Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Rolling Family
    The film has humanity to burn, but its loose structure makes it hard to connect with the multiple characters.
  2. Broken Bridges
    It's obviously intended as a star vehicle, but Broken Bridges turns out to be a rattletrap jalopy for country music performer Toby Keith.
  3. Vajra Sky Over Tibet
    An illuminating meditation on that deepest of Buddhist philosophical concerns -- impermanence. Study of a threatened culture and people is beautifully shot inside Tibet's most sacred sites and arrives with the blessing of the Dalai Lama.
  4. Saint of 9/11
    An unabashed tribute to Judge's life, struggles and Christian mission, does a good job of communicating what made Judge an inspiring figure to many, while making his life's work accessible and understandable.
  5. Crank
    Videogamers who've been itching for "Grand Theft Auto: The Movie" can tide themselves over in the meantime with Crank, a down-and-dirty actioner that follows a rugged antihero trying to outrun death by keeping his adrenaline flowing.
  6. Crossover
    Overshadowed by vastly superior sports movies like Invincible and hardly disguising its low-budget sources, pic isn't in any kind of shape for the theatrical leagues.
  7. The Wicker Man
    Any provocative questions LaBute might have wanted to raise are totally obscured as the rising tide of absurdity gradually overwhelms the entire enterprise.
  8. Lassie
    Competent journeyman writer-helmer Charles Sturridge ("Brideshead Revisited") and his overqualified thesp ensemble steer a steady course between dogged fidelity to Eric Knight's sentimental original novel and modern auds' need for a little humorous bite with the barking.
  9. Mutual Appreciation
    If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
    A simple, low-budget, contempo dramedy -- with plenty of clever plot reversals.
  11. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    Never really addresses why aspects of the ratings don't work, proposes concrete improvements or compares the system to those in other countries. Still, picture's bracing, hilarious and out-there elements make it a landmark.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bubot Niyar
    Distilled from a six-episode Israeli TV series, pic mostly fails to transcend its ramshackle structure or penetrate the inner-lives of its subjects.
  13. Idiocracy
    A satire for its time. What Judge is less sure of here than in his previous, perfectly pitched live-action comedy "Office Space," is how to build a complete movie around his key ideas.
  14. A Cantor's Tale
    Delightful documentary A Cantor's Tale casts a fond eye back at the "golden age" of chazzanut (Jewish liturgical music) and its star performers in the Brooklyn of yesteryear.
  15. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film
    Art aficionados the world over will want to catch the pic, which PBS airs later this month; given the impact Warhol had on the world, it's a must for culture vultures.
  16. Beerfest
    Such fare plays better on DVD, where the best moments can be absorbed in bite-sized bits and the debris easily bypassed.
  17. Idlewild
    Achieves magic--something sorely missing from so many movies these days--and does so via a philosophy of respect, but not reverence, for what's come before it; it never recycles, it just reimagines.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How to Eat Fried Worms
    A decidedly old-fashioned family film that may prove too quaint for modern audiences.
  19. Invincible
    Handling both directing and cinematography duties, Core invests both with a clearly impassioned sense of place, period and perspective regarding this fanfare for common men.
  20. The Quiet
    A Lifetime movie on crack, The Quiet dredges up every lurid cliche from the well of teen hormonal havoc in a tale of dysfunctional family meltdown that seems unsure whether to push for suburban-Gothic psychosexual excess or tongue-in-cheek malevolence.
  21. Queens
    A lively, well-packaged but meaningless amusement.
  22. Surviving Eden
    A flighty and unnecessary send-up of reality television.
  23. Buzz
    Film traverses Buzz's career with reasonable depth, helped by good-quality trailers from several pics. However, one suspects there are a lot more stories Buzz could tell in a more rigorous format.
  24. The Dogwalker
    Though central dynamic is a familiar one -- old coot and young lost soul thrown together -- perfs, understated script and well-judged direction avoid too-obvious sentimentality or melodrama. Nonetheless, overall story arc is fairly predictable, and deliberate pacing sometimes risks dullness.
  25. Fratricide
    A hard-hitting, ultimately tragic tale of the struggle for identity among Kurdish emigres in urban Germany.
  26. Princesas
    This loosely-structured pic feels authentic, its underdramatized script resolutely nonjudgmental.
  27. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
    Lee takes time to explain the stories behind the stories, to unearth revealing details under-reported in other accounts, and to identify individuals among the faceless masses of unfortunates.
  28. Snakes on a Plane
    Snakes on a Plane is exactly the sort of tasteless, utterly depraved, no-nonsense sluts-and-guts extravaganza it was meant to be.
  29. Accepted
    Sweetly amusing, gently anarchic and never mean-spirited.
  30. The Illusionist
    A bizarre story of intrigue, magic and murder in turn-of-the-century Vienna casts a considerable spell in The Illusionist.
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