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. Flightplan
    Largely undone by a script that self-destructs in the third act of an otherwise well-made thriller.
  2. 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.
  3. Daltry Calhoun
    A string of scenes in search of a movie.
  4. Dear Wendy
    Well made but unlikable and dramatically absurd picture.
  5. Dirty Love
    Few pretty actresses have so thoroughly discarded their vanity in an outright vanity piece as Jenny McCarthy does in Dirty Love, so it's unfortunate for her this exercise in comic self-abnegation, which she wrote for herself, falls so awfully flat.
  6. Dorian Blues
    Sharp performances and writing lend it a fresh appeal well above this genre's average.
  7. Occupation: Dreamland
    Helmers Garrett Scott and Ian Olds offer a sympathetic look at the average Joe doing duty in hell -- as well as a sharp indictment of the Pentagon's cavalier support for the troops.
  8. Oliver Twist
    A respectable literary adaptation but lacks dramatic urgency and intriguing undercurrents.
  9. Novo
    A bizarre combo of upscale French erotica studded with good-humored kinky sex scenes.
  10. Everything Is Illuminated
    Wood's powerlessness to break out of the emotive straightjacket hands the picture to his Russian costars on a platter, and they run with it.
  11. Proof
    But despite less-than-ideal casting of the male roles, and a tendency to soften the Pulitzer Prize-winning work's thorny humor with a more sober tone, director John Madden has woven together an elegant, intelligent drama of a breed increasingly rare in mainstream American movies.
  12. HellBent
    A straight-ahead slasher pic with the big difference of an all-gay male character cast, Hellbent is fun -- if minor horror fun -- ably handled by first-time feature helmer Paul Etheredge-Ouzts.
  13. Cry_Wolf
    Almost totally reliant on red herrings and the viewer's nervous reflexes.
  14. Just Like Heaven
    As uneven as the topography of its San Francisco locales, but the amiable peaks mostly offset the flat stretches and valleys. A variation on a very old meet-cute theme with a touch of otherworldly romance.
  15. Lord of War
    Brimming with cinematic confidence, cynicism, chutzpah plus dramatic bungles, Andrew Niccol's ambitious Lord of War views today's international arms trade through its anti-hero.
  16. Corpse Bride
    An endearingly schizoid Frankenstein of a movie, by turns relentlessly high-spirited and darkly poignant.
  17. Thumbsucker
    Thumbsucker (like "Donnie Darko") is more likely to prosper in the long haul as a home-format cult fave than in its initial arthouse tour. Both offer eccentric humor within a fairly somber overall tone, support-cast surprises, and (to a lesser degree in Thumbsucker) fable-like, hyperreal elements.
  18. The Thing About My Folks
    Good-natured but only memorable as a platform for the amusingly feisty Peter Falk, The Thing About My Folks plies a light approach to the problems grown children face when their parents appear on the verge of divorce.
  19. One Bright Shining Moment
    "Too decent to be president" was the label stuck to former senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern, the self-effacing subject of Stephen Vittoria's One Bright Shining Moment. If "decent" means "polite," then the movie makes no effort to emulate its subject.
  20. G
    A handsome, compelling drama, about the African-American elite settling in the Hamptons, that more than stands on its own.
  21. 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.
  22. Separate Lies
    With Separate Lies, Fellowes has made a truly adult film -- not because of its content or themes, but because it knows that real drama often lies in the accepted and unspoken realms of life.
  23. Hard Goodbyes: My Father
    An involving family drama about a young boy's dreams and personal loss, Hard Goodbyes: My Father brings a light touch -- and a full measure of unaffected charm -- to potentially downbeat material.
  24. Human Error
    Benefits from blend of live actors with computer-generated effects and backgrounds. Feature doesn't add up to much more than an enjoyable novelty.
  25. Finding Eleazar
    Will be of keen interest to fans but plays to the unwashed as cringingly pompous.
  26. I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth
    Pic's rediscovery in the capitalist U.S., and its reappraisal as a masterpiece of visual pyrotechnics, gives Brazilian documaker Vicente Ferraz's tale an upbeat final twist -- after some mid-film doldrums.
  27. Piggie
    Pic's quirky-for-quirky's-sake antics are neither particularly coherent nor enjoyably incoherent.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. Chain
    Links narrative fiction filmmaking to avant-garde with vision and authority.
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