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. Speed 2: Cruise Control
    Lacking the manipulative structure of "Speed," which shrewdly interspersed rousing set pieces throughout the story, Speed 2 is vastly uneven, trying in its second hour to recoup energy and compensate the audience for all the exposition of the initial reels.
  2. Ulee's Gold
    Nunez achieves a rare, and rarely earned, emotional depth that rewards the moderate demands he makes on contemporary viewers' short attention spans.
  3. Con Air
    Apart from not knowing to quit while it's ahead, Con Air provides quite an exciting flight prior to its crash and burn.
  4. The Pillow Book
    It is at first daunting but ultimately awesomely impressive and beautiful.
  5. Addicted to Love
    Warm performances that result in hilarity without guilt.
  6. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    David Koepp's script, from the Michael Crichton novel, is schematic and largely predictable. There's an obvious threat and not too many ways to quell it. Underneath the technical virtuosity is a standard chase film, and director Steven Spielberg does little to elevate it dramatically.
  7. Brassed Off
    This well-played, often very sparky dramedy about the shenanigans in a northern brass band composed of miners threatened with pit closure gets a bad attack of social realism in the latter stages that rocks the crowded craft.
  8. Love! Valour! Compassion!
    It is so sharply written and entertaining that in its stage-to-screen transfer the material easily overcomes its theatrical sensibility and the static direction of Joe Mantello, who also staged the Broadway production.
  9. Night Falls on Manhattan
    Lumet never tires of exploring moral quandaries. But what separates his films from the pack is his appreciation for all perspectives.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Brave
    The main fault lies with the writing. Lacking both a realistic grounding and compelling internal momentum, pic wastes its handsome mounting and capable cast on a plodding tale that eludes either psychological or allegorical sense.
  11. The Fifth Element
    Ultimately a mess of diverse ingredients that sorely could have used a rigorous screening process to eliminate all the chaff.
  12. Fathers' Day
    Robin Williams and Billy Crystal can each provoke a lot more laughs in a minute of standup than they jointly manage during the entire running time of Fathers' Day.
  13. Nowhere
    A vibrantly colorful, wildly nihilistic and lovingly perverse poem to America's beautiful, libidinous and doomed youth. Though not his best, Araki's sixth feature is without a doubt his most accessible, sensual and superficially entertaining movie to date.
  14. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
    Definitely lives up to its promise of being smashing, groovy, baby.
  15. Breakdown
    In his bigscreen feature debut, director and co-writer Jonathan Mostow displays real flair for visceral cinema while adroitly sidestepping many of the usual tripwires of this sort of film, particularly silly coincidences, stupid decisions on the part of characters with whom you're supposed to identify, and superheroics performed by ordinary people.
  16. Children of the Revolution
    Brimming with almost too many ideas for its 99-minute running time, Duncan's film boasts a strong cast of top actors who flesh out a group of bizarre yet recognizable characters involved in the political scene from the '50s to the present day.
  17. Irma Vep
    A slender but appealing divertissement about a has-been auteur attempting to remake the French silent classic "Les Vampires," the film's wry digs at the institution of Gallic art movies and at the anarchic confusion of the filmmaking process should amuse hip fest audiences.
  18. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
    Desperately uncertain in tone and able to generate only sporadic laughs, pic decks out its meager story of revenge and comeuppance with a vulgar, flashy shimmer that will no doubt attract teenage girls, or the core "Clueless" audience.
  19. Volcano
    A furiously paced popcorn picture whose outrageous implausibility is somewhat amusing, Volcano delivers enough spectacular action to get it off to a hot B.O. start, although like the lava in the picture, it may not flow quite as far as anticipated.
  20. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
    Spade is tiresome in yet another smart-ass part.
  21. Murder at 1600
    What makes the film involving and enjoyable in its first hour is a thick, multilayered plot, a rare sight in mainstream movies nowadays.
  22. Traveller
    The film shrewdly humanizes its protagonists to the point where the audience forgets their identity and roots for them to succeed - and survive.
  23. McHale's Navy
    Time and adapters have not been kind to the fun-loving series.
  24. Grosse Pointe Blank
    The zeal and good nature of the cast overcome the artificial quality of the situations.
  25. Anaconda
    A silly and plodding "Jaws" rip-off about a 40-foot man-eating snake on the prowl in the Brazilian rain forest.
  26. Paradise Road
    Though carefully rendered from a historical perspective, this powerful account of female friendship and bonding under the most cruel conditions lacks the narrative focus and dramatic shapeliness to generate emotional excitement.
  27. Schizopolis
    Some of the filmmaker's keen intelligence remains on display, but only in fractured and often obscure form, and pic overall gives the impression of a giant expurgation of negative feelings about things in general rather than a carefully articulated brief on recognizable subjects.
  28. Inventing the Abbotts
    An emotionally powerful but extremely old-fashioned coming-of-age saga.
  29. Chasing Amy
    Much of the dialogue is good, and Smith does a decent job of presenting the emotional fallout from every major participant's p.o.v.
  30. The Saint
    A generic suspenser that doesn't taste bad at first bite but becomes increasingly hard to swallow, The Saint comes off more as a pallid imitation of Paramount's Eurothriller "Mission: Impossible" than as anything resembling the further adventures of Leslie Charteris' charming rogue.
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