Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. Blood
    Brad Anderson’s film steers a middle course between dysfunctional domestic drama and supernatural horror. That balance doesn’t completely work. But solid performances and some strong, occasionally unpleasant content make this an involving if not entirely satisfying watch.
  2. 80 for Brady
    Kyle Marvin’s directorial debut is a pleasant enough reminder that these gals are still game for a good time.
  3. Talk to Me
    A somewhat mixed bag, as the script doesn’t fully ballast the serious tenor, this is nonetheless a confidently crafted effort with enough intriguing elements to keep viewers involved, if not particularly scared.
  4. Fairyland
    There’s an unforced authenticity to its portrait of ruptured early childhood that isn’t matched by its later, more melodramatic depiction of father-daughter warfare — even if its tear-jerking tactics are undeniably effective. That it’s affecting in both registers comes down to a performance of quiet, good-humored grace by Scoot McNairy.
  5. I Get Knocked Down
    When the movie — co-directed and produced by Emmy winner Sophie Robinson (“My Beautiful Broken Brain”) — relaxes into a more traditional doc approach, it’s on surer, if less dramatic, footing.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    3:10 to Yuma
    Aside from the fact that this is an upper-drawer western, 3:10 to Yuma will strike many for its resemblance to High Noon. That the climax fizzles must be laid on doorstep of Halsted Welles, who adapts Elmore Leonard's story quite well until that point.
  7. Paint
    In its dry deliberate way, Paint skewers something all too real: a certain kind of toxic self-deluding male myopia.
  8. At Midnight
    Boneta and Barbaro’s chemistry adds a simmering, sultry sway to the material’s rhythms, gifting it with an uplifting buoyancy. They’re magnetic together, driving our rooting interest for the couple.
  9. The First Step
    While there’s much to admire here, there are stylistic choices that vex. The First Step stumbles as it tries to balance its interest in Jones with the significance of the bill.
  10. The Magician's Elephant
    While the movie itself is more whimsical than magical, it does have a few tricks up its sleeve.
  11. Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire
    “Rebel Moon,” while eminently watchable, is a movie built so entirely out of spare parts that it may, in the end, be for Snyder cultists only.
  12. Ballerina
    Ballerina is a worthy entry in the “John Wick” canon, though I say that as someone who doesn’t think the “John Wick” canon is all that. By the end, Ana de Armas has proved that fighting like a girl and fighting like a guy need not be appreciably different, especially if they’re all fighting like a video game.
  13. The Miracle Club
    The movie’s nothing special, but it’s worth checking out just for the cast.
  14. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
    Using horror to satirize systemic racial failures in American society is a bold goal, but with its unbelievable final resolution, the film falters somewhat in execution.
  15. Jackpot!
    Fitting neatly between “The Heat” and 2016’s “Ghostbusters” reboot, Jackpot! finds the dapper director squarely in his comfort zone, falling back on some of the tricks that worked so well in “Bridesmaids,” minus the underlying relatability of that film’s brilliant screenplay.
  16. Haunted Mansion
    While the visual effects are surprisingly weak for a film of this scale, the script (from “Ghostbusters” writer Katie Dippold) proves far better than anyone might expect, establishing an emotional foundation for what might otherwise be a gimmick-driven haunted house movie.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The April Fools
    In addition to Lemmon, comedians Jack Weston (as his lawyer) and Harvey Korman (as a drinking companion they encounter in the commuter train’s drinking car) provide their own brand of laughs and the contrasting styles of the three actors gives the plot most of its action.
  18. Praise This
    Director Tina Gordon crafts a musical that’s carried through by a charming cast and highly entertaining ensemble performances.
  19. To Catch a Killer
    The worst thing you can say about To Catch a Killer is that it’s so adeptly executed in all departments that one is disappointed it ends up feeling a tad generic. It’s engrossing, sometimes exciting, yet never fully free from an overall sense of derivation.
  20. The Wrath of Becky
    The Wrath of Becky is entertaining enough. But perhaps inevitably, with its heroine grown to near-adulthood, the novelty is a bit dulled now.
