Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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  1. Ascension
    It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of her project, and it’s Kingdon’s work as editor that makes Ascension such a remarkable achievement. She organizes all these disparate scenes into a logical upward progression, and even though we seldom know where we are or who exactly we’re observing, these foreign situations are relatable, engaging and often unforgettable.
  2. Lantana
    A wonderfully acted, acutely observed psychological drama.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Friends of Eddie Coyle
    A very fine film about real people on the fringes of both crime and law enforcement.
  4. Reality
    Reality can be stranger than fiction, but “Reality” fuses the two to become stranger, and more riveting, still.
  5. Séraphine
    An extraordinary performance by vet thesp Yolande Moreau in the title role.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Oliver Twist
    From every angle this is a superb achievement.
  7. Marx Can Wait
    Straightforward in concept yet psychologically profound, the film draws the audience in with a lingering sadness made more potent by the director’s clear yet unspoken sense of guilt.
  8. 49 Up
    It doesn't make for involving drama, unless the audience is already invested in the subjects' fortunes. Thus, 49 Up will have more appeal for long-time followers than newcomers.
  9. To a Land Unknown
    To a Land Unknown is a film crafted with tremendous empathy.
  10. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    [A] sprawling, thrilling, finally heart-bursting group portrait of Parisian AIDS activists in the early 1990s.
  11. The Joy Luck Club
    Wang has made a dramatically confident move into the mainstream on his own terms with highly congenial material.
  12. Sirât
    This thrilling directorial confidence, given his film’s elegant opacities and ambiguities, is a quality to marvel at, even as it’s binding your hands and tying you to your seat and forcing you to watch, possibly against your will.
  13. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
    The situation Rasoulof depicts is hardly limited to Iran. There are echoes of Nazi Germany and modern-day China in the way average citizens submit, while the pressures to inform on one’s neighbors recall pre-perestroika Soviet policies. Rasoulof’s genius comes in focusing on how this dynamic plays out within a family, which makes it personal.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Postman Always Rings Twice
    Development of the characters makes Tay Garnett’s direction seem slowly paced during first part of the picture, but this establishment was necessary to give the speed and punch to the uncompromising evil that transpires.
  15. To Leslie
    It’s a downbeat diary that hooks us by taking the form of an addict’s picaresque. For two hours, we don’t know where Leslie is going to land next any more than she does, and that lends the film a searing, unvarnished quality.
  16. American Beauty
    A script as fresh and distinctive as any produced in the States in recent memory.
  17. Harmonium
    Shot in a meticulous yet unmannered style, the film provides the veteran cast with an ideal framework to mount masterful performances.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kagemusha
    Kurosawa, at 70, shows himself young indeed in the impressive handling of this historical drama laced with shrewd insights into the almost Shakespearean intrigues of power.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    That Obscure Object of Desire
    A gem-like, almost hypnotic, tale of an older man's obsession with a young woman.
  20. Far From Heaven
    An accomplished marriage of elaborate style and content.
  21. No Man's Land
    As a tyro auteur, Tanovich has a heavy-handed way of delineating characters and situations that makes this well-meaning film awfully familiar at times.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    Brilliant cinema theatre.
  23. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
    Neither pure masala musical nor pure masala meller, Lagaan is an involving, easily digestible hunk of pure entertainment that could be the trigger for Bollywood's long-awaited crossover to non-ethnic markets.
  24. Heart of a Dog
    While this alternately goofy, serious, lyrical and beguiling cine-essay serves primarily as a loving tribute to the memory of Anderson’s rat terrier, Lolabelle, its roving, free-associative structure brings together all manner of richly eccentric musings on the evasions of memory, the limitations of language and storytelling, the strangeness of life in a post-9/11 surveillance state, and the difficulty and necessity of coming to terms with death.
  25. Frame by Frame
    A piercing, poignant and — as befits its subject — beautifully composed exploration of the challenges and responsibilities faced by photojournalists in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban free press.
  26. Fireworks Wednesday (2006)
    Few Iranian films have tried to realistically depict both the urban middle and lower classes, and fewer still with the complexity of story telling and depth of characterization in Asghar Farhadi’s impressive third feature, Fireworks Wednesday.
