Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. In America
    Warm and borderline sentimental...also brimming with true and privileged moments, as well as an optimism in the face of tough circumstances that serves as a corrective to some of the more fashionably grim modern accounts of similar stories.
  2. Bad Santa
    First-rate talent and a uniquely dyspeptic mood separate this effort from more routine, populist stabs at tasteless yukkage.
  3. El bonaerense
    Not exactly a police corruption thriller, the film is more a study of innocence betrayed, though its insights into Argentine law enforcement are pretty scary.
  4. Blindness
    The ability not to see the obvious in both a literal and a metaphoric sense imbues the indie feature Blindness with dramatic potency.
  5. El leyton
    Despite its crude, willfully naive style, this comedy of transgression, judgment and revenge becomes steadily more appealing as it progresses.
  6. The Big Empty
    Hobbled by uninspired stabs at cleverness and surreal narrative curlicues, The Big Empty goes nowhere, replete with a question mark of an ending that isn't worth answering.
  7. Blue Gate Crossing
    High on charm but extremely low on content, Blue Gate Crossing is a half-hour short stretched to feature length.
  8. 21 Grams
    Ambitiously structured in non-chronological fragments that form a fascinating puzzle, this raw drama about grief, guilt and redemption becomes ultimately overextended and overwrought in its final stretch.
  9. Gothika
    Hampered by thinly developed characters and pedestrian plotting.
  10. The Barbarian Invasions
    A full-bodied, funny and gloriously unpretentious ode to family, friendship and the meaning of life, The Barbarian Invasions is solidly entertaining, sharply written and genuinely touching.
  11. The Cat in the Hat
    Attractively designed, energetically performed and, above all, blessedly concise, this adaptation of one of the most popular American kids' books of all time walks the safe side of surrealism with its fur-flying shenanigans. The younger the viewers, the better reactions are bound to be.
  12. Acts of Worship
    An earnest drama that's never quite as raw or moving as it means to be.
  13. Mail Order Bride
    Dismally unfunny cross-cultural farce posits stupidity as the universal language.
  14. The Missing
    Ron Howard has never before made a picture this raw and alive. At the same time, this tale of the desperate pursuit of the kidnappers of young women makes for a fundamentally grim and unpleasant experience.
  15. Ticket to Jerusalem
    Attempts to meld reality and artifice but to uninspiring results.
  16. The Singing Forest
    Provides scant entertainment value, intentional or otherwise.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One from the Heart (re-release)
    A hybrid musical romantic fantasy, lavishing giddy heights of visual imagination and technical brilliance onto a wafer-thin story of true love turned sour, then sweet. (review of original release)
  18. The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John
    Dramatically powerful, surprising in its strong narrative differences from previous cinematic tellings of "the greatest story" and bold in the extent to which it presents Jesus as a confrontational and threatening figure in the Judean context of the time.
  19. Tupac: Resurrection
    Lazin has without question skillfully assembled an entertaining, strongly narrative nonfiction package.
  20. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
    A not-inventive-enough romp that belches out gags at a rapid-fire clip but connects so sporadically as to leave the audience enervated but only sparingly entertained.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Vitelloni [re-release]
    Federico Fellini, long a scripter, in his second feature film satirizes the 'wastrels', the do-nothing sons of middle-class Italian provincials whose life ranges from schoolroom to poolroom.
  22. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    Rare proof that a gigantic production in contemporary Hollywood can possess a distinctive personality and its own approach to storytelling, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World proves as bracing as a stiff wind on the open sea.
  23. Anything But Love
    A low-budget musical so steeped in nostalgia that accusing it of being too old-fashioned is like accusing "Gone With the Wind" of being too Southern, (Standard Time-as this film was once titled) wears its heart, intentions and limitations on its sleeve.
  24. Hukkle
    A true original…Beautifully shot, full of droll humor and at 77 minutes never overstaying its welcome.
  25. A House on a Hill
    Pic's air of connoisseurist homage overwhelms a haphazard screenplay and characters who are hard to warm up to.
  26. Mango Yellow
    Like characters out of some Carnival hell, a macho butcher and his born-again wife, a forlorn barmaid, a sinister sadist and the gay manager of a flophouse called the Hotel Texas run in and out of each other's lives in a film as sloppy, sluttish, scruffy and vital as they are.
  27. My Architect
    This fascinating portrait of an eccentric visionary and his chaotic triple family life is an accomplished, enormously satisfying non-fiction work.
  28. Martin & Orloff
    Extending skit comedy into full-length form is a tricky and, despite lots of snappy acerbic wordplay and inspired zany moments, pic works only intermittently.
  29. In My Skin
    Delves far more deeply into grisly physical manifestation than psychological motivation, making it seem something of an actorish vanity piece. But the drama is directed with arresting spareness and control.
  30. Love Forbidden
    Torpid, academic vanity project for helmer-thesp Rodolphe Marconi.
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