  21. Ordinary Angels
    Gunn adeptly exercises a necessary modicum of visual dexterity to emphasize character drive.
  22. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
    It’s a shame that the plot gets so carried away with the supernatural power struggle, since the mile-a-minute movie is far more engaging when focused on Ruby — who makes an appealing addition to the DreamWorks Animation family — and the sitcom-ready aspect of kraken-human relations.
  23. Chantilly Lace
    An amiable, middle-brow entertainment, Chantilly Lace provides a knowing, bittersweet look at the complex lives of modern American women.
  24. Crater
    It’s sci-fi informed by a Gen-Z sensibility, with a particular focus on those Zoomers who can’t imagine a bright future on the planet they actually inhabit — an ever-expanding demographic, one imagines.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Star
    A strong performance by Bette Davis, in a tailor-made role, gives a lift to The Star that it might not have had otherwise.
  26. Ride On
    A sappy but enjoyable slice of family fun that has a nice horse doing wacky tricks for the younger viewers and for parents and older fans, is a gently meta, valedictory canter through the paddock of Chan’s previous achievements.
  27. Hilma
    Hallström mostly strikes a nice balance between approachability and mystique, between the definitive and the abstract, getting a huge amount of help from his daughter Tora’s open and warm performance in her first leading role.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Wild One
    Inspired by an episode when a mob of youths on motorcycles terrorized a Californian town for an entire evening, this feature is long on suspense, brutality and sadism. Marlon Brando contributes another hard-faced 'hero' who never knew love as a boy and is now plainly in need of psychoanalysis.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    House of Wax
    Andre de Toth's direction, while uneven, nonetheless gears it to the medium.
  30. Drive-Away Dolls
    Drive-Away Dolls is 84 minutes long, and it’s styled to be an easy-to-watch caper, but it’s most definitely a trifle.
  31. Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
    It’s a diverting enough entertainment from a group that has repeatedly proven itself to be capable of much more.
  32. It Lives Inside
    Though the results aren’t terribly original or memorable, they do provide a creepy 90-odd minutes.
  33. Love to Love You, Donna Summer
    The interviews are illuminating; Summer’s family members speak of her with complicated reverence, and with an appreciation for the currents of despair that she nurtured in private.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ponniyin Selvan: Part II
    Two features spanning five and a half hours may sound like ample time to adapt “Ponniyin Selvan,” and yet, Ratnam might have been better off making this a trilogy, since the books leave so much more that he wasn’t able to include.
  35. Scrambled
    Scrambled is a lot of fun when it’s not trying to also deliver uplift, but it ultimately proves that white, middle-class American women in their 30s can can defeat any obstacle that stands between them and the unfettered life they want, except screenwriting convention.
  36. A Brighter Tomorrow
    Giovanni may be the main character of A Brighter Tomorrow — a conceit shamelessly lifted from Fellini’s “8 1/2” — but Moretti pokes fun at himself, privileging other characters’ points of view as well.
  37. The Beanie Bubble
    Tonally, the movie walks a tricky line between easy-target satire and female-empowering corporate case study, falling into the overcrowded junk-culture nostalgia-porn category so recently represented by “Tetris,” “Air,” “BlackBerry” and “Flamin’ Hot.”
  38. Jeanne du Barry
    In attempting to reclaim this woman’s reputation, Maïwenn’s film feels unexpectedly tame — it risks turning a would-be scandal into a royal bore.
  39. Project Silence
    By no means a classic in the Korean action-thriller pantheon, but a good enough stopgap for a rainy Sunday until the next one comes along.
  40. Butterfly Vision
    It would be unfortunate if this contextual thicket were to obscure the merits of Butterfly Vision, which, while certainly not reinventing the war-is-hell wheel, is interesting to analyse in formal terms, especially in its sometimes effective, sometimes glib use of modern tech.
