Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. The GoodTimesKid
    Building his dry comedy out of a basic confusion of names, an Army recruitment slip and one man's curiosity, Jacobs creates a droll, meandering and defiantly uncommercial film.
  2. Alpha Dog
    Writer-director Nick Cassavetes' sprawling dramatization recklessly blurs the line between reconstruction and reality in ways that are admittedly interesting, if more than a little artistically suspect.
  3. Primeval
    It's not exactly good, but it's not bad, and far from boring.
  4. Stomp the Yard
    The dancing is more dynamic than the plotting in Stomp the Yard, an energetic if formulaic underdog tale about warring black fraternities specializing in an intensely competitive style of step dancing.
  5. God Grew Tired of Us
    Although shot over a longer period of time than "Lost Boys," God Grew Tired is a softer, less complex version of essentially the same story, far less troubling in its explorations and implications than "The Lost Boys," but with far greater commercial potential.
  6. Tears of the Black Tiger
    Fun, if finally too silly.
  7. Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    Looks, sounds and fascinates like an exceptional episode of a true-crime TV series.
  8. Guru
    Strongly cast, long-limbed yarn contains some of Ratnam's best stuff in its first half but script weaknesses mar the later going and film's overall impact.
  9. Ever Since the World Ended
    Continually tickles the mind while leaving a heavy lump in the chest, establishing and sustaining a unique low-key tone of mystery and dread.
  10. Comedy of Power
    While the picture may be too subtle and oblique in places for more general audiences, it remains enjoyable as a sardonic glimpse of unspoken codes at the intersection of politics and business.
  11. Happily N'Ever After
    Colorful, crowd-pleasing toon.
  12. Freedom Writers
    It takes the bold approach of being earnest, honest and unafraid to be called naive. As a result, it's extremely affecting.
  13. Code Name: The Cleaner
    This is an especially limp star vehicle that delivers a few widely spaced moments of frivolity before what should be a quick mop-up trip to the DVD aisles.
  14. Thr3e
    Indeed, you could argue that weighty questions about the nature of evil and the allure of sin figured more prominently in the similarly titled "Se7en," one of several other, better suspensers dimly echoed here.
  15. Pan's Labyrinth
    There's plenty of blood -- both literal and figurative -- coursing through the veins of Pan's Labyrinth, a richly imagined and exquisitely violent fantasy from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.
  16. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    The seductive, sensory prose of Patrick Suskind's bestseller, "Perfume," reaches the screen with loads of visual panache but only intermittent magic.
  17. Miss Potter
    Renee Zellweger, in another Blighty role, struggles to make Beatrix credible.
  18. The Dead Girl
    More ambitious than her 2002 debut, "Blue Car," Moncrieff's new film maintains her focus on women, expanding to include a range of ages, circumstances and psychologies. Picture's drama, however, is deliberately fractured into a quintet of stories that vary considerably in their overall impact.
  19. Factory Girl
    The wild, unhinged life of Andy Warhol's favorite "superstar," Edie Sedgwick, is refashioned in Factory Girl as a tame biopic with little feel for the 1960s New York Underground.
  20. The Flying Scotsman
    Helmer Douglas Mackinnon does what he can to make the most of emotional bullet points and gloss over the lack of connective tissue.
  21. Arthur and the Invisibles
    Haplessly blends live-action and visually repellent computer-animated work.
  22. The Tiger and the Snow
    Like an Iraq-war mirror image of "Life Is Beautiful," actor-director Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow re-runs the successful structure and comic persona of the 1998 Oscar-winning film in a trippy fantasia about a poet who follows his love to hell and, in this happier ending, back.
  23. Notes on a Scandal
    The riveting interplay between Dench and Cate Blanchett draws blood with every scene, thanks to a precision-honed script and Eyre's equally incisive direction.
  24. Children of Men
    Picture more than delivers on the action front -- not in bang-for-your-buck spectacle but in the kind of gritty, doculike sequences that haul viewers out of their seats and alongside the main protags.
  25. Black Christmas
    It's debatable whether the original 1974 "Black Christmas" is, as its most rabid fans claim, the mother of all slasher movies. But there can be no argument regarding the scant merits of its slapdash, soporifically routine remake, suitable only for the least discriminating of gore hounds.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Good Shepherd
    Robert De Niro's second film as a director adopts a methodical approach and deliberate pace in attempting to grasp an almost forbiddingly intricate subject, with a result that is not boring, exactly, but undeniably tedious.
  27. Night at the Museum
    This rambunctious, "Jumanji"-style extravaganza is a gallery of special effects in search of a story; rarely has so much production value yielded so little in terms of audience engagement.
  28. We Are Marshall
    Full of good intentions, We Are Marshall has a game plan that's hard to fault, but as with any playbook, a scheme is only as good as how well it's executed.
  29. Venus
    Genuinely funny, randy and moving by turns, breezily enjoyable throughout.
  30. Curse of the Golden Flower
    Zhang Yimou's strangest and most troubled film, abounds in hysterical, mannered Tang Dynasty-era palace intrigue and dehumanized CGI battle sequences.
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