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. CHIPS
    Shepard just sprinkles overstated banter onto a generic plot and bits of pedal-to-the-metal action, as if he was serving the action-comedy gods by sticking the usual ingredients in a blender and pushing “puree.”
  2. Kalamity
    An object lesson in overconfidence and underdevelopment, almost as unbalanced as its central psychotic.
  3. Immigration Tango
    Though the actors don't flesh out or particularly fit their roles, they seem perfectly at ease with them and with each other.
  4. Maladies
    It’s hard for the audience to invest in a protagonist this solipsistic.
  5. Winchester
    Winchester is the supernatural-schlock version of a liberal think-tank paper.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Cannonball Run
    Cross-country race of the title comes off as almost entirely incidental to the star turns. Overall effect is akin to watching the troupe take a vacation.
  7. The Divide
    Plodding and repetitive in its efforts to maintain pressure-cooker intensity, The Divide resembles nothing so much as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode as it brings a sci-fi twist to a familiar scenario about stressed characters who bring out the worst in each other while trapped in close quarters.
  8. Steel
    Writer-director Kenneth Johnson provides a tinny story and a leaden pace for his tarnished titan. There’s a coziness and simplicity to the production that would be better served on TV. Cinema-size, it comes off as corny, antiquated and slightly cheesy.
  9. Pandorum
    Special effects are none too convincing, while sound effects are of the cheaply jolting variety favored by producer Paul W.S. Anderson in his films as director ("Resident Evil," "Event Horizon"). Other tech credits are, like the pic as a whole, lazily derivative.
  10. The Big Wedding
    The film isn’t so much funny as it is merely amusing — a laundry list of inappropriate and potentially embarrassing moments that strive mightily, but never quite manage to land the laugh.
  11. Dirty Deeds
    A dispiritingly lazy high school comedy.
  12. The Hitcher
    In the absence of actors with the tremendous presence of Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, picture loses its raison d'etre. Yet, directed by video helmer Dave Meyers with a certain fastidious distance from its plentiful gore, picture is also insufficiently over-the-top or corny to incite gleeful audience feedback.
  13. Drop Dead Gorgeous
    A relatively pain-free, if brain-free, diversion.
  14. Pokémon: The Movie 2000
    A much more intense action vehicle for hero Ash Ketchum and his band of pocket monster trainers than its leaden, sometimes claustrophobic predecessor.
  15. Happily N'Ever After
    Colorful, crowd-pleasing toon.
  16. 90 Minutes in Heaven
    Christensen underplays throughout 90 Minutes in Heaven, even in scenes when Piper isn’t operating under the influence of painkillers, and his earnestness often comes off as monotonous. Still, he generates interest and sympathy, almost in spite of himself, and Bosworth lends capable support as a loyal spouse.
  17. Once Upon a Time in Venice
    What scant charms this direct-to-video-style Nineties throwback has belong mostly to Willis.
  18. The Haunting of Molly Hartley
    This softcore thriller runs strictly by the numbers.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ernest Rides Again
    The fifth in the series of slapstick comedies about Ernest P. Worrell will please his fans but is unlikely to convince anyone else as to it merits.
  20. Fireproof
    Cameron is genuinely compelling as Caleb.
  21. Lost in Florence
    Bland even for the armchair traveler, “Lost” is as inoffensive as a picture-souvenir booklet, and equally unmemorable.
  22. The Bag Man
    It’s only the Brazilian-born Da Costa who seems to be trying to create a real character.
  23. House on Haunted Hill
    Still nothing but a gussied-up B movie.
  24. When I'm a Moth
    Timlin bears a good-enough resemblance, and gives as much of a rounded performance as she can. But this conception provides no insight into any real HRC, past or present, and seems trite even as a fictionalized act of hostility toward whatever she represents to the filmmakers. Which is, in a word, murky.
  25. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    Swan is more of a doodle than a fully formed idea, though not necessarily less enjoyable for it, since it was clearly intended to be an undisciplined, anything-goes kinda story.
  26. Atlas Shrugged: Part I
    Part one of a trilogy that may never see completion, this hasty, low-budget adaptation would have Ayn Rand spinning in her grave, considering how it violates the author's philosophy by allowing opportunists to exploit another's creative achievement -- in this case, hers.
  27. Season of the Witch
    Both overblown and undercooked, Season of the Witch is a fine example of a film that would've been great fun if only its creators had a sense of humor about the wild brew of absurdity they had percolating.
  28. When the Bough Breaks
    The presence of a predominantly African-American cast arguably is the only distinguishing characteristic of this by-the-numbers thriller.
  29. Barry Munday
    Uneven but modestly diverting.
  30. Fifty Shades of Black
    At a minimum, a parody should be funnier than the film it’s sending up, but Fifty Shades of Black, a quick-and-dirty riff on last year’s S&M romance “Fifty Shades of Grey,” falls a laugh or two short of even that low standard.
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