Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. The Cave of the Yellow Dog
    Davaa's strong visual sense, engaging cast and respect for basic film grammar make this slim exercise in managed reality go the distance.
  2. Copying Beethoven
    Helmer Agnieszka Holland's Copying Beethoven joins 1994's "Immortal Beloved" in the ranks of mediocre dramatic interpretations of Beethoven's biography.
  3. Captive
    Gripping drama.
  4. Fuck
    The offensive word that provides the title for Steven Anderson's penetrating documentary/social critique has either enriched or infected Western culture to the point that we're either drowning in a "floodtide of filth" or blessed with the best verbal relief valve ever devised by man.
  5. Night of the Living Dead 3D
    A juiceless quasi-remake of George Romero's 1968 classic that, cardboard glasses aside, brings absolutely nothing new to the party.
  6. Coffee Date
    Full of unlikely misunderstandings.
  7. Linda Linda Linda
    This aimless, lifeless time-killer about four teenage girls prepping for their rock-band gig in a school talent show proves entirely the wrong choice.
  8. The Magic Gloves
    Sporadically charming and quite amusing, but torpidly paced.
  9. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    Uproariously funny mockumentary.
  10. Flushed Away
    Result is a kidpic long on invention but short on likability.
  11. The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
    Not unlike the shiny snow globe at its center, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause is a thing of consummate craftsmanship, a smoothly engineered and fundamentally lifeless object that's nevertheless capable of giving even the grinchiest moviegoers a brief attack of the warm-and-fuzzies.
  12. Volver
    Peopled with superbly drawn, attractive characters smoothly integrated into a well-turned, low-tricks plotline, Volver may rep Almodovar's most conventional piece to date, but it is also his most reflective, a subdued, sometimes intense and often comic homecoming that celebrates the pueblo and people that shaped his imagination.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shottas
    Gangster tale Shottas feels like a Jamaican "Scarface," offering a vivid slice of the underground street culture of Kingston. Still, the violence is senseless and the plot full of holes.
  14. Wondrous Oblivion
    Full of charming moments, but swinging hither and thither between mainstream entertainment and an over-cooked anti-racist tract.
  15. Commune
    Often mocked and rarely understood, the movement in communal living that blossomed with Flower Power in the '60s gets its most honest appraisal yet on film with Jonathan Berman's Commune.
  16. Death and Texas
    Audiences won't show much clemency toward Death & Texas, an uneasy (and very unfunny) marriage of sports culture satire and death penalty polemic.
  17. Unknown
    Brand has assembled a cast of world class improvisers, yet doesn't take advantage of their own particularized, inflected rhythms, as each ritualistically experiences a jump-cut fragmentary flashback in front of the same bathroom mirror.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Great Warming
    A more diffuse and prettier case for global calamity that accents the positive and stresses the possibility of reversing the planet's headlong rush to extinction.
  19. En soap
    Casts an entrancing spell thanks to understated perfs by leads and Christensen's featherlight touch with Kim Fupz Aakeson's screenplay.
  20. Romántico
    Engrossing pic is impressively shot, edited and scored.
  21. Babel
    Effectively building dread and emotional tension as tragic incidents triggered by human stupidity and carelessness steadily multiply, this film, like "21 Grams" in particular, employs a deterministically grim mindset in the cause of its philosophical aspirations, but is gripping nearly all the way.
  22. Catch a Fire
    Stories of resistance to oppression will never become obsolete, but this feels like a picture that should have been made a long time ago.
  23. Saw III
    Unlike the disturbingly mysterious original, Saw III is a neatly wrapped-up package that explains everything -- including Jigsaw's evil contraptions and the background of his crazed female assistant.
  24. Climates
    Immaculately shot and composed as always, and moving at Ceylan's usual measured pace, this one is slightly enlivened by more likable perfs and a trim 98-minute running time.
  25. Conversations with God
    More polished and better acted than many "inspirational" biopics.
  26. Shut Up & Sing
    It's the rare thorough documentary on a musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should win over fans of the Chicks on the fence and of music docus and perhaps create a little cultural stir as well.
  27. Death of a President
    Disappointingly, Death of a President shrinks from its promise as a piece of genuinely radical or adventurous speculative fiction.
  28. Cocaine Cowboys
    A rogues gallery of flamboyant gangsters paint an anecdote-rich portrait of the drug trade, while a steady stream of cops, coroners and crime reporters furnish social commentary.
  29. 20 Centimeters
    Showing a stylistic bravura and confidence rare among upcoming Spanish helmers, Ramon Salazar's campy 20 Centimeters is a self-regarding but vastly entertaining sophomore effort that fuses a wide range of influences -- Hollywood musicals, neo-realism and early-Almodovarian kitsch -- into a distinctive, giddy whole.
  30. Absolute Wilson
    A surprisingly conventional portrait of a decidedly unconventional man.
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