Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Velvet Goldmine
    A constantly imaginative, stylistically lively but dramatically inert chronicle of cultural and sexual rebellion.
  4. 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.
  6. Elizabeth
    Superior historical soap opera that shrewdly sidesteps all the cliches of British costume drama with its bold, often modern approach.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. American History X
    Jolting, superbly acted film.
  12. Life Is Beautiful
    Sluggish, uneven and lacking in rhythm, it nonetheless has enough pathos and winning humor.
  13. Pleasantville
    Ingeniously conceived and impressively executed, Pleasantville is a provocative, complex and surprisingly anti-nostalgic parable.
  14. Apt Pupil
    A creepy, well-acted story of contagious evil, Apt Pupil has more than enough chilling dramatic scenes to rivet the attention but suffers from some hokey contrivances and underlying insufficiencies of motivation.
  15. Orgazmo
    Massively inventive and spiked with perversely wicked humor.
  16. The Cruise
    There is unquestionably enough lively material here to snare one’s attention but, even at just 76 minutes, many will feel that this cruise has gone on plenty long enough.
  17. The Last Days
    A hard-hitting, well-organized documentary grounded in the stories of five Hungarian Jews who lived through the Holocaust.
  18. Happiness
    Baker does an amazingly sensitive job with the ticklish part and is joined in this by Read, who is superlative as his inquisitive young son.
  19. Beloved
    At nearly three hours, however, it rather overstays its welcome, trying the patience even as it sustains intrigue regarding its final revelations.
  20. Practical Magic
    Part comedy, part family drama, part romance, part special-effects mystery-adventure, and not entirely satisfying on any of these levels, this hodgepodge suffers from the conflicting sensibilities of its three credited scripters: Robin Swicord, who has done good work before, Akiva Goldsman, who has not, and Adam Brooks.
  21. Bride of Chucky
    After an eight-year series hiatus, Bride of Chucky emerges with recharged batteries and a mordantly funny edge that's attuned to the dawning millennium. [19 Oct 1998]
    • Variety
  22. Holy Man
    Complex issues of ambition and consumerism taken to televangelic levels aren't truly addressed or resolved but simply tied up in a box with the message that love conquers all.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Celebration
    A propulsively inventive but uneven family comedy-cum-melodrama.
  24. Slam
    The fervent performances by the central duo, real-life poets Williams and Sohn (who wrote their own material), are impeccable, clearly stemming from their deep moral commitment to their work.
  25. Flowers of Shanghai
    Gorgeously mounted, but butt-numbingly slow.
  26. What Dreams May Come
    A heaping serving of metaphysical gobbledygook wrapped in a physically striking package.
  27. A Night at the Roxbury
    The track record of SNL-drawn movies is dire ("It's Pat," "Stuart Saves His Family," "Blues Brothers 2000"), and this one stands just a peg higher, as an amiable, if flyweight, di-version.
  28. Antz
    A dazzling delight.
  29. Clay Pigeons
    Visual flourishes (handsomely lensed by Eric Edwards on Utah locales standing in for Montana) are polished but derivative, with too many time-lapse sky views, reminiscent of Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho."
  30. Ronin
    A pleasurable throwback to the sort of gritty, low-tech international thriller that was a staple of the 1960s.
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