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. Soft & Quiet
    Soft & Quiet is deeply unpleasant to watch, but that’s the point.
  2. The Climb
    Beautifully written and performed by the director and real-life BFF Kyle Marvin, Covino’s film gets precisely the balance of dependency and denial that keeps a bad bromance afloat.
  3. A Hero
    A Hero, for all that’s good in it, is a Farhadi movie that speaks to our heads (and sometimes has us scratching them) more than it does our hearts.
  4. Three Kings
    An impudently comic, stylistically aggressive and, finally, very thoughtful manner.
  5. The Northman
    In most respects, Eggers is a unique artist with strong, singular ideas of how to script, stage and pace his films, and while The Northman is nothing if not a signature addition to a most original oeuvre — no one but Eggers would or could have reimagined “Hamlet” thus — it lacks the element of surprise that made “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” feel like instant classics.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Killer
    This extremely violent and superbly made actioner demonstrates the tight grasp that director John Woo has on the crime meller genre, and his ability to twist the form into surprisingly satisfying shapes. The picture creeps up on an audience. Melodramatic from the start, it finally goes over the top to deliver a solid emotional punch.
  7. Vulcanizadora
    By the time its end credits roll, Vulcanizadora proves surprisingly moving in its depiction of mid-life crises and of two men who feel so betrayed by the world (and by their own actions) that they see no escape from their malaise. To turn that feeling into coherent drama is hard enough.
  8. Neruda
    Surprises always come at the end of Pablo Larraín’s films, when everything suddenly comes together and the audience sits in the cinema feeling both illuminated and floored. Neruda is no different, representing the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise.
  9. Penguin Highway
    To simplify matters: If you see just one anime feature this year, it ought to be Penguin Highway. It’s not that the style or story is mind-blowingly original, the way the best Miyazaki movies are; rather, this well-written cartoon playfully complements the kind of storytelling that Westerners are already enjoying via American-made, live-action series, while incorporating lots of delightfully Japan-specific details along the way.
  10. All Shall Be Well
    The lack of inflection in the film’s infinitely broad-spectrum compassion can sometimes feel less like restraint and more like timidity. Anger is alien to Yeung’s style but it is sometimes justified, and without it, All Shall Be Well is a plea for understanding that should by now, by rights, be a demand.
  11. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
    Watching “Lost and Found,” you’re moved by a life that veered into tragedy, yet the place it lands lifts you up. More than a great photographer, Ernest Cole captured something essential. By the end you feel the ghost is speaking to you.
  12. Deaf President Now!
    The propulsive nonfiction story feels as inspirational as any scripted feature, reuniting the four Gallaudet grads who organized the movement to describe events in their own words — words of passion, dynamically signed on-screen and spoken aloud by unseen actors.
  13. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    Though its glacial pacing will represent a significant hurdle for many viewers, the film grows steadily more involving as dawn breaks and the men make their way back home, and its unflinching observations of the legal and medical establishment at work frequently rivet. Visually, it's as gorgeous a film as Ceylan has made.
  14. John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
    What on paper might be a standard sporting bio-doc, largely relevant only to tennis aficionados or fans of John McEnroe at the height of his powers, instead becomes a lovely meditation on time and movement, dedication and obsession, image and perception.
  15. A Walk to Beautiful
    Competently made, precisely shot and buoyantly humanistic.
  16. Art Talent Show
    Whether you view this illuminating doc as a portrait of an institution, a snapshot of a generation or a sketch of the dedication and stamina shown by those in the teaching profession, Art Talent Show bears sprightly comparison to the various styles and modes of artistic expression it showcases.
  17. Stranger by the Lake
    This is essentially an absorbing and intelligent exploration of queer desire spiced up with thriller elements.
  18. Ten Canoes
    Anthropology and entertainment are marvelously married in Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes. The first feature in an Australian Aboriginal language feels authentic to the core as it tells a cautionary tale set 1,000 years ago.
  19. The Stranger
    Confounding, disturbing and yet icily compelling, the experience of watching François Ozon’s The Stranger is not entirely dissimilar to that of reading Albert Camus’ 1942 classic.
  20. Gilles' Wife
    Told primarily via body language and facial expressions with a minimum of dialogue, beautifully observed, emotionally intense tale is an ambitious and rewarding outing for Frederic Fonteyne.
  21. Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
    What’s most moving about Oliver Sacks: His Own Life is that Sacks, whose extreme love of existence was there in every sentence he wrote, could embrace death because it would be the most out-there adventure of his life. What he saw is that we were all, in our ways, afflicted and all unique. And therefore all extraordinary.
  22. The Maid
    Saavedra is riveting as a servant whose unblinking focus on her routine masks a profound loneliness.
  23. Cowards Bend the Knee or The Blue Hands
    Ultimately, psychotically inventive pic is a formidable addition to the ever-evolving Maddin oeuvre.
  24. Pandas
    Pandas is less sentimental than you expect, but you can respect the film’s honesty and still leave it hoping that the next true-life panda adventure delivers more of a feel-good ending — for the audience, and mostly for the pandas.
  25. Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
    Undoubtedly the most wildly original and audacious documentary in this year's Sundance Film Festival, Kirby Dick's Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is an uncompromising chronicle of the flamboyant poet and performance artist who died in 1996.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jezebel
    William Wyler’s direction draws an engrossing cross-section of old southern manners and hospitality. It’s undoubtedly faithful to a degree, and not without its charm. At times it’s even completely captivating.
  27. Sicario
    The opening of Sicario unfolds at such an anxiety-inducing pitch that it seems impossible for Villeneuve to sustain it, let alone build on it, but somehow he manages to do just that. He’s a master of the kind of creeping tension that coils around the audience like a snake suffocating its prey.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Long Good Friday
    In many respects a conventional thriller set in London's underworld, The Long Good Friday is much more densely plotted and intelligently scripted than most such yarns.
  29. Bacurau
    Though shot in striking anamorphic widescreen and laced with references to John Carpenter, Sergio Leone and the like, Bacurau doesn’t quite work in traditional genre-movie terms. Rather, it demands the extra labor of unpacking its densely multilayered subtext to appreciate.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hamlet
    This is picture-making at its best.
  31. My Octopus Teacher
    My Octopus Teacher never loses our goodwill: If we wind up wishing it had a little less man and a little more beast, that only serves its cause.
  32. Our Time Will Come
    By highlighting the value of artists and intellectuals, and the importance of protecting them, [Hui] imbues the authentic historical episode with timely universal relevance.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Honeymoon Killers
    Made on a very low budget by a writer-director Leonard Kastle, The Honeymoon Killers, based on the Lonely Hearts murder case of the late 1940s, is made with care, authenticity and attention to detail.
  34. Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
    A documentary constructed from re-enactments, talking heads and no actual footage of the story it tells, but that still packs a knock-out punch.
  35. A Thousand Cuts
    Ressa’s seemingly boundless energy, good humor and intelligence make her basically a power plant for the manufacture of inspiration in embattled times.
  36. No Home Movie
    In its own highbrow way, the formally demanding and impossibly intimate video essay serves as an elegy to that sense of home that disappeared with the woman who, as far as the film is concerned, seems forever confined to her own bourgeois apartment.
  37. At Berkeley
    One of Wiseman’s best, a summation of sorts of a career’s worth of principled filmmaking from a director in his ninth decade.
  38. Blade Runner 2049
    Villeneuve earns every second of that running time, delivering a visually breathtaking, long-fuse action movie whose unconventional thrills could be described as many things — from tantalizing to tedious — but never “artificially intelligent.”
  39. Step
    Without any fuss, Lipitz has made a film deeply rooted in intergenerational relationships between women.
  40. Experimenter
    Experimenter offers a heady brew of theories about the essence of human nature, and a Peter Sarsgaard performance that catches Milgram in all his seductive, megalomaniacal brilliance.
  41. C.R.A.Z.Y.
    The whole family can feel comfortable watching C.R.A.Z.Y., Jean-Marc Vallee's bouncy coming-of-age tale that coasts along on a terrific soundtrack and a spot-on feel for period detail. Story of a tight-knit Catholic family and their sexually confused son never goes near anything that might make mainstream auds uncomfortable, sticking with an old-fashioned tone balanced by inventive lensing that gives only the illusion of dipping its toe in risky waters.
  42. Eden
    Hansen-Love, who co-wrote the script along with her former-DJ brother Sven, zeroes in on the signature experiences of ’90s club life with expert precision.
  43. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
    A superior example of fearless filmmakers in exactly the right place at the right time.
  44. Short Cuts
    Exploding Raymond Carver's spare stories and minimally drawn characters onto the screen with startling imagination, Robert Altman has made his most complex and full-bodied human comedy since "Nashville."
  45. A Mighty Wind
    The gifted repertory company again creates an amusing gallery of incisively observed characters, riffing off each other with enjoyment levels that frequently prove contagious.
  46. The Damned United
    Telling with a light, surefooted touch a legendary tale from British soccer history, The Damned United reps the latest collaboration in factual fiction between chameleon thesp Michael Sheen, screenwriter Peter Morgan and producer Andy Harries ("Frost/Nixon," "The Queen").
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Georgia
    Performed to maximum effect by a host of top-flight actors, Ulu Grosbard's strong character study is knit together by a tense subtext that underlies even the calmest moments.
  48. The Woman Who Ran
    This deceptively offhand vibe requires the actresses to project effortless naturalism, and they all deliver.
