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. Glengarry Glen Ross
    But it doesn't quite all come together here as it did onstage, and relentless scabrousness, heavy claustrophobia and a vaguely dated feel are among the elements that will keep mainstream audiences away.
  2. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    Although The Last Jedi meets a relatively high standard for franchise filmmaking, Johnson’s effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors’ visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic.
  3. The Cove
    Eco-activist documentaries don't get much more compelling than The Cove, an impassioned piece of advocacy filmmaking that follows "Flipper" trainer-turned-marine crusader Richard O'Barry in his efforts to end dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rocco and His Brothers (re-release)
    It's plotted in the form of an epic poem, each stanza dedicated to a member of the group.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coal Miner's Daughter
    A thoughtful, endearing film charting the life of singer Loretta Lynn from the depths of poverty in rural Kentucky to her eventual rise to the title of 'queen of country music'. Thanks in large part to superb performances by Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones, film [based on Lynn's autobiography, with George Vescey] mostly avoids the sudsy atmosphere common to many showbiz tales.
  6. Mutual Appreciation
    If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation.
  7. Stray Dogs
    Tsai here seems to be stripping his ornately eccentric style down to formal fundamentals. A certain pictorial grace remains; his sense of humor, sadly, appears to have been largely tossed out with the bathwater.
  8. The Rescue
    A stunning documentary of bone-deep moral resonance and cinematic mastery that deserves to be experienced on the big screen.
  9. Universal Language
    Rankin may have conceived Universal Language in the spirit of homage, but there’s something undeniably original about the end result. Don’t be surprised if that translates into a modest cult following and more creative ideas in the future.
  10. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    Though it sounds like an offbeat idea even for horror fans, the tech work is so well done that it could disarm unwary buffs attracted by the campy title.
  11. 13 Assassins
    This at first slow-moving and then wildly kinetic actioner possesses a cool classicism that will appeal to offshore audiences as well as those at home.
  12. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    The Disappearance of Shere Hite is an astonishing, beautifully made corrective to the cultural amnesia that has for decades surrounded Hite, the author of “The Hite Report,” a landmark 1976 survey on female sexuality, that is apparently still ranked the 30th best-selling book in history.
  13. The Blue Caftan
    The Blue Caftan dares to imagine a world where there’s room for both appreciation of the old ways and room to evolve.
  14. Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench
    A surprise, a delight and a whimsical experiment.
  15. Crazy Heart
    Ever-youthful in his looks and energy, Bridges now stands as one of Hollywood's great old pros, incapable of making a false move.
  16. The Fool
    The helmer shows exquisite control of the world he has created.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Wrong Man
    Alfred Hitchcock draws upon real-life drama for this gripping piece of realism [from the Life magazine story The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero by Maxwell Anderson]. He builds the case of a NY Stork Club musician falsely accused of a series of holdups to a powerful climax, the events providing director a field day in his art of characterization and suspense.
  18. Stray
    Throughout the mostly wordless “Stray,” we wonder with compassion and considerable self-critique whom the society uplifts and supports vs. whom it chooses to disregard and deem invisible.
  19. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
    This feels like short film material stretched exasperatingly thin but nonetheless casts a certain sad spell, graced by moments of droll observational humor.
  20. De Palma
    Acolytes of Brian De Palma’s flavorful, flamboyant filmography hardly need reminding of his acrobatic ability as a visual storyteller; what they’ll learn from De Palma is that in front of the camera, he’s a pretty marvelous raconteur, too.
  21. Local Hero
    While modest in intent and gentle in feel, Local Hero is loaded with wry, offbeat humor and is the sort of satisfying, personal picture that is becoming an increasingly rare commodity these days.
  22. The Exorcist
    Just as some of the footage deepens what is already there, additions in final reel, though closer to Blatty’s wishes, restate the obvious or add a feel-good patina which pushes the film closer to our own audience-pleasing period than the more daring early ’70s. [2000 re-release]
  23. A Little Princess
    An astonishing work of studio artifice, A Little Princess is that rarest of creations, a children's film that plays equally well to kids and adults.
  24. Leviticus
    This outstanding debut from writer-director Adrian Chiarella organically marries blood-curdling fright with incisive social commentary.
  25. Custody
    Legrand’s achievement — his integrity, one might say — is that he’s managed to cut to the marrow of the situation while remaining keenly sensitive to how such things play out in the real world.
