Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. Major Payne
    It’s relatively foolproof light entertainment, undone only when it strays too far into the absurd or wears the mantle of Wayans’ comedy persona.
  2. Street Fighter
    Avid users of the videogame and Van Damme’s loyal fans may embrace the film out of curiosity, but this uninvolving movie will fail to achieve the results of the star’s last outings.
  3. Festival of Lights
    Complex story twists unfold to confusing effect, while characters angrily toss cliches at one another and revelations multiply rather than resolve murky plot developments.
  4. Get Hard
    Whatever one makes of Get Hard’s contribution to our ongoing national debate about race, class and sexuality, there’s no denying that too much of it simply feels cheap, flailing and tired.
  5. Brain on Fire
    This embarrassingly earnest film — produced by Charlize Theron — argues for the importance of doctors going the extra mile, when textbook diagnoses won’t do.
  6. Ghost in the Machine
    It’s an effective, if predictable paranoid fantasy. The film’s social statement may be hopelessly muddy, but its adroit sense of fun and thrills cannot be discounted.
  7. Law Abiding Citizen
    True torture-porn aficionados will be disappointed, as editor Tariq Anwar cuts away right before blade meets flesh -- a move that feels a tad, well, gutless under the circumstances. But elsewhere, "Citizen" proves startlingly graphic, even by R-rated standards.
  8. Ghosted
    The movie is a romantic action comedy that starts off light and breezy but turns, before you know it, into a dead-weight spectacle of wretched excess.
  9. Russian Doll
    A romantic comedy that treads familiar "Green Card" terrain with considerable charm if no great style or originality.
  10. Demolition Man
    A noisy, soulless, self-conscious pastiche that mixes elements of sci-fi, action-adventure and romance, then pours on a layer of comedy replete with Hollywood in-jokes.
    • Variety
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Private Lessons
    Dan Greenburg’s script from his own novel [philly] is very effective in presenting an innocent youth’s point-of-view confronted with the sexual stimuli that pervade modern society. Inability to flesh out this central notion into a feature-length screenplay is a pity, but Private Lessons should satisfy general audiences with its diversions of frequent nudity, softcore sex, dominant rock music score and gags.
  12. Glenrothan
    It’s unfortunate that the film itself is more like a bottom-shelf blend: easily drinkable, highly forgettable, bland. Worse still, it won’t get you even mildly buzzed.
  13. Friday the 13th
    As in his "Chainsaw" remake, Nispel's scare tactics amount to little more than carefully timed cattle-prod shocks, aided by high-volume speaker blasts that were beyond the budgetary reach of the early '80s films.
  14. Beyond the Reach
    A preposterously bad, grade-Z adventure yarn.
  15. Celtic Pride
    Not quite a three-pointer, but definitely more than an airball, "Celtic Pride" is an uneven but largely likable basketball-themed comedy that should lay up decent B.O. numbers and perform even better in the homevid arena.
  16. Vanguard
    This action spectacular seems hellbent on containing every possible marketable genre element, with no concern for whether they cohere or cancel one another out.
  17. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
    The picture is still much too rickety, slapdash and surprisingly dull to qualify as a good barrel-bottom pleasure.
  18. Thunder Force
    In general le cinéma de Falcone is not a pretty (or hilarious) thing. Thunder Force is, at best, more a light chuckler than a laugher.
  19. Looking for Palladin
    Amiable but uneven.
  20. Mother's Day
    Undistinguished apart from Rebecca De Mornay's performance as an unhinged mama.
  21. Year One
    Lacks seismic guffaws but elicits many mild smiles.
  22. Motherhood
    Though pregnant with possibility, Motherhood fails to deliver.
  23. Fireflies in the Garden
    Clumsy melodrama, which looks and sounds no better than an average made-for-cabler.
  24. Red One
    The villains are shape-shifters, but the key thing about “Red One” is that the whole movie is a shape-shifter: arduous action jape, low-kitsch Christmas fairy tale, buddy movie, family-reconciliation movie — every quadrant and demo must be served.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
    A no-frills, workmanlike picture.
  26. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    Sequel is louder and more elaborate (and even slightly longer) than predecessor, but the law of diminishing returns has caught up with this franchise.
  27. The Ledge
    There's a great deal of on-the-nose talk here about faith, rationality, sin and so forth. But Chapman's sincerity is undercut by the crudely melodramatic explanations of why his principals believe as they do.
  28. Doom
    It's really not all that bad. Ultra-derivative bigscreen transplant of one of the most successful (and controversial) games ever made plays like a mutant cross between a biotech thriller and a zombie movie, with all the alien autopsies, blood-gushing protuberances and meaningless scientific jargon that come with the territory.
  29. Mercy
    The movie turns out to be a notch or two better than you expect.
  30. The Smurfs 2
    The genially goofy shenanigans, incredibly corny punchlines and Hank Azaria’s go-for-broke performance as the incompetent wizard Gargamel are very much the same ― an entirely welcome thing in a summer movie season full of so much apocalyptic Sturm und Drang.
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