Variety's Scores

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For 17,765 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 2.3 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: 9,125 out of 17765
  2. Mixed: 7,004 out of 17765
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17765
17765 movie reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Simple Plan
    The key differences are in emphasis and tone: “Fargo” is deadpan noir; A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton as Mutt and Jeff siblings, is a more robust Midwestern Gothic that owes as much to Poe as Chandler.
  2. Star Trek: Insurrection
    Even though Frakes is back, Star Trek: Insurrection plays less like a stand-alone sci-fi adventure than like an expanded episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shakespeare in Love
    Exquisitely acted, tightly directed and impressively assembled.
  4. Rushmore
    Wickedly funny.
  5. Jack Frost
    Jack Frost is a slickly packaged and engagingly sentimental fantasy-comedy that stands out as one of the season's most pleasant surprises. Pic offers a shrewdly balanced mix of humor, high concept and heart tugging, along with some amusingly impressive special effects.
  6. Little Voice
    A small picture with a big heart.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Psycho
    A faithful-unto-slavish remake of the 1960 Hitchcock classic, pic contains nothing to outrage or offend partisans of the original, yet neither does it stand to add much to their appreciation.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Home Fries
    While plot elements don't add up, film's energy level remains high, and oddball ensemble brings to mind a classic of this type, Jonathan Demme's "Citizens Band."
  9. Very Bad Things
    Basically a very conventional movie gussied up with a few jaw-dropping moments. Unlike genuinely amoral pics such as "Heathers" or "Shallow Grave," it never seems really comfortable with its characters' actions.
  10. A Bug's Life
    Entertaining in a very showbizzy way.
  11. Babe: Pig in the City
    Babe: Pig in the City is tour de force filmmaking that masks its achievement in a good ripping yarn.
  12. Waking Ned Devine
    Bannen and the gawky Kelly, whose screen chemistry is vital to the film's success, make a delightful pair of stumbling shysters, and Jones' script weaves a sizable tapestry of other characters to flesh out the village.
  13. Celebrity
    The spectacle of Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis doing over-the-top Woody Allen impersonations creates a neurotic energy meltdown in Celebrity, a once-over-lightly rehash of mostly stale Allen themes and motifs.
  14. Central Station
    Montenegro carries the film su-perbly with her portrait of gritty strength being worn down to a state of tattered vulnerability, while newcomer de Oliveira, a shoeshine boy who won the role over 1,500 other aspirants, is engagingly natural and happily doesn't beg for viewer sympathy.
  15. The Rugrats Movie
    Aimed squarely at moppets with minuscule attention spans, “The Rugrats Movie” is a fast and frenetic animated feature that should delight young aficionados of the long-running Nickelodeon TV series.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    August 32nd on Earth
    An appealing though ultimately slight drama about a young woman who is thrown into an emotional tizzy after surviving a bad car crash.
  17. Enemy of the State
    Sporadically entertaining, though it lacks the kind of political urgency and emotional resonance so crucial to many similarly themed '70s movies.
  18. Meet Joe Black
    What might have been an effective fantasy if handled with sophistication and insouciance is instead weighed down by ponderous pacing, overstuffed production values and an instance of miscasting.
  19. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
    Purists will find the pic's obviousness disappointing, but there's no question that the film delivers a sufficient shock quotient to satisfy its youthful target audience.
  20. Velvet Goldmine
    A constantly imaginative, stylistically lively but dramatically inert chronicle of cultural and sexual rebellion.
  21. The Siege
    A potentially provocative idea is played out to diminishing returns.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Waterboy
    This yahoos-on-the-bayou farce is neither inventive nor outrageous enough.
  23. Elizabeth
    Superior historical soap opera that shrewdly sidesteps all the cliches of British costume drama with its bold, often modern approach.
  24. Gods and Monsters
    Doesn’t always convince, particularly in the last lap. But it’s an engrossing, unusual, imaginatively executed bit of psychological gamesmanship nonetheless.
  25. Belly
    The film is never boring -- there's no question that filmmaker Hype Williams has the fancy moves -- but the rhythmic, stylistic repetition becomes tedious, and serves to keep the audience removed from the story.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Living Out Loud
    This feminist comedy shot through with fantasies about the travails of newly single womanhood strikes some rich chords, but doesn't quite put together a complete tune.
  27. Vampires
    The pleasures are modest but consistent in John Carpenter's Vampires, a part-Western, part-horror flick that doesn't aim too high but nails the range it occupies.
  28. American History X
    Jolting, superbly acted film.
  29. Life Is Beautiful
    Sluggish, uneven and lacking in rhythm, it nonetheless has enough pathos and winning humor.
  30. Pleasantville
    Ingeniously conceived and impressively executed, Pleasantville is a provocative, complex and surprisingly anti-nostalgic parable.
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