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. Ciao America
    Never less than pleasant and genteel, but rarely more.
  2. The Experiment
    A solid slice of entertainment without reaching the psychological depths promised by the subject matter.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elvira's Haunted Hills
    Must-see fare for fans of the bosomy camp horror queen.
  4. Quitting
    What gives Quitting its freshness is its setting in a country that often denies it has such problems and the decision to anchor the film strongly within the Chinese family fabric.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Dogwalker
    There's an infectious, spry quality to much of The Dogwalker, an indie that benefits from amusing characters, strong thesping and taut situational humor.
  6. The Children of the Century
    A generally old-fashioned costumer that runs out of gas even faster than does the tempestuous love affair between writer George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset that it so devotedly recounts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Igby Goes Down
    Young Kieran Culkin holds his own against a stellar ensemble in Igby Goes Down, a family comedy so dark it turns "The Royal Tennebaums" into latter-day Bradys.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Barbershop
    A rousing celebration of the family-run small business, this Ice Cube-topped ensemble comedy, without offering anything especially new or exciting, provides a springboard for high-voltage comic exchanges that double as wisecrack-coated lessons in community relations.
  9. Stealing Harvard
    Depressingly thin and exhaustingly contrived. Only masochistic moviegoers need apply.
  10. Ted Bundy
    Looks set to unsettle as many conservative auds as it will delight nihilistic film buffs.
  11. The Pinochet Case
    It's hard to walk away unaffected from this heartfelt, well-researched, feature-length documentary.
  12. Swimfan
    A chiller resolutely without chills, in which even the pool water always seems heated. And inasmuch as the pic never owns up to its own trashiness, it's not even enjoyable camp.
  13. City by the Sea
    De Niro's reunion with helmer Michael Caton-Jones doesn't stoke the same fire as their previous pere-fils drama, "This Boy's Life," partly because De Niro's latest portrayal of a troubled cop feels so familiar.
  14. The Execution of Wanda Jean
    At its best, Garbus' account quietly depicts a set of wasted lives, and a closing image of Allen's plywood casket carted away by a bulldozer is emblematic of the tragedy.
  15. In Praise of Love
    The film offers a frequently obscure but (for fans) always watchable look at history, memory and -- in the most rarefied sense -- love.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Heartbreak Hospital
    Tries to combine romantic comedy, soap-opera parody and murder mystery, but the disparate elements never gel, and the film, about homicide at a daytime television serial, bounces around with no clue of how to reconcile or intertwine its genre conventions.
  17. Burning Man: The Burning Sensation
    A knockout documentary with a renegade personality ideally suited to its anarchic subject matter.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Big Carnival
    Billy Wilder's direction captures the feel of morbid expectancy that always comes out in the curious that flock to scenes of tragedy.
  19. FeardotCom
    Never quite realizes its potential to evoke the real horror of the Internet -- Yet, Malone has given the film a distinctive atmosphere and occasional flashes of his perverse sense of humor.
  20. *Corpus Callosum
    Watching *Corpus Callosum and marveling at its sprightliness, its joyous, imaginative air, its effortless attenuation to all that is wonderful and horrible and comical about modern technology, makes you want to jump up and shout for joy, too.
  21. Undisputed
    With Undisputed, writer-director Walter Hill is back in contention as one of Hollywood's last defenders of the muscular, no-nonsense genre movie.
  22. Little Secrets
    What you end up with are a bunch of kids acting not like kids, but how adults who've lost all sense of what it was like to be a kid think kids behave.
  23. Serving Sara
    Little more than a mall movie designed to kill time.
  24. S1m0ne
    Attempts to delve beneath the surface of Hollywood's rampant narcissism and fascination with technology, but ultimately feels like just one more in the long line of films this year about the business of making movies.
  25. One Hour Photo
    This immaculately made first feature from noted musicvid and commercials director Mark Romanek provides Robin Williams with one of his creepiest, atypical roles, and the comic star responds with an unusually restrained performance that is, in the end, quite moving.
  26. Going By
    Pleasantly watchable.
  27. Long Time Since
    Intense but inscrutable tale involving a woman's gradual remembrance of a long-suppressed trauma.
  28. Possession
    LaBute has had middling success at best, having come up with a passably engaging time-jumping romantic melodrama that at least grapples seriously with one of the novel's most potent themes.
  29. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
    The proper mix is never found. Ill-conceived and expensive project that winds up looking like a bunch of talented thesps slumming it.
  30. Mostly Martha
    A charming relationships comedy about food, gourmet cooking and emotionally chilling out. Anchored by a career-best performance from German thesp Martina Gedeck.
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