Variety's Scores

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For 17,765 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 2.3 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: 9,125 out of 17765
  2. Mixed: 7,004 out of 17765
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17765
17765 movie reviews
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  1. Assassination Tango
    On just about every level -- as a thriller, as a romance and as a character study of a complicated man nearing the end of his professional life -- the film fails, and the meandering, sub-Cassavetes approach is likely to be a turnoff for all but the most indulgent viewers.
  2. The Core
    More palatable than most pictures of its ilk due to its keen awareness of its own preposterousness, a self-knowledge exuberantly expressed by a mostly live-wire cast.
  3. Head of State
    So beneath the considerable talents of its star, Chris Rock, it's dismaying to note Rock is also the movie's director, producer and co-scenarist. Not unlike Richard Pryor a generation ago, Rock has yet to land a movie vehicle that captures the sparky energy and subversive bent of his excellent stand-up performances.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Night and the City (re-release)
    Jules Dassin, in his direction, manages extraordinarily interesting backgrounds, realistically filmed to create a feeling both of suspense and mounting menace.
  5. Basic
    The teasing tale is told with such dispatch it will carry willing audiences along; genre staples of action, macho attitude and corruption through the ranks are delivered intact.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flickering Lights
    Jensen helms with assurance and maturity, with rapid but unhectic pacing, plenty of dark humor and deft action sequences that turn cliches from U.S. action-comedies into something very Danish.
  7. Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie
    Unlikely to draw new fans but destined to please followers who couldn't catch the live act.
  8. Unknown Pleasures
    As lethargic as the characters it portrays, the film requires greater staying power than many audiences will possess.
  9. Piglet's Big Movie
    Fine new chapter in the long-running franchise should score well with family audiences.
  10. Chuen jik sat sau
    High-octane plunge into pop gangster psychology.
  11. Down and Out with the Dolls
    Unaffectedly hip and affably manic, Down & Out With the Dolls picks up where "Singles" left off.
  12. Boat Trip
    Washout. Lacking the mojo even to be offensive in its stereotypical view of gays and women, this excruciating cocktail of sitcom plotting and gross-out humor makes a clunky cheesefest like "The Love Boat" look like breezy, sophisticated fun.
  13. Gaudi Afternoon
    Silly, childish fun and as relaxing to watch as good American TV fiction -- and with a very similar world view.
  14. View from the Top
    Flubs nearly every opportunity to be the comedy it wanted to be.
  15. Dreamcatcher
    Overlong and unwieldy grab-bag of vintage monster-movie elements starts intriguingly as a snowbound deep-woods chiller, but gradually dissolves into a mess of other-worldly invasion and military counter-offensive.
  16. Decasia
    Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc, compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score.
  17. Japan
    Its powerfully visual storytelling delivers great rewards as the meditative drama moves into increasingly complex, at times confrontational territory.
  18. Zhantai
    Thoughtful, melancholy drama.
  19. Willard
    Strictly for the birds.
  20. Journeys with George
    A golden opportunity to witness the "unplugged," after-hours George W. Bush at his most congenial. "George" offers a portrait of a gregariously charming and self-mocking fellow who's perfectly at ease in his own skin, and who's no less slick and savvy a politician for being willing to make himself the butt of jokes.
  21. The Hunted
    Routine, superficial manhunt stuff.
  22. Agent Cody Banks
    As a spy pic, it has more pizzazz than the last few Bond adventures, "The Sum of All Fears" or "The Recruit."
  23. Spun
    Outrageously grungy and whacked-out walk on the wild side.
  24. Bend It Like Beckham
    Writer-helmer Gurinder Chadha assembles a gallery of broadly played stereotypes into a movie about social attitudes that's more rooted in small-screen sitcom than anything deeper.
  25. Laurel Canyon
    The dramatic trajectory is frightfully obvious, the characters tediously one-dimensional, the dialogue banal.
  26. Nowhere in Africa
    Easy on the eye and effortlessly entertaining across almost 2½ hours.
  27. Bringing Down the House
    There are certainly good laughs to be had. But the contrived script and bland direction prevent the film from ever developing a comic life of its own, leaving what fun there is seeming like the foundation to a rumpus room that's never finished.
  28. The Safety of Objects
    A genuine and tangible fondness and respect for the characters and their eccentricities.
  29. Irreversible
    A demanding but rewarding emotional odyssey in a challenging visual package.
  30. Tears of the Sun
    This is one of those pictures that unavoidably becomes part of the zeitgeist due to its coincidental arrival at a precise moment in history when its themes play into current events.
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