Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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 2.4 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. A Dark Place
    The result is diverting enough, yet ends up more a mildly offbeat time-filler than something memorable.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Medium Cool
    Photographed in Chicago against the clamor and violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where cast principals were on their own as they made their way through the crowds and police lines. Buildup to these later sequences frequently is confusing and motives difficult to fathom.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Out of Africa
    At two-and-a-half hours, Out of Africa certainly makes a leisurely start into its story. Just short of boredom, however, the picture picks up pace and becomes a sensitive, enveloping romantic tragedy. Nonetheless it’s a long way to go for a downbeat ending, which may hurt broad appeal.
  4. Clementine
    It’s too early to state for sure, but restraint appears to be one of Gallagher’s gifts — the kind that rewards moviegoing patience. With this first feature, Gallagher spins a yarn, also peeling a story of attraction and power, identity and coming-of-agency. Only this Clementine is no toss off.
  5. The Short History of the Long Road
    There is enough substance here to propel The Short History of the Long Road forward through its minor bends and speed-bumps. Most of all, it is Carpenter’s restrained performance and air of wisdom, permeating the screen with an astutely soulful quality that’s tough to turn away from.
  6. Standing Up, Falling Down
    Thanks largely to the performers (and Crystal in particular), the end result is diverting enough if unmemorable.
  7. Stray Dolls
    The downbeat, disenfranchised “dark side of the American dream” thing has been done to death in a thousand noirs, but Stray Dolls elbows just enough room for itself in that crowded category, especially for how it honors the American cinematic tradition of the last-chance motel: a place designed for passing through that somehow never lets you leave.
  8. Nightmare Cinema
    If there are no outright duds, there’s no real triumph either. But the whole is certainly diverse, lively and reference-packed enough to please horror fans attracted to this kind of enterprise.
  9. Lying and Stealing
    Yet even given its budgetary limits and second-tier cast, Lying and Stealing manages to be a retro escapist pleasure — one whose cleverness might actually have been muffled by flashier surface assets.
  10. Meeting Gorbachev
    We might have hoped for a more sparky encounter, but Meeting Gorbachev, though consistently engaging, is less a fireworks display than a fireside chat, and so feels curiously like an opportunity missed.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Project X
    If nothing else, Project X is the ultimate film for monkey lovers. Some quite endearing chimpanzees share center stage with Matthew Broderick for nearly two hours here, and while they, and he, are engaging enough to watch, picture lets its manipulative strings show too clearly.
  12. Head Count
    This is all a lot more interesting than some guy in a mask running around with a kitchen knife. Though not at all comedic like the “Happy Death Day” films, Head Count similarly plays with narrative perception in clever ways. It’s an admirably disciplined film with committed performances by actors playing characters more complicated than the usual horror casualty list.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bedtime Story
    Bed time Story will divert the less discriminating, although there are times when even such major league performers as Marlon Brando and David Niven have to strain to sustain the overall meager romantic comedy material.
  14. Atlantics
    The result offers mixed levels of satisfaction, most successful in capturing the protagonist’s leap into adulthood and her increasing reliance on the forthright, independent-minded women around her.
  15. Bacurau
    Though shot in striking anamorphic widescreen and laced with references to John Carpenter, Sergio Leone and the like, Bacurau doesn’t quite work in traditional genre-movie terms. Rather, it demands the extra labor of unpacking its densely multilayered subtext to appreciate.
  16. Frankie
    There are a few surprises in Frankie, and the movie, in its placid way, wants to deliver a tug of revelation of what life is about. The trouble is, life at the end of this day doesn’t look very much different than it did at the start of the day.
  17. Les Misérables
    It’s a furious work of social geography that satisfies slightly less as a character piece: In its ambitious attempt to dramatize the violent anxieties of men on both sides of the law, Les Misérables risks selling some victims a little short.
  18. The Traitor
    It’s clearly made by a master filmmaker questioning the nature of repentance, and as such is far from superficial; and yet while it never loses our attention, it also doesn’t deliver much of a punch.
  19. Port Authority
    So maybe “Port Authority” isn’t the most elegant queer romance audiences will see this year, but it’s propelled by a pair of terrific performances, and Lessowitz captures the spirit and energy of the vibrant ball world in a totally fresh way.
  20. Diego Maradona
    It’s a heady, engrossing, indulgently sprawling profile of a modern athlete in all his glory and contradiction, but it’s also a film that leaves you with more questions than it should.
  21. Lux Æterna
    Let’s be clear: Lux Æterna is a glorified Saint Laurent commercial. That’s the tweet-length analysis. But there’s more to it than that.
  22. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil
    As much fun as it is to watch Lee beat people up and strut around in shiny pinstripe suits, it’s just as much of a pleasure to watch him think it all through.
  23. Zombi Child
    The film can feel worked-over and schematic, as if Bonello was too preoccupied with serving the thesis to trust his peerless intuition.
  24. Tommaso
    A movie that’s a loosely structured ramble can work, and about half of “Tommaso” feels more vital than anything Ferrara has made in a while. But the film should have been shapelier and 20 minutes shorter, with a more focused dramatic psychology.
  25. Family Romance, LLC
    The “LLC” in the film’s title is a clue that the movie wasn’t conceived purely in a spirit of empathy, although Herzog’s humor is good-natured enough. If anything, Family Romance is just the latest iteration of a uniquely human desire to replicate the relationships we can’t control in our lives.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Hawaii
    Hal Kanter's breezy screenplay, from a story by Allan Weiss, is the slim, but convenient, foundation for a handsome, picture-postcard production crammed with typical South Seas musical hulaballoo.
  27. My Spy
    There’s hardly a surprise along the way but Bautista’s gruff charm and winning chemistry with talented young co-star Chloe Coleman (“Big Little Lies”) do just enough to carry a script by “RED” writers Jon and Erich Hoeber that pokes some good fun at action movie tropes but is hampered by too many groan-worthy gags.
  28. Halston
    When it reverts to conventional documentary storytelling, then, “Halston” is thrilling stuff for fashion nerds, as well as a poignant character study of a misfit ultimately undone by an excessive hunger to prove himself.
  29. Weathering with You
    Shinkai hasn’t gone far enough into fantasy to excuse the enormous holes in his script, though he does a nice job of distracting us with detail.
  30. The Art of Racing in the Rain
    Granted, there aren’t a lot of surprises in The Art of Racing in the Rain. If anything, knowing — or at least anticipating — how the film’s myriad tragedies will unfold seems to heighten the effect.
  31. The Quiet One
    Murray’s job was to curate the extensive Wyman collection and turn it into a story, and he does so without ever digging too deep into Wyman’s psyche.
  32. Vita & Virginia
    As Vita & Virginia loses its girlishness, drawn like the tides to the solemn maturity of Debicki’s performance. With her as the lodestar, this is a stranger and more intriguing film than it really has a right to be, one that becomes less about a clandestine courtship between famous women, and more about Woolf’s relationship with her writing, and with the workings of her own beautiful, restless mind.
  33. Chasing the Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch
    For shootouts, explosions and tough talk, "Wild Bunch” has plenty to please action fans
  34. Mine 9
    Mensore’s film aims chiefly to highlight the typical plight of an American underclass that rarely gets big-screen attention. That it does with honesty and conviction, if not a great deal of inspiration.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Two for the Road
    As far as producer, director, femme lead and screenwriter are concerned, this attempt to visually analyze the bits and pieces that go into making a marriage, and then making it work, is successful. If it drags a bit here and there, blame it on the stodgy performance of actor Albert Finney who is unable to convey the lightness, gaiety and romanticism needed.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Bad Seed
    Taken from Maxwell Anderson's stage play, adapted from William March's novel, the film remains more of the theatre than of the motion picture field. Nonetheless, it is well done within that qualification.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Americanization of Emily
    Primarily interesting for the romance between Andrews and Garner.
  38. Bad Trip
    The result is sniggering slapstick that’s two-parts biological fluids and one-part salute to the innate empathy of mankind, often in the same scene.
