Variety's Scores

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:
17771 movie reviews
  1. A tense documentary with multiple layers of meaning.
  2. This full-bodied adaptation of Dennis Lehane's involved and involving 2001 bestselling crime novel about old friends in Boston's working-class Irish neighborhood finds Clint Eastwood near the top of his directorial game with a cast of first-rate actors.
  3. Hurt is quietly affecting as Dave Purcell, a fine chef but a lousy businessman whose sticksville cafe, the Auk, is named after a rare, possibly extinct kind of duck.
  4. Middling drama about euthanasia, worked out through a sprawl of underdeveloped characters.
  5. The more Marc Fusco and co-writer Michael Garrity's script aims for cleverness, the more it unravels.
  6. A tasty if wildly far-fetched thriller, Out of Time proves far stronger in its characterizations than in developing genuine suspense.
  7. Film gathers together only those who knew, loved and made music with "the quiet Beatle."
  8. A well-acted and crafted character piece that's a bit too calculated and cutesy for its own good.
  9. Has absolutely nothing to say about its characters and their lamentable actions.
  10. Combined with hilarious physical business and perfectly overearnest delivery of pseudocool lines like, "Let your fingers do the rocking!," he (Black) pretty much single-handedly keeps the formulaic progress funny.
  11. A slackly paced but modestly diverting trifle, with cameos by recording artists Beck, Beth Orton and Hank Williams III to elevate the hipper-than-thou quotient.
  12. Unable to blend artfilm with psychological thriller, writer-director Hamlet Sarkissian makes something opaque indeed out of Camera Obscura.
  13. Depressingly parochial.
  14. With a glowing performance by Sarah Polley as the doomed woman, this Spanish-Canadian co-prod, filmed in English, is surprisingly adept at avoiding the worst cliches and most manipulative elements inherent in such a story.
  15. Emerges as an engaging, upbeat saga of an all-girl band on its way to nowhere in particular. Helmed by ace music supervisor Alex Steyermark and written by punk rocker Cheri Lovedog, pic feels authentic from first frame to last.
  16. Somewhere along the line, the comedy turned from dark and playful to mean-spirited and sophomoric. A waste of the considerable appeal and comic talents of leads Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cements the Rock's status as a contempo action hero with a bigscreen future.
  17. Lane transforms this seriocomic saga of a devastated American divorcee who impulsively purchases a Tuscan villa, thereby changing her life, into a spellbinding display of emotional transparency.
  18. Mismatched marriage of offbeat character study and unimaginative horror riffs. Most compelling element by far is Bruce Campbell's inspired performance as a nursing home patient who insists he is the real Elvis Presley.
  19. Proceeds like a stultifying history pageant rather than a movie with a pulse of its own.
  20. It's a very small pic but engagingly played by a fine cast.
  21. Sure to turn off general viewers due to its emotional inaccessibility, multitude of narrative problems and preoccupation with a torture Web site.
  22. The film is, at times, emotionally riveting -- yet also has an institutional feeling, largely because it attempts to cover too much ground in too little time.
  23. A woefully predictable imperiled-yuppie-family-under-siege suspenser that hardly seems worth the attention of its relatively high-profile participants.
  24. The broad comedy is somewhat strained and obvious, and the hyper-real atmosphere encourages the cast to slice the prosciutto a little thickly. But the film's sweet-natured ingenuousness proves reasonably contagious.
  25. Makes engrossing viewing for much of the way...but stumbles dramatically in its final leg.
  26. The younger casting brings a freshness to the material and, with Allen as the weird mentor, there are plenty of laughs, even if the pacing's slow and the running time over-extended.
  27. Writer-director Craig Ross Jr. offers both rigorously effective dramatic sections and terribly pedantic and melodramatic strokes of overkill.
  28. An entirely schematic treatise on maternity and conflicting cultures. A subject perhaps far more suited to documentary treatment, this numbingly earnest effort will be a laborious delivery for IFC.
  29. Any negative stereotypes viewers might harbor about education in rural communities are sent packing by this magnificently lensed and cumulatively touching account from documaker Nicolas Philibert.

Top Trailers