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. Paprika
    With its brainy scientist heroine, and surreal, super-kitsch imagery, above-average Japanese anime sci-fi pic Paprika has a better chance than most Nipponese toons of breaking out of the specialty ghetto by appealing to femme auds as well as the genre's core constituency of fanboys.
  2. Hell and Back Again
    Similar in its battlefield passages to last year's Danish-made "Armadillo," Dennis' film scores a layered perspective that follows Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris into combat and back home.
  3. Il Postino: The Postman
    Pic's potentially inspiring story too often remains grounded by a problematic script and unshapely direction.
  4. Loveling
    Brazilian director Gustavo Pizzi crafts a warm and wonderfully universal love story that comes across surprisingly unconventional for something so familiar.
  5. The Hate U Give
    Without compromising the complexity of the issues raised, or condescending to the youth of its protagonists, The Hate U Give strides with absorbing, intelligent certainty through the desperately dangerous, uneven terrain of racially divided America.
  6. Come See Me in the Good Light
    Come See Me in the Good Light, is very good on the existential. But Gibson and Falley are even more generous in sharing their journey through the medical morass.
  7. Hairspray
    It's one of the best Broadway-tuner adaptations in recent years -- yes, arguably even better than those Oscar-winning ones.
  8. Faya Dayi
    Faya Dayi is predominantly a mood piece that seeks to evoke the leaf’s own perception-altering properties.
  9. 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.
  10. King Kong
    Almost too much of a good thing, Peter Jackson's remake of the film that made him want to make movies is a super-sized version of a yarn that was big to begin with, a stupendous adventure that maximizes, and sometimes oversells, its dazzling wares.
  11. Chicago
    First-time feature director Rob Marshall and Oscar-winning "Gods and Monsters" screenwriter Bill Condon have spun the dark tale of two murdering floozies into a widely palatable entertainment, but the long-gestating film comes up short in rhythm and personality.
  12. That's Entertainment! III
    Resourceful filmmakers Bud Friedgen and Michael J. Sheridan have come up with a bang-up third anthology of Golden Era musical highlights that capably holds its own with its predecessors.
  13. TransFatty Lives
    TransFatty Lives is an unusually playful and emotionally involving first-person chronicle of serious illness.
  14. Free in Deed
    Superb, skin-prickling performances by the three principals contribute invaluably to the pic’s stern believability, with Findley utterly wrenching as a dedicated mother pushed to frank irrationality by others’ neglicence.
  15. Battle Royale
    Departing from two decades' worth of domestic and personal dramas and returning to his roots as Japan's maestro of mayhem, Kinji Fukasaku has delivered a brutal punch to the collective solar plexus with one of his most outrageous and timely films.
  16. Goodnight Mommy
    Shooting in sleek 35mm, Franz and Fiala have dreamt up a home-invasion scenario where the aggressors lived there all along.
  17. I Lost My Body
    I’d hazard to say it’s one of the most original and creative animated features I’ve ever seen: macabre, of course — how could it be otherwise, given the premise? — but remarkably captivating and unexpectedly poetic in the process.
  18. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    Even more than the first “Knives Out,” “Glass Onion” is a thriller wrapped in a deception tucked inside a riddle. It is, of course, a murder mystery with multiple suspects, but it’s one that comes with byways and flashbacks and bells and whistles, not to mention two whodunit homicides for the price of one.
  19. A White, White Day
    In light of my own experience with the film, I recommend the following. See it twice: a virgin viewing, simply to take in the strange counterintuitive way the story unfolds, and then again, with a bit of distance, knowing where the journey is headed, so that you might fully appreciate the genius of its construction. I’m convinced that A White, White Day is the work of one of the most important voices of this emerging generation, arriving at a stage where we have yet to learn his language.
  20. Two Step
    This character-driven picture takes its time marinating in quiet conversations and Austin atmosphere, making the sudden jolts of violence all the more shocking when they land.
  21. Summer 1993
    Striking a careful balance between narrative and atmosphere, the writer-director paints a vivid portrait of a light-filled summer when a little girl has to face the loss of her mother and integration into a new nuclear family
  22. Starred Up
    The pic owes its believability to Asser, who served as a therapist similar to Oliver’s character, drawing from his experience to shape the world. Asser brings more than just realism, however, crafting the central father-son relationship on the foundation of classical Greek tragedy.
  23. The Macaluso Sisters
    To imagine the decades-long catch-and-release sweep of a single lifespan and condense it into one sub-90-minute film is a feat; to do so about multiple interconnected lives without losing definition is even more impressive.
  24. Midnight in Paris
    Like a swoony lost chapter from "Paris, je t'aime" agreeably extended to feature length.
  25. The Guardians
    Inspired by prize-winning French author Ernest Pérochon’s 1924 novel, director Xavier Beauvois’ emotionally devastating adaptation — which some may find as arduous as the wartime chapter it depicts — dispenses with a fair amount of the suffering to be found in the book, forgoing the contemporary tendency toward gritty, handheld realism in favor of a more timeless, almost painterly aesthetic.
  26. Mirai
    It’s the work of a true auteur (in what feels like his most personal film yet) presented as innocuous family entertainment.
  27. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
    Director Christopher McQuarrie delivers a formidable concept and several hall-of-fame set-pieces while somehow also managing to tie the storylines back into these movies’ core mythology.
  28. Love and Death on Long Island
    This is arguably Hurt's best role in years, and he bites into it with relish, managing to seem both manipulative and vulnerable, dour and droll at the same time.
  29. A War
    A War doesn’t seek to break new ground in the ongoing cinematic investigation of the Afghanistan conflict; rather, it scrutinizes the ground on which it stands with consummate sensitivity and detail.
  30. She Dies Tomorrow
    The film feels a bit too experimental at times, suffering from lags in tempo and purpose, but it never succumbs to the ordinary either. There is a rare, unrefined quality to Seimetz’s film — a personal work of art that feels deeply honest throughout.
  31. Living
    Living isn’t nearly as subtle as it purports to be, although it can feel that way, considering how much these characters hold back — and this, one supposes, is what audiences want from an Ishiguro script.
  32. Chaos
    A breathlessly involving tale of urban indifference, rampant hypocrisy and the difference a little human decency can make, superbly played pic is a black comedy that's frequently funny but never frivolous.
  33. The Story of the Weeping Camel
    The film spins a beguiling web of detail that builds to a surprisingly throat-clutching finish.
  34. Tuesday, After Christmas
    Again, Muntean and his script collaborators offer exceptionally naturalistic dialogue.
  35. The World's End
    A fraction less gut-bustingly goofy than its predecessors.
  36. Racing Extinction
    Racing Extinction tends to be far more effective when presenting its enlightened activists as heroes.
  37. Top Spin
    The film doesn’t so much avoid cliches as brush off any sentimental excess, briskly maintaining narrative flow.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chinese Portrait
    The compositions are rich with multiple layers; they explore the depth of the cinematic space, and suggest invisible presences at the edge of the frame.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again is anything but a super-western. It's just plain, good entertainment [from an original story by Felix Jackson suggested by Max Brand's novel], primed with action and laughs and human sentiment.
  40. The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet
    It presents details so small they belong under a microscope, and events so large they belong in science fiction; that these chopped fragments can build to an experience so smooth and significant is only because of Katz’s radical re-centering of the drama, away from what happens and onto the life it happens to.
  41. Listening to Kenny G
    Ruthlessly entertaining ... Lane is a master archive digger, unearthing priceless artifacts, some damning, others endearing.
  42. Mountains
    [Mountains] carries an undeniable veracity and compassion. Its narrative proves less insightful, however: too wary to crack into its protagonist’s troubled psyche, softening the film’s worthwhile political anxieties into sympathetic messaging that seems ho-hum and predetermined.
  43. ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!
    A hilarious behind-the-scenes account of that ill-advised investment, MTV Documentary Films’ unconventional — and unexpectedly inspiring — makeover doc follows along as the pair sink millions into rescuing the crumbling landmark out of bankruptcy.
  44. Lost Illusions
    This sweeping period drama may be up to its eyeballs in costumes and carriages, but it plays with all the brio and jeopardy of a modern-day gangster movie, featuring hack journalists as its antiheroes.
  45. Menashe
    Though the fate of his journey isn’t terribly well communicated, it’s a privilege to have observed Menashe’s world from the inside.
  46. District 9
    Though compelling throughout, District 9 never becomes outright terrifying, largely because Blomkamp is less interested in exploiting his aliens for cheap scares than in holding up a mirror to our own bloodthirsty, xenophobic species.
  47. The World
    While the film feels overlong at two hours 20 minutes, there's a seductive stillness to its enveloping mood.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Picnic at Hanging Rock
    Visually it probably is one of the most beautiful pix ever seen, with Aussie flora and fauna and wonderful blue skies. Everything has been carefully re-created with loving exactitude.
  49. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
    The film is a good start, but such an important artist deserves a more rigorous portrait.
  50. Nitram
    In its quiet respect for the victims’ dignity, its uniformly outstanding performances and in apportioning responsibility only to those who shirked their responsibilities, and deploying a grief-struck compassion toward everyone else, Nitram may come to be recognized as one of the finest exemplars yet of the mass-shooting movie — inasmuch as we can stomach having an entire genre built around the phenomenon.
  51. Woman at War
    Erlingsson’s genius lies in how he puts it all together with such witty intelligence, arranging beautifully shot picaresque episodes around a central figure who lives the ideals of the heroes she has hanging on her wall, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
  52. The Night of the 12th
    The Night of the 12th is a mostly compelling sit, though what lends the film its singular texture is that it keeps tricking us into thinking it’s a more conventional thriller than it is.
  53. The Nest
    Movies almost never deal with the intricacies of marriage: finances, schooling, finding the right work-life balance. By contrast, The Nest burrows into the minutiae, and the rewards of going along with the O’Haras are worth it, at least for those willing to risk the frustration of a movie that plays by its own rules and doesn’t necessarily believe in happy endings.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    To Live and Die in L.A.
    To Live and Die in L.A. looks like a rich man's Miami Vice. William Friedkin's evident attempt to fashion a West Coast equivalent of his [1971] The French Connection is engrossing and diverting enough on a moment-to-moment basis but is overtooled.
  55. Right Now, Wrong Then
    Right Now, Wrong Then is a film of minute observations rather than grand revelations, less concerned with butterfly-effect consequentiality than the variable human foibles that can turn a bad day into a good one.
  56. Sabbath Queen
    This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism. It’s a painful divide, but one that Sabbath Queen helps keep at least partly in the realm of civil argument.
  57. Ford v Ferrari
    Watching Bale and Damon channel those two speed freaks in all of their surly, testosterone-spitting glory is a reminder of how much fun it was to watch Bale play a similar character opposite Mark Wahlberg in “The Fighter.”
  58. Bad Education
    Superbly orchestrated, visually impressive.
  59. The Voice of Hind Rajab
    If The Voice of Hind Rajab opens one hitherto blinkered eye, or ear, to the atrocities in Gaza, it will have done its job. But it’s a blunt and discomfiting instrument.
  60. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
    The laughs come at a clip few movies can sustain, stacked so dense, repeat viewing (and in some cases, strategic freeze-framing) is required to catch them all.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bullitt
    Conflict between police sleuthing and political expediency is the essence of Bullitt, an extremely well-made crime melodrama [from Robert L. Pike's novel Mute Witness] filmed in Frisco. Steve McQueen delivers a very strong performance as a detective seeking a man whom Robert Vaughn, ambitious politico, would exploit for selfish motives. Good scripting and excellent direction by Peter Yates maintain deliberately low-key but mounting suspense.
  62. The Chambermaid
    Director Lila Avilés has designed her debut feature, The Chambermaid, to give audiences the opposite opportunity, inviting us to step into the shoes of an invisible woman for two hours, and as such, her film is a rare and special thing.
  63. Silver Linings Playbook
    Never one to shy away from unlikely sources of comedy, David O. Russell tackles mental illness, marital failure and the curative powers of football with bracingly sharp and satisfying results in Silver Linings Playbook.
  64. A Self-Made Hero
    This sure-footed, deeply ironic comedy about an impostor who rises through the ranks is rock-solid entertainment with an appealing edge.
  65. Buena Vista Social Club
    Wenders lets the music and the sprightly people who make it speak for themselves, although the director's ongoing fascination with the urban environment is in top form as the camera serenely cruises the streets of Havana, often at a velvety dusk.
  66. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    Karasawa deftly orchestrates the sometimes hairpin tonal shifts, never veering towards the saccharine; if she did, Stritch would probably shoot her.
  67. Huesera: The Bone Woman
    Examining the bone-breaking work that being a mother can be, Garza Cervera’s tale is most thrilling for the ways it refuses any tidy answers about a woman’s place and wallows (and finds plenty of terror) in the ambiguities therein.
  68. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Exhilarating, heartbreaking and righteous, Waiting for Superman is also a kind of high-minded thriller: Can the American education system be cured?
  69. Rimini
    This is not, in the end, a tale of hubris brought low, or even of a tacky life staring down a long lens at a tawdry, dwindling death. Instead it’s a chilling parable about the sins of the father becoming the punishments of the son, and about the moral arc of the universe bending, across generations, toward the coldest justice imaginable.
  70. Ray & Liz
    Ray & Liz is formally arresting and rigorous, though not at the expense of its direct emotional force.
  71. 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.
  72. Tantura
    The film is a record of what went on during the War of Independence — a much uglier and more brutal story than Israel has ever wanted to acknowledge. The film includes graphic testimony, and it comes from the most authoritative sources possible: those who fought in the war and lived it — the Palestinians, but also the Israeli soldiers themselves.
  73. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    For genre aficianados, it’s bold, mind-bending work which satisfies that so-often-frustrated craving: for a zombie movie with brains.
  74. Encounters at the End of the World
    Resultant picture -- one of Herzog's best and most purely enjoyable -- may lack the built-in curio factor of "Grizzly Man."
  75. The Turin Horse
    Though ripe for metaphorical interpretation, the slender setup, about the fate of a horse seen beaten in the streets, gives arthouse audiences little to cling to, and will provide institutional and fest programmers a test-of-wills head-scratcher for their calendars.
