Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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 2.3 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis
    “In Viaggio” captures the Pope, and by extension the whole Church, in an uncomfortable limbo state between defensiveness and progressiveness, though it keeps its own critique tacit and un-narrated, hinging on what the viewer brings to its hand-picked footage.
  2. Creed III
    Creed III is a sports drama that feels like a thriller with an urgent conscience.
  3. We Have a Ghost
    Rarely ha-ha funny and never scary, it’s ultimately more sentimental than anything else — a clunky approach that undermines its strong performances.
  4. Cocaine Bear
    Cocaine Bear is less formulaic than a slasher film and more stylishly made. It’s a true oddball, one that mixes yocks and mock desperation and disembodied limbs. So when it’s over you can say, “Well, we definitely saw that.”
  5. Femme
    A pair of sensational performances by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (“Candyman”) and George MacKay (“1917”), locked in a nervy duet as two men with virtually nothing in common but their sexuality, represents the chief selling point for this stylish, commendably uncompromising fusion of genre fireworks and measured, thoughtful character study.
  6. Jesus Revolution
    It’s one of the most appealing faith-based big-screen entertainments in a while, polished and persuasive without getting too preachy.
  7. Bruiser
    From the squarish Academy ratio and unconventional framing to composer Robert Ouyang Rusli’s tense, bracing-for-conflict score, Warren’s choices frequently surprise, building to an ending that does exactly the right thing with the showdown we could feel coming all along.
  8. Ingeborg Bachmann - Journey into the Desert
    In many ways, Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert feels like the exact opposite of the project we ought to be attempting, which is to reclaim the work of women of genius who are in danger of falling into obscurity, without reducing their already threatened legacies to mere romantic biography
  9. Golda
    Golda is a good drama about Israel. But it will take a great drama about Israel to dig into the nation’s long-simmering moral ambiguities.
  10. The Echo
    Examining the unique ties that bind farming families, where everyone’s welfare hangs on the same unkind elements, this exquisitely textured film observes how children’s lives echo those of their parents, repeating for generations on the same constantly inconstant land, until somebody breaks the pattern.
  11. The Survival of Kindness
    Man’s enormous inhumanity to man is reproduced in precise, characterful miniature, with a pared-back artistry that somehow earns de Heer the right to be thematically blunt, and deeply pessimistic.
  12. Disco Boy
    Even when Disco Boy threatens to be too much or too little, however, Rogowski’s strange, sparse, plaintive performance keeps its soul intact, and its most poignant query afloat above all the flash and dazzle and neon lights: just how much of themselves people will sacrifice for a paper identity.
  13. The Adults
    The Adults is most moving in its understanding of the trivial quips, asides and slight, splintered anecdotes that are sometimes all that remains between adult relatives who once shared richer connective tissue.
  14. Devil's Peak
    Despite some good performances and vividly written characters, Devil’s Peak crumbles due to Penn’s inexperienced performance. Otherwise, it’s an entertaining drama with some grandiose ideas about family legacy that make it peculiarly compelling.
  15. Reality
    Reality can be stranger than fiction, but “Reality” fuses the two to become stranger, and more riveting, still.
  16. Manodrome
    The characters feel thin, the secret society seems implausible and its goals too vague to capture the imagination. “Manodrome” taps into a deep unease at play in the wider world, but it presents only the shell of an idea, focusing on a not-terribly-interesting character with only the haziest of goals.
  17. She Came to Me
    We’re invited to laugh at what we’re seeing, yet Miller works in such a heartfelt and unassuming way that we’re never standing outside the quirks.
  18. BlackBerry
    The film, at least, feels fresh, making geek history more entertaining than it has any right to be.
  19. A Radiant Girl
    Newcomer Marder’s performance is a thoroughly engaging one. She manages to demonstrate both screen presence and likability, despite a role which requires her to represent youthful optimism to an almost symbolic degree.
