Variety's Scores

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For 17,825 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: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
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  1. Hotel Room
    Spanish writer-director Cesc Gay and Argentine co-director Daniel Gimelberg cook up one or two agreeably tart episodes in this uneven pic, but ultimately, it plays like "Four Rooms" without a budget.
  2. Camera Obscura
    Unable to blend artfilm with psychological thriller, writer-director Hamlet Sarkissian makes something opaque indeed out of Camera Obscura.
  3. Man of the Year
    Ensemble proves improvisationally capable, but film overall is rather conventional, a Hollywood idea of an experimental film presented with a heavy serving of showbiz-type cynicism.
  4. Time Changer
    There is something sweetly naive about pic's astonished contention that this is because morals were taught in a nonreligious context. But it's not a compelling argument for the Apocalypse.
  5. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
    Recycles familiar adventure and cartoon devices with minimal wit and flair, and the lack of imagination will seem all the more dramatic to audiences in comparison to the winningly sophisticated "Shrek."
  6. Pinocchio
    The spirit of the late Federico Fellini -- with whom Benigni talked of doing the project together -- surfaces repeatedly. But that spirit fails to enliven a film substantially lacking in personality, energy, magic and humor.
  7. Love in the Time of Money
    This kind of episodic chain of interlocking encounters has become a formulaic favorite in American indie cinema, and Mattei's take on the genre is narrow and schematic.
  8. Charlotte Gray
    A bland and dour screen version of Sebastian Faulks' highly engrossing bestseller.
  9. The Children of the Century
    A generally old-fashioned costumer that runs out of gas even faster than does the tempestuous love affair between writer George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset that it so devotedly recounts.
  10. Jet Lag
    Stays resolutely grounded thanks to miscasting of Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno as the leads and a script that contrarily breaks every rule of the genre.
  11. Godzilla 2000
    A classically low-tech monster mash.
  12. Teknolust
    While it's stylishly designed and shot in startling colors on digital high-definition cameras, this feels like yesterday's futuristic news, and it's more likely to surface as a video/DVD curiosity than a theatrical draw.
  13. Teddy Bears' Picnic
    Despite its intelligence and a great, funny concept for a movie, this "Picnic" never gets past the appetizers; pic lacks the development needed for a full-length feature and, following a hilarious opening sequence, it becomes tiresomely one-note.
  14. Little Secrets
    What you end up with are a bunch of kids acting not like kids, but how adults who've lost all sense of what it was like to be a kid think kids behave.
  15. Suspended Animation
    A psychological drama cum genteel shocker that's long on ambition and short on delivery.
  16. Riding in Cars with Boys
    The result under Penny Marshall's direction is a film with genuinely serious intentions that falls considerably short of its intentions.
  17. All About the Benjamins
    Boilerplate crime comedy.
  18. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    Saddled with a sentimentally "sincere" subject and lacking the stylistic and humorous cachet of the recent computer-animated smashes.
  19. Hard Ball
    There's no cork inside Hardball, but there's more than enough corn. Everything about the movie is geared for maximum uplifting and tear-jerking effect, and seems designed, in the end, to question the old saw that there's no crying in baseball.
  20. Kill by Inches
    The atmosphere is properly bizarre and in moments even scary, but there's no involving story or characters to sustain the feature-length narrative.
  21. The Middle of the World
    Debuting helmer Vicente Amorim provides a determined forward movement, which, while lacking in cultural explanation, gives the saga uplift and punch.
  22. Like Mike
    The court action contains only a fraction of the hoops energy one would expect from a pic co-produced by NBA Entertainment -- and film suffers from the conspicuous absence of the title's Michael Jordan.
  23. Head of State
    So beneath the considerable talents of its star, Chris Rock, it's dismaying to note Rock is also the movie's director, producer and co-scenarist. Not unlike Richard Pryor a generation ago, Rock has yet to land a movie vehicle that captures the sparky energy and subversive bent of his excellent stand-up performances.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Head Over Heels
    A mildly amusing trifle.
  25. Kedma
    A largely dull history lesson…stripped of any backgrounding, peopled with archetypes rather than fully-drawn characters, and features self-consciously arty direction that gets in the way of story-telling.
  26. Enough
    The latest model in the recent spate of underwhelming female star vehicles, Enough, a thriller detailing how a good wife gets back at an evil, possessive husband, is never provocative enough to generate strong emotional response.
  27. Along Came a Spider
    Weaves a humdrum plot that's never ahead of the audience until three-quarters through.
  28. 15 Minutes
    A thriller more contrived than it is exciting.
  29. My Baby's Daddy
    Isn't an embarrassment. Rather, it's an acceptably executed, thoroughly routine time-killer.
  30. Frankie and Johnny Are Married
    Beyond the participants' friends and co-workers, it's hard to imagine an audience for this professionally packaged exercise in navel gazing.
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