Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. In Good Company
    An often lively comedy-drama that lands some nice jabs at the mega-corp ethos, In Good Company makes for pretty good company until going soft when it counts.
  2. Fat Albert
    fFat-footed and ham-handed in its attempt to reconstitute a popular '70s TV cartoon show as a full-length, family-skewing feature.
  3. Darkness
    Though pic boasts decent perfs, potent atmospherics and eye-catching visuals, both psychology and plot are bargain-basement.
  4. The Woodsman
    A stunningly crafted work from first-time feature director Nicole Kassell.
  5. The Keys to the House
    Radiates a warm humanity and uplifts the spirit. Subtle rather than sentimental, it lacks easy tears though attentive viewers will find it lacerating enough.
  6. In the Realms of the Unreal
    Documentarian Jessica Yu employs everything from animation and voiceover thesping to archival documents and eyewitness accounts while examining Henry Darger, a self-taught artist who has been posthumously lionized as a visionary genius.
  7. The Phantom of the Opera
    Sumptuous pic version, which evokes the original show while working as a movie in its own right, is lit by a radiant, vocally lustrous perf by teenaged Emmy Rossum.
  8. Meet the Fockers
    Te laughs "Fockers" generates are the type you feel embarrassed about almost immediately afterward.
  9. Hotel Rwanda
    The genocide of some one million Rwandan Tutsis by their Hutu neighbors remains a disgraceful and too-little-known episode in recent world history. Alas, Terry George's ineffectual Hotel Rwanda only partly rectifies that problem, taking what ought to have been a complex, powerful inquiry and simplifying it to a story about the resilience of the human spirit.
  10. Imaginary Heroes
    The film sways awkwardly back and forth between prickly humor and pathos, rarely ringing true in either register.
  11. Open My Heart
    Has a perverse fascination, despite some technical clumsiness and stiff thesping.
  12. Beyond the Sea
    It's raffish, flashy, energetic, entertaining and not very deep.
  13. Flight of the Phoenix
    Shows both how far Hollywood's tech departments have advanced in 40 years and how shallow the pool of solid action thesps has become.
  14. The Sea Inside
    A dramatic triumph.
  15. Spanglish
    Short on real drama and incident and long on tedium.
  16. The Aviator
    An enormously entertaining slice of biographical drama, The Aviator flies like one of Howard Hughes' record-setting speed airplanes.
  17. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
    Snicket's macabre tale of three newly orphaned siblings has been lavishly visualized. But for all its elaborate splendor, production pic lacks the feeling and imagination that have distinguished the best recent kidpics.
  18. Million Dollar Baby
    Staying at the top of his game when most of his contemporaries have long since hung up their gloves, Clint Eastwood delivers another knockout punch with Million Dollar Baby.
  19. Santa Smokes
    A meandering, semi-improvised tale of a terminal Gotham loser who works as Santa when he bombs as an actor.
  20. A Talking Picture
    A film destined to divide Manoel de Oliveira's fans but also to win him new ones, A Talking Picture is his simplest, most linear story in memory.
  21. Dolls
    Despite an excessively meandering final act, the drama's three intertwined stories have a cumulative impact, their affecting sadness matched by meticulously composed visual poetry.
  22. Ocean's Twelve
    This smooth inside job benefits from heightened bonhomie among the players, fab Euro locations and a diminished obligation to stick to the heist genre boilerplate.
  23. A Tale of Two Sisters
    It manages to suspend disbelief without over-taxing the viewer's patience, and boasts at least one terrific performance, by actress Yeom Jeong-ah as a scary stepmom.
  24. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    The effect is often soporific.
  25. Freeze Frame
    Signals a talented newcomer in writer-director John Simpson and boasts a gripping central performance from popular British comedian Lee Evans.
  26. Bandido
    The filmmakers seem split between doing it straight and gleefully ripping up the genre, and never make up their minds.
  27. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Even if the film itself is relatively conventional, its exposure of a squalid city's most benighted neighborhood and its introduction of hope into nearly hopeless lives give it strong human interest value.
  28. Blade: Trinity
    Won't linger in the memory long, but gives pretty good action eye-candy while it's going.
  29. House of Flying Daggers
    The tangled tale of love and disguise is awesome in its action sequences but doesn't touch the heart to the same degree.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    After Midnight
    Ferrario has fun with antique footage and exhibits from the museum, but there's a lack of urgency or sufficient charm to engage.
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