  49. Mass
    The writing is so deft, and the actors so committed, that by the end you feel you’ve touched the burning core of something real.
  50. Art for Everybody
    Much like Penny Lane’s endlessly amusing “Listening to Kenny G,” Yousef’s illuminating doc appeals to all sides, from Kinkade’s haters to his most ardent defenders, revealing dimensions altogether absent from his enormously popular oeuvre.
  51. Western
    Without advertising itself as such, Western could be viewed as a wry reflection of the European Union’s sometimes fractious present-day state — though much of its character conflict hinges on a more universal fear of the other.
  52. Wadjda
    With enormous sympathy for all, Al Mansour captures the isolation of Saudi women and their parallel lives of freedom at home and invisibility outside.
  53. 13th
    More than just another documentary, it’s a crucial and stirring document — of racism and injustice, of politics and the big-picture design of America — that, I believe, will be watched and referenced for years to come.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fresh
    This portrait of a childhood both incredibly resourceful and tragically deprived is memorable in an era of numerous outstanding preteen performances, and the final image of Fresh cracking, for the first time, from the cumulative pressure of his life is indelible. Performances are terrifically intense from top to bottom. Esposito is particularly riveting as the sinewy drug baron, and Ron Brice also scores as a rival dealer.
  55. McLibel
    An alarming if ultimately inspiring David-and-Goliath parable for today.
  56. Sobibór, 14 Octobre 1943, 16 heures
    Has a terrible fascination that glues viewers to the screen. At the same time, audience patience is tested.
  57. Still I Strive
    The power of performing arts to restore hope to damaged young lives is marvelously captured in Still I Strive.
  58. The Levelling
    The Levelling is an intimate story, waterlogged with guilt, grief and blame, but it explores this dark spectrum with such unsentimental honesty that its tiny moments of uplift, when its repressed characters form tentative connections despite themselves, are magnified and moving.
  59. This Much I Know to Be True
    This remarkable performance documentary may be for the Nick Cave-curious exclusively, but for them (us) it is close to essential.
  60. The History of Concrete
    With The History of Concrete, John Wilson takes the least interesting subject imaginable — the dull gray composite used for sidewalks, overpasses and that great big church in “The Brutalist” — and crafts what’s likely to be the most entertaining documentary of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
  61. Brian
    That such a hefty topic can be used to create such breathless, eye-watering comedy without tipping into self-indulgence — and without robbing the film of its most meaningful drama — is practically a miracle.
  62. Arrival
    Adams draws on her gift for making each and every moment quiver with discovery. The actress is alive to what’s around her, even when it’s just ordinary, and when it’s extraordinary the inner fervor she communicates is quietly transporting.
  63. Juno
    An ultra-smart-mouthed comedy about a planned adoption that goes weirdly awry.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Shorty
    Good, sly fun.
  65. Weapons
    Regardless of how you feel about the ending (and many will happily embrace the movie’s darkly comic finale), Cregger has achieved something remarkable here, crafting a cruel and twisted bedtime story of the sort the Brothers Grimm might have spun.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fly
    David Cronenberg's remake of the 1958 horror classic The Fly is not for the squeamish. Casting Jeff Goldblum was a good choice as he brings a quirky, common touch to the spacey scientist role.
  67. Everything Everywhere All at Once
    Everything Everywhere is ultimately too much of a good thing, a novel idea driven to the point of exhaustion.
  68. Blue Valentine
    On balance, this is a meaty, strongly realized dramatic work of considerable accomplishment.
  69. After Love
    Spare and pared-back in all respects ranging from performance to its clean, airily-lensed aesthetic, After Love carries bulky baggage with an elegant lightness, leaving its audience with further unpacking to do.
  70. Close
    I am convinced that Dhont has a masterpiece in him. But there’s an immaturity to his movies that he must first overcome. He’s already so close
  71. State Funeral
    Both as film and as history, State Funeral stands as a canonical work.
  72. Truman
    Cesc Gay’s wise, wistful and well-observed film about two friends enjoying a final reunion in the shadow of impending death, is by turns amusing and affecting — and quite often both at once.
  73. The Dissident
    The Dissident is riveting, but it’s also a moving testament to a man whose courage burned too brightly to die with him.
  74. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    Rare proof that a gigantic production in contemporary Hollywood can possess a distinctive personality and its own approach to storytelling, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World proves as bracing as a stiff wind on the open sea.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Trip to Bountiful
    The Trip to Bountiful is a superbly crafted drama featuring the performance of a lifetime by Geraldine Page.
  76. Godzilla Minus One
    Despite a few lapses into lumpy melodrama, Yamazki’s thoughtful script holds firm and is dotted with delightful humor at just the right moments.
