Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Operation Filmmaker
    Picture raises pithy questions sure to provoke animated discussions pro and con. Credit Davenport for a mostly unbiased presentation that presents her own disenchantment in a balanced manner.
  2. Bigger Stronger Faster*
    More scrupulously reported than your average Michael Moore film but every bit as entertaining, Bigger, Stronger, Faster* is as commercial as documentaries come.
  3. The Foot Fist Way
    The character of Fred Simmons is a Cliff Clavin-esque sensei deluxe in The Foot Fist Way, a low-budget, low-flying farce a la "Napoleon Dynamite" or "Jackass: The Movie."
  4. Savage Grace
    Scripter Howard A. Rodman's treatment of an enthralling book is more a series of vignettes rather than a fully connected work, and helmer Tom Kalin seems unable to decide how much Sirkian melodrama to introduce into the heady mix. Gone are the reasons to be fascinated with these people, merely replaced with maddeningly over-arch dialogue and struggles with characterization.
  5. Sex and the City
    Best in its small moments, the movie should find receptive gal pals congregating for the mother of all viewing parties.
  6. The Strangers
    It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic. Still, after such a long, creepy, cannily restrained buildup, it must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote.
  7. The Unknown Woman
    Brings peaks of violence and suspense to the vivid story of a young East European prostitute-turned-cleaning lady intent on carrying out a mysterious mission in Italy.
  8. Stuck
    Ingeniously nasty and often shockingly funny as it incrementally worsens a very bad situation, then provides a potent payoff with the forced feeding of just desserts.
  9. Cleaner
    Scrub away a needlessly fussy visual style, trendy narrative tweaks and a climax both morally repugnant and logically absurd, and there’s a tough little noir about buried transgressions coming out of the past in Renny Harlin’s lackluster thriller “Cleaner.” Too mainstream to attract genre interest, and too tangled in its character motivations to sit well with the multiplex crowd, this is a minor stain that should fade quickly and leave only faint traces in ancillary.
  10. The Children of Huang Shi
    Giving Jonathan Rhys Meyers the kind of manly yet paternal role Spencer Tracy once mastered, this carefully wrought international production relates the basic story of reporter George Hogg without any vibrancy, emotion or style.
  11. War, Inc.
    A blackly comic take on the first totally outsourced war? We're too close to being in one right now, which makes this John Cusack vehicle too close for comfort. It's also so close to being funny you can just about taste it -- just about.
  12. Postal
    This anything-goes exercise isn't dull -- one just wishes the outrageousness were more consistently funny.
  13. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    Nineteen years after their last adventure, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford have no trouble getting back in the groove with a story and style very much in keeping with what has made the series so perennially popular.
  14. The Edge of Heaven
    Superbly cast drama, in which the lives and emotional arcs of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- criss-cross through love and tragedy.
  15. A Jihad for Love
    Predicament makes the picture kin to 2001's "Trembling Before G-d," about gay Orthodox Jews. Both docs share the same fascination and limitation.
  16. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    Closer to a straight-ahead medieval battle picture than the fantastical, other-worldly journey depicted in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," this new entry is a bit darker, more conventional and more crisply made than its 2005 predecessor.
  17. Reprise
    Final result, with its peculiar happy ending that may or may not be a further fantasy, may leave some auds feeling more drained than satisfied. It's a bit like spending 105 minutes with a litter of frisky, mischievous puppies.
  18. Sangre De Mi Sangre
    Ochoa is such a masterful actor that he makes things fairly interesting despite the script, with Hernandez and Espindola well-cast as two young men operating by different moral compasses.
  19. Lion's Den
    Situated somewhere between neo-realist study and standard women in prison pic, Lion's Den too frequently wanders into common territories to make the material its own.
  20. Speed Racer
    Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers' return behind the camera for the first time since the "Matrix" trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. In every other respect, it's pure cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist.
  21. The Babysitters
    It ultimately fails to deliver on the audacity of its premise. Neither truly original nor a guilty-pleasure genre spin, the picture lacks a hook for general audiences who may find the subject matter distasteful as presented.
  22. The Fall
    This convoluted, arbitrary, overlong whimsy will strike most grown-ups as childish, and is far too violent and pretentious for kids.
  23. Frontier(s)
    Can a movie be an adrenalin-fueled, blood-gushing thrill ride and still be as boring as dirt? Apparently. The French answer to "Hostel" and "Saw" -- Frontier(s) is a 100-minute hemorrhage that doesn't bring anything to the operating table of torture-porn but more gore, cruelty and misery.
  24. Noise
    Amusing but marginal diatribe against aural assault in Manhattan.
  25. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
    A spy spoof that -- rarity of rarities -- represents a remake actually worth making. Current comic fave Jean Dujardin plays title character OSS 117 as a kind of James Bond crossed with Maxwell Smart.
  26. Surfwise
    Somewhat forced happy ending aside, the pic holds together well.
  27. Turn the River
    Atmospheric picture positively vibrates with authenticity, and Janssen's intense, febrile performance earned a special jury prize at the Hamptons fest.
  28. What Happens in Vegas
    This two-seated star vehicle for top-billed Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz wrings a respectable number of laughs from a formulaic scenario about attracted-opposites who bicker and back-stab their way toward happily-ever-aftering.
  29. Before the Rains
    Tale of an idealistic local caught in the crossfire of an illicit affair is too pat and pretty to connect with upscale audiences.
  30. A Previous Engagement
    Stevenson casts her usual magic in this frankly adult, determinedly lighthearted comedy of romantic errors.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »