Vanity Fair's Scores

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For 643 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Under the Skin
Lowest review score: 10 Bright
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 429 out of 643
  2. Mixed: 171 out of 643
  3. Negative: 43 out of 643
643 movie reviews
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  1. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    It would be easy to get lost in all that technical detail, to figure the impression—both physical and vocal—is enough. But Chastain digs deeper than the aesthetics, and locates something crucial in Tammy Faye. It’s a genuine, deep-seated, perhaps ruinously naive compassion, which Chastain illustrates with great care.
  2. I Care a Lot
    Pike has been nominated for a Golden Globe for the performance, but don’t let that turn you off. She is, once again, a stealthy marvel in this movie, cruel and clever. The rest of the film might not meet the heights of its star, but it is still a sleek and compelling standout in an erratic season, anchored by one of the great performances of the year (so far, anyway).
  3. Chappaquiddick
    Chappaquiddick isn’t a harangue against Kennedy, but it does take a hard look at a man who was a revered stalwart of the Democratic party for decades. The film works best as a character study, a profile of moral crisis, rather than any sort of true-crime exposé.
  4. Clara's Ghost
    This extremely homemade film, written and directed by Bridey Elliott and starring her own mostly-famous family, is extremely funny at times and nerve-wracking at others, but also pitch black to the point that many will find it unbearable. I say stick with it; if nothing else, the film is a work of great daring.
  5. Godard Mon Amour
    Hazanavicius is one of our weirder directors. His schtick is to parrot other styles, either with his parody Bond films (the two OSS 117 movies) or The Artist. But Le Redoutable is his best work, I think, and not just because I’m fond of the French New Wave.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Special Agent
    The film contains the best answer yet recorded to the type of gangster who swears he can never be caught—namely, that "Dillinger didn't die of old age!"
  7. The Rider
    Despite its pure beauty, in other words, there’s no mistaking The Rider for a simple, crowd-pleasing pick-me-up. The movie is soulful, elegant, filmed as often as not at the magic hour, when the sky is as broad as it is orange-yellow, and every nook of the world seems alight with possibility. It is hardly, on its surface, an outright downer. But it’s unmistakably a movie about loss.
  8. The Brutalist
    Brody and Pearce vividly manifest Corbet’s arguments about the clash between art and money, between the old world and the new. When they are blazing away on screen together, The Brutalist swells to epic size—two craftsmen prodigiously working to realize their architect’s flawed and awesome vision.
  9. Nomadland
    Nomadland, which is really more character study than surveying sociology, approaches Fern’s circumstances, and those of the people she encounters on her travels, with a fluid, un-judging sensitivity.
  10. Carry-On
    The film is not going for total plausibility, but it is grounded in the logic and physics of the real world. Carry-On is refreshingly old-fashioned in that way; it is more interested in actual human capacity than in what modern technology can fake.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Devotion
    Devotion is thoroughly well-executed, but it’s rousing when Majors gets to play outside the box and show you something new.
  12. Fighting with My Family
    The story, which is humbly well told and good-humored, if familiar, is enjoyable enough not to write the film off.
  13. No Hard Feelings
    No Hard Feelings is a nice comedy, courting taboo here and there but largely rounded out with sweetness. It’s an amiable time at the movies—but I was hoping for more of a shock.
  14. Let Him Go
    Let Him Go is a swift entertainment, claustrophobic and anxious in its depiction of an impossible, frustrating situation, and satisfying in its gnarly climax.
  15. Deadpool & Wolverine
    The film’s gaze is narrow and insider-y, but it somehow kind of works. Deadpool & Wolverine is an amusing reflection on the recent cultural past, and a half-cynical, half-hopeful musing on what its future might be.
  16. The Last Duel
    The Last Duel is a surprising jumble, a motley assemblage of tones that often work in perverse harmony.
  17. Boys State
    Boys State is a grim lesson—a painful allegory—in the realities of American politics, in who so often wins campaigns by running platforms built on red-meat shibboleths while ignoring or barely addressing the pertinent ills of the country.
  18. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
    You don’t need to be a fan of the accordion-toting Yankovic to get some enjoyment and laughs out of the gleefully absurd Weird, but it sure wouldn’t hurt either.
  19. Red White & Royal Blue
    The familiarity of RW&RB’s obnoxious indulgences are, in some ways, its greatest triumph: its version of storybook love is allowed to be just as annoying, in the same ways, as the heteros’.
  20. Saltburn
    Stylish and intriguing, Saltburn proves an engaging sit for the majority of its run, and thus a stumble—even a big one—can mostly be forgiven. If anything, the film makes me curious to see what Fennell might do with another classic novel.
  21. The Wonder
    Lelio’s haughty piece of flair doesn’t diminish the impression made by Pugh, who fluidly projects compassion tinged with the faintest hint of menace.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Theater Camp
    With the adult actors playing zany characters, the kids’ genuine passion and skills ground the movie. Their performances make you believe in the mission of the camp, and may even have you wiping away tears.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Lost King
    One lovely wisp of a movie. ... Offers few surprises but plenty of comfort.
  24. Stargirl
    There’s something sweetly clumsy about how Stargirl invites us back in time, to twenty years ago, when such a made-up person might have surprised and delighted us. Stargirl is a strange but not unwelcome reminder of that fact. How quaint of us. How quirky, really.
  25. Master Gardener
    Much of Master Gardener is disarmingly placid. It’s a warmer, more optimistic film than one might expect, even if it does at times creak with the antiquated perspective of a stalwart septuagenarian filmmaker unwilling to shake off some of the past’s bad habits.
  26. Materialists
    Materialists is successfully seductive, eventually revealing a few potential deal-breakers but otherwise proving an engaging date. I wanted to fall in love, as I had with Past Lives. But a diverting, heady fling will do too.
  27. Knock at the Cabin
    The riskiness of that—the way Knock at the Cabin, accidentally or not, courts and even invites sympathy to one of the right’s most dangerous shibboleths—gives the film a surprising, alarming, but not unwelcome edge.
  28. 80 for Brady
    80 for Brady is a loosely structured hang movie, albeit one that culminates in a curiously affecting emotional climax.
  29. The Wife
    I wouldn’t call The Wife middling, exactly—but for all its soapy seriousness, it can’t match the genuine heft of Close’s craftwork.
  30. Harriet
    It doesn’t have the polish or prestige of your typical Oscar movie ... But there’s a tension at work in Harriet that’s missing from other, “better” movies. ... It’s also a vaster and in many ways wilder film than it will get credit for, a movie that leans into the excitement of Tubman’s mission so energetically it almost morphs into a heist picture, dredging up odd romantic and religious energies along the way.
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