Variety's Scores

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For 17,777 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: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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  1. Step
    Without any fuss, Lipitz has made a film deeply rooted in intergenerational relationships between women.
  2. The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
    This portrait of the artist as an old woman is a gentle-hearted gem, as profoundly subtle as it is subtly profound.
  3. Bright
    This ambitious, yet astonishingly well-executed Netflix tentpole directly benefits from the way Ayer’s gritty, streetwise sensibility grounds Landis’ gift for creating an elaborate comic-book mythology.
  4. Win It All
    Funny, warm, and broken-in in all the right ways, Win It All marries Swanberg’s loping, observational style with a plot that wouldn’t have been out of place in an old-school Warner Bros. melodrama, and ends up dealing a surprisingly strong hand.
  5. The Sting
    The Sting has all the signs of a blockbuster. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are superbly reteamed, this time as a pair of con artists in Chicago of the ’30s, out to fleece a bigtime racketeer brilliantly cast with and played by Robert Shaw. George Roy Hill’s outstanding direction of David S. Ward’s finely-crafted story of multiple deception and surprise ending will delight both mass and class audiences. Extremely handsome production values and a great supporting cast round out the virtues.
  6. Uncertain
    In another director’s hands, the residents might be labeled “eccentric” and condescendingly depicted for laughs, but Ewan McNicol and Anna Sandilands approach this touch-and-go community with curiosity and humanism, capturing what feels like a deciding moment in a series of struggles so far off the grid, they would otherwise escape our notice entirely.
  7. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    The movie just about pulses with contemporary resonance.
  8. Tickling Giants
    Tickling Giants is a terrific movie that leaves you cherishing (a little more) the freedom we have, and holding in contempt (a little more) those who would compromise it. Mostly, the movie makes you understand how every society — and ours more than ever — needs people like Bassem Youssef to demonstrate that laughter will always be one of the essential ways to keep power in check.
  9. Gemini
    For a director who emerged from indie film’s so-called “mumblecore” movement, Gemini feels like a grown-up achievement, and the sign of a director with so much more to give in the future.
  10. I Am Another You
    By the end of I Am Another You, what starts off as a celebration of reckless freedom turns into a revelation of a broken yet soaring soul: the story of a life that resists being judged as much as it does being pigeonholed.
  11. The Nightingale
    Kent’s elemental revenge tale attains a near-mythic grandeur over the course of its arduous, ravishing trek. Some stricter editing wouldn’t go amiss, particularly in a needlessly baggy, to-and-fro finale, but it’s a pretty magnificent mass of movie.
  12. The Old Man & the Gun
    People don’t forget a performer like Redford, whose movie-star charisma idles low and sexy like a Harley Davidson motor even when he’s not doing anything, and that means a movie like David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun — a dapper, low-key riff on the bank-robber genre — can play things soft, counting on Redford’s charm to fuel the show.
  13. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
    With no shtick to fall back on, Sandler is forced to act, and it’s a glorious thing to watch.
  14. Violet
    Devos depicts stages of grief not as a series of emotions but as an evolving alchemy of perception that surrounds the protagonist, distorting time, space, color and light in patterns of dislocation, muffling the synapses that connect sounds and images.
  15. Lucky
    Everything Harry Dean Stanton has done in his career, and his life, has brought him to his moment of triumph in “Lucky,” an unassumingly wonderful little film about nothing in particular and everything that’s important
  16. Amazon Adventure
    Slee’s film boasts such a high level of writing, acting, and overall production polish that youngsters may be fooled into thinking they’re watching a mindless blockbuster, when in fact, they’ve actually been fooled into thinking.
  17. The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
    Driven by both empathy and a passion for justice, “How to Survive a Plague” director David France’s stellar documentary charts an investigation into the still-unsolved death of trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, along the way illuminating the persistent discrimination that exists today, and the bonds of community designed to counter it.
  18. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    [A] sprawling, thrilling, finally heart-bursting group portrait of Parisian AIDS activists in the early 1990s.
