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. Double Team
    Shrewdly made with an eye for the global market, where the Belgian star is more of a draw than he is Stateside, pic features visually exciting set pieces in alluring tourist sites, putting the audience in a pleasantly mindless state of disbelief.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love and Other Catastrophes
    Boosted by a terrific ensemble of five engaging young thesps, pic is forthright, frank and freewheeling in its approach to sex, love and cinema.
  3. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
    Even under the best of circumstances, it would be late in the day for another bigscreen adventure from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But coming so soon after the well-received reissue of George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, the high-camp cheesiness ofTurbo: A Power Rangers Movie is especially unimpressive.
  4. The Devil's Own
    The Devil's Own is neither the best nor the worst $90 million-$100 million-area budgeted picture ever made, but it must be the one in which the cost is least evident on the screen.
  5. Cats Don't Dance
    Decked out with sharp and colorful design work, some well-drawn characters and six snappy Randy Newman tunes, this first entry from Turner Feature Animation goes down very easily but lacks a hook to make it anything other than a minor kidpic entry commercially.
  6. Selena
    Although Nava's screenplay hits the subject of every scene right on the head and doesn't ask for much subtlety or subtext, Lopez is wonderful to watch in the dramatic sequences as well as in the numerous musical interludes.
  7. Liar Liar
    Awfully funny at times.
  8. Crash
    Cronenberg is a master of creating and sustaining a mood of insinuating cool and dark allure, but while the director remains firmly behind the wheel for the first hour or so, he cracks up toward the end with sequences that send the film and the audience into a ditch.
  9. Maborosi
    This visually lush but sometimes ponderously slowfilm is a poetic saga of love and loss.
  10. Gray's Anatomy
    Removing a live audience from the equation, Soderbergh becomes a bold participant in the storytelling. The backdrop keeps changing, from a brick wall to drapes, windows and assorted landscapes. The lighting is in constant flux, often punctuating the text on cue.
  11. The Substance of Fire
    But what presumably was powerful in Jon Robin Baitz's play has been diluted in opening it up for the screen.
  12. Love Jones
    Although it becomes a bit contrived and conventional toward the end, writer-director Theodore Witcher's debut feature shows quite a few good moves, and Larenz Tate and Nia Long make an attractively hot couple at its center.
  13. Private Parts
    A funny and unexpectedly beguiling account of the outrageous humorist's unlikely rise to the pinnacle of radio celebrity.
  14. Jungle 2 Jungle
    An extremely handsome physical production, with breathtaking Venezuelan vistas by Tony Pierce-Roberts, Jungle 2 Jungle is an otherwise modest effort. Simple truths are often the most effective, but in this instance they are only banal and mildly amusing.
  15. The Daytrippers
    Greg Mottola's feature directorial debut, is an amusing farce about the delicate intricacies and imbalances of a modern marriage. A spirited cast, including old pros such as Anne Meara and younger talent such as Parker Posey, elevates the basically sitcom material into something fluffier and funnier than its nature suggests.
  16. Donnie Brasco
    The psychological dimensions of the story remain underrealized, but the loaded central premise and intimate focus the film sustains combine for a very involving and dramatic piece of crime lore.
  17. Hard Eight
    Four excellent lead performances, vividly evoked ambience and a masterfully sustained mood of quiet desperation mark Sydney as an impressive piece of work.
  18. Smilla's Sense of Snow
    An exceedingly sleek and handsome thriller, this ambitious European co-production, like the novel on which it's quite faithfully based, starts intriguingly but fails to stay the distance.
  19. Booty Call
    Though straining at the bounds of good taste (and occasionally spilling over), the story remains vigilant in its primary focus.
  20. Lost Highway
    Although uneven and too deliberately obscure in meaning to be entirely satisfying, result remains sufficiently intriguing and startling to bring many of Lynch's old fans back on board for this careening ride.
  21. Rosewood
    Ultimately, however, the film's ambition, urgency and acute observations prevail over the many stock elements to forge an estimable work that is notably serious and analytical for a Hollywood-produced film in this day and age.
  22. Fools Rush In
    In a role that Tom Hanks might have played a decade or so ago, Perry is pretty bland and doesn't provide any hints as to why Alex is so emotionally stymied.
  23. Vegas Vacation
    Series regulars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and Randy Quaid (who joined for "Christmas Vacation") are all back for more, and thank God for Quaid, who injects a few bracing shots of mangy humor into what is otherwise a lukewarm brew.
  24. Absolute Power
    Eastwood is in good, sly form, once again delighting in a character's splendid solitude and singular skill at what he does.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Touch
    Paul Schrader's first feature since Light Sleeper five years ago boasts a colorful cast and some vivid individual scenes, but unsuccessfully mixes tones while strenuously reaching for offbeat humor.
  26. That Darn Cat
    It's not quite a catastrophe, but the updated remake of That Darn cat is a loud and largely charmless trifle. Very small children may be attracted in sufficient numbers for fair-to-middling opening weekend B.O., but this overbearing comedy isn't likely to pussyfoot very long in theaters before it high-tails to homevideo.
  27. Dante's Peak
    Physicality of the second half, then, will keep the audience going, but it is not quite sufficient to camouflage the elemental silliness of storyline.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    SubUrbia
    Writer-director teamings seldom mesh as smoothly or suggest so many creative affinities as does the one at the heart of subUrbia, a brooding, incisive comedy that blends the talents of helmer Richard Linklater and playwright Eric Bogosian.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Waiting for Guffman
    The enterprise comes across like a bunch of talented friends making an elaborate home movie for their own amusement.
  30. Fierce Creatures
    A hilarious farce.
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