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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  1. Snake Eyes
    Cage supplies beaucoup energy, but his highly compromised hustler cop character provides little else in which he can invest his talent. Sinise wears an increasingly grim demeanor in a part that comes to make no sense, and John Heard's role as a local power broker gets lost in the shuffle.
  2. Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi
    Sweet if slight Israeli comedy.
  3. Blue Hill Avenue
    Writer-director Craig Ross Jr. offers both rigorously effective dramatic sections and terribly pedantic and melodramatic strokes of overkill.
  4. Reconstruction
    Valiant attempt to innovate in the well-trod realm of Boy Meets Girl doesn't quite coalesce despite a thoughtful and distinctive visual approach.
  5. Head in the Clouds
    A lively, plush but unconvincing potboiler cobbled from familiar pieces of better films (and TV miniseries).
  6. Swordfish
    A half-absorbing, half-ridiculous techno-thriller that often goes too far in search of audience-rousing effects.
  7. The Yes Men
    Sometimes feels like an extended pilot for a smarty-pants broadcast series in the tradition of Michael Moore's "Awful Truth" and "TV Nation" skeins.
  8. Latter Days
    Falls back on the broad characterizations and stereotypical situations that typified the earliest gay-themed movies, while preaching a familiar (though not entirely ingenuous) message of tolerance.
  9. Mr 3000
    Never generates enough laughs to escape the infield. It doesn't help that this is a sports movie that lacks any suspense or dramatic tension about what transpires on the field, and Mac plays such a self-absorbed jerk through most of the film that rooting interest is minimal.
  10. The Rage in Placid Lake
    Melds an insightful observational style with some rather clunky satire and the resulting mix is uneven at best.
  11. Conspiracy Theory
    A below-par star vehicle for Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, Conspiracy Theory is a sporadically amusing but listless thriller that wears its humorous, romantic and political components like mismatched articles of clothing.
  12. Cecil B. DeMented
    Diverting but uneven.
  13. Down with Love
    Stars Zellweger and McGregor are too knowingly nudge-wink in their performances, too much contrived constructs to become real characters, let alone fuel the romantic comedy engine and make an audience care much whether they end up together.
  14. The Other Side of Heaven
    Rousing, family-friendly item has a big, epic look and state-of-the-art visual effects, which help to make pic -- a high-profile example of the mainstreaming of Christian entertainment.
  15. The Raspberry Reich
    This ostensible spoof of "radical chic" is, like his previous works, at once amusingly outrageous and slightly dull.
  16. Black Hawk Down
    Goes down like stiff medicine, leaving one feeling exhausted relief when it's finally over.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Halloween
    After a promising opening, Halloween becomes just another maniac-on-the-loose suspenser. However, despite the prosaic plot, director John Carpenter has timed the film's gore so that the 93-minute item is packed with enough thrills.
  18. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
    The film lacks the accompanying media spotlight that boosted the Moore release and therefore appears unlikely to reach beyond a liberal audience with an already vehement aversion to Fox News' partisan coverage.
  19. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
    A warm embrace of broadly but humanely sketched characters plus some scrappy casting of rising young stars led by an incandescent Kate Bosworth help overcome the half-realized comedic situations.
  20. Fools Rush In
    In a role that Tom Hanks might have played a decade or so ago, Perry is pretty bland and doesn't provide any hints as to why Alex is so emotionally stymied.
  21. Next Friday
    A few good laughs but few surprises in Next Friday, an amiably unfocused sequel.
  22. The Golden Bowl
    A deliberately paced literary film that takes too long to build narrative momentum and explore its central dramatic conflicts.
  23. Love & Sex
    Valerie Breiman’s exceedingly slick feature is one of those cutesy items in which the characters talk about nothing but relationships and themselves.
  24. Very Bad Things
    Basically a very conventional movie gussied up with a few jaw-dropping moments. Unlike genuinely amoral pics such as "Heathers" or "Shallow Grave," it never seems really comfortable with its characters' actions.
  25. Anna and the King
    Her (Foster's) performance is contained in a schmaltzy, ultra-elaborate, overly long production.
  26. The Dust Factory
    A muddled metaphysical allegory that isn't nearly sunny enough to camouflage its darker undercurrents.
  27. The Big Bounce
    Modestly engaging, albeit instantly forgettable shaggy-dog story only gradually reveals itself as a seriocomic take on standard-issue noir.
  28. Get Over It
    A mildly diverting, largely inoffensive teen laffer that's long on cartoonish high school hijinks but short on dramatic concentration and crucial story details.
  29. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    Sequel is louder and more elaborate (and even slightly longer) than predecessor, but the law of diminishing returns has caught up with this franchise.
  30. P.S.
    Laura Linney’s beautiful performance is most of the story in p.s.
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