Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. She's All That
    While there are a few good jokes and sight gags along the way, the main impression left by She's All That is how numbingly consistent its lack of originality is.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Gloria
    A travesty trying to be a Sharon Stone vehicle, this wooden crime yarn easily qualifies as the most tired, unexciting mob movie in recent memory.
  3. Children of Heaven
    Much humor and suspense is wrung from incidents that would be minuscule from anything but a child’s p.o.v., many repeated until they become ingenious running gags.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Playing by Heart
    A stellar cast and articulate script notwithstanding, pic fails to connect emotionally with its audience, which perhaps says more about the difficulty of making empathetic attachments than writer-director Willard Carroll intended.
  5. Virus
    Curtis and Pacula are thoroughly convincing in thinly written roles.
  6. Varsity Blues
    An unappetizing mix of raucously vulgar comedy and teen-angst melodrama.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    At First Sight
    Although it's notoriously difficult to play a romance involving one partner's disability or illness without resorting to sentimentality, Kilmer acquits himself admirably.
  8. The Thin Red Line
    Like a Rousseau painting splattered with carnage of warfare.
  9. Forever Mine
    Paul Schrader hits a low water mark with Forever Mine, a strenuously straight-faced film noir wanna-be that edges perilously close to self-parody.
  10. Affliction
    The pervasive chill, ugly feelings and downward spiral of the narrative make this a work that requires an equally sober, serious-minded attitude on the part of the viewer.
  11. Hilary and Jackie
    Eye-grabbing performances from Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths, who portray celebrated British cellist Jacqueline Du Pre and her older sister, Hilary, distinguish this ambitious but flawed biography.
  12. The Faculty
    Results may not be Nobel Prize material, but they're zesty and cogent.
  13. Stepmom
    Everything about the film suggests that its makers consider it a deep, emotionally probing drama, but it's merely a soap opera with elevated production values and a sterling cast.
  14. A Civil Action
    A solid and intelligent legal thriller that may be too complex in its issues, and too low-key and unexciting in its style, for today's market demands.
  15. Patch Adams
    Shamelessly sappy and emotionally manipulative, Patch Adams is an aggressively heartwarming comedy-drama that may be roasted by critics but embraced by ticketbuyers.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mighty Joe Young
    Mighty Joe Young is wholesome, well-crafted family fare like Hollywood used to make.
  17. Down in the Delta
    Poet Maya Angelou's debut feature directing effort is a solid and affecting piece of work.
  18. The Theory of Flight
    A risky idea only occasionally gets both wheels off the ground in "The Theory of Flight," a sometimes wryly amusing, oftimes dramatically awkward story
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    You've Got Mail
    The most successful version yet of this familiar premise.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Prince of Egypt
    At once rich in historic and character detail and full of eye-popping tableaux, this new spin on the Moses saga sometimes out-DeMilles DeMille's 1956 live-action epic, "The Ten Commandments."
  21. The General
    Rarely has a veteran filmmaker rejuvenated his career to such startling effect as John Boorman with The General, a fresh-off-the-slab biopic of maverick Irish crime lord Martin Cahill that both challenges and entertains the audience at a variety of levels, as well as reviving the vitality of the helmer's earliest, mid-'60s pics.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Simple Plan
    The key differences are in emphasis and tone: “Fargo” is deadpan noir; A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton as Mutt and Jeff siblings, is a more robust Midwestern Gothic that owes as much to Poe as Chandler.
  23. Star Trek: Insurrection
    Even though Frakes is back, Star Trek: Insurrection plays less like a stand-alone sci-fi adventure than like an expanded episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shakespeare in Love
    Exquisitely acted, tightly directed and impressively assembled.
  25. Rushmore
    Wickedly funny.
  26. Jack Frost
    Jack Frost is a slickly packaged and engagingly sentimental fantasy-comedy that stands out as one of the season's most pleasant surprises. Pic offers a shrewdly balanced mix of humor, high concept and heart tugging, along with some amusingly impressive special effects.
  27. Little Voice
    A small picture with a big heart.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Psycho
    A faithful-unto-slavish remake of the 1960 Hitchcock classic, pic contains nothing to outrage or offend partisans of the original, yet neither does it stand to add much to their appreciation.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Home Fries
    While plot elements don't add up, film's energy level remains high, and oddball ensemble brings to mind a classic of this type, Jonathan Demme's "Citizens Band."
  30. Very Bad Things
    Basically a very conventional movie gussied up with a few jaw-dropping moments. Unlike genuinely amoral pics such as "Heathers" or "Shallow Grave," it never seems really comfortable with its characters' actions.
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