it practically evaporates on screen.
  4. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    At a time when tortured superheroes like Spider-Man, Superman and Batman would benefit from some serious psychotherapy, it's almost refreshing to see a comicbook caper as blithe, weightless and cheerfully dumb as Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Nancy Drew
    Purportedly an attempt to modernize the young detective's adventures for a new generation of tweens, the pic instead serves up stale mystery-movie cliches and overcooked red herrings in a thoroughly wooden adaptation.
  6. Eagle vs Shark
    Result is still innocuously mild and inconsequential.
  7. Fido
    Brightly packaged and steadily amusing.
  8. When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan
    A potent combination of ethnography and concert film, Brit helmer Jasmine Dellal's joyous celebration of tzigane music follows the 2001 U.S. "Gypsy Caravan" tour, which showcased five bands from four countries.
  9. Strike
    Continuing the late-career renaissance of historically urgent, politically engaged fiction filmmaking that began with 1999's "The Legend of Rita" and 2004's "The Ninth Day" German vet Volker Schloendorff stumbles slightly, but doesn't fall, with Poland-set Solidarity saga Strike.
  10. The Trials of Darryl Hunt
    Advocacy cinema at its most searingly direct, The Trials of Darryl Hunt is a powerful and unsettling chronicle of the 20-year struggle to free a man twice convicted of a crime he didn't commit.
  11. 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.
  12. Macbeth
    Something indeed wicked this way comes in a mangled Macbeth set in contempo gangland Melbourne.
  13. Noriko's Dinner Table
    Although told through a cascade of flashes forward and back, the puzzle doesn't quite form a complete picture by the end, which may leave genre fans frustrated but the arthouse crowd intrigued.
  14. Lights in the Dusk
    Lights in the Dusk finds veteran Finnish helmer Aki Kaurismaki treading water with an amiable but very undercooked noirish fable about a security guard done wrong by a femme fatale.
  15. Ocean's Thirteen
    As smooth as a good mojito, as stylish as an Armani suit and as meaningful in the grand scheme of things as yesterday's Las Vegas betting odds, Ocean's Thirteen"continues the breezy good times of the first two series entries without missing a beat.
  16. Hostel: Part II
    In this twist-filled sequel, the real shocker is just how smart and satisfying such degradation can be. There's no question "Part II" outgrosses the original "Hostel" in the blood-and-guts department.
  17. Surf's Up
    Every bit as entertaining as the early Christopher Guest efforts.
  18. The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams
    Undone by a thorough lack of visual craft.
  19. Miriam
    Despite troubling sexual themes (while in hiding, Miriam is raped by her protector), this remarkable, albeit unpolished, personal history may prove appropriate for religious or teaching purposes.
  20. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    The buoyant little comedy 12:08 East of Bucharest puts its finger on the problem in the best tradition of East European humor, savvy but concrete, gentle but sharp as a knife.
  21. Knocked Up
    Uproarious. Line for line, minute to minute, writer-director Judd Apatow's latest effort is more explosively funny, more frequently, than nearly any other major studio release in recent memory.
  22. Gracie
    Modestly engaging but thoroughly predictable.
  23. Mr. Brooks
    Mr. Brooks is most effective when it's dealing with Earl and his conscience. Hurt and Costner are terrific together as two sides of the same personality and, again, the casting is what it's all about.
  24. Crazy Love
    While the competent filmmaking package lacks much of its own personality, the sheer fascinating strangeness of the people documented could earn the picture a minor cult following a la "Grey Gardens."
  25. Day Watch
    Bursting with incident and FX, Day Watch will delight fans of its predecessor, "Night Watch," but further annoy those antipathetic to the Russkie-made supernatural franchise.
  26. I'm Reed Fish
    Pitch-perfect dialogue, quietly dynamic helming and small-scale action on a widescreen canvas make for a very appealing film.
  27. Ten Canoes
    Anthropology and entertainment are marvelously married in Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes. The first feature in an Australian Aboriginal language feels authentic to the core as it tells a cautionary tale set 1,000 years ago.
  28. Radiant City
    In the end, helmers have some nifty tricks up their verite sleeves.
  29. Bug
    A ranting, claustrophobic drama that trades in shopworn paranoid notions, William Friedkin's overwrought screen version of Tracy Letts' play assaults the viewer with aggressive thesping and over-the-top notions of shocking incident, all to intensely alienating effect.
  30. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    The third voyage in the "Priates" trilogy could be touted as "The biggest, loudest and second-best (or second-worst) 'Pirates' ever!" -- not necessarily a ringing endorsement, but honest.
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