  19. A Gentle Creature
    The film beguiles with its bravura but it’s a deliberately punishing journey, made by a male Cassandra impelled to point out his nation’s destruction yet sadly aware that it’s too late to change the tide of history.
  20. Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS
    A powerful and important documentary.
  21. Sweet Virginia
    It’s this strange alchemy — the way that a terse script can leave so much unsaid, combined with such a talented ensemble’s ability to suggest all the details left either in silence or in darkness — that makes “Sweet Virginia” such a haunting character study.
  22. Captive State
    Although the TV ads and other promotional material appear to promise a megaplex-ready thrill ride about space invaders and rebellious Earthlings, this rigorously intelligent, cunningly inventive, and impressively suspenseful drama plays more like a classic tale about a disparate group of resistance fighters united in a guerrilla campaign against an occupying force.
  23. Support the Girls
    Hall’s performance — tender, tough, empathetic, controlled — crumples from tears to laughter in a blink. It’s phenomenal.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Excalibur
    Excalibur is exquisite, a near-perfect blend of action, romance, fantasy and philosophy, finely acted and beautifully filmed by director John Boorman and cinematographer Alex Thomson.
  25. Loveless
    The dramatic aesthetic of a movie like Loveless — rock-solid yet leisurely in its observance, grounded yet metaphorical — makes it a quietly commanding film.
  26. My Friend Dahmer
    As you watch the movie, its central idea — that Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t just born, he was made; that he started off as an actual human being — has a shocking validity that never undercuts the extremity of his crimes.
  27. Lost in Paris
    Who wouldn’t want a picturesque trip to the French capital that delivers more laughs than a nitrous oxide leak near the hyena compound? In fact, I’d go as far as to promise that Lost in Paris offers the three most delightful sight gags you’ll see on screen all year.
  28. Let the Sunshine In
    Perfectly small rather than slight, and radiantly carried by Juliette Binoche — in a light-touch tour de force to be filed alongside her work in Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” — this turns out to be a subtler departure than it outwardly appears for Denis, most evoking her other Parisienne drifting-hearts study, “Friday Night,” in its bittersweet tone.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    12 Angry Men
    Perhaps the motivations of each juror are introduced too quickly and are repeated too often before each changes his vote. However, the film leaves a tremendous impact.
  30. Ava
    Mysius’ startlingly assured, exquisitely shot “Ava” is a film that doesn’t simply explore the textural possibilities of 35mm film for the hell of it, it makes thematic use of them, to stunning, evocative effect.
  31. Faces Places
    Agnès Varda, in the glory of her golden years, has become a humanist magician.
  32. Jeune Femme (Montparnasse Bienvenüe)
    Serraille studied literature before switching to cinema, and her sharp attention to the detail distinguishes Jeune femme from so many first-time indie features.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Muppets Take Manhattan
    The Muppets Take Manhattan is a genuinely fun confection of old-fashioned entertainment.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Psycho
    Perkins gives a remarkably effective in-a-dream kind of performance as the possessed young man. Others play it straight, with equal competence.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It's a Wonderful Life
    Frank Capra and James Stewart, in returning to films after long years in uniform, endow the pic with its most telling contributions. Herewith, Stewart touches the thespic peak of his career. He hasn’t lost a whit of his erstwhile boyish personality (when called to turn it on) and further shows a maturity and depth he seems recently to have acquired.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    For Your Eyes Only
    For Your Eyes Only bears not the slightest resemblance to the Ian Fleming novel of the same title, but emerges as one of the most thoroughly enjoyable of the 12 Bond pix [to date] despite fact that many of the usual ingredients in the successful 007 formula are missing.
  37. Harmonium
    Shot in a meticulous yet unmannered style, the film provides the veteran cast with an ideal framework to mount masterful performances.
  38. The General
    Rarely has a veteran filmmaker rejuvenated his career to such startling effect as John Boorman with The General, a fresh-off-the-slab biopic of maverick Irish crime lord Martin Cahill that both challenges and entertains the audience at a variety of levels, as well as reviving the vitality of the helmer's earliest, mid-'60s pics.
  39. En el Séptimo Día (On the Seventh Day)
    Each elegantly framed shot, every deftly observed moment expresses something organic and moving.
