Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. School of Rock
    Combined with hilarious physical business and perfectly overearnest delivery of pseudocool lines like, "Let your fingers do the rocking!," he (Black) pretty much single-handedly keeps the formulaic progress funny.
  2. Southlander: Diary of a Desperate Musician
    A slackly paced but modestly diverting trifle, with cameos by recording artists Beck, Beth Orton and Hank Williams III to elevate the hipper-than-thou quotient.
  3. Camera Obscura
    Unable to blend artfilm with psychological thriller, writer-director Hamlet Sarkissian makes something opaque indeed out of Camera Obscura.
  4. Bollywood/Hollywood
    Depressingly parochial.
  5. My Life Without Me
    With a glowing performance by Sarah Polley as the doomed woman, this Spanish-Canadian co-prod, filmed in English, is surprisingly adept at avoiding the worst cliches and most manipulative elements inherent in such a story.
  6. Prey for Rock & Roll
    Emerges as an engaging, upbeat saga of an all-girl band on its way to nowhere in particular. Helmed by ace music supervisor Alex Steyermark and written by punk rocker Cheri Lovedog, pic feels authentic from first frame to last.
  7. Duplex
    Somewhere along the line, the comedy turned from dark and playful to mean-spirited and sophomoric. A waste of the considerable appeal and comic talents of leads Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rundown
    Cements the Rock's status as a contempo action hero with a bigscreen future.
  9. Under the Tuscan Sun
    Lane transforms this seriocomic saga of a devastated American divorcee who impulsively purchases a Tuscan villa, thereby changing her life, into a spellbinding display of emotional transparency.
  10. Bubba Ho-tep
    Mismatched marriage of offbeat character study and unimaginative horror riffs. Most compelling element by far is Bruce Campbell's inspired performance as a nursing home patient who insists he is the real Elvis Presley.
  11. Luther
    Proceeds like a stultifying history pageant rather than a movie with a pulse of its own.
  12. Yossi & Jagger
    It's a very small pic but engagingly played by a fine cast.
  13. Demonlover
    Sure to turn off general viewers due to its emotional inaccessibility, multitude of narrative problems and preoccupation with a torture Web site.
  14. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
    The film is, at times, emotionally riveting -- yet also has an institutional feeling, largely because it attempts to cover too much ground in too little time.
  15. Cold Creek Manor
    A woefully predictable imperiled-yuppie-family-under-siege suspenser that hardly seems worth the attention of its relatively high-profile participants.
  16. Mambo italiano
    The broad comedy is somewhat strained and obvious, and the hyper-real atmosphere encourages the cast to slice the prosciutto a little thickly. But the film's sweet-natured ingenuousness proves reasonably contagious.
  17. In This World
    Makes engrossing viewing for much of the way...but stumbles dramatically in its final leg.
  18. Anything Else
    The younger casting brings a freshness to the material and, with Allen as the weird mentor, there are plenty of laughs, even if the pacing's slow and the running time over-extended.
  19. Blue Hill Avenue
    Writer-director Craig Ross Jr. offers both rigorously effective dramatic sections and terribly pedantic and melodramatic strokes of overkill.
  20. Casa de los babys
    An entirely schematic treatise on maternity and conflicting cultures. A subject perhaps far more suited to documentary treatment, this numbingly earnest effort will be a laborious delivery for IFC.
  21. To Be and to Have
    Any negative stereotypes viewers might harbor about education in rural communities are sent packing by this magnificently lensed and cumulatively touching account from documaker Nicolas Philibert.
  22. Secondhand Lions
    May score higher with parents than the kids they bring in tow. Writer-director Tim McCanlies' ("Dancer, Texas Pop. 81") feel-good celebration of youth and old age enriching each other is carefully leavened with humor.
  23. The Fighting Temptations
    Paper-thin plot serves as a pretext for rousing gospel numbers in The Fighting Temptations, which straddles styles and eras to get everybody's toes tapping.
  24. Underworld
    Takes itself so seriously that it never has fun with its shopworn genre elements.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Year That Trembled
    Fails to generate much excitement, due to the blandness of the characters and some murky storytelling.
  26. Millennium Actress
    Contains some brilliant invention between duller stretches.
  27. Dummy
    At this stage, Pritikin shows considerably more aptitude for writing than for directing, and the exuberant eruptions of humor lead one to suspect he should try for outright comedy next time and forget the sentiment.
  28. Luster
    An ensemble seriocomedy that's initially loose to a fault, but gradually wins one over with its shaggy charm -- and by the close has grown more ambitious, and poignant, than initial reels lead you to expect.
  29. So Close
    Slickly packaged, unashamedly exploitative popcorn movie.
  30. Matchstick Men
    Odd mixture of ultra-sleek visuals, psychological probing, "Paper Moon"-like father-daughter swindling, self-improvement efforts and abrupt tough-guy stuff keeps the picture percolating, even if it seems too artificial to genuinely convince on an emotional or dramatic level.
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