Variety's Scores

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:
17833 movie reviews
  1. Starts off deliriously, is derailed into reality, and finally settles into something in between.
  2. There's a pleasantly dreamy quality to much of Eye of the Dolphin, and that goes a long way toward enabling audiences to ignore the formulaic plot and enjoy the laid-back charms of this innocuous indie.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Result should satisfy Bynes fans looking for a pleasant, innocuous follow-up to her last vehicle.
  3. A drama that steadily succumbs to self-conscious artiness, drunk on its own sense of contrived poetry and cloudy existential reflection.
  4. Never completely takes off, yet somewhat overestimates the surrounding zaniness. Still, any opportunity to witness the improvisatory skills of Sarah Silverman, Bonnie Hunt and Amy Sedaris should not be missed.
  5. Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a 2½--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns.
  6. Slick, good-looking, cluttered pic won't please fans of novelist Susan Cooper's original "The Dark Is Rising" sequence. But then, they are mostly grown-ups by now, and this very Hollywood-style adaptation of a very English book is aimed squarely at tweens.
  7. Excels at bloodthirsty action, though dialogue and human-interest aspects are a tad anemic. Result is a mixed bag but has a catchy premise and quite enough splatter to satisfy gorehounds.
  8. By underplaying the melodrama in the presumed hope of seeming subtle when Kelley Sane’s script is so baldly melodramatic, the “Tsotsi” helmer drains the life out of an obviously explosive subject.
  9. There's something clumsily charming about Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour.
  10. Mexican-born helmer Alejandro Monteverde's debut will be remembered as a curious case of a mediocre film that wows crowds.
  11. Thanked and vilified from coast to coast, Carter remains steadfast in his belief that Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories are unjust and counterproductive.
  12. There's not quite as much corn in The Final Season as there is in the Iowa farm fields that run through it, but it's close.
  13. The results will be received with a large, loud yawn by all but the most loyal fans of Pinter and hard-working co-stars Michael Caine and Jude Law.
  14. Amiable but no more, Bee Movie puts a hiveful of potent talent at the service of a zig-zigging, back-of-an-envelope story that's short on surprise and originality.
  15. Even by the standards of the recent "Saws," which have enjoyed considerably larger budgets than the first pic, the new edition is more frenetically cut (by editors Kevin Greutert and Brett Sullivan), more dimly lit (by lenser David A. Armstrong), sweatier in terms of perfs by the grimly serious cast, more madly packed with micro-incidents and action, and more brazen in requiring suspension of disbelief.
  16. Apparently needing to release some private thoughts, musings and images to the world, Anthony Hopkins takes a leap into stunning self-indulgence with his directorial debut, Slipstream.
  17. Stylistically audacious in the way it employs six different actors and assorted visual styles to depict various aspects of the troubadour's life and career, the film nevertheless lacks a narrative and a center, much like the "ghost" at its core.
  18. Much nastier and less genteel than his best-known Stephen King adaptations ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile"), Frank Darabont's screw-loose doomsday thriller works better as a gross-out B-movie than as a psychological portrait of mankind under siege, marred by one-note characterizations and a tone that veers wildly between snarky and hysterical.
  19. As neatly tailored, clean-cut, and visually appealing as a Savile Row suit. But audiences accustomed to more knowing fare are likely to find its twists and turns outdated while yearning for a little of the rebellious fun that made the genre gleam in the first place.
  20. A game, disarming lead performance from Jess Weixler, who won a jury acting prize at Sundance, goes some way toward making palatable this mish-mash, whose provocative nature could carve out a certain commercial niche.
  21. Despite a magnificent performance by Javier Bardem, the film not only falls short of the novel's magic, but fails to generate much of its own.
  22. Sprinkles in charming moments but ultimately doesn't evoke enough wonderment to overcome its tongue-twisting title and completely win over adults along with kids.
  23. Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing "fictional documentary" -- inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad -- has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can't make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form.
  24. Impressively rendered but oddly uninviting adventure.
  25. One of the more irresponsible eruptions in the current rash of populist nonfiction cinema.
  26. Boasts dazzling hockey action, but its off-ice piousness makes for tough sledding for non-Canucks.
  27. Conceit often stretches -- and breaks -- the limits of what the tales can handle, though the implication of viewers as voyeurs gives pic a subversive edge.
  28. Like a tragic overture played at the wrong tempo and slightly off-key, Woody Allen's London-set Cassandra's Dream sends out more mixed signals than an inebriated telegraphist.
  29. Like its sister films in the surfing-movie genre, the extreme-skiing movie Steep is less a documentary than a sales pitch -- not for a product or a place, but for a sport, one its practitioners feel requires pugnacious self-promotion.

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