Variety's Scores

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For 17,832 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: 9,164 out of 17832
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17832
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17832
17832 movie reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (re-release)
    Good action caper.
  2. Hackers
    There is a great deal more style than substance here. The special effects experts and the other members of the technical crew do their considerable best to give their various hacking sequences the look of warp-speed sci-fi fantasy.
  3. Primal Fear
    The major jolt is saved for the very end but, like much else in the film, it is overexplained and underlined when more simplicity and quiet would have provided the revelation with the power of a depth charge.
  4. The Last Days of Disco
    Whit Stillman's stiff directorial approach ill suits the sensual ambiance of the club scene so intently depicted, and the mostly self-conscious, uptight characters seem to have made a left turn out of "Metropolitan" and walked through the wrong door to turn up in this flamboyant druggie scene.
  5. Clay Pigeons
    Visual flourishes (handsomely lensed by Eric Edwards on Utah locales standing in for Montana) are polished but derivative, with too many time-lapse sky views, reminiscent of Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho."
  6. Rounders
    Intermittently engaging but dramatically slack, this tale...is more interesting around the edges than it is at its core, thanks to the dull nature of the lead character played by Matt Damon.
  7. Analyze This
    The gradual dilution of fresh humor is further undercut by a queasy sense that the picture, in the end, is quietly endorsing all the psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo that it has been poking fun at all along.
  8. 102 Dalmatians
    A pale reworking of its predecessor.
  9. Welcome to Collinwood
    Anthony and Joe Russo place too much faith in the ability of their talented thesps to carry the day over precariously thin material.
  10. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    A lightweight, modestly engaging yarn sporting reductive mystical and philosophical elements that are both valid and borderline silly.
  11. Bittersweet Motel
    Well-made if not particularly insightful docu should be catnip to Phishheads, while the previously unconverted are likely to stay that way.
  12. Heist
    While staccato dialogue and edgy confrontations have always been the wordsmith's forte, the precision-tooled mechanics of an elaborate crime caper have not, and the physical direction here could use some muscle.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uptown Girls
    Light, occasionally charming and reasonably well-crafted.
  14. Human Nature
    Charlie Kaufman's clever screenplay bears many traces of the same brand of originality and eccentric imagination that graced his work on "Being John Malkovich," although even at an hour-and-a-half the conceit is stretched almost too thin for audience sustenance.
  15. The Gatekeeper
    Actor-turned-director John Carlos Frey, who also stars, knows how to push the right sentimental buttons in what ultimately amounts to a pedestrian actioner, a cliched compendium of Anglo villains and Mexican martyrs.
  16. Unknown Pleasures
    As lethargic as the characters it portrays, the film requires greater staying power than many audiences will possess.
  17. Buffalo Soldiers
    Had the young Jack Nicholson played such a character during the height of the Vietnam War, it would have been easy to go along for the ride. But skilled as Phoenix is at pulling off the individual scenes of Elwood's shenanigans, the actor doesn't come across as embodying rebellion to the marrow of his bones, which renders his scams arbitrary and disagreeably irresponsible.
  18. Two Men Went to War
    Solidly crafted, strongly cast pic doesn't hit a thoroughgoing comic tone.
  19. Hard Rain
    A waterlogged would-be thriller deep-sixed by its misguided notion of high concept. [12 January 1998, p. 63]
    • Variety
  20. Center Stage
    Unfortunately, Center Stage is directed and shot (by Geoffrey Simpson) in a way that doesn't let the audience feel the exhilarating pull of the dance world.
  21. The Hunted
    Routine, superficial manhunt stuff.
  22. Maestro
    Josell Ramos' docu expounds the joys of clubbing to the uninitiated while regaling aficionados with testimonials about brilliant pioneer deejays and the invention of the tweeter cluster.
  23. Snipes
    Unremarkable but competent in stylistic terms, with good use of Philadelphia locations, sharp casting and the requisite marketable hip-hop soundtrack adding up to a fun genre package.
  24. Dopamine
    A dweeby and unenchanting concoction as romantic comedies go, Mark Decena's debut feature also juggles enough storylines to fill five or six movies in barely 80 minutes of screen time, ending up with a whole distinctly less than the sum of its parts.
  25. The Scoundrel's Wife
    A bland gumbo of wartime intrigue and home-front soap opera in the bayou country of Louisiana.
  26. Manna from Heaven
    This family affair is a squeaky-clean cable-ready comedy, unabashedly retro fluff.
  27. The Emperor's Club
    A rather stodgily directed pic by Michael Hoffman which extols the virtues of Greek and Roman thinking in the guise of Kevin Kline's classics teacher.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
    A no-frills, workmanlike picture.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Field of Dreams
    In spite of a script hobbled with cloying aphorisms and shameless sentimentality, Field of Dreams sustains a dreamy mood in which the idea of baseball is distilled to its purest essence.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Good Boy!
    Passable kiddy fare that, although it strenuously underscores its message of friendship and loyalty, doesn't revitalize the genre.
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