  39. Ladies in Black
    "Ladies” is let down by a screenplay lacking the sharp wit and emotional depth to bring its characters and themes fully to life.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bloodbrothers
    Bloodbrothers is an ambitious, if uneven probe into the disintegration of an Italian-American family [from the novel by Richard Price]. Under Robert Mulligan's forceful direction, sharply-drawn characters clash, scream and argue, but fail to resolve any of their or the film's conflicts.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freaks
    Freaks is sumptuously produced, admirably directed, and no cost was spared. But Metro failed to realize that even with a different sort of offering the story still is important. Here it is not sufficiently strong to get and hold the interest, partly because interest cannot easily be gained for a too fantastic romance.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Funny Farm
    Director George Roy Hill shows little distinction with this material [from Jay Cronley’s book], but then again, the material here isn’t very distinctive. Some of the setups work better than others, though most are of the sitcom variety.
  43. The Last Whistle
    The final scenes stop far short of providing the cheap thrill of a feel-good wrap-up, and are all the more effective for that.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Champ
    Even those unfamiliar with the 1931 pic will feel resonances in the current Champ and in this edition Schroder projects a comparable emotional range and depth.
  45. Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable
    A documentary that recaps Hamilton’s life in compelling fashion without adding anything of special novelty or depth (though much of the surfing footage is spectacular), it can feel like you’re seeing a perfectly fine devotional sports biography that doesn’t elevate the saga it’s telling to the next level.
  46. Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock & Roll
    While the film may feel at times like it was made under the auspices of an Asbury Park tourism board, it’s at least a theoretical tourism board that has a good awareness that a dystopia doesn’t shift back to utopia overnight, or even over a neat 50 years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Dinner with Andre
    An overlong but mainly captivating conversation, consisting largely of stream of consciousness monologs by Gregory.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Punchline
    It’s an uneven melodrama where Tom Hanks exhibits flashes of brilliance as a caustically tongued stand-up comic in a strange, undefinable romance with protege Sally Field.
  49. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
    Smith has every right to be older and wiser here, and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, with its gentle anarchy and not-quite-mock nostalgia, is a time-machine sequel that passes the time amiably enough. But if Jay and Silent Bob get any older or wiser than this, they’re going to stop being who they are.
  50. TINY: The Life of Erin Blackwell
    The movie itself isn’t bad, though I wish it were better.
  51. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    Like virtually every stand-alone MCU movie to come before, “Shang-Chi” does a fine job of presenting its hero as a relatable everyman during the first half before spiraling off into bombastic, brain-numbing supernatural mayhem for the final act.
  52. Jojo Rabbit
    It’s like a Wes Anderson movie set during the Third Reich. ... And yet it’s not as if it’s a terrible movie; it’s actually a studiously conventional movie dressed up in the self-congratulatory “daring” of its look!-let’s-prank-the-Nazis cachet.
  53. The Last Duel
    Despite a brief action interlude here or there, The Last Duel turns out to be a lavishly convoluted and, at times, rather interesting medieval soap opera.
  54. Hope Gap
    Slow and stuffy, like a filmed play, but also considerably more nuanced and mature than your typical relationship drama.
  55. How to Build a Girl
    The final product feels like if the greatest musician in the world tried to write a classic in 15 minutes. Yet, “How to a Build a Girl” dares to argue that reinventing yourself doesn’t make you a poseur ... It’s a young person’s jam that will hit the right teen like a thunderbolt.
  56. Military Wives
    If you’ve seen even one based-on-a-true-story British misfit hobbyists movie, you already know the tune.
  57. Killerman
    Bader does a respectable job of sustaining interest by repeatedly introducing clichés and genre tropes, then upending expectations or taking unpredictable detours.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
    Melvin Van Peebles produced this film, edited it, wrote the screenplay, composed the music and played the leading role. He comes out ahead in all but one category: there are some serious problems with his screenplay.
  59. Driven
    Against the film’s own boisterous inclinations, Pace gives it something like a heart, albeit a closed, melancholic one: that’s some acting, and it’s maybe more than these agreeably derivative proceedings deserve. Like its less interesting chancer of a protagonist, however, Driven will take what brushes with greatness it can get.
