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. Birders: The Central Park Effect
    Director Kimball's sharply focused, serenely ravishing nature photography provides reason enough to go armchair birding.
  2. Conclave
    Conclave is one of those rare films that respects the audience’s attention, even as it sneaks a few tricks behind their backs.
  3. Mother
    Key casting is aces, led by a deglammed Kim, forcefully low-key as the mother who seems capable of anything to protect her son.
  4. Free Willy
    An astute, intelligent family picture, the film is a potent reminder that you can have your heart in the right place and still produce a gripping, satisfying entertainment.
  5. Keep the Lights On
    Delicately tracing the troubled nine-year bond between two men living in New York, Ira Sachs mines his own memories to sensitive, melancholy if somewhat muted effect in Keep the Lights On.
  6. Hermia & Helena
    With its tricksy timeline and waifish subplots, the film feels unduly stretched even to reach its modest length, while our dramaturgy-fixated protagonist is slow to stumble into a compelling arc of her own.
  7. Rogers Park
    It’s an ideal showcase for the four leads, who are given the latitude to create fully human characters.
  8. Another Round
    Another Round is the kind of movie that’s so into its cool concept that it doesn’t sweat the details. Yet the film’s sloppy broadness ends up fighting the Dogme style, which keeps telling us that these people are authentic.
  9. Bitterbrush
    Think of John Ford vistas by way of Kelly Reichardt’s lyricism, soulfully underscored by Bach, and you’ll be roughly in Mahdavian’s vicinity.
  10. Shiva Baby
    Having grown up in a tight-knit Jewish community herself, Seligman tightly orchestrates it all with loving cultural specificity and nuance, working her satirical muscles to a thrilling extent.
  11. Searching for Sugar Man
    A winning musical detective story about a failed, forgotten early '70s rocker.
  12. Sing Street
    The truest and most tearduct-tugging relationship here is that between Conor and his lank-haired college-dropout brother, played with spaced-out warmth and wistful good humor by the ever-likeable Reynor.
  13. Keane
    Convincing as a portrait of a marginal man gone beyond the emotional pale.
  14. Brawl in Cell Block 99
    It’s the rare movie that truly evokes the grindhouse ’70s, because it means everything it’s doing. It’s exploitation made with vicious sincerity.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yellow Submarine
    This is a full length animated cartoon in which the prime factor is the appearance of the Beatles in caricature form. Here are all the ingredients of a novel entertainment.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quadrophenia (re-release)
    Sting, as the weekend super-Mod whose image collapses when he's revealed to work as a bellhop, cuts a slick dash in the dancehall sequences.
  17. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    An entrancing ensemble piece, directed with calm assurance, acted by a fine ensemble, and structured and scripted with wit and precision.
  18. The Law in These Parts
    Adopting a postmodern method quite different from that of his remarkable "The Inner Tour," Ra'anan Alexandrowicz poses his questions from a legal angle, and finds these minds stumped by a system they've professionally defended.
  19. Official Competition
    Cruz is quite obviously having a ball sending up the ivory-tower vanities and mannerisms of the prodigious auteurs she’s worked with over the years. It’s a performance of fizzy, frenzied, physically elastic inventiveness, though she doesn’t render Lola a complete cartoon.
  20. Manufactured Landscapes
    This landmark glimpse into China's modern-day industrial revolution becomes something more -- a profound, open-ended meditation on man's physical impact on his environment.
  21. Li'l Quinquin
    The odd mix of elements makes for an alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) hilarious and unsettling whole.
  22. Zodiac
    Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Thin Blue Line
    A mesmerizing reconstruction and investigation of a senseless murder. It employs strikingly original formal devices to pull together diverse interviews.
  24. Love
    The action is compelling, the film good looking, the acting first rate and the circumstances -- people from neglected nations in an alienating if not hostile urban landscape -- is moving.
  25. Brand Upon the Brain!
    Billed as a silent film, Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain! is actually closer to a live theatrical event -- a feature-length motion picture screened with the accompaniment of a live orchestra, plus Foley artists, sound effects technicians and assorted vocalists, too. Together, they provide the elaborate soundscape for a typically frenetic, Maddin-esque amalgam of the autobiographical, Freudian and willfully absurd.
  26. Sand Dollars
    Chaplin’s performance is characterized by a lack of vanity and an almost magical combination of empathy and pathos.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story
    A documentary, at once acerbic and affectionate, that tracks Sievey’s one-of-a-kind, semi-off-the-rails career.
