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. Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
    The film is the portrait of a kind and giving man open to all positive ideas that come his way.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mountain Patrol
    Exquisite to behold and with a stimulating storyline that mixes guns with ecological consciousness, picture is a considerable change of pace for director Lu Chuan.
  3. La Mujer de Mi Hermano
    Soapy melodrama and a small-screen cast undermine the first-time director's efforts.
  4. Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
    Superbly crafted documentary is strong enough to make believers out of non-metalheads, and inside enough to get the devil's-horns salute from the most diehard followers.
  5. Nathalie...
    An intellectual-cum-sexual teaser whose twist is apparent far too early on.
  6. The Sisters
    Even a magnificently inspired Maria Bello proves insufficiently daring to save Richard Alfieri and Arthur Allan Seidelman's Chekhov-based chamber piece Sisters from pretentious psychodrama.
  7. Preaching to the Choir
    While the film looks good, sense of place is never very convincing. Over time, however, director Charles Randolph Wright and screenwriters Kevin Heffernan and Peter E. Lengyel do manage to create well-defined characters, whose flaws are as important as their gifts.
  8. Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story
    The deliberately jittery hand-held lensing enhances the mockery in this mockumentary.
  9. Sisters in Law
    Documentary has the fascination of watching an African "Judge Judy" with a more important case load. It also offers the satisfaction of seeing the law being used to change patterns of social injustice.
  10. Lucky Number Slevin
    Thoroughly -- and sometimes justifiably -- infatuated with its own cleverness, this mistaken-identity thriller delights in narrative complication and Tarantino-esque self-awareness.
  11. The Benchwarmers
    Under Dennis Dugan's rote direction, Schneider winds up playing straight man to Spade, who once again relies on his snarky coward shtick, and Heder, who comes across like someone doing a bad imitation of ... well, Heder himself in "Napoleon Dynamite."
  12. Phat Girlz
    Mo'Nique, a vet standup and sitcom performer whose sassy, brassy shtick isn't nearly enough to support material this insubstantial.
  13. Take the Lead
    Well-intentioned, feel-good urban tale.
  14. Friends with Money
    Stealing the show is Jane, whose rage-fueled rants and scarcely concealed mutterings are loaded with sarcastic bon mots that are delivered to the hilt by McDormand.
  15. Simon
    Eddy Terstall's mild brand of humor and predictable throat-catching weepiness works strictly along boob-tube illness-of-the-week lines, with plentiful shots of topless women.
  16. On a Clear Day
    By turns whimsically humorous and intelligently sentimental, but also infused with a pungent air of working-class realism.
  17. When Do We Eat?
    Success depends on the degree to which Jewish auds connect with the broadly drawn stereotypes; gentiles and others are sure to pass over this culturally specific comedy altogether.
  18. 4
    Its bawdy comedy, bravura sound design and uncanny atmosphere will turn on auds with a taste for deeply oddball fare and baffle others.
  19. Free Zone
    Amos Gitai's most satisfying pic since war drama "Kippur." Schematic set-up is given a human face by fine performances and a physical journey that's often more interesting than the characters' emotional ones, which are weakened by the Israeli auteur's tendency toward convenient doctrinaire-ism and chunks of expository dialogue.
  20. One Last Ride
    Though it lacks the sheer, depraved intensity of similarly themed pics like "The Gambler," Ride shares much of the sunlit sadness of "Save the Tiger," also populated by desperate, middle-aged men plying their trade in Los Angeles' garment district.
  21. Sir! No Sir!
    Because it's bolstered by proud memories of Vietnam vets who turned against the war, Sir! No Sir! rings with an exultant, even elated tone.
  22. 95 Miles to Go
    An engaging crazy-quit of comedy.
  23. The Outsider
    Jarecki has produced more of a Friar's Club roast than a document, with the negative aspects of the subject made funny, and the positive inflated.
  24. Quality of Life
    Picture's cliched underlying story of restless youth plays as too naive for an older audience and too provocative for teens.
  25. I Am a Sex Addict
    Hits its stride from the opening scenes and continues hilariously for a while, before declining into more of same. Its undeniable appeal lies in shocking frankness shackled to irony, a combo that should attract indie lovers with psychoanalytic leanings and droll senses of humor.
  26. Basic Instinct 2
    Those hoping for either a sizzling -- or an unintentionally hilarious -- good time will be disappointed by this inexplicably dull sequel.
  27. ATL
    Higher on stylistic dazzle than originality or coherence.
  28. Ice Age: The Meltdown
    A tad crasser and pushier than its predecessor, Ice Age: The Meltdown is still an entirely serviceable follow-up to the 2002 hit that will thoroughly amuse kids and get a rise or two out of parents as well.
  29. Slither
    Slither begins briskly, gradually accelerates and eventually achieves a breakneck momentum that makes the wild ride even more exhilarating.
  30. Brick
    The story, while derivative, isn't half bad, and the picture gains in finesse and confidence to the point where Johnson more or less pulls off his peril-fraught exercise.
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