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. Color Me Kubrick
    A sly, enormously entertaining romp based on the antics of real-life Brit conman Alan Conway who rooked his way around '90s London posing as Stanley Kubrick.
  2. First Snow
    Engages but underwhelms.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Journey from the Fall
    A post-Vietnam War boat people saga is launched to compelling effect in Journey From the Fall, a sleek U.S. production.
  4. Offside
    In his most accessible and spontaneous picture, ranking Iranian helmer Jafar Panahi reveals unsuspected comic gifts barely visible in his dramatic festival winners "The White Balloon," "The Circle" and "Crimson Gold."
  5. The Page Turner
    Scripter-helmer Denis Dercourt's sixth feature is spare but classy, with an impressively controlled perf by Deborah Francois (the young mother in the Dardenne Bros.' "L'enfant") opposite popular and spot-on vet Catherine Frot.
  6. Memory
    It's actually considerably better -- and far more intriguing -- than most entry-level horror pics, marrying a retro B-movie setup with the ghostly obsessions of recent Asian extreme cinema.
  7. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
    The Prisoner is in many ways a justifiably angry film, simmering with moral outrage. But it is also -- surprisingly, maybe even amazingly -- hopeful.
  8. What Love Is
    Picture looks and sounds like an Off Off Broadway play.
  9. Iluminados por el fuego
    A watchable if none-too-penetrating analysis of the traumatizing effects of a war largely forgotten.
  10. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
    An ingeniously twisted mockumentary.
  11. Nomad
    Picture fits seamlessly together although it is somewhat generic in flavor, with an off-the-shelf narrative arch and characterizations drawn using broad brushstrokes.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dead Silence
    Only those in a cold sweat for their weekly horror fix will bother with this formulaic and rather lazy exercise in booga-booga scare tactics.
  13. I Think I Love My Wife
    The main drawback is that under director Rock, actor Rock doesn't possess quite the chops to pull off this character, and the humor and flights of fancy are simply too low-key.
  14. Premonition
    This slick exercise about a housewife whose spouse might or might not be dead is effective until a downright maudlin close.
  15. Caffeine
    Nonsense, hysterics and many cuppas spill in Caffeine, an ensembler that serves up a menu's worth of forced and trite situations.
  16. My Brother
    A heavy-handed redemption story.
  17. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    Though tastily lensed and with a convincing cast led by Cillian Murphy, essentially small-scale picture lacks the involving sweep of Loach's earlier historical-political yarn, "Land and Freedom."
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adam's Apples
    A funny, politically incorrect and, somewhere deep down, thoughtful black comedy, Adam's Apples is the third and final film in helmer-writer Anders Thomas Jensen's excellent trilogy centered on oddballs and misfits in Denmark.
  19. Tortilla Heaven
    As flat as a tortilla and considerably less nourishing.
  20. American Cannibal: The Road to Reality
    Fails to draw any conclusions and, thanks to legal issues, leaves too many questions unanswered.
  21. Blockade
    Told without voiceover, explanatory subtitles or any other contextualizing material, Russian docu Blockade looks unlikely to show up on the History Channel as it stands now. Nevertheless, this absorbing account of the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during WWII, told entirely through re-edited archive footage with freshly made sound, reps poignant viewing as it focuses on the daily lives of the city's inhabitants.
  22. The Go Master
    Perhaps the least accessible of Tian's films, this serenely elliptical poser will elude all but the most devoted arthouse auds.
  23. 300
    A blustery, bombastic, visually arresting account of the Battle of Thermopylae as channeled through the rabid imagination of graphic novelist Frank Miller.
  24. The Host
    On almost every level, there's never quite been a monster movie like The Host. Egregiously subverting its own genre while still delivering shocks at a pure genre level, and marbled with straight-faced character humor that constantly throws the viewer off balance.
  25. Believe in Me
    Even with ties to the true story of high school hoops coach Jim Keith and his unlikely triumph with a 1960s Oklahoma high school girls' squad, the hackneyed, overlong Believe in Me is much too similar to a recent flood of inspirational basketball pics to distinguish it.
  26. Beyond the Gates
    Although in many respects a more stylish, authentic, tougher-minded film than "Hotel Rwanda," director Michael Caton-Jones' respectable and well-intentioned Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) still falls into the trap of filtering an inherently African story through the eyes of a noble white protagonist -- in this case, two of them.
  27. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    Intelligent, informative and unusually entertaining documentary errs only when it yanks too insistently on heartstrings while focusing on worst-case scenarios involving desperate debtors driven to suicide.
  28. The Namesake
    A richly compelling story of family and self-discovery.
  29. The Ultimate Gift
    Although cynics likely will reject The Ultimate Gift as warmed-over Capra-corn, this predictable but pleasant drama based on Jim Stovall's popular novel may be prized by those with a taste for inspirational uplift and heart-tugging sentiment.
  30. The Exterminating Angels
    Brisseau trains his deft camera on the crescendo of female sexual pleasure and how women can heighten the intensity of already blissful sensations via transgressive flourishes. If exiting viewers could all be asked "Was it good for you?" the likely answer is "Yes."
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