  20. Moving On
    Tomlin’s terrific in this mode. The script is as bland as the “cardboard” they serve in her rest-home cafeteria, but she manages to inject it with vinegar and attitude, while embracing the realities of aging.
  21. 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.
  22. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey
    It’s bad enough that the film doesn’t have the smarts to actually satirize its inspirational source. But bizarrely, it doesn’t really send up slasher tropes, either, while lacking the skillset to take play them seriously.
  23. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    “Quantumania” is fun, as well as bedazzling, relentless and numbing, then fun again just when you think you’ve had enough; all of that gets mashed together.
  24. Consecration
    In Consecration Jena Malone doesn’t just sport a casually impeccable British accent. She becomes British — her mood and manners, the way she rocks the sweaters and bangs and debonair politeness. She creates a compelling character, only to see the film’s director, Christopher Smith, swallow her up in all the ecclesiastical gothic malarkey.
  25. Seriously Red
    Director Gracie Otto’s Seriously Red disarms and delights as a sensationally spirited concoction that neatly balances unfettered outrageousness and unabashed sentimentality.
  26. Attachment
    For horror fans that are as compelled by creative (and thought-through) ideas as by style or skillful execution, “Attachment” embraces what to many may be a new or different text, but it’s clearly knowledgeable about the traditions of the genre — and most of all, deeply faithful to its spirit.
  27. 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.
  28. Your Place or Mine
    Your Place or Mine is an outrageously benign movie, which may not sound like much of a criticism. But it’s so benign it’s innocuous. There’s no tension, no comedy with any bite (except for the dry one-liners of Tig Notaro as the best friend who’s there to give advice), no romantic friction.
  29. Somebody I Used to Know
    The romantic comedy genre’s broad, patented hijinks and hilarity are indeed on display, but cleverly cloaked by a beautifully-realized portrait of delicately faceted characters and their relatable conundrums.
  30. Sharper
    A deep ensemble cast is game for this ambitiously overwrought material, but no amount of committed acting can overcome the movie’s manipulative artifice.
  31. Magic Mike's Last Dance
    “Toothless” probably isn’t the first word Magic Mike fans want to associate with Channing Tatum’s aging exotic dancer series, but there’s no denying the female-targeting franchise has dulled its bite over the past decade.
  32. The Integrity of Joseph Chambers
    The absurdity would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrifying. Your mileage may vary.
  33. Pamela, a love story
    Even as a thoughtful chronicle of the ups and downs of her life, Ryan White’s film plays slightly as a retread that amplifies the public’s love story with redemption arcs — especially for celebrities — more than it offers anything that has not already been revealed to the world.
  34. A Lot of Nothing
    Even if the onyx-dark humor and sardonic formal control go MIA eventually, “A Lot of Nothing” is really quite something.
  35. Baby Ruby
    Evocative and appropriately aggravating as Baby Ruby is in its portrayal of mental breakdown following traumatic childbirth, however, its parlaying of this condition into full-blown genre tensions and terrors yields mixed rewards.
  36. The Locksmith
    The plot is so straightforward and reminiscent of a thousand other crime movies that nothing will be missed. Alas, nothing is gained either, and the entertainment value is subpar at best.
  37. Small, Slow But Steady
    Director Shô Miyake’s measured, unsentimental adaptation of a memoir by Keiko Ogasawara — who turned professional despite the difficulties of lifelong deafness — turns out to be somewhat aptly described by its own title, though none of those adjectives quite conveys its rare and delicate grace.
  38. The Deepest Breath
    As a pure adrenaline-rush experience, however, The Deepest Breath is hard to argue with, coming closer than might seem possible to conveying the exhilaration and/or terror of descending further than the length of a football field into infinite aqua.
  39. The Amazing Maurice
    Courtesy of source material by offbeat fantasy maestro Terry Pratchett, it’s genuinely eccentric enough — with its sly talking cat, intrepid band of gold-hearted rats and chronic aversion to keeping the fourth wall intact — to come off as charming rather than smarmy.
