Variety's Scores

For 17,777 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:
17777 movie reviews
  1. Little more than a mall movie designed to kill time.
  2. Attempts to delve beneath the surface of Hollywood's rampant narcissism and fascination with technology, but ultimately feels like just one more in the long line of films this year about the business of making movies.
  3. This immaculately made first feature from noted musicvid and commercials director Mark Romanek provides Robin Williams with one of his creepiest, atypical roles, and the comic star responds with an unusually restrained performance that is, in the end, quite moving.
  4. Pleasantly watchable.
  5. Intense but inscrutable tale involving a woman's gradual remembrance of a long-suppressed trauma.
  6. LaBute has had middling success at best, having come up with a passably engaging time-jumping romantic melodrama that at least grapples seriously with one of the novel's most potent themes.
  7. The proper mix is never found. Ill-conceived and expensive project that winds up looking like a bunch of talented thesps slumming it.
  8. A charming relationships comedy about food, gourmet cooking and emotionally chilling out. Anchored by a career-best performance from German thesp Martina Gedeck.
  9. All the trappings of an energetic, extreme-sports adventure, but ends up more of a creaky "Pretty Woman" retread, with the emphasis on self-empowering schmaltz and with the big-wave surfing that gives pic its title seemingly an afterthought.
  10. An unexpected departure off the map, flinging together elements of Alpine musical, ghoulish Jan Svankmajer-style claymation and a family portrait so hokey it makes the Brady Bunch look hip.
  11. Clearly inspired by, though not in the same dramatic league as, "Schindler's List," pic is marred by uneven perfs and lacks the intensity.
  12. Elusive and elliptical as it is, this is one of the most accessible films in Oliveira's recent repetoire.
  13. Modest but engaging.
  14. A repetitious, borderline-silly vanity project.
  15. An enjoyable absurdist comedy.
  16. xXx
    A brawny commercial attraction strategically tapping into the auds for extreme sports, spy pix, thrill rides, popcorn actioners and anyone looking to see Diesel kick butt, blow stuff up and/or take his shirt off.
  17. A rough, gritty, often scabrously humorous tribute.
  18. The 72-year-old star, who is centerscreen throughout, makes this rather far-fetched yarn go down much more easily than it otherwise might have.
  19. The moments of inspired originality are all too infrequent. There's enough eye candy and marvels on screen, however.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Much of the joy of the film is to be found in the way Jarman and his team recreate the look and color of the original paintings.
  20. This one comes up short in terms of visual flair. But it delivers amusingly observed characters, consistent laughs underscored by the poignancy of unfulfilled existences and winning performances from a terrific cast captained by Jennifer Aniston.
  21. By turns defiant and apologetic, gleefully raunchy and anxiously defensive.
  22. Arid, self-consciously arty and emotionally uninvolving.
  23. Craftily combining elements that speak directly to three different generations, this accomplished ensemble piece is shaping up to be the surprise homegrown hit of the season.
  24. Vehicle for Dana Carvey as a chameleonic crime-fighting imbecile is noisy, colorful and fart-gag-filled enough to amuse undiscriminating auds under the age of 10.
  25. All smoke and mirrors. With his third straight excursion into the supernatural, M. Night Shyamalan has begun revealing the hand that works his spooky tricks so much that the lack of substance is plainly seen.
  26. Takes the viewer deep into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the powerful immediacy of raw images, some of them very hard to look at.
  27. A treat, a delicious blend of perversity, playfulness and deadly passion concealed beneath the tranquil, moneyed surface of the Swiss bougeoisie.
  28. Opulently produced, fittingly enough, and quite entertaining as a surface ride through the up, down and somewhat up again life of one of the New Hollywood's most colorful characters.
  29. Might spark controversy in mainland China, not only because it deals with a homosexual relationship between a member of the Chinese establishment and a peasant, but also because it touches on events such as the 1989 massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. However, pic is unlikely to raise eyebrows anywhere else.

Top Trailers