Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. Thirteen
    Deliberately unvarnished shock piece designed to give pause to anyone with a daughter approaching teenhood.
  2. Catching Out
    Rambles into unexpected places, some more interesting than others, but it stays on track long enough to take auds somewhere special.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uptown Girls
    Light, occasionally charming and reasonably well-crafted.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Passionada
    A lovely, albeit imperfect fable marked by strong performances and infused with glorious bursts of soulful fado folk music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Johnny Guitar (re-release)
    Love, hate and violence, with little sympathy for the characters, is stirred up during the overlong film.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freddy vs. Jason
    The basic formula of iconic supernatural beings slaughtering plucky teenagers continues with even more graphic violence.
  7. American Splendor
    Sad, tender, wise and beautiful film... It's a profound tribute to lives lived on the fringes of society -- to the introspective loners who are the most observant chroniclers of our times.
  8. Open Range
    An intensely scenic, refreshingly humanistic oater that dares to be sincere and open-hearted.
  9. Grind
    A textbook example of the charm-free ephemera dumped by studios during the waning days of summer.
  10. OT: Our Town
    The evolving drama of the amateur, crisis-strewn production creates its own tensions, internal structure and time frame. Pic constantly surprises.
  11. Le divorce
    This supposed comedy of manners about Americans in Paris feels artificial at every turn, its characters so devoid of backstory and nuance their behavior often makes little sense.
  12. The Princess Blade
    A martial arts fantasy in modern dress, but set in an unidentified country and era, The Princess Blade is a tough toasted sandwich with a soft filling.
  13. Step Into Liquid
    An awe-inspiring survey of global surf culture, with the power to crush the post-"Gidget" decades of Hollywood stereotyping of surfers and surfing.
  14. S.W.A.T.
    Coming in the wake of the physically astonishing "Bad Boys 2," S.W.A.T. seems square.
  15. Seaside
    The whole endeavor pleases with its wealth of tiny observations that add up to an affecting whole.
  16. Freaky Friday
    Genuinely clever switched-identities romp.
  17. Zero Day
    Consistently riveting. Anything but sensationalistic, pic powerfully illuminates the banality of evil, as realistically ordinary kids (played brilliantly by non-professional high schoolers) prepare to wreak havoc.
  18. And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen...
    A good-looking but slim confection that's short on the multi-characterisation and sense of entwined destinies that mark the great Lelouch sagas.
  19. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    Director Alan Rudolph achieves fresh as well as humorous insights into family life and strategies for keeping a damaged relationship from expiring. But a tiresome final act proves trying.
  20. Enemies of Laughter
    Indie comedy about an unsuccessful playwright who very nearly talks himself out of his last best chance for happiness recalls the early work of Woody Allen. But pic stands on its own merits as witty and well-observed grown-up fare.
  21. The Magdalene Sisters
    Mullan's increased maturity as a director is evident in his skill at manipulating light and dark dramatic tones, and shifting between moods of anger and plaintive melancholy.
  22. American Wedding
    The funny stuff continues for a quite satisfying conclusion during the wedding prep and ceremonies, which Stifler single-handedly transforms into his own personal gross-out comedy masterpiece.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gigli
    Arrives carrying more baggage than a Greyhound bus, which may distract moviegoers from what is a silly but still an enjoyably written and performed romantic comedy.
  24. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    Jolie is even hotter, faster and more commanding than last time around as the fearless heiress/adventuress, plus a little more human. The less welcome news is that most of the same shortcomings that cramped the first installment are still dogging the sequel, which delivers on action but dawdles through downtime.
  25. Mondays in the Sun
    A tough-but-tender movie driven by perfectly modulated performances, an accomplished script and naturalistic dialogue, all at the service of an oft-told message about overcoming circumstances.
  26. Buffalo Soldiers
    Had the young Jack Nicholson played such a character during the height of the Vietnam War, it would have been easy to go along for the ride. But skilled as Phoenix is at pulling off the individual scenes of Elwood's shenanigans, the actor doesn't come across as embodying rebellion to the marrow of his bones, which renders his scams arbitrary and disagreeably irresponsible.
  27. Hotel
    Though Hotel has brilliant moments, and an energetic first half, it falls away badly in the later stages.
  28. Seabiscuit
    Respectable when it should be thrilling, honorable when it should be rough and ready.
  29. Lucía, Lucía
    In a brilliant and precise reversal of Hollywood's current casting game of matching older male stars with younger female starlets, Roth takes hold of the mature end of a love affair with the ultra-handsome Becker and steers a course of vivid sexual and emotional power.
  30. Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
    It's hard to dislike a movie this light-hearted, but there's something terribly ephemeral about it as well; it's a film of complete weightlessness.
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