  60. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.
  61. Gwen
    Approach the film with managed genre expectations, however, and there’s much to admire (and duly shiver over) in its formidable, stormcloud-hued atmospherics, low-simmer storytelling and a particularly fine, unaffected breakout performance by teenage actress Eleanor Worthington-Cox in the testing title role.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Devils
    As if the story alone weren’t bizarre enough, Russell has spared nothing in hyping the historic events by stressing the grisly at the expense of dramatic unity.
  63. Consequences
    Ultimately, Stante’s raw energy and sure hand with actors are more encouraging than the screenplay’s lack of depth is bothersome.
  64. Tigers Are Not Afraid
    For a film bursting with so many ideas, only a fraction of them seem to work. And yet, as an artistic statement, “Tigers” proves as fearless as its kid characters, and an indicator of incredible things to come from its creator.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Punisher
    Dolph Lundgren looks just as if he’s stepped out of a comic book. Thankfully, he breezes through the B-grade plot with tongue firmly placed in cheek.
  66. Cuck
    Cuck is powerful so long as we’re simply trapped observing Ronnie’s all-too-palpable incomprehension and childlike tantrums over his dead-end circumstances. But when those circumstances start to feel rigged, the film’s value as analysis of a hot-button social phenomenon begins to cool.
  67. Can You Keep a Secret?
    Its candy-floss-lite sentiments and strong lead performances carry the picture beyond the genre’s limitations. That said, it lacks a sense of uniqueness to set it apart from other female-centric book-to-screen adaptations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Duellists
    It does not quite achieve a more lusty visual feel for the times and the strange relations of these two men to themselves and to the women in and out of their lives.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slam Dance
    Slam Dance is like junk food. It's brightly packaged, looks good and satisfies the hunger for entertainment, but it isn't terribly nourishing or well-made.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Missouri Breaks
    The trouble with The Missouri Breaks is that one is seriously drawn to it on its upfront elements, but leaves with a depressing sense of waste. As a film achievement it’s corned beef and ham hash.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Manitou
    This bout between good and Satan includes some scares, camp and better than average credits.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fearless Vampire Killers
    Ferdy Mayne is the menacing Dracula, and Sharon Tate, lady in question, looks particularly nice in her bath. Alfie Bass, the innkeeper; Iain Quarrier as the count’s effeminate son, who has some fangs all his own; Terry Downes, the toothy hunchback castle handyman (who might be Quasimodo returned), and Jessie Robbins, innkeeper’s spouse, lend proper support.
  73. Bloodline
    Well acted (though Garriga doesn’t quite make a coherent character out of Lauren, or create believable marital chemistry with Scott), this is a smooth movie that maybe should have been a little less tidy for maximum impact.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Koyaanisqatsi
    Koyaanisqatsi is at first awe-inspiring with its sweeping aerial wilderness photography. It becomes depressing when the phone lines, factories, and nuke plants spring up. The pic then runs the risk of boring audiences with shot after glossy shot of man’s commercial hack job on the land and his resulting misery.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One Million Years B.C.
    Biggest novelty gimmick of this likely click for unsophisticated situations is that, despite four writers on screenplay [including director Michael Carreras], dialog is minimal, consisting almost entirely of grunts. More saleable gimmick is that, at last, the nubile Raquel Welch is on view.
  76. Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight
    Mix "Night of the Living Dead" with Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" movies, then add a hefty dose of "Beavis and Butt-Head"-style silliness, and you have "Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight," a fang-in-cheek horror thriller that likely will please fans and turn off non-devotees.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cul-de-sac
    As a study in kinky insanity, Cul-de-Sac creates a tingling atmosphere. This sags riskily at times when the director unturns the screws and does not keep control of his frequently introduced comedy.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fortune Cookie
    Generally amusing (often wildly so) but overlong.
  79. Ne Zha
    Ne Zha has something vital to teach the American animation industry — about the glories of letting the dark side rip — but it’s also clear that Chinese animators, working under more restrictions than we have, have absorbed a great many of the breakneck freedoms of American pop culture. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a beautiful symbiosis.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Navy Seals
    Nifty performances make this routine action flick better than it probably has a right to be.