  40. In Transit
    Sampling snippets and snatches of lives and conversations, Maysles and his fellow filmmakers undertake a folk odyssey through northern landscapes that proves a fitting farewell to an American ethnographer.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Coma
    Coma is an extremely entertaining suspense drama in the Hitchcock tradition. Robin Cook's novel is adapted by Crichton into a smartly paced tale which combines traditional Hitchcock elements with contemporary personal relationships.
    • Variety
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Goldfinger
    There's not the least sign of staleness in this third sample of the Bond 007 formula. Some liberties have been taken with Ian Fleming's original novel but without diluting its flavor.
  43. Molly's Game
    Molly’s Game delivers one of the screen’s great female parts — a dense, dynamic, compulsively entertaining affair, whose central role makes stunning use of Chastain’s stratospheric talent.
  44. Top Gun: Maverick
    Hardly anything in Top Gun: Maverick will surprise you, except how well it does nearly all the things audiences want and expect it to do.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Escape from the Planet of the Apes
    Escape from the Planet of the Apes is an excellent film, almost as good as the original Planet of the Apes. Arthur Jacobs’ production is marked by an outstanding script, using some of the original Pierre Boulle novel characters; excellent direction by Don Taylor; and superior performances from a cast headed by encoring Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter.
  46. Our Beloved Month of August
    A tantalizing mix of documentary, fiction and everything in between (including music video), Miguel Gomes’ 150-minute love song to rural Portugal, Our Beloved Month of August, scores viscerally as well as intellectually.
  47. No Time to Die
    No Time to Die is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neo-classical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.
  48. Brad's Status
    It’s a film with the courage to be unlikable and the confidence to be complex, trusting audiences to navigate Brad’s whirling, restless mental state as it swings from jealousy to pride to what Ananya (correctly) identifies as “white privilege, male privilege, first-class problems” — otherwise known as entitlement.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ruthless People
    Ruthless People is a hilariously venal comedy about a kidnapped harridan whose rich husband won’t pay for her return.
  50. 4 Days in France
    Unapologetically rambling but never dull at over 140 minutes, this story of two gay lovers both separated and united by mobile distractions of the flesh loiters coolly where the sensibilities of Jacques Rivette and Alain Guiraudie intersect — which is to take nothing away from the droll peculiarity of Reybaud’s own voice.
  51. Annihilation
    For those willing to put in the effort, Annihilation achieves that rare feat of great genre cinema, where we are not merely thrilled (the film is both intensely scary and unexpectedly beautiful in parts) but also feel as if our minds have been expanded along the way.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Sure Thing
    The Sure Thing is at heart a sweetly old-fashioned look at the last lap of the coming-of-age ordeal in which the sure thing becomes less important than the real thing. Realization may not be earth shattering, but in an era of fast food and faster sex, return to the traditional is downright refreshing.
  53. Machines
    This simultaneously beautiful and abjectly unhappy film is forced to close by silently admitting its limitations.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Absence of Malice
    Absence of Malice is the flipside of All The President's Men, a splendidly disturbing look at the power of sloppy reporting to inflict harm on the innocent.
  55. Kill Me Please
    Anita Rocha da Silveira’s arresting debut feature captures the queasy mix of desire and fear among kids who are sexually inexperienced, yet can think of little else. Pop kitsch, social satire, dreamy narrative unreliability and retro giallo-thriller vibes further flavor a movie at once bold and cryptic.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Licence to Kill
    The James Bond production team has found its second wind with Licence to Kill, a cocktail of high-octane action, spectacle and drama...The thrills-and-spills chases are superbly orchestrated as pic spins at breakneck speed through its South Florida and Central American locations.
  57. The Farthest
    Reynolds’ film conveys a legitimate, stirring sense of awe about mankind’s innate desire for adventure, discovery and communion with all that surrounds it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Natural
    The Natural is an impeccably made, but quite strange, fable about success and failure in America. Redford is perfectly cast as the wary, guarded Hobbs.