  26. Under the Shadow
    Slyly merging a familiar but effective genre exercise with a grim allegory of female oppression, Babak Anvari’s resourceful writing-directing debut grounds its premise in something at once vaguely political and ineluctably sinister.
  27. Adaptation.
    All but stealing the film is Cooper, who seizes a rare opportunity as an extroverted, rather than buttoned-up, character to bust loose like an uncaged alligator.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fighter
    A powerful, heartfelt and funny documentary that serves as a respectful nod to the aging generation of WWII survivors.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Baby Doll
    Except for moments of humor that are strictly inherent in the character of the principals, Baby Doll plays off against a sleazy, dirty, depressing Southern background. Over it hangs a feeling of decay, expertly nurtured by director Elia Kazan.
  30. The Snapper
    There’s plenty of unvarnished, off-the-wall Irish humor, especially in the ensemble scenes of family life and boozy barroom chat, plus real warmth beneath the rough one-liners.
  31. The Forbidden Room
    Delightful and ingenious as much of this is on a moment-to-moment basis, it becomes somewhat wearying over the long haul.
  32. Network
    Sidney Lumet’s direction is outstanding.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Dinner with Andre
    An overlong but mainly captivating conversation, consisting largely of stream of consciousness monologs by Gregory.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An American in Paris
    One of the most imaginative musical confections turned out by Hollywood in years...Kelly is the picture’s top star and rates every inch of his billing. His diversified dancing is great as ever and his thesping is standout. But he reveals new talents in this one with his choreography.
  35. The Secret of the Grain
    An overlong, dramatically unbalanced picture whose emotional wallop gets somewhat diffused.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Trainspotting
    Scabrous, brutal and hip, Trainspotting is a "Clockwork Orange" for the '90s.
  37. Welcome to the Dollhouse
    Though lacking the sensationalistic elements of a movie like "Kids", Dollhouse offers unflinching realism, meticulous attention to detail and deliciously wicked humor as it explores the growing pains of a misfit.
  38. The Disciple
    Tamhane patiently constructs his characters out of small details, relying on his audience to pick up on small changes and muted shifts of tone that signal the passage of time and Sharad’s interior journey.
  39. The Graduate
    The Graduate is a delightful, satirical comedy-drama about a young man's seduction by an older woman, and the measure of maturity which he attains from the experience.
  40. The Postman's White Nights
    Some stunning shots and a likable protag can’t cover up the story’s shallowness.
  41. The Other Side of Everything
    Mila’s film honors Srbijanka’s legacy of activism and brings her spirit of honor and responsibility to a new generation and a wider audience.
  42. The Ground Beneath My Feet
    Without proselytizing, and without distracting from the main thrust of her gripping, intelligent psychodrama, Kreutzer and her predominately female team have created a story both knottily specific and usefully general in its understanding that for many women, an ultimately untenable level of watchful self-control is the price of ambition.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Horse Feathers
    The madcap Marxes, in one of their maddest screen frolics. The premise of Groucho Marx as the college prexy and his three aides and abettors putting Huxley College on the grid-iron map promises much and delivers more.
  44. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
    Hassona is both fashionable and immensely talented (she shares her Arabic poems and songs with Farsi), and the more we see of her over the movie’s 110 minutes, the more devastating it becomes that we will never meet her, or never truly get to know her.
  45. Power To The People: John & Yoko Live in NYC
    In “Power to the People,” we see archival footage of John and Yoko onstage with Elephant’s Memory, who are a killer band, but thanks to the freshness of the editing (by Ben Wainwright-Pearce), one half of the screen will be on the singer, and the other half will be peering at a band member or three, soaking up their energy, making the two sections of the image feel unified in their very separation, as if the film were breaking down the atomic structure of rock ‘n’ roll.
  46. Between the Temples
    There’s a sweetness here to Silver’s typically jaundiced humor, an affectionately gilded frame around his broken-off character portraiture, that feels both new and entirely natural to his work.
  47. The Wind Rises
    Miyazaki is at the peak of his visual craftsmanship here, alternating lush, boldly colored rural vistas with epic, crowded urban canvases, soaring aerial perspectives and test flights both majestic and ill-fated.
  48. Fantastic Mr. Fox
    The film's style, paradoxically both precious and rough-hewn, positions this as the season's defiantly anti-CGI toon, and its retro charms will likely appeal more strongly to grown-ups than to moppets; it's a picture for people who would rather drive a 1953 Jaguar XK 120 than a new one.
  49. Limbo
    Limbo sincerely and intelligently finds its own way.
  50. In the Loop
    Intelligent political satire this expertly acted is nothing to sneeze at.