  28. Bread & Roses
    This film is a necessary howl of rage, one that argues cogently — via the simple expedient of capturing life as it is lived — that to ignore what it happening in Afghanistan is to condemn half the population of the country to oppression under a dictatorship that is both political and personal.
  29. Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
    Directed by Shoshannah Stern, who is hearing impaired, the documentary — made for the “American Masters” series and premiering at Sundance — is both straightforward and subtle.
  30. Priscilla
    The daring thing Coppola does, given that we’re used to seeing even sophisticated biopics weave the lives they’re showing us into dramatic arcs, is to present the rise and fall of Priscilla and Elvis’s relationship as a diary, one that simply flows forward in a kind of objective Zen fashion, never trumping anything up.
  31. The Innocents
    This superior chiller is both a satisfying genre exercise and a minute observation of the process by which young children acquire morality; its most striking aspect may just be the empathy Vogt displays for his 7- to 11-year-old stars, and the extraordinary juvenile performances that empathy brings out.
  32. Run Lola Run
    A highly accomplished, compact feature, which, while it may be light on depth, is rich in humor, rhythm, energy and inventiveness.
  33. Contemporary Color
    It’s not every documentary that can so exhilaratingly make us feel a part of something so special.
  34. South Mountain
    As highlighted by its pitch-perfect finale, South Mountain demonstrates a realistically complex conception of stock ideas like “vengeance,” “moving on” and “healing,” and Ethan Mass’s cinematography echoes the material’s dualities in its delicate interplay of light and dark. Guiding the material from start to finish, however, is Balsam.
  35. All In: The Fight for Democracy
    A powerfully timely and absorbing documentary.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The One and Only Dick Gregory
    The first-rate doc, written and directed by Andre Gaines, is a reminder to anyone familiar with Gregory of the breadth and prescience of his work; to the uninitiated, it will be an eye-opener.
  37. One to One: John & Yoko
    The rare rock doc that’s a must-see.
  38. Black Swan
    A wicked, sexy and ultimately devastating study of a young dancer's all-consuming ambition, Black Swan serves as a fascinating complement to Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," trading the grungy world of a broken-down fighter for the more upscale but no less brutal sphere of professional ballet.
  39. The Painter and the Thief
    To get the desired emotional reaction, The Painter and the Thief proves able to deceive in ways that are best discovered for yourself. It works: In a genius final stroke, Ree pulls back to reveal the entire canvas, putting key aspects of this unconventional portrait into startling new perspective.
  40. Black Bear
    This adventurous seriocomedy has enough surprising elements and off-kilter humor to keep one intrigued, even if the payoff is debatable.
  41. Our School
    Exercising admirable restraint in its expose of ingrained racism in the Romanian educational system, absorbing docu Our School follows the sad yet resilient journey of three Roma children over four years as they grapple with prejudice and stereotyping.
  42. Our Children
    At this finely tooled tragedy’s core towers Emilie Dequenne, no longer the feral young thing seen in 1999′s “Rosetta,” but a trapped animal pushed to devastating extremes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight
    Story [from one by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz] is light, but with a good share of humorous moments, many of them of the screwball variety. It's a slender thread, however, on which to tie series of incidents in adventures of a stranded showgirl in Paris.
  44. Hilary and Jackie
    Eye-grabbing performances from Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths, who portray celebrated British cellist Jacqueline Du Pre and her older sister, Hilary, distinguish this ambitious but flawed biography.
  45. i'm thinking of ending things
    It’s not just a quirky, morose downer of a movie — it’s didactically morose.
  46. Angels Wear White
    Engaging female dynamics result in strong, convincing performances, especially as their relations eschew platitudes on sisterhood or exploitative images of victimization.
  47. Lurker
    A tight, nifty, and unsettling little parable of the pathology of fame in our time.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lady and the Tramp
    A delight for the juveniles and lots of fun for adults, Lady and the Tramp is the first animated feature in CinemaScope and the wider canvas and extra detail work reportedly meant an additional 30% in negative cost. It was a sound investment.
  49. The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks
    While best enjoyed by the already converted, it provides enough showbiz insight and interpersonal drama to entertain newbies.
  50. André Is an Idiot
    The film is most enlightening and affecting when it settles into a perceptive, finely detailed examination of everyday domesticity lived under the weight of rushing mortality.