  27. Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS
    A powerful and important documentary.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All the President's Men
    Some ingenious direction by Alan J. Pakula and scripting by William Goldman remove much of the inherent dramatic lethargy in any story of reporters running down a story.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prizzi's Honor
    Picture is a stretch for Nicholson, who speaks in a street-tough, accented gangster-ese that initially takes some getting used to, but shortly becomes totally convincing. Turner manages to use her loveliness to jolting results.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back
    Pennebaker has fashioned a relentlessly honest, brilliantly edited documentary permeated with the troubador-poet's music.
  31. Aferim!
    While its tone is occasionally overly strident, Aferim! is an exceptional, deeply intelligent gaze into a key historical period, done with wit as well as anger.
  32. Is God Is
    Both wildly entertaining and viciously upsetting, this remarkable debut boldly reaps what others have sown.
  33. War Witch
    Along with the moral lesson, Nguyen remembers to give auds some pleasures, including the exquisitely chosen soundtrack of African folk and pop music, Nicolas Bolduc's cinematography and the very artful use of sound throughout.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    2001: A Space Odyssey
    A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark; Kubrick must receive all the praise - and take all the blame.
  35. Toy Story 4
    "Toy Story" ushered in the era of computer-animated cartoon features, and the fourth movie wraps up the saga beautifully. At least, for now.
  36. Darwin's Nightmare
    Somewhat haphazardly organized yet fascinatingly detailed and enriched by the candor and dignity of its shockingly deprived interview subjects.
  37. My Winnipeg
    Though it may feel undernourished to the faithful, Winnipeg is an easily digestible meal, for the uninitiated and fans alike.
  38. On the Record
    On the Record presents a searing, at times shocking exposé of alleged criminal acts. Yet here, as in those earlier chronicles, what’s extraordinary is the disturbingly intimate communion the film creates between the audience and the survivors. Not just the facts but the meaning of these alleged crimes comes scarily alive in the emotional details of their telling.
  39. The White Ribbon
    Immaculately crafted in beautiful black-and-white and entirely absorbing through its longish running time, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon nonetheless proves a difficult film to entirely embrace.
  40. In My Room
    In My Room presents and accepts its partial apocalypse with unquestioning calm — an extreme contrivance that merely enables an elegant, exacting character study.
  41. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
    Beautiful, yet flawed film.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pride and Prejudice
    The film is something less than satisfactory entertainment, despite lavish settings, costumes, and an acting ensemble of unique talent.
    • Variety
  43. Chicken for Linda!
    Malta and Laudenbach have crafted an entertaining, kid-friendly toon whose power lies less in its plot than the surprising insights into human behavior revealed along the way.
  44. In the Heights
    Like its source, the movie is a blast, one that benefits enormously from being shot on the streets of Washington Heights.
  45. Fire of Love
    Fire of Love, which has been directed by Sara Dosa with a discursive, let’s-try-it-on lyricism, is like one of Werner Herzog’s documentaries about fearless outliers, only this one is touched with romance.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blood Simple
    An inordinately good low-budget film noir thriller...Performances are top-notch all around, Walsh in particular conveying the villainy and scummy aspects of his character with convincing glee.
  47. Hamnet
    Ultimately, the filmmaker invites the world to feel loss in a new way, and in letting go, liberates something fundamental in all of us.
  48. The Witch
    Writer-director Robert Eggers’ impressive debut feature walks a tricky line between disquieting ambiguity and full-bore supernatural horror, but leaves no doubt about the dangerously oppressive hold that Christianity exerted on some dark corners of the Puritan psyche.
  49. Looper
    In a genre infamous for loose ends, this thinking man's thriller marshals action, romance and a dose of very dark comedy toward a stunning payoff.
  50. Graduation
    As expected from a master like Mungiu, everything is beautifully structured and utterly credible, yet Graduation feels like a retread.
  51. Kubo and the Two Strings
    With such awe-inspiring artistry, designed so as to never distract from the material it serves, Kubo and the Two Strings stands as the sort of film that feels richer with each successive viewing, from the paper-folded Laika logo at the beginning (an early taste of the stunning origami sequences to follow) to the emotional resonance of its final shot.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aliens
    James Cameron's vault into the big time after scoring with the exploitation actioner The Terminator makes up for lack of surprise with sheer volume of thrills and chills - emphasis is decidedly on the plural aspect of the title.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Room at the Top
    Neil Paterson's literate, well-molded screenplay is enhanced by subtle, intelligent direction from first-timer Jack Clayton and a batch of topnotch performances.
  54. The Other Side of Hope
    As long as Kaurismäki presents this tidy a vision (aesthetically and morally), he’ll continue to be an engagingly hermetic art-house curio impersonating an artist.
  55. The Vast of Night
    Patterson trusts that chemistry will compensate for a gentle thriller that chooses to impress with ingenuity and charm instead of special effects.
  56. Old Joy
    A beautifully nuanced study in friendship and the irretrievability of the past.
  57. Momma's Man
    Wryly comic, sometimes heartbreaking and altogether original film about a thirtysomething Angeleno who pays a visit to his aging New York parents and finds himself unwilling or unable to leave.
  58. You Were Never Really Here
    Ramsay has made more sensually rapturous films, but this may be her most formally exacting: No shot or cut here is idle or extraneous.
  59. In the Name of the Father
    But the filmmakers have invigorated and enriched the story through the use of a thousand details, a strong sense of time and place, outstanding characterizations and a display of energy and cinematic flair that marks an advance on "My Left Foot."
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Girl Crazy
    The story thread is light, but enough to string together the George and Ira Gershwin songs.
  61. A Ghost Story
    While Lowery’s actual method of delivery may not be scary, it’s sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience.
  62. Ballast
    A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports Ballast, an extraordinary debut by editor-writer-director Lance Hammer.
  63. Volver
    Peopled with superbly drawn, attractive characters smoothly integrated into a well-turned, low-tricks plotline, Volver may rep Almodovar's most conventional piece to date, but it is also his most reflective, a subdued, sometimes intense and often comic homecoming that celebrates the pueblo and people that shaped his imagination.
  64. The Square
    The Square is journalism, but Noujaim’s agenda is greater than mere reportage.
  65. Widows
    Widows, while a highly original and entertaining variation on the heist film, isn’t a home run.
  66. Love After Love
    Bolstered by superb lead turns from Chris O’Dowd and Andie MacDowell, as well as a formal structure that enhances the roiling emotions propelling its characters into a downward spiral, Love After Love is an assured debut feature that announces its writer-director as a formidable new American indie voice
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Story
    It is generally successful on all artistic levels, propelled by the best-selling Erich Segal novel written from the original screenplay.
  68. Position Among the Stars
    As with his previous pics about the brood, Dutch-Indonesian helmer Leonard Retel Helmrich deploys an expressionistic, quasi-soap-opera approach to produce striking results, thanks especially to use of Steadicam. But the protagonists seem to be playing to the cameras more this time round, making "Stars" a less charming effort than earlier installments.
  69. Motherland
    There’s an ease of intimacy to Diaz’s observations that suggests her crew was embedded for some time in the ward. The camerawork is crisp and bright, the editorial assembly likewise effortlessly engaging, capturing a sense of lives revealed in the everyday workings of the hospital.
  70. Synonyms
    Breathtaking in the way it careens from one scene to the next in a whirlwind of personal and political meaning all but impossible to grasp in full measure, the film is an excoriation of Israel’s militant machismo and a self-teasing parody of Parisian stereotypes, embodied by actor Tom Mercier in this astonishingly audacious debut.
  71. Boys State
    Ultimately, Boys State works because the “characters” are so compelling.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Homicide
    Mamet’s direction gives much of the film a bracing, refreshing tone as he works to express the shattering tensions of Gold’s work.
  73. On Her Shoulders
    It’s one thing to tell a traumatic story, and another to capture how that trauma impacts a life. What makes Alexandria Bombach’s On Her Shoulders so powerful — besides the profound dignity of its subject, Yazidi massacre survivor Nadia Murad — is the way she reveals Murad’s distress at having to take on the role of activist.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Bad News Bears
    The Bad News Bears is an extremely funny adult-child comedy film. Walter Matthau stars to perfection as a bumbling baseball coach in the sharp production about the foibles and follies of little-league athletics.
  75. Sense and Sensibility
    Crucially for such an elaborately dressed production, the characters all come thoroughly alive with their ready wits and pulsing emotions, overcoming the two-century gap with seeming effortlessness.
  76. The Descendants
    Nearly every detail sources directly back to Kaui Hart Hemmings' sensitively crafted novel, and yet, Payne's triumph is in striking the right tone -- and knowing what to leave unsaid.
