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. Robots
    It's meant as high praise to say that, very early in Robots, the extraordinary starts to seem perfectly ordinary.
  2. The Upside of Anger
    Increasingly exhibits a desire to amuse and distract rather than go deep, which ultimately generates disappointment in light of its announced intentions.
  3. Millions
    Maintains a bankable charm and innocence even when overdrawn on the special effects side.
  4. In My Country
    An unquestionably sincere but dramatically stillborn outing by veteran John Boorman.
  5. Mail Order Wife
    This black comedy on the making of a documentary about mail-order wives finally breaks down under the weight of its twists and turns, but mostly maintains a creepy fascination with its scuzzy characters.
  6. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    Given a lift by its folksy soundtrack of toe-tapping Ceili dance tunes, the film is handsomely produced and engaging enough, but never more than that due to a weak dramatic arc and soft conflicts in Nicholas Adams' script and to John Irvin's functional direction.
  7. Don't Move
    In his second outing as a director, top thesp Sergio Castellitto (also playing the surgeon) takes the viewer on an emotion-filled ride and brings a violently masculine perspective to the story. However, it is Penelope Cruz who gives the film's knockout performance.
  8. Dot the I
    But behind its slick veneer and the glibness of its preposterous premise and dark twists, there's a yawning absence of charm or substance in this London-set love triangle, as well as a lack of chemistry between its three leads.
  9. Off the Map
    Campbell Scott's latest foray behind the camera most excels as a subtly observed study of how the dynamics within a close-knit family can shift over time.
  10. The Buffalo Boy
    Sports a stronger narrative spine than is usual in Vietnamese rural dramas and a less fragile tone in its deployment of landscape and character.
  11. Sheriff
    Equal parts colorful character study and real-world procedural, docu by Daniel Kraus retains interest throughout, even if it delivers just partial insight into the man, job and milieu.
  12. Be Cool
    A staggeringly flat sequel that trades filmdom for the music bizbiz and could hardly be less cool.
  13. The Jacket
    A movie as lacking in personality as its amnesiac protagonist.
  14. The Pacifier
    If auds swallow this odoriferous exercise in calculated career repositioning, they'll swallow anything.
  15. Dear Frankie
    Material that might have turned to standard dysfunctional family treacle in other hands is given stirring poignancy, warmth and emotional insight in Shona Auerbach's assured first feature.
  16. Face
    A well-meaning but schematic drama about three generations of Chinese women in America.
  17. Gunner Palace
    Put together by Tucker and his co-director/editor wife Petra Epperlein without a hint of artifice, docu offers up its sounds and images bluntly, and they are very much sounds and images worth having as part of the record.
  18. Intimate Stories
    Endowed with captivating simplicity, gentle humor, rich humanity and infectious generosity of spirit.
  19. Walk on Water
    Attempts the miraculous but achieves the adequate.
  20. Whisky
    A whimsical piece of deadpan drollery, Whisky plays like Aki Kaurismaki, South American style.
  21. The Best of Youth
    At nearly six hours, pic's extreme length lets Giordana and screenwriters Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli build up a novelistic rhythm, pulling the audience so deeply and forcefully into their story that it becomes like a enveloping dream; when it's over, parting with the characters is truly sweet and sorrowful.
  22. Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating
    This amusingly light (but oh-so-gut-busting) reverie on one man's titanic efforts to rise to the top ranks in the very unofficial sport of competitive scarfing goes down quickly as a good example of documaking on freakish behavior and freakier subcultures.
  23. Cursed
    Except for Eisenberg's superb comic timing and his ability to make the familiar seem interesting, the high school scenes play like "Scream" outtakes.
  24. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    An ungainly hodgepodge of vaudeville-style comedy, turgid soap-operatics, and joyful epiphanies of gospel-flavored uplift.
  25. Man of the House
    More than passably amusing.
  26. Up and Down
    A vibrant, immediate treatise on love and cultural identity in a complex new world of fluid borders and deep suspicions in the stunning new Czech drama Up and Down.
  27. 10 on Ten
    A self-contained master class on cinema.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Other Side of the Street
    A diverting, if unspectacular, Brazilian drama centered on an aging female detective.
  29. Sexual Dependency
    Has more flash than finesse.
  30. Turtles Can Fly
    Ghobadi in this pic displays a complete command of his art as he shifts between -- and even blends -- wrenching tragedy and amusing comedy.
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