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. A memorable portrait of an unbearable personality.
  2. Fails to stir the emotions despite its heavily melodramatic drive.
  3. An exquisite reflection on personal bereavement.
  4. Builds steadily through a series of masterfully orchestrated modulations to a final act without shattering revelations or lofty dramatic peaks but with a quiet, formidable power.
  5. An almost plotless effort that features charismatic stars and plentiful scenes of finely choreographed mayhem.
  6. Virtually bursts with visual goodies, and writer-director Stephen Sommers scarcely allows the actors, or the audience, a moment to take a breath during the nonstop action of the final hour.
  7. A disappointingly mild re-creation of true events.
  8. In its overwhelmingly artificial depiction of the street gangs that ruled Brooklyn's mean streets in the 1950s, Deuces Wild draws from a phony deck.
  9. An ultimately moving drama about a displaced people. But its emotional kick is muffled by long-windedness, sentimental overkill and an overpopulated character gallery.
  10. Chalk it up as a middling B-pic that, with a bit more wit and style, could have been at least a cult item.
  11. Feels like a film from several years ago, one of the many made in the wake of "Pulp Fiction" that tried and failed to be as clever as its progenitor.
  12. Director Renny Harlin has unfortunately adopted a let's-try-anything attitude that translates into a chaotic and unattractive visual style.
  13. A deliberately paced literary film that takes too long to build narrative momentum and explore its central dramatic conflicts.
  14. A lot of talent on both sides of the camera operating in low gear.
  15. A smoothly made period romancer that's elevated by strong playing from its whole cast, led by John Turturro and Emily Watson as the starstruck lovers.
  16. The lowdown on The Low Down: charm 8, content 2.
  17. Amiable rather than genuinely funny.
  18. One of the most brutally awful comedies ever to emerge from a major studio.
  19. A fairly sexy, serious-minded drama hobbled by its lack of real conceptual ambition.
  20. Oblique and impenetrable under its glossy surface.
  21. The happiest marriage yet of the disparate propagandistic and narrative influences inherent in the subgenre of "religious" cinema.
  22. So fractured and so awkwardly staged that end result is an uninvolving film that’s dramatically inert and artistically shapeless.
  23. Has shown its true colors as less a serious religious-themed film than a moth-eaten tapestry of foreign intrigue and badly miscast international stars.
  24. Both fascinates and horrifies with its bold assertions about what it means to be a woman under a cruel, institutionalized patriarchy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Misses its mark, failing to capitalize on the staccato rhythms and sardonic wit of Bridget's inner life.
  25. Sensationally exuberant, imaginatively crafted and intoxicatingly clever.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uneven but generally well-acted.
  26. The director has managed the difficult feat of making a nonlinear film that contains a handful of almost unbearably suspenseful sequences, each one undercut by bizarre black humor.
  27. Takes a prominent place along with "Tomcats," "Say It Isn't So," "Saving Silverman" and "Get Over It" on the list of reasons why raucous teen farce is headed six feet under.
  28. A one-joke comedy that is good for more than a few good laughs.

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