  51. Indignation
    This may be Schamus’ directorial debut, but he’s no amateur, and his experience — both in cinema and in life — comes through onscreen.
  52. The Devil's Backbone
    Though it fails in its final reels to capitalize on its early promise, picture is still stylish, accomplished and tremendously enjoyable fare.
  53. Speak No Evil
    The director shoots and cuts almost every scene so that the most innocuous action seems charged with the expectation that something awful is about to erupt, cranking viewer tension to an unpleasant degree.
  54. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
    With a pronounced Baroque palette and his usual astonishing use of light, picture looks ravishing -- individual scenes make a deeper impact than the characters themselves.
  55. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
    An assured melange of dramatic re-creation, archival material and interviews, it is a uniquely entertaining venture.
  56. Enough Said
    Enough Said may be her cleanest, most polished and broadly funny effort to date; its emotional generosity is undeniable, but so is its tendency to smooth over some of the hard, brittle edges that have been the more interesting hallmarks of Holofcener’s work.
  57. Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds
    Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is a droll, spirited, and disarmingly intimate documentary that now feels karmically timed.
  58. 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Play Misty for Me
    When it’s not serving as an overdone travelog for the Monterey Peninsula-Carmel home environment of star, producer and debuting director Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me is an often fascinating suspenser about psychotic Jessica Walter, whose deranged infatuation for Eastwood leads her to commit murder. For that 80% of the film which constitutes the story, the structure and dialog create a mood of nervous terror which the other 20% nearly blows away.
  60. A Different Man
    With A Different Man, Schimberg attempts — and mostly succeeds, with deliciously awkward results — to cram a lifetime of thoughts about beauty and ugliness, attraction and disgust, identity and performance into a postmodern meta-film mold that few (apart from Charlie Kaufman, perhaps) have managed to make tolerable.
  61. The Green Fog
    If this hour-long collage might fairly be summed up as little more than an inspired goof, of primary interest to cineastes, it’s nonetheless one whose giddy fun will hold up for such an audience through repeat viewings.
  62. Sr.
    Sr. packs a wallop in the end, when it comes time for father and son to say goodbye.
  63. 28 Weeks Later
    A full-bore zombie romp that more than delivers the genre goods.
  64. An Unfinished Film
    By entwining reality with dramatization to such an inseparable degree, An Unfinished Film runs the emotional gamut, with a pulsing naturalism that few films about the recent pandemic (or any real disasters) have ever managed to achieve.
  65. Paul McCartney: Man on the Run
    Neville’s movie serves as a splendid jukebox, offering rapid-fire clips that bowl you over anew with just how rapidly McCartney’s own synapses were firing on ingenious hit after hit.
  66. The Age of Shadows
    If anything, the film is most indebted to classic cloak-and-dagger movies, in which sharp, richly succinct dialogue and plenty of atmosphere seem effortlessly carried along by the force of magnetic personalities.
  67. Chile '76
    What begins as a muted marital melodrama slowly boils into a restrained political thriller, with an ease and skill all the more impressive in a first feature.
  68. Les Misérables
    It’s a furious work of social geography that satisfies slightly less as a character piece: In its ambitious attempt to dramatize the violent anxieties of men on both sides of the law, Les Misérables risks selling some victims a little short.
  69. Insomnia
    Gripping, highly dramatic thriller that more than confirms the distinctive talent of young Brit helmer Christopher Nolan.
  70. Kajillionaire
    In the end, Kajillionaire is less about the con than it is the connection, and we’re all the richer as a result.
  71. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
    A labor of love made over the course of seven years that crucially matches the energy and passion Langlois himself embodied, this deep-dish account of the life and times of the longtime head of the Cinematheque Francaise will enthrall buffs.
  72. The House of Mirth
    Visually detailed but emotionally dry.
  73. My Flesh and Blood
    One leaves My Flesh and Blood with admiration for the lenser's craftsmanship, and for her ability to remain an unobtrusive observer during moments of extreme emotional turmoil.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Roman Holiday
    [William Wyler] times the chuckles with a never-flagging pace, puts heart into the laughs, endows the footage with some boff bits of business and points up some tender, poignant scenes in using the smart script and the cast to the utmost advantage.
  75. Private Property
    Boasting a script so clear and airtight that shrinks could use it for family therapy courses, the sole caveat is the unrelenting unpleasantness of the stronger-willed son.