    • Variety
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Downhill Racer
    Redford contributes a sensitive, interesting portrayal. His interpretation is many-faceted and probing. Hackman’s characterization is virile and thoroughly human.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chariots of Fire
    The casting is pin point. Charleson and Cross, neither meaningful to film fans up to now, come over as plausible types rather than stereotypes. John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson contribute sharply as university officials dismayed by the upstart young Jew. Nigel Davenport is very good as the Olympic squad’s titular leader, and Patrick Magee is excellent in a brief turn as a blimpish peer of the realm.
  61. Gerald's Game
    Taken strictly on its own terms, the film adaptation is an arrestingly and sometimes excruciatingly suspenseful psychological thriller lightly garnished with horror-movie flourishes...and driven by a compelling lead performance that is entirely worthy of a description too often misapplied to lesser work: tour de force.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Julia
    Fred Zinnemann’s superbly sensitive film explores the anti-Nazi awakening in the 1930s of writer Lillian Hellman via persecution of a childhood friend, portrayed in excellent characterization by Vanessa Redgrave in title role. Richard Roth’s production is handsome and tasteful.
  63. The Teacher
    Although dealing with weighty matters, Jarchovsky’s script (which is based on a real-life incident he experienced during primary school) is leavened with welcome humor and irony.... As usual, Hrebejk’s direction is smooth and the ensemble performances top-notch.
  64. Lady Bird
    The real surprise is just how honest and personal this film proves to be — again, par for the course with Gerwig, and yet, fairly rare among first-time directors, who haven’t had nearly so much practice simply being real.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jesús
    Jesús investigates the darkest side of adolescence, raising a number of moral questions without providing easy answers. The top-notch cast is the icing on the cake, with Goic stoically embodying Chile’s hopes and failures while young Durán mesmerizes with his stunning androgyny.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Black Rain
    This gripping crime thriller about hardboiled NY cop Michael Douglas tracking a yakuza hood in Osaka, Japan, boasts magnificent lensing and powerfully baroque production design.
    • Variety
  67. First Reformed
    In First Reformed, Paul Schrader courts respectability and leaves it in the dust, getting stoned on excess. But make no mistake: He’s still one hell of a filmmaker.
  68. 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.
  69. I, Tonya
    It’s a serious blast, with a plot that zigs and zags (but only because it sticks, within reason, to the facts), and a cast of characters who are so eccentrically scuzzy that maybe no one could have dreamed them up.
  70. Mom and Dad
    Though sure to be distasteful for some viewers even to ponder, this giddy exercise transcends mere bad-taste humor to become one of the great jet-black comedies about suburbia.
  71. The Future Perfect
    Wohlatz’s sensitivity to language, the way it’s used and how the ability to express oneself literally changes the manner in which we deal with the world around us, is subtly yet rigorously demonstrated, not just with the words and tenses themselves but how they’re spoken.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Singin' in the Rain
    Concocted by Arthur Freed with showmanship know-how, it glitters with color, talent and tunes, and an infectious air that will click with ticket buyers in all types of situations.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cool Hand Luke
    Newman gives an excellent performance, assisted by a terrific supporting cast, including George Kennedy, outstanding as the unofficial leader of the cons who yields first place to Newman.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Invasion of the Body Snatchers
    Invasion of the Body Snatchers validates the entire concept of remakes. This new version of Don Siegel’s 1956 cult classic not only matches the original in horrific tone and effect, but exceeds it in both conception and execution. Sutherland has his best role since Klute. He gets excellent support from Adams, who projects a touching vulnerability.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Fistful of Dollars
    This is a hard-hitting item, ably directed, splendidly lensed, neatly acted, which has all the ingredients wanted by action fans and then some.
    • Variety
  76. Hissein Habre, A Chadian Tragedy
    [A] concise, clearly told and deeply effective documentary.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Getting Straight
    Getting Straight is an outstanding film. It is a comprehensive, cynical, sympathetic, flip, touching and hilarious story of the middle generation [of the late 1960s] – those millions a bit too old for protest, a bit too young for repression.