  77. First Man
    After seeing First Man, it’s doubtful you’ll think about space flight, or Armstrong’s historic walk, in quite the same way. You’ll know more deeply how it happened, what it meant and what it was, and why its mystery — more than ever — still lingers.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Terminator
    A blazing, cinematic comic book, full of virtuoso moviemaking, terrific momentum, solid performances and a compelling story.
  79. Distant
    An arthouse film par excellence, a consummately made study of loneliness and frustration.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
    Taylor has a major credit with her portrayal of Maggie. The frustrations and desires, both as a person and a woman, the warmth and understanding she molds, the loveliness that is more than a well-turned nose – all these are part of a well-accented, perceptive interpretation.
  81. Snowpiercer
    Snowpiercer has been brought to the screen with the kind of solid narrative craftsmanship, carefully drawn characters and — above all — respect for the audience’s intelligence rarely encountered in high-concept genre cinema.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Old Yeller
    Disney organization's flair for taking a homely subject and building a heartwarming film is again aptly demonstrated in this moving story set in 1869 of a Texas frontier family and an old yeller dog. Based on Fred Gipson's novel of same tag, this is a careful blending of fun, laughter, love, adventure and tragedy.
  83. Eephus
    Its pearls of practical wisdom and jewels of melancholic wit make Eephus a gem, which is fitting, for a movie about a game played on a diamond.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Uncle
    Somewhat long for a comedy, Jacques Tati's film has inventiveness, gags, warmth and a 'poetic' approach to satire.
  85. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Mike Leigh's mellowest work yet, and his most purely entertaining.
  86. Lassie
    Competent journeyman writer-helmer Charles Sturridge ("Brideshead Revisited") and his overqualified thesp ensemble steer a steady course between dogged fidelity to Eric Knight's sentimental original novel and modern auds' need for a little humorous bite with the barking.
  87. Shrek
    This spirited and often very funny lark accomplishes something that most films in the bygone Hollywood studio era used to do but is remarkably rare in today's world of niche markets: It offers entertainment equally to viewers from 4 to 104.
  88. Youth (Hard Times)
    At nearly four hours in length, it surpasses even its gargantuan predecessor “Youth (Spring),” but it also uses that film as a platform for deeper exploration.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Letter
    Never has [the W. Somerset Maugham play] been done with greater production values, a better all-around cast or finer direction. Its defect is its grimness. Director William Wyler, however, sets himself a tempo which is in rhythm with the Malay locale.
  90. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    A heady spirit of spontaneity permeates the proceedings, suggesting the entire pic, much like the concert it documents, was conceived, planned and completed in a single burst of creative enthusiasm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Victor Victoria
    A sparkling, ultra-sophisticated entertainment from Blake Edwards.
  92. Our Time Machine
    Sun and Chiang strike a tricky balance between a high-stakes making-of documentary and an intimate, observational family portrait, but Maleonn is such a thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant subject that the film is compelling no matter where on the creative spectrum they find him.
  93. The Day I Became a Woman
    A powerful statement about the social oppression of women in today's Iran.
  94. The Quiet American
    One of Caine's meatiest roles, and he handles it with power, humanity and remarkable emotional fluidity; from the opening moments, an enormous amount comes through his eyes alone.
  95. The Pinochet Case
    It's hard to walk away unaffected from this heartfelt, well-researched, feature-length documentary.
  96. The Fallout
    It’s a remarkable accomplishment: a film with the confidence to pose big questions, and the humility to leave them unanswered.
  97. Weiner
    Filmmakers Josh Kriegman (a former Weiner aide) and Elyse Steinberg utilize their seemingly unfettered access to deliver a rollicking and never-dull insider’s view of a political campaign in crisis mode, but the most fascinating questions surrounding Weiner’s epic fall remain unanswered.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stalag 17
    The legit hit about GI internees in a Nazi prison camp during the Second World War is screened as a lusty comedy-melodrama, loaded with bold, masculine humor and as much of the original’s uninhibited earthiness as good taste and the Production Code permit.
  99. Iraq in Fragments
    As beautiful as it is unrevealing, James Longley's Iraq in Fragments rests on a debatable but firm premise -- that the embattled country is irrevocably separated by its three dominant groups, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds -- but brings back nothing journalistically substantial from the war front .
  100. Mystic River
    This full-bodied adaptation of Dennis Lehane's involved and involving 2001 bestselling crime novel about old friends in Boston's working-class Irish neighborhood finds Clint Eastwood near the top of his directorial game with a cast of first-rate actors.
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