  76. The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story
    Engaging documentary draws on plentiful archival footage and A-list interviewees, and should lure dedicated nostalgists.
  77. The Supreme Price
    With beauty, brains and dignity to burn, Hafsat Abiola inherits her mother’s mantle and offers riveting insight into the contradictions of a dynasty of reformist aristocracy.
  78. Long Strange Trip
    It has the sprawl and generosity of a good Dead show, yet there’s nothing indulgent about it — it’s an ardent piece of documentary classicism.
  79. Crane World
    The pic is made up of small events and incidents, well observed and naturalistically performed.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Westerner
    Supplied with a particularly meaty role, of which he takes fullest advantage, Brennan turns in a socko job that does much to hold together a not too impressive script.
  81. Styx
    This is "All Is Lost” with a spinning moral compass and a topical dimension that proves even more gripping than its brilliantly achieved visceral action.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Nun's Story
    Fred Zinnemann's production is a soaring and luminous film. Audrey Hepburn has her most demanding film role, and she gives her finest performance. Despite the seriousness of the underlying theme, The Nun's Story [from the book by Kathryn C. Hulme] has the elements of absorbing drama, pathos, humor, and a gallery of memorable scenes and characters.
  83. 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.
  84. BlackBerry
    The film, at least, feels fresh, making geek history more entertaining than it has any right to be.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Gas Food Lodging
    Gas, Food Lodging is filled with the kind of personal, small-scale rewards indie filmmakers seem best at delivering. Lensed on location in Deming, NM, on a budget of about $1.3 million, Allison Anders' fresh and unfettered pic [from Richard Peck's novel Don't Look and It Won't Hurt] emerges distinctively as an example of a new cinema made by women and expressive of their lives.
  86. Starting Out in the Evening
    Director Andrew Wagner draws topnotch work from a pro cast in Starting Out in the Evening, a wise, carefully observed chamber drama.
  87. Tori and Lokita
    Working in their rigorously lyrical drama-as-documentary style, the Dardennes place the audience on the hamster wheel of Tori and Lokita’s lives, in a way that’s both harrowing and immersive.
  88. Oddity
    McCarthy and editor Brian Philip Davis deploy high-voltage moments with expert timing, using the dark to their favor in refreshing fashion.
  89. Princess Mononoke
    Exceedingly imaginative, beautifully realized animated epic adventure.
  90. Luzzu
    An honest, affecting slab of working-class portraiture, altogether bracing with its thorny labor politics and salty sea air.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Full Metal Jacket
    An intense, schematic, superbly made Vietnam War drama.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lifeboat
    Hitchcock pilots the piece skillfully, ingeniously developing suspense and action. Despite that it’s a slow starter, the picture, from the beginning, leaves a strong impact and, before too long, develops into the type of suspenseful product with which Hitchcock has always been identified.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Remember the Night
    Picture is highlighted in numerous instances by some deft telling in the script and fine piloting by director Mitchell Leisen to lift the yarn from commonplace and trite category. Stanwyck turns in a fine performance. MacMurray is impressive as the serious-minded prosecutor, but loosens up for the comedy stretches.
  94. Head-On
    Fine, gritty, contempo love story.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witches
    The wizardry of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and a superbly over-the-top performance by Angelica Huston gives The Witches a good deal of charm and enjoyment.
  96. Black Dog
    Achieving a delicate balance between drama and deadpan comedy, Guan’s approach gives the scenes of violence or tragedy a certain antic, Buster Keaton quality, which is enhanced by both Peng’s impassive yet physically expressive performance, and that of his wonderful canine co-star.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Airplane!
    Airplane! is what they used to call a laff-riot. Made by team which turned out Kentucky Fried Movie, this spoof of disaster features beats any other film for sheer number of comic gags.
  98. Sketch
    With his stellar indie family adventure Sketch, commercials director Seth Worley has come up with a creative — and highly teachable — concept for his feature debut, using imaginative visual effects to impart a valuable lesson about dealing with grief and other strong feelings.
  99. Lightning in a Bottle
    Undeniably powerful on the bigscreen.
  100. All That's Left of You
    Spiritually guided by Dabis’ personal and familial memories, the narrative film is sometimes deeply stirring, other times clumsily heavy-handed, often hampered by Christopher Aoun’s bland cinematography.
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