  41. Youth (Spring)
    Youth (Spring) uses the workshops of Zhili City to illustrate — again and again, to the point of dulling its impact — the desolate truth that in the lower echelons of China’s industrial sector, youth is not wasted on the young. It is methodically ripped from them, day by day, seam by seam, stitch by stitch.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights is a competent, tasteful, frequently even lovely re-adaption of Emily Bronte's Gothic, mystical love story. But the brooding tension, the electric passion of two lovers compelled to an inevitable tragedy is not generated.
  43. Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara
    Solid, stately and — like the collapsing Papal States of the Italian Peninsula in the late 1800s — just a little too tradition-bound for its own good.
  44. The Old Oak
    Ebla Mari, the actor who plays Yara, makes Yara’s despair over her missing and possibly murdered father, and her agony at having had to abandon her country, incredibly layered and precise. Her performance doesn’t allow us to phone in our empathy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Woman of the Year
    Picture runs 112 minutes and frequently seems every moment of that. Tracy and Hepburn go a long way toward pulling the chestnut out of the fire.
  46. Cyclo
    Made with the same jewel-like meticulousness and very Gallic sense of style that set Tran’s debut so far apart from other Asian offerings, the new feature again boasts boldly creative craftsmanship in every frame. The film is disappointingly compromised, however, by needlessly convoluted, often pretentiously enigmatic plotting, placing a considerable blight on its commercial potential.
  47. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Scripted by “Chicken Run” alums Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, along with newcomer Rachel Tunnard, the sequel doesn’t offer many surprises plotwise, but is consistently amusing in its dad-jokey kind of way.
  48. Cobweb
    Director Samuel Bodin’s first theatrical feature is atmospheric, and departs from stock slasher conventions just enough to make for an entertaining if unexceptional scarefest.
  49. Retribution
    The film’s 90 minutes whiz by.
  50. Two Tickets to Greece
    Despite occasional detours into darker themes, this is fundamentally a relaxing trip for an audience — ideal for women of a similar age to the main characters who might fancy treating themselves to a trip to the Greek islands without actually having to get on a flight.
  51. Saw X
    The torture set pieces in the “Saw” films are lavish gifts of baroque horror presented to the audience. They are, quite simply, the reason we came. Tobin Bell, with his stare of pitiless wisdom, is also a draw, but “Saw X” raises the issue of how much of John Kramer’s hand-wringing is too much. In the eyes of a lot of “Saw” fans, hand-wringing < hands cut off with mechanized garden shears.
  52. No One Will Save You
    The film is most successful when it finds Brynn in survival mode.
  53. Back on the Strip
    Despite wall-to-wall narration by Haddish (at her most raunchy), the movie does a clumsy job of telling a not-very-complicated story. Then again, this lean team effort is Sanders’ directorial debut, and he gets the laughs.
  54. Venom: The Last Dance
    As you watch “The Last Dance,” the film obliterates any distinction between shooting the works and jumping the shark and just saying, “WTF, let’s do it!”
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sunburn
    Grodin works overtime to carry the picture and does so marvelously, displaying a savvy low-key comedy style.
  56. Reptile
    Reptile comes on as “smart,” but the movie, for all its sinister-ominous-music atmosphere, is opportunistic enough — or maybe just enough of a consumer product — to swallow its own premise, if not its own tail.
  57. The Beast
    Laden with enticing ideas and images that never quite activate each other, “The Beast” instead coagulates into a thick 146-minute triptych of general, fidgeting malaise, and strands a hard-working Léa Seydoux and George MacKay in a cross-time, cross-purposes relationship that keeps shape-shifting without getting us terribly involved.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Night They Raided Minsky's
    Norman Lear's period peek at a peculiarly American form of entertainment - burlesque - is most successful in its art direction and nostalgic recapturing of New York's lower East Side during its most hoydenish period.
  59. The Dead Don't Hurt
    That nonlinear narrative choice in an otherwise understated art-house Western serves to confuse more than it reveals, complicating things for the meat-and-potatoes crowd that regularly turn out for cowboy stories.
  60. Adagio
    While the craft team here feel at the top of their game, delivering scene after scene of perfectly composed glossy, grimy, sweaty tableaux, the script could have used a bit more time to sharpen up. Still, there are some zingy, zesty sequences here that really pop.
  61. Finestkind
    If you choose to focus on the family connections, then it’s clear that Helgeland has something to say.
  62. Journey to Bethlehem
    Journey to Bethlehem is first and foremost a family movie, and though its music sounds a little too early-aughts to become a classic, it fills a crèche-shaped niche in the current theatrical landscape, with nearly six weeks to clean up before Christmas.
  63. Ezra
    The underlying integrity of “Ezra,” what makes it an honest film despite some formula devices, is that its message about how to help children with special needs is that there’s no magic way. Beyond celebrating them for who they are and showing them who you are.
  64. Dear Jassi
    The two characters at the center of Amit Rai’s screenplay are superficially defined beyond their all-consuming devotion, and that lack of nuance and texture makes for some flat stretches across a leisurely 134-minute runtime — though a shattering finale, staged with brilliant formalist rigor, leaves the most lasting impression.
  65. Dashing Through the Snow
    Howery’s line readings sound improvised, and that’s a good thing. He’s the ebullient, fast-talking spark plug of a formula comedy with a cheap engine, though one that putters along harmlessly enough.
  66. Fackham Hall
    The movie, in its mud-on-the-doily way, is amusing enough to get by. But it never shocks you into laughter.
  67. The Kitchen
    Even at its shakiest, however, “The Kitchen” gets by on the steam of its own fury, and on its tender depiction of a trampled underclass staving off defeat through small, everyday acts of care and empathy.
  68. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
    “Humanist Vampire” doesn’t want us to think too deeply, and aims mostly to charm. Largely it succeeds, which is its own kind of critique in this post-“Titane” and -“A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” era, when some viewers might expect provocation or transgression from their horror archetypes.
  69. Freud's Last Session
    So many movies are either mindless or completely disinterested with engaging the intellect of their audiences that Freud’s Last Session offers a welcome bit of brain stimulation — but does far less for the soul.
  70. The Crime Is Mine
    It’s a film less about any frenetic onscreen shenanigans as it is about its own mood board of sartorial and cinematic reference points — Jean Renoir, Billy Wilder, some vintage Chanel — and as such it slips down as fizzily and forgettably as a bottle of off-brand sparkling wine.
  71. The Stones and Brian Jones
    It’s clear the filmmaker has never lost that besotted hero worship. The Stones and Brian Jones digs deep into the Jones mystique, trying to make the case for him as a misunderstood “genius.”
  72. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    You might say that “Frozen Empire” has to work even harder to invent a reason for itself to exist. Yet it’s a livelier movie than “Afterlife.”
  73. Ultraman: Rising
    The movie winds up having it both ways once too often, to the extent that Ultraman’s fate and the movie’s message are ultimately unclear.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Belly of an Architect
    The Belly of an Architect is a visual treat, almost an homage to the style of Rome's architecture, lensed with skill and packed with esoteric nuances, but doubts about the story and the skill of the acting linger.
  75. Arthur the King
    This true-life tale about perseverance, compassion and second chances cuts right to the quick. While it doesn’t stray from a predictable path, the journey is rarely dull, making our travels and these characters’ travails feel worthy of the big screen.
  76. Role Play
    The players are deft enough that a little more wit in the writing would have surely been well-served. (Nighy in particular makes much of relatively little.) And while briskly handled, none of the ideas here are fresh enough for Role Play to score points on narrative or character unpredictability.
  77. Love Me
    The Zucheros’ creation is audacious and original, but also suffers from some of the same ADHD issues that afflicted “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (both are movies made for multitaskers with brains wired for constantly switching between screens).
  78. American Star
    The director’s most rewarding decision: simply trusting McShane to summon the mood.
  79. The Strangers: Chapter 1
    "Chapter 1” can’t help feeling like an ersatz imitation at times, but it seems the franchise’s well hasn’t run dry just yet.
  80. Death of a Unicorn
    As first features go, Death of a Unicorn is considerably more ambitious and imaginative than so much of what studios greenlight these days, which goes a fair distance to excuse some of its flaws.
