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. Flatliners
    As dull as it gets, Flatliners never sinks all the way into outright fiasco, and there’s enough talent both behind and in front of the camera to keep things on the right side of basic competence. The actors do what they can with the material, and Oplev happens upon a few decent visual ideas.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Jaws 3-D
    The Jaws cycle has reached its nadir with this surprisingly tepid [Arrivision] 3-D version.
  3. Sex and the City 2
    Part of the action occurs in the desert, which inadvertently proves apt, since the oases of enjoyable moments -- and they do exist -- suffer from being spaced too widely in what's otherwise a long, arid trek.
  4. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    But the charm of the film is that it resists turning people into cliches and lets Parker and Grant work their particular magic -- before they get to Wyoming, their performances are as stressed out as their characters, and while it's a dubious conceit that going cowboy is a cure-all, they put the notion across as convincingly as possible.
  5. Crossroads
    Awfully lame bigscreen debut for pop diva Britney Spears.
  6. The Majestic
    A thick slice of bogus inspirational cheese that only makes itself look bad by recycling so many golden movie memories.
  7. A Guy Thing
    Does get slightly better as it goes along.
  8. Catwoman
    The lure of Halle Berry as the leather-clad feline should help this mangy misfire claw out a decent opening before a quick slink to DVD.
  9. Blacklight
    If you approach it with sufficiently lowered expectations, and have fond memories of the ’70s paranoid dramas that obviously inspired director and co-writer Mark Williams, this might be your house-brand jam.
  10. Gamer
    The audience gets played in Gamer. This latest eye-scraper from writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor is as hopped up as their "Crank" pics, but with dour Gerard Butler as a soldier commandeered by a teenage gamer, it's considerably less interactive.
  11. Expecting
    Even when judged by the standards of broad farce, however, Expecting repeatedly strains credibility and defies logic in ways too glaring to ignore.
  12. Cherkess
    Despite much verbal huffing and puffing, rifle waving and scimitar rattling, Cherkess proceeds with an astounding lack of action.
  13. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2
    There may be a lot more going on “Blood and Honey 2,” but let’s not kid ourselves. It’s mostly a shambles.
  14. John Henry
    Flashes of craft can’t make up for the director’s easy default to gore over story. Forbes and his co-writer knew how they wanted to depict Hell’s sadism but never nailed how to embrace the hero with the hammer.
  15. Wild Hogs
    Given his writer-producer credits on good-to-great recent sitcoms ("My Name Is Earl," "Arrested Development," "Grounded for Life"), one might expect more situational wit, or at least some snappy patter, from Brian Copeland's first bigscreen script. Instead, the humor rests primarily on slapstick wipeouts that have no physical consequence.
  16. Transformers: The Last Knight
    For the first time, the messy hyperactive form and nihilistic crunched-metal content seem to reinforce each other.
  17. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
    Though it's decidedly for perverse palates, some kind of cult audience seems assured for this one-note onslaught, which exercises a bizarre fascination despite its excesses.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Spy Next Door
    Chan struggles gamely to charm, but the picture's cartoonish jokes and misfired gags are likely to elicit more eye rolls than laughs.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Meteor
    Meteor really combines several disasters in one continuous cinematic bummer.
  20. The Darkness
    At some point in the production process, co-writer/director Greg McLean must have believed he was making John Cassavetes’ “Poltergeist,” but this odd fusion of psychodrama and supernatural hokum gets away from him.
  21. Now & Forever
    A preposterously convoluted and exasperatingly sappy saga.
  22. The Professor and the Madman
    For those that have been anticipating this curious, much-delayed oddity, the good news is that Gibson is fine; it’s everything else that doesn’t work.
  23. Coyote Ugly
    The latest and most calculated re-do on the formulaic fantasy of an innocent conquering Gotham.
  24. Open My Heart
    Has a perverse fascination, despite some technical clumsiness and stiff thesping.
  25. All the Devil's Men
    Resourceful and energetic, All the Devil’s Men is better than it might have been. But it’s still not very good.
  26. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind
    As it goes on, this all becomes a marketing hook for an increasingly flaked-out fantasy.
  27. The Women
    The Women is less about getting even than about inspiring that same mushy sense of female empowerment you might find in a Tyler Perry meller, complete with manic mood swings and full-blown diva moments.
  28. When a Stranger Calls
    A modestly clever concept gets indifferent execution in When a Stranger Calls, another bigger-yet-blander remake of an allegedly "classic" '70s shocker.
  29. Playing for Keeps
    A modestly affecting reconciliation drama wrapped in a so-so sports movie by way of a misogynistic romantic comedy, Playing for Keeps can't stop tripping all over itself.
  30. Cool World
    Style has seldom pummeled substance as severely as in Cool World, a combination funhouse ride/acid trip that will prove an ordeal for most visitors in the form of trial by animation.
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