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. Sea Fever
    We can feel a richer idea tingling just beneath Sea Fever’s skin. But Hardiman never roots it out, opting instead for a restraint that is often admirable, but also dampens the film’s potential power.
  2. Mrs. Hyde
    Huppert, whose sharpness lends itself beautifully to ironic humor, is more than game. Mrs. Hyde is, among other things, a comedy of enlightenment—literal enlightenment, if the gold sparks coursing through Géquil’s body are any indication. Perhaps its greatest lesson isn’t within the movie, but rather the fact of it: rather than revise a stale genre, burn it anew.
  3. Isn't It Romantic
    I wish the movie was just a tad sharper, took a little more time to really clarify its stance on this whole social-sexual-commercial world of romantic aspirationalism, to make its commentary and its humor really sing—and sting.
  4. Under the Silver Lake
    Mitchell has made a stylish, occasionally intriguing film, by turns idiosyncratically funny and downright scary. But he says and shows a lot of bothersome things throughout, which I’m not quite sure how to approach.
  5. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    Though some zesty flair has been added—particularly a new heroine—this hyper-aggro spin-off of a beloved franchise over does it while under-delivering.
  6. House of Gucci
    There’s some art to be found here, for sure. But there’s not nearly enough of the pop.
  7. Being the Ricardos
    Being the Ricardos reduces the physical comedy that made I Love Lucy work night after night to a series of explainers. Speech after speech drills into the workings of a comedy script or gag, yet nothing makes you laugh.
  8. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
    The pleasures of Ol Parker’s film are simple and sensual, its riot of color and sweet, nostalgic songs proving wholly agreeable even without much of a plot to hold it all together.
  9. We Live in Time
    There is also its nimble humor, its refreshingly frank and positive depictions of sex—perhaps we are finally turning a corner on that whole issue. And there is the remarkable Pugh, doing so much to deeply humanize a story of pretty people in pretty places and ever so slightly contrived circumstances.
  10. Voyeur
    There are issues of trust between the two men. It’s unclear who is exploiting whom—and impossible to know what is being recreated for the camera and what is being captured “live.” This is all to the betterment of Voyeur, which, it isn’t too much of a spoiler to say, ultimately concludes that Mr. Talese and Mr. Foos aren’t all that different from one another.
  11. Outlaw King
    It’s funny to be watching a movie about nationalism—something of a hot topic right now—that gives off so little heat. Not because it’s unexpected—but because the missed opportunity seems both so obvious and so beside the point.
  12. Godzilla vs. Kong
    Godzilla vs. Kong competently, efficiently does its job, which is really all you can ask of the fourth movie in a rickety franchise.
  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. Lizzie
    Lizzie isn’t a bad film, but it doesn’t accomplish all that it wants to—and all I wanted it to. We’re never as immersed in its psychological swirl as we should be, and every character in it is either such a creep or a flinching headcase that it’s hard to get our emotional hooks in any of them.
  15. The Forgiven
    Chastain pulls focus whenever she can, operating as one of the film’s main resources of levity and acerbic bite. I wish the movie had more of that energy—McDonagh keeps the proceedings oddly muted given the circumstances—but at least Chastain is there, pepping things up a bit.
  16. Those Who Wish Me Dead
    Those Who Wish Me Dead is missing an act, maybe, some of kind bridge between its drawn-out beginning and its hurried climax. What’s in the film is staged shrewdly by Sheridan, but there’s little sense of cumulative build.
  17. Ballerina
    One happily trots along with Ballerina as it ventures into absurdity. Its silliness is, at least, compellingly rendered. It helps immensely that de Armas is such a limber, confident action performer.
  18. Joker
    The movie is, for a good stretch, a troubling and arresting character study, one done with nervy conviction. Eventually, though, Phillips has to more tightly attach this downward spiral to the larger Gotham mythology, which is where the provocative ambivalence of the film gives way to veneration.
  19. The Little Mermaid
    McCarthy’s sly, amoral performance is far and away the best part of the film. Every time she’s onscreen, the movie finally seems, well, animated.
  20. Cruella
    Cruella is yet another act of co-opting by the biggest entertainment company in the world, an attempt to graft a cheap rebel spirit onto a naked exercise in I.P. synergy.
  21. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    The film strikes a nice balance between serviceable, not-overly-slick action scenes—we’ve come a long way from those shoddily animated monkeys—and comedy that’s actually rooted in character, rather than cheap references or stereotypes.
  22. It: Chapter Two
    There isn’t truly standout work from anyone in the cast, even if the cast is what makes the movie work when it does work. Thank God for Hader’s unassuming sense of humor, Ransone’s jitteriness, Chastain’s steely, intuitive resolve.
  23. F9: The Fast Saga
    F9’s attempts at classical drama, all its reckoning with dynastic sin, do weigh the thing down quite a bit. Those going to the theater simply for the kicky, bad-joke, MacGuffin charms of F&F may find themselves a little bored and distracted, as I was, by all the turgidity.
  24. Boston Strangler
    What a welcome rarity Boston Strangler is, even in its limits: a sturdy, thoughtfully constructed movie featuring a compelling story and host of great actors.
  25. An American Pickle
    An American Pickle proves a pretty good hang. It’s straightforward, well-paced, has fun-enough cameos (Lonely Planet’s Jorma Taccone and comic Tim Robinson, to name two). But it also sells its premise quite a bit short.
  26. The Midnight Sky
    The ending of the film stuck with me for days, pushing me into a kind of melancholy existential funk that proved distressingly hard to shake.
  27. Jojo Rabbit
    Jojo Rabbit has little to say about any of the things it dredges up, beyond the obvious.
  28. Work It
    Only 92 minutes long, Work It could use more space to move around in: to let these performers really strut their stuff, and to allow the movie to develop a bit more idiosyncratic texture. As is, Work It is an agreeable enough pastiche, clearly aware of its influences and not trying to pretend that it’s come up with these steps all on its own.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wicked Little Letters
    Ultimately, Wicked Little Letters turns out to be not much of a whodunnit—frankly, you can probably guess now and get it right. But the lack of a real mystery doesn't really matter when Buckley and Colman are as delightful to watch as they are in this film.
  30. The High Note
    The High Note isn’t an ecstatic, tenuously held burst; instead, it’s a mellow pleasure, sleekly directed by Ganatra, who turns Flora Greeson’s occasionally programmatic script into something of smooth, sensual warmth. It is, above all else, an inviting opportunity for two likable actors, Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross, to simply exist on screen together, fluid in their casual appeal and gracefully bringing a sappy, aspirational story to mostly credible life.
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