  40. 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.
  41. Knock at the Cabin
    Knock at the Cabin takes a premise audiences think they know and does something unconventional and (alas) frustrating with it. Trouble is, these days, it’s no surprise to be let down by a Shyamalan movie.
  42. Pathaan
    Pathaan has a stop-and-go rhythm, and a strung-together structure, that grows wearying. (Two-and-a-half hours of frenetic derivative pulp is a lot of pulp.)
  43. Let It Be Morning
    This is a farce of stasis, not frenzied activity. By holding his characters literally captive — as the village is held, absurdly but violently, under siege — Kolirin forges an actual microcosm through which to examine the social and political status of Israel’s Arab community.
  44. Cinema Sabaya
    Based on helmer-writer Orit Fouks Rotem’s experience as a teacher and the real women she encountered, the film is full of life, love, humor and authenticity without being didactic. At the same time, it cleverly questions the ethics and responsibility of filmmaking.
  45. Adam
    Taking the stories of two women, both frozen in existential stasis, and bringing them together in a predictable yet deeply satisfying manner, the writer-director ensures this scrupulously even two-hander about grief, shame, and the redemption of motherhood doles out emotional comfort food that’s neither too sweet nor too heavy.
  46. 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.
  47. In My Mother's Skin
    “In My Mother’s Skin” finds a rare sweet spot between story-book nightmare and historical allegory.
  48. Landscape with Invisible Hand
    Finley loses his exacting handle on the material, allowing the story’s more commonplace ideas to dictate its direction in ways both unsurprising and a little rough around the edges.
  49. Kokomo City
    The questions may not be pre-approved by GLAAD, but they’re coming from a trans woman actively working against the usual feel-good talking points; the responses she gets are frank, funny and frequently shocking.
  50. Radical
    Radical isn’t so much an irresponsibly magical against-the-odds yarn as a truthful one, in which a well-intentioned outsider can only go so far in protecting underprivileged students from certain grim paths.
  51. Scrapper
    Regan’s debut rehashes a host of familiar elements from assorted kitchen-sink dramas and dysfunctional parent-child stories, painting them colorfully enough that audiences won’t mind the odd bit of rust.
  52. 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.
  53. Shortcomings
    For all the film’s chatty insights into modern dating mores and its casually pointed discussions of racial identity, the formula to which Shortcomings mostly adheres is a familiar one, as though someone has given one of the Apatow-esque man-child comedies of the aughts an Asian makeover.
  54. Passages
    Sachs excels at investigating thorny, uncomfortable situations, and he treats all three characters fairly here, which allows audiences to decide which one they identify with.
  55. A Little Prayer
    MacLachlan’s writing style is at once honest and slightly elevated, the kind we’re used to hearing onstage, where the structure of the entire script matters, and subtext is every bit as important as what’s spoken.
  56. 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.
  57. Beyond Utopia
    What we’ve forgotten about, for too long, is the North Korean people. For years, their misery has existed under a blackout. Beyond Utopia looks behind the wall and shines a light.
  58. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
    "Going to Mars” responds creatively to the call of its ingenious subject thanks to the directors’ soulful grasp of her work, and Terra Long and Lawrence Jackman’s skillful editing.
  59. The Persian Version
    The Persian Version is a bit madcap and self-indulgent, not unlike its protagonist, before it settles into a groove that foregrounds Shirin.
  60. Kompromat
    Focusing on the moment-to-moment thrills proves more satisfying than wondering what actually sparked this intrigue.
  61. Theater Camp
    Mostly, audiences are stuck watching everybody trying to be funny: testing out one-liners, singing off-key, panhandling for laughs. Running jokes trip over their own shoelaces.
  62. A Thousand and One
    Rockwell uses the full range of cinematic expressivity to turn a small, often tragic story of raw deals and rash decisions into an admiring portrait of survivorship, determination and resourcefulness.
