Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. Trade
    Little more than a slipshod, trashy, sometimes exploitative thriller.
  2. Bordertown
    Bordertown straddles two realms: the worthy and the kitsch. The flimsy conspiracy theories floated here, coupled with pic's trite thriller plotting, risk trivializing the atrocities while it obfuscates their causes.
  3. Feast of Love
    Septuagenarian director Robert Benton brings his characteristically fine touch with actors and appreciation for the female form to this tastefully erotic ensembler, but compassion finally outstrips insight in a drama as soft-headed as it is soft-hearted.
  4. The Game Plan
    Wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the most valuable player here, revealing impressive comic chops and megawatt charisma even while serving as a human punchline for many of the pic's predictable sight gags.
  5. The Kingdom
    A realist thriller that mixes crowd-pleasing mayhem with provocative politics.
  6. Lust, Caution
    Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a 2½--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns.
  7. The Price of Sugar
    A solid and affecting piece of work.
  8. Outsourced
    This unaffected charmer treats a hot-button contempo issue with old-fashioned grace and benevolent wit, rendering it a sure-fire word-of-mouth crowd-pleaser.
  9. Into the Wild
    Sean Penn delivers a compelling, ambitious work that will satisfy most admirers of the book.
  10. The Last Winter
    An imperfect but compelling thriller.
  11. Good Luck Chuck
    Dane Cook sells out arenas with his stand-up act, and Jessica Alba is, well, Jessica Alba, but once "Chuck" exhausts their devoted bases, this doesn't promise to bring much good luck to Lionsgate.
  12. Resident Evil: Extinction
    Unfortunately, the new pic never really achieves maximum velocity as a full-throttle action-adventure opus, despite game efforts by returning star Milla Jovovich, still a lithe and lethal dynamo when it comes to butt-kicking, zombie-slicing derring-do.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sydney White
    Result should satisfy Bynes fans looking for a pleasant, innocuous follow-up to her last vehicle.
  14. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    One of the best Westerns of the 1970s, which represents the highest possible praise. It's a magnificent throwback to a time when filmmakers found all sorts of ways to refashion Hollywood's oldest and most durable genre.
  15. The Jane Austen Book Club
    Cast is first-rate all around, unafraid to play up the annoying, insensitive or self-pitying aspects of their nonetheless likeable characters.
  16. The Man of My Life
    A drama that steadily succumbs to self-conscious artiness, drunk on its own sense of contrived poetry and cloudy existential reflection.
  17. Beauty Remains
    An unappealing, stiff melodrama.
  18. Across the Universe
    All you need is love -- for the Beatles, for psychedelic visuals, for ideas about being young in the ‘60s -- to fully enjoy Across the Universe.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    December Boys
    Occasionally touching but rarely convincing coming-of-ager.
  20. Dragon Wars: D-War
    A feast of A-grade f/x married to a Z-grade, irony-free script.
  21. Eastern Promises
    A superbly wrought yarn set in the milieu of first-generation Russian mobsters in London that is simultaneously tough-minded and compassionate about the human condition, Eastern Promises instantly takes its place among David Cronenberg's very best films.
  22. In the Valley of Elah
    Too self-serious to work as a straight-ahead whodunit and too lacking in imagination to realize its art-film aspirations.
  23. Ira & Abby
    Starts off deliriously, is derailed into reality, and finally settles into something in between.
  24. King of California
    Douglas is a manic joy, and Wood manages to hang on for the ride.
  25. Mr. Woodcock
    There's more genuine humor to be gleaned from saying "Woodcock" over and over again than from watching Mr. Woodcock, a wan comic effort barely elevated a few notches by Billy Bob Thornton's passive-aggressive villainy.
  26. Silk
    Silk is a snooze. Vacuous, arid and terminally dull, this adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's freak bestseller hasn't a trace of real life or energy to it, and is hamstrung by a lethargic lead performance by Michael Pitt.
  27. The Brave One
    Foster’s pistol-packing turn as an avenging dark angel nearly sustains director Neil Jordan’s grim vigilante drama through a string of implausibilities and occasionally trite psychological framing devices, with deft support from Terrence Howard as a sympathetic cop.
  28. The Rape of Europa
    This mesmerizing morality play, rich in rare archival footage and complete with heroic Allied saviors, merits a full-fledged arthouse run before reaching larger PBS and cable auds.
  29. Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
    As certain to get auds singing as the man himself, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is a terrific, multilayered portrait of a singer whose legacy extends beyond music and into every major social action movement since the 1940s. Always enjoyable, this docu proves that a few rare people actually deserve the hagiography treatment.
  30. Great World of Sound
    Blessed with a witty script (by Zobel and co-writer George Smith), a talented ensemble of little-known character actors and a Meredith Willson-like feel for just-plain-folks Americans, this is a low-key but enormously charming picture.
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