  77. The Secret of Kells
    With its jewel-bright colors and intricate use of lines, the result is absolutely luscious to behold.
  78. Top Five
    Rock is enormously appealing here, balancing his patented comic abrasiveness with a real tenderness, the faint bewilderment of an ordinary man blindsided by his own success. And Dawson makes an excellent foil.
  79. Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
    As certain to get auds singing as the man himself, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is a terrific, multilayered portrait of a singer whose legacy extends beyond music and into every major social action movement since the 1940s. Always enjoyable, this docu proves that a few rare people actually deserve the hagiography treatment.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Simple Plan
    The key differences are in emphasis and tone: “Fargo” is deadpan noir; A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton as Mutt and Jeff siblings, is a more robust Midwestern Gothic that owes as much to Poe as Chandler.
  81. Closet Monster
    Canadian writer-director Stephen Dunn’s first feature treads no new ground in basic outline. But the risk-taking confidence with which he weaves in sardonic magical-realist elements, not to mention his unpredictable yet assured approaches to style and tone, make this a most auspicious debut.
  82. Godland
    [Pálmason's] a cinematic original whose voice grows stronger and more certain with each film.
  83. Katyn
    This plays almost like an academic master class, meticulously exploring the event's ramifications but only catching full fire at the end.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Klute
    Produced handsomely in New York, but directed tediously by Alan J. Pakula, the film is a suspenser without much suspense. Donald Sutherland shares above-title billing in a line-throwing, third-banana trifle of a part.
  85. Youth (Homecoming)
    Youth (Homecoming) stands on its own, as a genuinely sorrowful film about how deeply the churn of industry has worked its way into people’s bones, as though they’ve become one with the machines they operate.
  86. Coming Home
    Heartbreaking in its depiction of ordinary lives affected by political upheaval, this ode to the fundamental values that survive even under such dire circumstances has an epic gravity that recalls another great historical romance, “Doctor Zhivago.”
  87. Living in Oblivion
    An amusing look at the perils of film production, Living in Oblivion is an inside joke with a generosity of heart that makes it accessible to anyone who would take an interest.
  88. Coco
    In any case, it works: Coco’s creators clearly had the perfect ending in mind before they’d nailed down all the other details, and though the movie drags in places, and features a few too many childish gags...the story’s sincere emotional resolution earns the sobs it’s sure to inspire.
  89. My Joy
    Although discomfiting to audiences desiring a steady narrative thread (and less accessible to those unfamiliar with Eastern European history and culture), it sustains interest throughout as a devastating critique of Russian society.
  90. Little Richard: I Am Everything
    Little Richard: I Am Everything, directed with supreme love and insight by Lisa Cortés, is the enthralling documentary that Little Richard deserves.
  91. Bridge of Spies
    While the helmer’s myth-making approach makes for great Capra-esque entertainment, younger auds may find it terribly old-fashioned — and they’d be right to think so, although Spielberg would be the first to admit it was his intention to play things classical.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Driving Miss Daisy
    Bruce Beresford's sensitive direction complements Alfred Uhry's skillful adapation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
  93. Shaun the Sheep Movie
    Though realized on a more modest scale than other Aardman features, the film is still an absolute delight in terms of set and character design, with sophisticated blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detailing to counterbalance the franchise’s cruder visual trademarks.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bombshell
    Here's a crackling comedy built out of the low down on Hollywood, elaborately dressed up with a lot of inside stuff, written with fine jaunty insouciance and acted with luscious abandon by a tip top cast. [24 Oct 1933, p.17]
    • Variety
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Theater of Blood
    Theatre of Blood is black comedy played for chills and mood and emerges a macabre piece of wild melodramatics.
  96. Invisible Life
    Anyone already familiar with Aïnouz’s work will know to expect a florid sensory experience, but even by the Brazilian’s standards, this heartbroken tale of two sisters separated for decades by familial shame and deceit is a waking dream, saturated in sound, music and color to match its depth of feeling.
  97. I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
    Of viciously pointed relevance anywhere populism is on the rise, “Barbarians” is a fiercely intelligent, engaging and challenging wake-up call, a film that leaves you smarter at the end than when you went in, but also sadder and significantly more terrified.
  98. White Material
    Structurally, White Material unfolds like a novel, undoubtedly partly due to the work of Denis' co-scripter, author Marie N'Diaye. That said, it's still very much a Denis film, not just in the complexity of the characters and their motivations -- Huppert shoulders the narrative effortlessly, her strength and direction unwavering -- but in the framework and editing.
  99. Master of Light
    The light here emanates from Morton. His curiosity about art, about his place in the world after his incarceration, makes visible the darkness he’s experienced.
  100. The Station Agent
    A well-acted and crafted character piece that's a bit too calculated and cutesy for its own good.
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