  81. Girl on the Third Floor
    What’s ultimately less impressive is Stevens’ script, which to varying degrees draws on the templates of “The Amityville Horror,” “The Shining,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and other conspicuous predecessors, but lacks the original fillip or three that might have turned an enjoyable exercise into something really first rate.
  82. Color Out of Space
    Entertaining but uneven, the result is a deliberately over-the-top sci-fi horror exercise that loses some focus as the action grows more psychedelically unhinged — its oscillating tone not necessarily helped by Nicolas Cage growing likewise, in one of his less inspired gonzo-style performances.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ocean's 11
    Laboring under the handicaps of a contrived script, an uncertain approach and personalities in essence playing themselves, the production never quite makes its point, but romps along merrily unconcerned that it doesn't.
  84. No Place Like Home (2006)
    A watchable mess with ultra-laid-back Me Decade vibe.
  85. Jexi
    Lucas and Moore write some whiplash funny lines, and since the film is just a throwaway, you can enjoy it on a trivial synthetic revenge-of-the-nerd level.
  86. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
    There’s a momentum to his story — it has a heist-movie-style checklist, carried out by a team composed of only one — that has its own satisfactions, and set-pieces with real tension, even if they lead to a less-than-novel place.
  87. Empathy, Inc.
    A clever indie suspense that draws on fantasy-tinged notions of virtual reality and identity exchange to create an ingenious tale more in the realm of an intimately-scaled thriller than sci-fi.
  88. Earthquake Bird
    Westmoreland approaches the project every bit as respectful toward Japanese customs as Jones was, although only a percentage of her insights carry over to the film. They’re still there, mind you, but more difficult to detect.
  89. Waiting for the Barbarians
    Coetzee’s novel, with its measured, interiorized voice and sparse, incrementally devastating narrative, was never an obvious fit for film treatment. After a stiffly mannered, overwritten first act, however, Waiting for the Barbarians gradually gains in poetry and power, while Mark Rylance’s lead performance, as a liberal-minded colonial official undermined and overwhelmed by his tyrannical superiors, gives proceedings a quiet but firm moral core.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Polyester
    A fitfully amusing comedy of not so ordinary people.
  91. Vitalina Varela
    Costa’s elongation of time (made more acute since there’s rarely enough light coming from the screen to check your watch) combined with his habit of doling out a few narrative details without exploration, results in a film that distances spectators not already in his thrall.
  92. Blink of an Eye
    Waltrip’s earnest and forthright narration lends Blink of an Eye its intimacy and insight.
  93. 3 Days with Dad
    Ultimately, however, this tonally untidy yet incrementally affecting dramedy scores a cumulative impact by credibly and astutely depicting eruptions, disruptions and reconciliations during the long goodbye to a dying paterfamilias.
  94. Human Capital
    This “Capital” succeeds as a well-acted crisscrosser of a melodrama between two awkwardly entangled families in upstate New York. Where it falls well short is in attaining the level of biting social commentary Virzi drew from the same material.
  95. Giants Being Lonely
    The film asks us to indulge and share the privacy of its characters. That’s its moody, free-floating allure.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
    Fans of Winona Ryder will definitely want to catch her in an offbeat role as the town rebel in this teen-oriented smalltown saga; unfortunately, the rest of the production doesn't quite match up.
  97. Exotica
    There's demonstrable growth in his visual and narrative skills here but the writer/director isn't likely to expand his audience with the sometimes oblique, unnerving saga of interwoven lives whose paths cross with alternately comic and tragic results.
  98. The Disappearance of My Mother
    The Disappearance of My Mother is a successful piece of documentary filmmaking inasmuch as it’s entertaining and dextrously crafted. But its precise intent is unclear.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ffolkes
    The biggest attraction is the banter between Roger Moore and the various types with whom he comes in conflict during his preparations to save a hijacked supply ship.
  100. Sweetheart
    It’s good of its type — just not quite good enough to linger once the lights have come up.
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