  51. Bus 174
    A tense documentary with multiple layers of meaning.
  52. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
    It’s “The Bachelorette” wed to “The Iceman Cometh”: the setup is staged, but the tears are real.
  53. Soul
    It all blends together beautifully, a marriage of Pixar’s square, safe, feel-good sensibility with what could be described as the “real world” — and one that, much as “Inside Out” anthropomorphized the mind, will leave audiences young and old imagining their own souls as glowing idiosyncratic cartoon characters.
  54. Terrestrial Verses
    This is punchy first-person filmmaking, from the point of view of the last person you want to be.
  55. Amores Perros
    He (Gonzalez Inarritu) handles a complex plot with clarity and precision while keeping audience members on the edge of their seats.
  56. Osama
    Apart from its historical interest, this tragic tale of religious extremism and misogyny is a very good film able to catch audiences up emotionally.
  57. The Salt of the Earth
    Wim Wenders’ mastery of the documentary form is again on display in The Salt of the Earth.
  58. Glory
    The film quietly builds to a feeling of inexorable disaster, guided by terrific performances as well as spot-on editing.
  59. American Doctor
    It is a necessary watch because it dares its audience not to look away, forcing the question not only of whose story is told, but whose deaths matter and make headlines.
  60. Rat Film
    Artfully assembled and often entertaining, the diverse whole nonetheless doesn’t quite gel, with the film finally coming off as somewhat pretentious and heavy-handed.
  61. The Librarians
    Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder’s illuminating documentary — premiering at the Sundance Film Festival — offers a rattling look at coordinated efforts to ban books. More importantly, it introduces viewers to the everyday and increasingly vital heroes pushing back: the librarians who sound the alarm to both legislative and grassroots attempts to pull books from school and public libraries.
  62. The Perfect Neighbor
    The tragedy here doesn’t stop with a white woman shooting her Black neighbor, but the underlying belief that she felt she could and still get away it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
    A very special kind of picture, combining photographic ingenuity, imaginative story telling and fiscal daring.
  64. 20 Days in Mariupol
    Structured by onscreen markers of the days passed, this nonfiction feature may not have a simple narrative arc, but the director’s unpretentious first-person narration and the intensity of the war-crimes evidence compiled make it riveting nonetheless.
  65. Turning Red
    Irresistibly cute and thoroughly unashamed of its own silliness, Turning Red may be second-tier Pixar, but the emotions run every bit as deep as in the studio’s best.
  66. Better Days
    In Derek Kwok Cheung Tsang’s gripping, superbly performed melodrama — a deeply moving if occasionally overwrought exposé of bullying in the acutely competitive academic pressure cooker of a Chinese high school — it’s hard to imagine she can be nostalgic for her own school days.
  67. Lingui, The Sacred Bonds
    Lingui may return its maker to a familiar milieu, but it’s an exciting departure in other respects. This is Haroun’s first film focused expressly on women: Perhaps it’s a coincidence that it’s less stentorian in its melodrama than some of his previous work, though given the shift, it feels apt that the film listens as much as it speaks. Its surprises extend to its choices of emphasis and protagonist.
  68. Office
    This boardroom tuner charmingly mines humor, romance and no shortage of eccentric lyrics from the world of spreadsheets and stock portfolios, but its real achievement is a formal and conceptual one, conjuring a tongue-in-cheek vision of modern capitalism in splendidly Brechtian terms (and in widescreen 3D, to boot).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Being There
    Being There is a highly unusual and an unusually fine film. A faithful but nonetheless imaginative adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's quirky comic novel, pic marks a significant achievement for director Hal Ashby and represents Peter Sellers' most smashing work since the mid-1960s.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Who Framed Roger Rabbit
    An unparalleled technical achievement... Yet the story amounts to little more than inspired silliness about the filmmaking biz where cartoon characters face off against cartoonish humans.
  71. Chop Shop
    Ultimately, the pic will be noted and remembered not for any inherent drama or analysis but for its simply having so thoroughly documented a strange place most people have never seen and never knew existed.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Moonstruck
    Carried by snappy dialog and a wonderful ensemble full of familiar faces.
    • Variety
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    42nd Street
    Everything about the production rings true. It's as authentic to the initiate as the novitiate.
  74. Babi Yar. Context
    Babi Yar. Context has power but falls short of the director’s greatest works, largely because his span here is considerably longer, and in consequence the focus suffers.