  81. Holland
    Holland blossoms in the space where all-American domestic fantasy ends and nightmares begin, but never quite delivers on its premise, if only because the resolution feels so familiar.
  82. Maria
    Maria bears many of the hallmarks of Larraín’s lavish empathy and filmmaking skill. Yet the movie, in contrast, is driven by a dramatic fatalism that does it little favor.
  83. The First Omen
    Stevenson’s consistently unsettling and gleefully sacrilegious offering packs its share of legitimate shocks en route to one glaringly obvious “surprise.”
  84. Presence
    You want the movie to add up to something, but what it adds up to is another half-diverting, half-satisfying Soderbergh bauble, only this time he’s the ghost in the machine.
  85. This Is Me…Now: A Love Story
    To be fair, it feels like a person who’s generated her level of fame and success and attention will never truly be “knowable” to an ordinary person. But This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is the closest that they’ll likely come, and it’s a testament to Lopez’s talent that she’s able to take pop-star wisdom and make it seem like a window into her soul.
  86. Suncoast
    An amiable ensemble effort, with two sturdy lead performances, Suncoast is reminiscent of the minor-key, quirky-charming ’90s dramedies so often discovered by the Sundance Film Festival. This is a fine thing; there are deserved laughs and tears. It is also a slightly awkward thing.
  87. Power
    Anyone watching the film is likely to learn something, though whether its lessons will stick, or claw their way beneath one’s skin, is less likely.
  88. Porcelain War
    Porcelain War thrives on contrast, much of it poignant.
  89. It's What's Inside
    The results are coldly diverting, with the plot continually ratcheting itself into higher degrees of panic and surprise, though potential for a darker, harder psychological payoff is missed — largely because these characters are so thin.
  90. Thelma
    Thelma may bill itself as an unconventional action movie, but it’s more of a sitcom, really.
  91. Monkey Man
    The movie has three extended action sequences, and I would have been happier if it had eight of them — that is, if it had less pretensions and, like the “Wick” films, was more willing to wear its pulp on its sleeve.
  92. Sleeping Dogs
    Sleeping Dogs, starring Russell Crowe as a retired cop with Alzheimer’s disease, is a half-rusted scrap heap of a detective mystery. It’s patchy, it’s badly lit, it’s glum, it’s overloaded with suspects, and it’s almost proud of its contrivances. Yet in its logy, booby-trapped way, it keeps you watching.
  93. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
    These guys are so good at what they do, Ritchie fails to muster the expected tension. Instead of suspense, audiences feel a sense of delight in watching them succeed, no matter the setback.
  94. Irish Wish
    As a rom-com, Irish Wish is more than willing to kiss the Blarney Stone. Yet the chemistry of Lohan and Speleers makes it watchable enough to get by.
  95. Trigger Warning
    Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s well-crafted first English-language feature is too formulaically contrived to qualify as “elevated genre” or to boast the personal stamp of her prior work. Still, it’s an entertaining, pacey action melodrama.
  96. Moana 2
    Moana 2 is an okay movie, an above-average kiddie roller-coaster, and a piece of pure product in a way that the first “Moana,” at its best, transcended.
  97. Molli and Max in the Future
    In crafting two believable characters, giving them witty banter and getting Mamet and Athar to inhabit them, Litwak succeeds. The rest feels hit or miss.
  98. Spy x Family Code: White
    Spy x Family Code: White is far more chuckle-worthy than laugh-out-loud funny, but there’s an innocent, adolescent charm to even its jokes that miss the mark.
  99. Lonely Planet
    While many of the picture’s finer details are in desperate need of ironing out, the wrinkles within these two characters’ lives are compelling enough.
  100. Michael
    Simply put, this is not a movie about Michael Jackson’s dark side. Yet the surprise of “Michael” is how well it plays, and what an engrossing middle-of-the-road biopic it is. It’s basically an ’80s-TV-movie version of the Michael Jackson story with sharper acting and snazzier photography. It
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