  63. The Mission
    There’s nothing terribly wrong with Anderson’s documentary — save that after 96 minutes, any viewer could well obliviously walk right past its principal subjects on the street, so fleeting an impression do they make in this surface-level portrait.
  64. Memories of My Father
    Trueba keeps things moving within and between eras in a graceful, affectionate, assured way that’s always enjoyable, even if the film overall seems a bit frivolous given its larger themes.
  65. Maybe I Do
    To be fair: Maybe I Do is undemanding, painless and pleasantly diverting, and has the saving grace of never trying too hard for a cheap laugh. There are quite a few undeniably funny lines, many of them made all the more amusing by the perfect-pitch delivery of the pros in the cast.
  66. AUM: The Cult at the End of the World
    Braun and Yanagimoto go for comprehensiveness over comprehension, bringing in many more commentators — writers, lawyers, reporters, eyewitnesses — each to peel back one further, fascinating fold in the infinite origami of the Aum story.
  67. Flora and Son
    It’s catchy and touching, it weaves the music into the story with a spontaneity that can leave you laughing with pleasure, and it navigates an honest path from despair to belief, which is Carney’s disarmingly sweet calling card.
  68. Earth Mama
    Leaf recognizes that whatever happens to Gia, the problem remains. Her portrait is intended to illuminate, and Nomore makes for a wonderful collaborator in this.
  69. 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.
  70. Eileen
    The formal rigor that made Oldroyd’s “Lady Macbeth” such a striking debut is in evidence here throughout, but this time that directorial precision is applied to a narrative of bold, even garish ambition, which “Eileen” conceals, along with its unhinged heart, beneath a controlled, placid exterior.
  71. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
    If “All Dirt Roads” perhaps does not connect quite as powerfully as it could on a narrative level, it marks the arrival of an arresting new talent in Raven Jackson, at the very least as the creator of the kind of cinema you do not watch as much as touch and smell and taste.
  72. Polite Society
    In many respects, Polite Society comes across as a giant pastiche of Manzoor’s favorite movie references, with homage paid to films from all over the globe via individual shots and sound cues throughout. But there’s no denying her creativity or the defiantly original voice she brings to her characters.
  73. Past Lives
    For all the films that have been made about love triangles, Song has fashioned hers in the form of a circle, defying so many of the clichés in her quietly devastating way.
  74. You Hurt My Feelings
    You Hurt My Feelings stays true to the droll casualness of its title. It’s not a major Holofcener movie; it’s closer to a lively and digressive short story. Yet it’s compelling to see Holofcener merge the fates of all her characters through a grand tweak of the piety of positivity.
  75. The Pod Generation
    The Pod Generation is very much about our flesh, and the forces that are only too happy to take it away from us.
  76. Run Rabbit Run
    What it lacks in thematic newness, Run Rabbit Run makes up for in the sophistication of its moment-to-moment scarifying and its performances from Sarah Snook and outstanding newcomer Lily LaTorre.
  77. Sometimes I Think About Dying
    It’s a thin, practically anemic observational movie for audiences who recognize themselves in Fran’s awkwardness.
  78. Justice
    Justice re-equips the anti-Kavanaugh side by pulling a more streamlined narrative from the blizzard of detail that threatened observers at the time with snow-blindness.
  79. 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.
  80. Fair Play
    The key to the film’s potential success isn’t just that it’s made in a commercial genre. It’s that Fair Play, while full of sex, money, corporate backstabbing, and a lot of other things that are fun to watch, really is a good little movie.
  81. Cat Person
    It’s a squirmy, uncomfortable movie no teenager wants to watch with their mom, but maybe everyone should — required viewing for freshman year.
  82. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
    Fox is a charismatic guy, and even though his personal story has been overshadowed by Parkinson’s disease, Guggenheim’s upbeat and ultra-polished documentary reminds what a peppy, relatable personality he was — and is — on-screen.
