Variety's Scores

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For 17,777 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: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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  1. The Masked Saint
    Veering from broad small-town comedy to heavy-handed vigilante dramatics, and marbled with the sort of spiritual epiphanies typically mastered in Sunday school rather than seminary, this Canadian indie seems unlikely to galvanize the faithful.
  2. Yoga Hosers
    If it’s true, as Kevin Smith noted in his lengthy introductory remarks at Sundance, that “failure is just success training,” then he should be in the best shape of his career after Yoga Hosers, an imbecilic, strenuously wacky helping of see-what-sticks juvenilia.
  3. Nine Lives
    Nine Lives is a lot like a cat: It occasionally bestirs itself, and it would like to be stroked with love, but mostly it just sits there. It’s a pet farce so flat it makes you long for the Lubitsch touch of the “Alvin” comedies.
  4. The Assignment
    Nobody — not even viewers willing to settle for good, unclean B-movie fun — is done any favors by something as crude as (re)Assignment, which gracelessly mashes together hardboiled crime-melodrama cliches and an unintentionally funny “Oh no! I’m a chick now!!” gender-change narrative hook.
  5. Mr. Church
    A crude sugary-sweet fantasy.
  6. Trespass Against Us
    It’s hard to say what the title of Trespass Against Us actually means, but then it’s hard to know what anything in this movie thinks it’s about. Even Ed Wood would have said, “Needs work.”
  7. Max Steel
    [A] drearily lame time-waster.
  8. The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez
    'Aranjeuz” has less of a pulse than the already inert “Every Thing Will Be Fine."
  9. Spark: A Space Tail
    It’s hard to imagine that even the least demanding of tykes will ask for a second sampling of this thoroughly second-rate animated feature, which has all the charm, and twice the volume, of a barking dog.
  10. Once Upon a Time in Venice
    What scant charms this direct-to-video-style Nineties throwback has belong mostly to Willis.
  11. Illicit
    Illicit is too tepid to qualify as an erotic thriller, or even a guilty pleasure, and the performances range from over the top to tiresomely obvious.
  12. Winchester
    Winchester is the supernatural-schlock version of a liberal think-tank paper.
    • 8 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Mangler
    With its clunky narrative and lack of solid scares or gory effusions until the obligatory all-stops-out climax, pic ends up with little to excite fans of “Elm Street”-style shockers or Hooper’s own “Poltergeist.”
  14. The Happytime Murders
    It should come as no surprise that “Happytime” comes up farcically short as a metaphor for racism. But its most fatal miscalculation is the decision to frontload so many of its crassest setpieces into the first 15 or 20 minutes, depriving the rest of the film of the shock value that is its entire raison d’etre.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Money Pit
    The Money Pit is simply the pits. There is really very little else to be said about this gruesomely unfunny comedy. Unofficial remake of the 1948 Cary Grant-Myrna Loy starrer Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House begins unpromisingly and slides irrevocably downward from there.
    • Variety
  16. Gotti
    [Travolta's] performance ain’t lousy, but the movie that surrounds it is, and it’s almost laughable to see this iconic star trying so hard on behalf of a project that is so compromised in its intentions.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Jaws: The Revenge
    Pacing leaves a lot to be desired and the moment-of-attack sequences, full of jagged cuts and a great deal of noise, more closely resemble the view from inside a washing machine.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Piranha Part Two: The Spawning
    This is a routine monster film, unrelated to Joe Dante’s 1978 Piranha. Idiotic premise has US government genetic engineering experiments creating a deadly form of grunions (hinted at being used in the Vietnam war).
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Death Wish 3
    Death Wish 3 adds significantly to the body count scored to date in this street-rampant series. Thrills, however, are way down due to script’s failure to build motivation for Paul Kersey’s latest killing spree.
  20. Showdown in Manila
    Its intrigue and action neither very well developed nor integrated, Showdown in Manila feels like a checklist of elements typical of such movies — hey, where’s our training montage?!? — with arthritic-level connective tissue.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
    Only saving grace is the satire pic’s opening titles, a clever lampoon of theatre trailers and advertising pitches, including a mid-credit title card that boasts, ‘This space for rent’. There’s also a tongue-in-cheek parody of disaster pic music, sung in a deep basso voice, but that’s over in about two minutes. Thereafter it’s all downhill, rapidly.
  22. Desolation
    Around the halfway mark, Desolation stops making sense altogether and spins off into the realm of free-form absurdity.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    An Innocent Man
    This collection of cliches accomplishes the almost unthinkable by bringing the prison genre to a new low.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Cannonball Run II
    Execution is uninspired, laughs are hard to find, and the script is also difficult to locate. Reynold’s high-pitched laugh is wearing thin.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Firefox
    Firefox is a burn-out. Despite the tense mission being depicted, there’s no suspense, excitement or thrills to be had, and lackadaisical pacing gives viewer plenty of time to ponder the gaping implausibilities.
  26. America's Musical Journey
    Even at 40 minutes, America’s Musical Journey could have taken us on an organic and inspiring musical adventure. But what’s odd about the movie is that instead of reveling in the jewels of our cultural past, it seems to be twisting itself in knots to avoid the past.
  27. The Outsider
    Dull, flavorless, and fundamentally incurious, “The Outsider” is a clueless misfire, the cinematic equivalent of a study-abroad student showing off the kanji forearm tattoo whose meaning he never bothered to learn.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Masters of the Universe
    All elements are of epic proportions in this Conan-Star Wars hybrid ripoff, based on the best-selling line of children’s toys. Epitome of Good takes on Epitome of Evil for nothing less than the future of the Universe, and the result is a colossal bore.
  29. Supercon
    The humor misfires painfully even when it just tries to be charming.
  30. Billy Boy
    Billy Boy is the worst kind of grab for “indie cred”: It’s exasperatingly undercooked and arted-up, failing on basic levels of character definition and narrative coherence, too often feeling like a classic indulgence for pretty-boy actors playing tough.
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