Variety's Scores

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For 17,840 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: 9,167 out of 17840
  2. Mixed: 7,035 out of 17840
  3. Negative: 1,638 out of 17840
17840 movie reviews
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  1. Step Up 2: The Streets
    Rather than mixing classical and modern styles the way "Step Up" did, this hip-hop-powered sequel is all about new moves, which should keep the kids coming back after the pic's initial Valentine's Day crush.
  2. Welcome to the Rileys
    Nothing short of preposterous, Jake Scott's film imagines a grieving couple (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) who play surrogate parents to an underage stripper ("Twilight's" Kristen Stewart) and spins it for the "Blind Side" crowd.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Prince of Darkness
    Carpenter spends so much time turning the screws on the next scare that he completely forsakes his actors, who are already stranded with a shoddy script.
  4. As I Lay Dying
    Franco offers up a competently acted, technically adequate Cliff Notes take on Faulkner’s narratively refracted tale of dirt-poor Mississippi folk in mourning.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Charly
    Considering the innumerable stumbling blocks, cast does well. Cliff Robertson seems to overdo the external manifestations of retardation, but he is excellent in the post-operative scenes. With more help from the script he could have been a movingly tragic figure.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Runaway
    This Michael Crichton robotic nightmare is so trite that the story seems lifted from Marvel Comics, with heat-seeking bullets and a villain so bad he would be fun if the film wasn’t telling us to take this near-futuristic adventure with a straight face.
  7. Home on the Range
    An engagingly rambunctious toon Western that likely will attract herds of family auds, if not multitudes of teens and tweeners, to megaplex corrals.
  8. Straight-Jacket
    A fey and frisky farce with a fabulous fashion sense, Straight-Jacket artfully balances broadly campy humor and ironically overplayed soap opera.
  9. Burn Your Maps
    Burn Your Maps is one of those movies that’s glib and facile and threadbare all the way through, then the ending sort of gets to you (you’d have to be made of pretty stern stuff if it didn’t), so you think back over what you’ve seen — and it’s still a crock.
  10. The Case for Christ
    Although it sporadically errs on the side of sentimentality and simplification, The Case for Christ sustains interest, and even generates mild suspense, while offering a faith-based spin on the template of an investigative-journalism drama.
  11. Poseidon
    Thanks to its simple construction, Wolfgang Petersen's large-scale liner moves reasonably well, though anyone with the faintest memory of its 1972 predecessor will wonder where most of the plot went.
  12. Now You See Me
    Thanks to some accomplished hocus pocus and an appealing cast, this would-be “Ocean’s Eleven” of the magic world remains watchable throughout, even as it plods along without ever quite fulfilling its potential.
  13. Wide Awake
    Reflecting the zeitgeist of the last decade, with children increasingly having to come to terms with the untimely deaths of parents and friends as a result of AIDS and other illnesses, Wide Awake tackles its issues with an admirably uncompromising honesty, though it suffers from being dramatically obvious. [16 Mar 1998, p.64]
    • Variety
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Funny Farm
    Director George Roy Hill shows little distinction with this material [from Jay Cronley’s book], but then again, the material here isn’t very distinctive. Some of the setups work better than others, though most are of the sitcom variety.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Airport 1975
    Jack Smight’s direction has the refreshing pace of a filmmaker who knows his plot can crash unless he hurries.
  16. Dreamland
    For all its salaciousness and scenery-chewing, it’s the dullness of Dreamland that provides further proof that dreams tend to be of fascination mainly — perhaps only — to the dreamer.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Guarding Tess
    Comedy, pathos and thrills alternately collide, creating problems in both pacing and developing a consistent tone.
  18. The Other Boleyn Girl
    A sexy, good-looking political bodice-ripper with an almost flawless cast at the top of its game.
  19. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    Bruckheimer's passably enjoyable, antiquity-themed epic should satisfy its young male core demographic well enough, but won't connect with other auds on the level of Bruckheimer's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise.
  20. Dark Skies
    In the end, a pretty good buildup to OK payoff without any real surprises en route makes Dark Skies feel just enough above average to make one wish it had one memorable spark of conceptual inspiration up its sleeve.
  21. The American Society of Magical Negroes
    The sly beauty of The American Society of Magical Negroes is that it’s a wicked satire of white people that’s also an empathetic satire of Black people.
  22. Cease Fire
    Audiences hooked on Persian mainstream will devour this irreverent romantic comedy, spiced with saucy dialogue that spoofs traditional gender roles through gritted teeth.
  23. Race You to the Bottom
    It's a bad heterosexual date movie (more a date-gone-wrong), has too limited a gay angle for that demographic, and is about characters who are not particularly likable as individuals or as a couple.
  24. Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry
    While it admirably avoids either schoolboyish titters or schoolmarmish prudery, the docu's cheery neutrality comes at the expense of any point of view at all.
  25. Bel Borba Aqui
    A vibrant catalogue of his outdoor pieces presented in context with an exhaustive portrait of Borba as a boundlessly energetic, iconoclastic creator, the documentary ties itself too tightly to its subject, mimicking forms and rhythms it never fully makes its own.
  26. 28 Hotel Rooms
    Lacking much dramatic or intellectual stimulation, it's ultimately a limp effort.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Halloween III: Season of the Witch
    There’s not much to say about Halloween III that hasn’t already been said about either of the other two Halloween pics or a slew of imitators.
  28. How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change
    An environmental documentary that consists of roughly one-third doom-and-gloom to two-thirds wide-eyed optimism, and that is more potent in individual scenes than it is as a sprawling whole.
  29. A Dog's Way Home
    For every shameless trick the filmmakers employ to pluck our heartstrings, resonant chords are struck elsewhere, teaching audiences about family, the power of unconditional love, and the ripple effects of compassion.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kelly's Heroes
    Nearly satirical in its overall effect, plot caroms between cliche dogface antics, detailed and gratuitous violence, caper melodramatics, and outrageous anachronism.
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