  83. Infinity Pool
    The Canadian helmer has created the cinematic equivalent of an M.C. Escher drawing, which bends and breaks and folds back on itself in impossible ways. Brain-shattering as it all is, we can hardly tear our eyes away.
  84. Magazine Dreams
    Magazine Dreams creates a character haunting in his extremity. But his dream becomes ours, as does the heartbreaking prospect of it being snuffed before our eyes.
  85. Cassandro
    In Williams’ hands, the laughs never come at Saúl’s expense, ridiculous as this arena might seem to audiences. Luchadores are entertainers, first and foremost, and “Cassandro” celebrates that while taking Armendáriz’s achievements seriously.
  86. 80 for Brady
    Kyle Marvin’s directorial debut is a pleasant enough reminder that these gals are still game for a good time.
  87. New Gods: Yang Jian
    “Yang Jian” offers vivid and exciting animation matched with traditional Chinese mythic storytelling to deliver an entertaining film.
  88. Of an Age
    Equal parts wistful and sensual, vivid and gentle, Stolevski has gifted us with a swoon-worthy romantic drama that looks at that first blushing crush not as an ephemera in need of being remembered but as a living memory that can pulsate and ache precisely because it’s never left you.
  89. Blueback
    The film adopts a somewhat more grownup, realistic, less parabolic tenor, though its ecology-minded narrative remains a bit sketchy for feature treatment — resulting in a pleasant, very handsome-looking movie rather short on dramatic impact.
  90. You People
    You People alternates between energetic set-pieces by a nimble roster of comedians and intervals of tedium during which the actors seem lost, unable to jump-start the script’s plentiful thin stretches.
  91. Shotgun Wedding
    When it sticks to the trivial stuff, Shotgun Wedding is at least capably mediocre, coasting on its coastal scenery — actually the Dominican Republic, and brightly shot by David Lynch collaborator Peter Deming, not that you’d ever guess — and Lopez’s reliably sparky screen presence. It’s intermittently stolen, however, by everyone’s favorite Jennifer of the moment, Coolidge, as the gaffe-prone mother of the groom.
  92. Jethica
    If the mix of dead-serious themes and playful, why-the-hell-not approach gives off a youthful, almost film-studenty energy, the actual craft is well above amateur-level. Ohs wears well the hats of director, editor and co-writer (alongside the entire cast of four who also get script credit), but especially as cinematographer, he does a sterling job of maximizing a doubtless threadbare budget.
  93. Blaze
    Blaze marks the feature directing debut of a distinctive new voice, and though there’s a certain woodenness to the narrative, the visuals — glitter dreams of a 10-foot fuchsia dragon — radiate with originality.
  94. Kitchen Brigade
    The cruelties of the French immigration system lend a bitter back note to Petit’s otherwise upbeat heartwarmer — a mostly palatable affair that can’t wholly sidestep white-savior cliché in a rushed final course.
  95. The Price We Pay
    We’ve been down this road before and we’ll go there again, but The Price We Pay has enough gas in the tank to make the detour worthwhile.
  96. Sick
    It’s best to let audiences discover the reaper’s motives in context; suffice to say that “Sick” not only factors in our still-evolving COVID-era rules but also serves as an amusing time capsule for the collective fear that has seized us these past three years.
  97. Missing
    An improbable escalation of events and more than a few niggling questions about who’s doing what and how renders this screenlife thriller in dimensions that unfortunately resonate better on an intimate, handheld scale than the big screen.
  98. On Sacred Ground
    The result is a movie that is not merely disappointingly uneven, but irredeemably unbalanced.
  99. House Party
    The film taps into the glitz ethos of the age of social-media envy without necessarily scrutinizing what it all means. Kid ‘n Play had put on a party to remember, but the new movie, much like Kevin and Damon themselves, just goes with the flow of the scam.
  100. Shin Ultraman
    Tongue-in-cheek but never campy, Shin Ultraman is an object lesson in how to reboot a superhero franchise for modern times.
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