  76. The King of Escape
    A marked strength of the movie is that it does succeed in making the unlikely central love affair believable within its own universe.
  77. Unrest
    Though the “Patient, film thyself” concept is starting to risk overexposure...Unrest is a high-grade example of the form that’s consistently involving, with content diverse enough to avoid the tunnel-visioned pitfalls of diarist cinema.
  78. Western Stars
    Western Stars isn’t a rockin’-out extravaganza; it’s intimate in its embrace. Yet it’s a moving testament to how much Bruce Springsteen has still got it. It’s a concert film you’ll want to experience with others, as a ray of light in the dark.
  79. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    The overall effect makes for a far more resonant film than that offered by concurrent narrative feature "Hotel Rwanada."
  80. When I Walk
    The pic is a bit clunky at times in its structure of blackout-separated chapters, and its subjects aren’t the most articulate folks, but it’s all kept relatable by their almost unshakably upbeat attitudes.
  81. Waves
    Propelled by color, energy, electronic music and a quartet of career-making performances, here is that rare sort of cinematic achievement that innovates at every turn, while teaching audiences how to make intuitive sense of the way it pushes the medium.
  82. The Martian
    An enthralling and rigorously realistic outer-space survival story.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Last Temptation of Christ
    A film of challenging ideas, and not salacious provocations, The Last Temptation of Christ is a powerful and very modern reinterpretation of Jesus as a man wracked with anguish and doubt concerning his appointed role in life.
  84. Neon Bull
    Neon Bull keeps a cinematic distance at nearly all times, seldom moving in for closeups and allowing most scenes to play out in a single shot. Whether his subjects are shoveling manure or showering down afterward, Mascaro prefers to celebrate these figures in their physical entirety.
  85. Nowhere Special
    Nowhere Special is the kind of confident, understated film that doesn’t need to pound the audience with its sentiments in order to make us feel alive and human in front of it.
  86. Preparation for the Next Life
    Thanks to its terrific stars and Liu’s patient direction, which luxuriates in the smallest of gestures, “Preparation” transcends its most predictable beats.
  87. Communion
    While Communion holds tight to its own private mysteries, it scores a perfect 10 in drawing out viewer empathy, leaving us hoping anxiously that things will turn out all right for its protagonists.
  88. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
    Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is an enticingly clever and droll, nearly pitch-perfect piece of murder-mystery fun — a whodunit that lives up to the expectations set six years ago by “Knives Out,” which offered its own perfect revival of the Agatha Christie spirit, with a tasty frosting of meta cheekiness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Some will find him (Hurt) mesmerizing, others artificially lowkeyed.
  90. Tom Dowd & the Language of Music
    Dowd's graciousness and enthusiasm, and the enormous respect afforded him by industryites on record here, make this a thorough and satisfying acknowledgement of one man's unique contribution to popular music.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ridicule
    Resplendent and intelligent from start to finish, Ridicule strikes a winning balance between humor and heart as it pillories an era in France (the court of Louis XVI, circa 1780) when wit was the most valuable currency and a man's fortune and reputation could be made or undone on the strength of a single remark.
  92. Wendy and Lucy
    "Old Joy" helmer Kelly Reichardt plays to her strengths in Wendy and Lucy, a modest yet deeply felt road movie about an idealistic young drifter, her faithful canine and the wide-open spaces of the Pacific Northwest.
  93. Young Mothers
    Deeply moving but never manipulative, Young Mothers amounts to the brothers’ best film in more than a decade.
  94. The Testament of Ann Lee
    The Testament of Ann Lee is rich in agnostic questioning and bemused human interest, but at such radiant peaks, Fastvold makes believers of us all.
  95. X
    X is a wily and entertaining slow-motion ride of terror that earns its shocks, along with its singular quease factor, which relates to the fact that the demons here are ancient specimens of humanity who actually have a touch of…humanity.
  96. The Sparks Brothers
    After the 140 minutes of “The Sparks Brothers” zip by like a tight half-hour, even the previously uninitiated may well feel like they’ve known Sparks all along – or at least that they should have.
  97. Uppercase Print
    In Uppercase Print, the fangs of the past are sharp, but muzzled.
  98. Little Girl
    Sébastien Lifshitz’s lovely, clear-eyed documentary thoughtfully articulates the disorientation of gender dysphoria not from the inside out — Sasha is never less than calmly convinced of who she is — but from the outside in, as her transitioning identity sparks confusion and resistance in an uninformed community, causing her anxiety in turn.
  99. The Wrestler
    Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky's fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle.
  100. The Hours
    Considerable intelligence and strategic finesse have been brought to bear on this handsomely mounted adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which was hardly a natural for the bigscreen.
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