  78. Bending the Arc
    With the gripping appeal of a great epic novel, Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos’ documentary spans three decades of diligent work on the frontlines of global health crises to prove, in moving detail, the difference dedicated professionals can make in seemingly hopeless situations.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wait Until Dark
    Wait Until Dark emerges as an excellent suspense drama, effective in casting, scripting, direction and genuine emotional impact.
    • Variety
  80. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
    Jim & Andy is fleetly edited and engrossing, animated by a sense of discovery.
  81. Chappaquiddick
    The movie is avidly told and often suspenseful, but it’s really a fascinating study of how corruption in America works. It sears you with its relevance.
  82. In Between
    What makes this spiky dramedy so compelling are the Palestinian-Israeli protagonists, whose split lives have rarely been depicted on screen.
  83. The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis
    Rather than any outward show of police or physical repression, the directors suffuse their drama with a sense of paranoia and constant surveillance, chillingly capturing the fear of one man forced into a moral dilemma.
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pale Rider
    It’s all been seen before, but Eastwood serves it up with authority, fine craftsmanship and a frequent sense of fun. This film is graced not only by an excellent visual look and confident storytelling, but by a few fine performances, led by Eastwood’s own.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Thomas Crown Affair
    the Norman Jewison film tells a crackerjack story, well-tooled, professionally crafted and fashioned with obvious meticulous care. McQueen is neatly cast as the likeable, but lonely heavy. Dunaway makes an excellent detective who gradually develops a conflict of interests regarding her prey. The only message in this film is: enjoy it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Arachnophobia
    Arachnophobia expertly blends horror and tongue-in cheek comedy in the tale of a small California coastal town overrun by Venezuelan killer spiders. Frank Marshall’s sophisticated feature directing debut never indulges in ultimate gross-out effects and carefully chooses both its victims and its means of depicting their dispatch.
  88. Come Sunday
    Marston, working from Marcus Hinchey’s sensitive and remarkably nuanced script, invites measured introspection from both his characters and the audience.
  89. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
    It’s the human side of the character that makes this McCarthy’s best performance to date, revealing haunting insights into friendship, loneliness, and creative insecurity.
  90. Doctor Zhivago
    The sweep and scope of the Russian revolution, as reflected in the personalities of those who either adapted or were crushed, has been captured by David Lean in Doctor Zhivago, frequently with soaring dramatic intensity. Director has accomplished one of the most meticulously designed and executed films--superior in several visual respects to his "Lawrence of Arabia."
  91. Minding the Gap
    It exists because it’s the movie Liu was born to make, the one he had to get off his chest before he could move on in his filmmaking career.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All About Eve
    All About Eve has substance in virtually every dramatic and romantic mood, which have been given proper shading and projection by producer Darryl F. Zanuck and Mankiewicz.
  93. Non-Fiction
    This story of two couples dealing with change in their personal and professional lives, so packed with intellectual sparring, gets progressively lighter as it moves along, acknowledging the primacy of human interaction (foibles and all) over doctrine.
  94. The Favourite
    It’s a perfectly cut diamond of a movie — a finely executed, coldly entertaining entry in the genre of savage misanthropic baroque costume drama.
  95. Transit
    A refugee portrait that piles contrivance upon contrivance to somehow land at a place of piercing emotional acuity.
  96. Hereditary
    Ari Aster directs slowly, meditatively, purging the film of any of the usual horror-video razzmatazz. Instead, he creates scary coherent spaces for the audience to sink into.
  97. The Tale
    Fox’s directing and script are so purposeful and direct that it can be very hard to watch The Tale without having to look away.
  98. Loveling
    Brazilian director Gustavo Pizzi crafts a warm and wonderfully universal love story that comes across surprisingly unconventional for something so familiar.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Great Escape
    Producer-director John Sturges has fashioned a motion picture that entertains, captivates, thrills and stirs.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It Happened One Night
    One of those stories that without a particularly strong plot manages to come through in a big way, due to the acting, dialog, situations and direction. In other words, the story has that intangible quality of charm which arises from a smooth blending of the various ingredients. Difficult to analyze, impossible to designedly reproduce. Just a happy accident.
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