  75. '71
    A vivid, shivery survival thriller that turns the red-brick residential streets of Belfast into a war zone of unconscionable peril.
  76. The Cave
    This is both an immensely humanist film, and a tough, heartbreaking watch.
  77. Blackfish
    Righteous, captivating and entirely successful as single-issue-focused documentaries go, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s film draws on startling video footage and testimonies from former orca trainers, building an authoritative argument on behalf of this majestic species.
  78. The Guilty
    Gustav Möller’s short, taut debut feature never leaves the claustrophobic confines of the call center, but builds a vivid aural suspense narrative through the receiver, all while incrementally unboxing the visible protagonist’s own frail mental state.
  79. Prayers for the Stolen
    The film may be called “Prayers for the Stolen,” but it is much more a heartbroken lament for the circuits that are broken when the stealing happens, and for the spaces the stolen leave behind.
  80. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
    It’s the kind of unapologetically local love letter to the Big Apple and its less-illustrious denizens that New York deserves.
  81. The Girl and the Spider
    Few directors could get away with giving audiences so little context or plot, but the Zürchers succeed in piquing our curiosity, which is all one really needs to sustain a film.
  82. Corpse Bride
    An endearingly schizoid Frankenstein of a movie, by turns relentlessly high-spirited and darkly poignant.
  83. The Territory
    This short, sharply crafted Sundance premiere makes an impact with both its bleak, blunt messaging and its muscular formal construction, as the turf war in question takes on the heated urgency of a thriller.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Young Frankenstein
    Young Frankenstein emerges as a reverently satirical salute to the 1930s horror film genre.
  85. Predators
    Osit’s brilliant, subtly needling film leaves us unnerved and alert, but not certain of our convictions — an outcome, perhaps, that more true-crime programming should pursue.
  86. Project Nim
    A provocative and surprisingly emotional saga that ranges from wrenching to downright hilarious as it spans more than a quarter-century of unpredictable twists, "Nim" reaches far beyond mere scientific curiosity to become compelling human drama.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    National Velvet
    Story is told with warmth and understanding.
  88. The Lighthouse
    The movie, building on “The Witch,” proves that Robert Eggers possesses something more than impeccable genre skill. He has the ability to lock you into the fever of what’s happening onscreen.
  89. Spider-Man 2
    The pleasure is doubled in Spider-Man 2. Crackerjack entertainment from start to finish, this rousing yarn about a reluctant superhero and his equally conflicted friends and enemies improves in every way on its predecessor and is arguably about as good a live-action picture as anyone's ever made using comicbook characters.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    True Grit
    It’s mostly Wayne all the way. He towers over everything in the film – actors, script [from Charles Portis’ novel], even the magnificent Colorado mountains.
  91. Jazzy
    At first glance, Jazzy might seem more polished and traditionally structured than its predecessor. But the two films share a proudly scrappy and loose-limbed spirit in their soulful, tranquil pace.
  92. Rose Plays Julie
    The most disturbing thing about the impressively disturbing Rose Plays Julie may just be how satisfying it is.
  93. Saint Frances
    Turns out there are a lot of things that have gone unsaid in movies until now, and Saint Frances goes there in a way that’s not only enlightening, but entertaining as well. This exceptionally frank, refreshingly nonjudgmental indie was written by and stars Kelly O’Sullivan, a “girl next door” type whose no-nonsense approach to issues facing both her gender and her generation leaves ample room for laughter — à la Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck.”
  94. Mandy
    Mandy has so many enjoyably whacked-out elements, it comes as an actual surprise that Barry Manilow’s titular 1974 No. 1 hit is not among them.
  95. When We Were Kings
    Tightly made and populated by a uniformly larger-than-life cast of characters , pic is a total delight for every second of its running time.
  96. 20 Feet from Stardom
    For most of its running time, this personality-packed docu is nothing short of absorbing as it recaps the essential role African-American background singers played in shaping the sound of 20th-century pop music.
  97. Avatar
    Avatar is all-enveloping and transporting, with Cameron & Co.'s years of R&D paying off with a film that, as his work has done before, raises the technical bar and throws down a challenge for the many other filmmakers toiling in the sci-fi/fantasy realm.
  98. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
    It’s all absorbing stuff, amply conveying the magnetism of a conflicted leader who drew fanatical adoration, yet who one suspects wasn’t easy company (especially in tandem with Love).
  99. 20th Century Women
    20th Century Women is an endless chain of anecdotes, and though many individual moments are winning, the movie as a whole is rudderless. It never achieves an emotional power surge.
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