Variety's Scores

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For 17,833 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 2.3 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: 9,165 out of 17833
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17833
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17833
17833 movie reviews
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    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wild Side
    Sex frequently disguises itself as friendship and love in Wild Side, a morbid and self-important homosexual "Jules & Jim" for the new millennium.
  2. J.S.A.: Joint Security Area
    Despite its merits, is neither an art movie nor an out-and-out, propulsive actioner like "Shiri."
  3. Wheel of Time
    Taken strictly as a docu about a key Buddhist ritual, Wheel of Time is a perfectly pleasant, educational film, featuring pretty pictures, exotic locations and interview footage with the Dalai Lama himself. As a Werner Herzog film, it's flat and disappointing.
  4. King of the Corner
    Lacks the stylistic attention to psychological distress that might have lent it maximum impact. Instead, the pic is amiable, kinda charming, visually routine, and incisive in individual sequences.
  5. Rebound
    Scores a few chuckles while following a familiar game plan.
  6. Dark Water
    Well-crafted but thoroughly unsuspenseful.
  7. Fantastic Four
    A wildly uneven, sporadically slapdash action-adventure that amuses in fits and starts.
  8. Steve + Sky
    Promising frosh helmer Felix van Groeningen exhibits a fresh eye, though his script is full of too many self-consciously Tarantino-ish verbal digressions that serve to distract from the story, and self-conscious quirks he mistakes for character development.
  9. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
    Ultimately, pic feels very much like a romanticized, outsider's view of the South that willfully seeks out the culture's strangest, most weirdo aspects for other outsiders' gleeful delectation.
  10. Happy Endings
    A protracted parade of woefully familiar motifs from the Amerindie playbook, Happy Endings comes off like an undernourished Paul Thomas Anderson wannabe.
  11. Last Days
    Result is dead-on depiction of the hedonistic rock lifestyle, punctuated by sequences of haunting beauty but also quasi-religious imagery that borders on tacky.
  12. Edgar G. Ulmer - The Man Off-screen
    A definitive docu on the elusive Edgar G. Ulmer is a practical impossibility, which is why Michael Palm chooses to highlight questions rather than facts. But Edgar G. Ulmer -- the Man Off-Screen neither fully illuminates the tales nor finely sifts through the evidence to discover the truths behind the myth-making.
  13. Tony Takitani
    Ultimately, this is a striking-looking film -- consciously recalling the paintings of Edward Hopper in its architectural use of space -- which, like its protag, is a little short on real feeling.
  14. The Skeleton Key
    Stirring up a humid Gothic mood and amassing a gifted roster of actors, The Skeleton Key is unable to ward off the nasty spirits of formula screenwriting.
  15. 2046
    The overall effect simply underlines the central weakness of the pic: that the neo-kitschy futuristic scenes don't add much to the real-life '60s relationships.
  16. Asylum
    Overly plotted erotic drama.
  17. The Goebbles Experiment
    A man whose name has become a byword for pure evil gets a disarming makeover in The Goebbels Experiment. Far from being the horror show expected from its title, Lutz Hachmeister's cool, almost anti-dramatic docu paints a portrait of an insecure manic-depressive solely through extracts from Joseph Goebbels' own voluminous diaries.
  18. Supercross
    Completely disposable yet rousing on its own crude, testosterone-saturated terms.
  19. The Brothers Grimm
    The tilt here toward a hyperactive, buddy-movie action-adventure with loud comic archetypes is a poor fit for a film that relies on fairy tale icons and themes.
  20. The Baxter
    May find a following among those who stand in awe of the names Sandler, Ferrell and Spade. But Showalter pushes too far: Nerdiness, after all, can be only so attractive.
  21. Formula 17
    While it has about as much depth and nuance as the bubblegum Sino-pop tunes that pepper its soundtrack, Formula 17 is a fresh, sweet-natured affair with an attractive young cast that should play to the gay-teen niche.
  22. The Man
    Functional if thoroughly uninspired movie. Because it clings to the comedy-action template of "48 Hrs.," pic feels like it could have been made 15 years ago.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Campfire
    Juggles several storylines that include the personal and political, but is unable to get beyond soap-opera shtick.
  24. Kamikaze Girls
    Wears out its welcome at 100 minutes, but could find an audience in the West as a latenight attraction at gay fests.
  25. The Future of Food
    Genetically-modified (or GM) fruits and vegetables are a topic of raging debate in scientific and ecological circles, so it's a shame writer-director Deborah Koons Garcia opts to show only one side of the argument.
  26. Cry_Wolf
    Almost totally reliant on red herrings and the viewer's nervous reflexes.
  27. Flightplan
    Largely undone by a script that self-destructs in the third act of an otherwise well-made thriller.
  28. Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow
    The movie plays like a career summation in which the 68-year-old writer-director has simply run out new ideas.
  29. Venom
    Acquits itself well enough. Gratuitously gory and derivative to the core, Venom manages to deliver some effective frights in between large swaths of voodoo gibberish.
  30. Roll Bounce
    Funky disco-era throwback never fully jells with a surprisingly intense central tale of father-son estrangement, strongly acted by Chi McBride and 18-year-old rapper-thesp Bow Wow.
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