Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. Standing Still
    Surfing the crowd in Altman-lite style, pic skims the surface entertainingly but goes limp in its stabs at seriousness, especially in the final scenes, which all but drown in emotional confrontations and hasty happy endings.
  2. Stolen
    A documentay that should appeal not just to the legion of Vermeer fans, but to lovers of good mystery.
  3. Scary Movie 4
    Scary Movie 4 finds horror parody overshadowed by ho-hum groin blows, C-list celebrity cameos, slapstick child abuse, soon-to-be-forgotten hip-hop personalities, plus scatalogical and gay jokes; real laughs are few.
  4. The Wild
    Uninspired character animation and obnoxious banter aside, The Wild is ultimately done in by the persistent stench of been-there-seen-that.
  5. Kinky Boots
    A London drag queen and a bunch of Midlands working stiffs find common ground and, uh, mutual respect in Kinky Boots, a slick, cross-tracks Britcom whose stride is hampered by its desire not to offend.
  6. Hard Candy
    A spectacular performance by teenage thesp Ellen Page elevates this disturbing slice of designer shocksploitation into a film that's impossible to dismiss on principle.
  7. The Notorious Bettie Page
    A superficial look at the '50s sex icon, picture feels like it was researched via press clippings rather than attempting a fresh rethinking of its era and provocative subject.
  8. Look Both Ways
    An imaginative, humorous and truthful contemplation of human reaction to the inexplicable.
  9. Abominable
    Abominable goes completely over the top into an Ed Wood-meets-"Rear Window" subspecies of giddy, gory amateurish abandon.
  10. Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
    The film is the portrait of a kind and giving man open to all positive ideas that come his way.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mountain Patrol
    Exquisite to behold and with a stimulating storyline that mixes guns with ecological consciousness, picture is a considerable change of pace for director Lu Chuan.
  12. La Mujer de Mi Hermano
    Soapy melodrama and a small-screen cast undermine the first-time director's efforts.
  13. Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
    Superbly crafted documentary is strong enough to make believers out of non-metalheads, and inside enough to get the devil's-horns salute from the most diehard followers.
  14. Nathalie...
    An intellectual-cum-sexual teaser whose twist is apparent far too early on.
  15. The Sisters
    Even a magnificently inspired Maria Bello proves insufficiently daring to save Richard Alfieri and Arthur Allan Seidelman's Chekhov-based chamber piece Sisters from pretentious psychodrama.
  16. Preaching to the Choir
    While the film looks good, sense of place is never very convincing. Over time, however, director Charles Randolph Wright and screenwriters Kevin Heffernan and Peter E. Lengyel do manage to create well-defined characters, whose flaws are as important as their gifts.
  17. Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story
    The deliberately jittery hand-held lensing enhances the mockery in this mockumentary.
  18. Sisters in Law
    Documentary has the fascination of watching an African "Judge Judy" with a more important case load. It also offers the satisfaction of seeing the law being used to change patterns of social injustice.
  19. Lucky Number Slevin
    Thoroughly -- and sometimes justifiably -- infatuated with its own cleverness, this mistaken-identity thriller delights in narrative complication and Tarantino-esque self-awareness.
  20. The Benchwarmers
    Under Dennis Dugan's rote direction, Schneider winds up playing straight man to Spade, who once again relies on his snarky coward shtick, and Heder, who comes across like someone doing a bad imitation of ... well, Heder himself in "Napoleon Dynamite."
  21. Phat Girlz
    Mo'Nique, a vet standup and sitcom performer whose sassy, brassy shtick isn't nearly enough to support material this insubstantial.
  22. Take the Lead
    Well-intentioned, feel-good urban tale.
  23. Friends with Money
    Stealing the show is Jane, whose rage-fueled rants and scarcely concealed mutterings are loaded with sarcastic bon mots that are delivered to the hilt by McDormand.
  24. Simon
    Eddy Terstall's mild brand of humor and predictable throat-catching weepiness works strictly along boob-tube illness-of-the-week lines, with plentiful shots of topless women.
  25. On a Clear Day
    By turns whimsically humorous and intelligently sentimental, but also infused with a pungent air of working-class realism.
  26. When Do We Eat?
    Success depends on the degree to which Jewish auds connect with the broadly drawn stereotypes; gentiles and others are sure to pass over this culturally specific comedy altogether.
  27. 4
    Its bawdy comedy, bravura sound design and uncanny atmosphere will turn on auds with a taste for deeply oddball fare and baffle others.
  28. Free Zone
    Amos Gitai's most satisfying pic since war drama "Kippur." Schematic set-up is given a human face by fine performances and a physical journey that's often more interesting than the characters' emotional ones, which are weakened by the Israeli auteur's tendency toward convenient doctrinaire-ism and chunks of expository dialogue.
  29. One Last Ride
    Though it lacks the sheer, depraved intensity of similarly themed pics like "The Gambler," Ride shares much of the sunlit sadness of "Save the Tiger," also populated by desperate, middle-aged men plying their trade in Los Angeles' garment district.
  30. Sir! No Sir!
    Because it's bolstered by proud memories of Vietnam vets who turned against the war, Sir! No Sir! rings with an exultant, even elated tone.
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