Variety's Scores

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For 17,810 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: 9,150 out of 17810
  2. Mixed: 7,023 out of 17810
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17810
17810 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Miss Potter
    Renee Zellweger, in another Blighty role, struggles to make Beatrix credible.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Arthur and the Invisibles
    Haplessly blends live-action and visually repellent computer-animated work.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. Venus
    Genuinely funny, randy and moving by turns, breezily enjoyable throughout.
  18. 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.
  19. Letters from Iwo Jima
    Taken together, "Flags" and "Letters" represent a genuinely imposing achievement, one that looks at war unflinchingly -- that does not deny its necessity but above all laments the human loss it entails.
  20. The Painted Veil
    Intelligent scripting, solid thesping and eye-catching location shooting aren't enough to make a compelling modern film of The Painted Veil.
  21. Rocky Balboa
    The time away from the ring has done Rocky and the franchise some good, although it takes pic a good long while to gather momentum and clout before a surprisingly satisfying third-act heavyweight bout.
  22. Matthew Barney: No Restraint
    Whatever audiences might have wanted to know about sculptor-filmmaker Matthew Barney but were too embarrassed to ask is revealed in accessible documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint.
  23. Dreamgirls
    Finally. After "The Phantom of the Opera," "Rent" and "The Producers" botched the transfer from stage to screen, Dreamgirls gets it right. Bill Condon's adaptation of the 1981 show about a Motown trio's climb to crossover stardom pulls off the fundamental double-act those three musical pics all missed: It stays true to the source material while standing on its own as a fully reimagined movie.
  24. The Good German
    For actor and director, the project seems like trying on a new coat, and it doesn't fit either of them.
  25. Breaking and Entering
    Entirely respectable in every way, it nonetheless has a very cool body temperature and thus likely will inspire polite admiration rather than excitement among viewers.
  26. Charlotte's Web
    Nowhere to be found is any dramatic surprise, heightening of the pulse or genuine pulling of heartstrings. Gary Winick's direction consists of button pushing, and the mechanics are palpable at every step.
  27. Eragon
    Appropriating all the external trappings of big-budget fantasy but none of the requisite soul, this leaden epic never soars like the CG-rendered fire-breather at the core of its derivative mythology.
  28. The Pursuit of Happyness
    The Pursuit of Happyness is more inspirational than creatively inspired -- imbued with the kind of uplifting, afterschool-special qualities that can trigger a major toothache.
  29. The Secret Life of Words
    Sarah Polley gives a wonderfully searching performance, as a woman in a state of extreme isolation, in The Secret Life of Words, a compellingly claustrophobic drama set mostly aboard an oil rig.
  30. Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here)
    There is an undeniable quirky appeal to the creative world of Daniel Smith, though those who hope a behind-the-scenes look will explain his motivation or personality won't find the enigma resolved here.
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