Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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  1. Games People Play: New York
    This artless, unpolished venture adds a heavy sex-and-skin factor to a poorly defined game show, lurching awkwardly between exploitative voyeurism, maudlin confessions and self-consciously risque titillation.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    This Ain't No Heartland
    Given Horvath's multi-tasking, pic is unsurprisingly rough. Nonetheless, for a professional photographer, his DV lensing is disappointing.
  3. Ghost River
    Huppert's mastery aside, this is a European Art Film writ large, complete with classical music, gorgeously filmed landscapes, expository voiceovers, poetic transitions and only a ghost's footprint of a story.
  4. Hidalgo
    Tells an old-fashioned boys' adventure yarn in an equally old-fashioned way.
  5. Starsky & Hutch
    Blessed with sporadic moments of cheeky fun, isn't painful but seldom advances beyond costumes and hairstyling in terms of creativity.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Reckoning
    Has its flaws, among them a certain self-righteousness and a complicated storyline, but it is never less than gripping thanks to its gifted international cast.
  7. Down by Love
    A terrific performance by young actress Patricia Kovacs makes the high-stakes gamble of Down by Love -- a light psychodrama almost entirely centered on one character in an apartment -- into an engrossing 90-odd minutes.
  8. Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen
    An awkward blend of documentary and genre pic.
  9. James' Journey to Jerusalem
    There's a fable-like quality to this first feature by documaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz that packs just as much punch as a more "serious," didactic movie while entertaining the viewer at the same time.
  10. Collateral Damages
    Casts a somewhat different light on the trauma of 9/11 and particularly on its long, devastating aftermath.
  11. Club Dread
    A stunningly unfunny farce that makes the worst of a stale concept.
  12. Greendale
    Sublimely pointed in its idealistic simplicity yet willfully scruffy in presentation -- much like the enduring Young's best music.
  13. Tube
    A check-your-brains-at-the-door, almost non-stop actioner that finally wins the viewer over with its sheer single-mindedness.
  14. Twisted
    A dreary, weary psychosexual thriller that's neither sexy nor thrilling.
  15. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Superficial but entertaining new pic offers equal parts freshness and kitsch appeal set to a pulsating Latin soundtrack.
  16. Goodbye Lenin!
    This triumph of historical verisimilitude in the service of solid storytelling requires no detailed knowledge of the period to be appreciated as the moving story of a son's unconditional love for his mother.
  17. Risk/Reward
    Lacking the overall drama of "Startup.com" or "e-Dreams," pic more than compensates with skillful presentation and the fascinating power of its subjects, femme movers and shakers who perform high-wire juggling acts between their personal and professional lives every day.
  18. Confessions of a Burning Man
    This not particularly well shot/organized feature isn't very engaging on the human level, either.
  19. Alila
    An ensemble drama laced with lighter moments that depicts the vitality, resilience and moral dilemmas of the people of Tel Aviv, the film is absorbing and at times moving.
  20. The Passion of the Christ
    If an age produces the renditions of classic stories that reflect those times, then The Passion of the Christ, which is violent, contentious, emotional, extreme and highly proficient, must be the Jesus movie for this era.
  21. Our Father
    Haroun's film is both touching and, ultimately, almost perversely optimistic.
  22. Teknolust
    While it's stylishly designed and shot in startling colors on digital high-definition cameras, this feels like yesterday's futuristic news, and it's more likely to surface as a video/DVD curiosity than a theatrical draw.
  23. Big Animal
    A rueful yet gentle fable about the price of individuality and the value of dignity that preserves the intellectually stimulating spirit of Kieslowski's best work while tapping into a universally understandable vein of low-keyed absurdist comedy.
  24. Against the Ropes
    Think of Against the Ropes as a "Rocky" story -- if, that is, the vintage is somewhere between "Rocky IV" and "V," and the action centered around the Burgess Meredith character as played by Meg Ryan wearing "Barbarella" outfits.
  25. Clifford's Really Big Movie
    Harmless tale of the giant pooch helping out some itinerant performing animals while longing for home will go down smoothly with the preschool faithful, but anyone over 5 will feel antsy even given the brief running time.
  26. EuroTrip
    Promising young cast flounders amid comic material that's staler than week-old bread.
  27. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
    Minimally funny comedy feels like a Disney Channel pic that got boosted to theatrical after Lohan scored a hit opposite Jamie Lee Curtis in the "Freaky Friday" remake.
  28. Kitchen Stories
    The film appears consistently poised to go deeper but instead hangs back, making it less substantial than it might have been. Yet the sweet-natured story's gentle humor and poignancy should draw appreciative audiences.
  29. Welcome to Mooseport
    Lacks the antic energy and inspired imagination that might have put this over as a sharp-witted community comedy in the Preston Sturges vein.
  30. Lost Boys of Sudan
    A potent, engrossing look at several young refugees from Sudan's disastrous, endless civil war who've been relocated to the U.S.
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