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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Harder They Fall
    Budd Schulberg's vehement novel about the fight racket is given a strong pictorial going-over in The Harder They Fall. It's main-event stuff.
  2. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
    It’s a handsomely crafted portrait overall, yet one whose middleweight content flatters the subject without ultimately quite doing him justice.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The War of the Worlds
    A socko science-fiction feature, as fearsome as a film as was the Orson Welles 1938 radio interpretation of the H.G. Wells novel.
  4. Pavilion
    The beauty of the footage is undeniable, and the aimlessness never overstays its welcome as the film documents that strange stretch in our lives when nothing seems to matter more than the present moment, suspended in a sort of idle immortality.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lassie Come Home
    From the novel of Eric Knight, and with Fred M. Wilcox directing his first feature picture, Lassie emerges as nice entertainment enhanced by color photography and good scenic shots.
  6. We
    Diop’s small but potent act of subversion, in choosing disparate lives and moments that could seem linked by a railway line and nothing more, is not just to enlarge the idea of who is meant by the collective French “We.” It is also to reclaim the selection process for inclusion within that tiny, divided pronoun.
  7. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
    Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is nothing if not an homage to the lasting impact that junk culture can have on impressionable minds.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    On Dangerous Ground
    Ray manages to inject an occasional bit of excitement into the yarn, and had the psychotic touches been eliminated in the script, film could have qualified as okay, even if grim, melodrama.
  9. Ex Machina
    Ex Machina turns out to be far wittier and more sensual than its coolly unblemished exterior implies; it’s a trick that mirrors Ava’s own apparent Turing-test-defying evolution.
  10. Oldboy
    A wild, intensely cinematic ride into two men's burning desire to get even.
  11. A Gentle Creature
    The film beguiles with its bravura but it’s a deliberately punishing journey, made by a male Cassandra impelled to point out his nation’s destruction yet sadly aware that it’s too late to change the tide of history.
  12. Saloum
    Revenge is a dish served with considerable style and imagination in Saloum, a fast and furious crime-horror-thriller that twists and turns its way around the mangroves, islets and inlets of Senegal’s Sine-Saloum coastal region.
  13. The Tribe
    Sans dialogue or translation, each interaction effectively becomes a puzzle to be solved, and Slaboshpytskiy is brilliant at using ambiguity to heighten rather than dull the viewer’s perceptions. Even when the meaning of a particular exchange eludes us, a greater sense of narrative comprehension begins to take hold.
  14. The Sisters Brothers
    I enjoyed the film as far is it goes, especially John C. Reilly’s straight-shooter performance, yet I also found myself, at certain points, growing impatient with it.
  15. La Ciénaga
    An atmospheric and cumulatively impressive feature-length debut from Argentine writer-director Lucrecia Martel.
  16. It's Not Me
    he fatal flaw of “It’s Not Me” is that it looks backward rather than forward, embodying films that have already been made, rather than those yet to be dreamed.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jungle Fever
    Performances are all pointed and emotionally edgy. Film feels too long, but it ends powerfully, as the audience exits with the view that both the white and black communities are deeply troubled and have a very long way to go to resolve their differences.
  18. The Real Dirt on Farmer John
    Examines 50-odd years in the life of its eponymous subject -- a most compelling character -- and in doing so literally provides the viewer with food for thought.
  19. Blue Moon
    Like a backstage pass for Broadway buffs, it’s one hell of a show for those in the know, and a sparkling introduction for the uninitiated.
  20. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    Dazzlingly well made and perhaps deliberately less fanciful than the previous entries, this one is played in a mode closer to palpable life-or-death drama than any of the others and is quite effective as such.
  21. Zootopia
    It is, in short, a city that only the Mouse House could imagine, and one that lends itself surprisingly well to a classic L.A.-style detective story, a la “The Big Lebowski” or “Inherent Vice,” yielding an adult-friendly whodunit with a chipper “you can do it!” message for the cubs.
  22. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
    With whip-smart filmmaking that weaves together the physical and digital worlds, Ibelin is powerful cinema that uses its stylistic experimentation for distinctly humanist means, breathing life into a person’s story when it seemed like there were few dimensions left to explore.
  23. Innocence
    This genuine curio maintains its mystery to the end.
  24. Hard Eight
    Four excellent lead performances, vividly evoked ambience and a masterfully sustained mood of quiet desperation mark Sydney as an impressive piece of work.
  25. Lost Boys of Sudan
    A potent, engrossing look at several young refugees from Sudan's disastrous, endless civil war who've been relocated to the U.S.
  26. Best in Show
    A barkingly funny new "mockumentary" that does for those canine pageants what the helmer's 1996 "Waiting for Guffman" did for smalltown theatrics.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chariots of Fire
    The casting is pin point. Charleson and Cross, neither meaningful to film fans up to now, come over as plausible types rather than stereotypes. John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson contribute sharply as university officials dismayed by the upstart young Jew. Nigel Davenport is very good as the Olympic squad’s titular leader, and Patrick Magee is excellent in a brief turn as a blimpish peer of the realm.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    House of Games
    David Mamet's first trip behind the camera as a director is entertaining good fun, an American film noir with Hitchcockian touches and a few dead bodies along the way. The action unfolds at a steady pace.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pit and the Pendulum
    A physically stylish, imaginatively photographed horror film which, though needlessly corny in many spots, adds up to good exploitation.
  30. I'm Your Man
    Taking inspiration from a short story by German writer Emma Braslavsky, Schrader and co-writer Jan Schomburg serve up a rich panoply of questions, answers and stray ideas. Rarely are these assembled into neat combinations, even if the script veers too far into thematic explication in the final third.
  31. The Velvet Queen
    This elegant, unusual documentary shifts the role of the game-spotter from that of non-violent hunter — in pursuit of one prized target — to passive but duly wide-eyed observer, accepting but also appreciating the limits of our access.
  32. Never Look Away
    Never Look Away gives us as complete a portrait as seems humanly possible, for which Lawless merits abundant credit.
  33. The Eight Mountains
    Stately and serene from a distance, but up close riven with the fissures and follies of a friendship that costs both men so much but gives them even more, the movie, too, is a mountain.
  34. A Love Song
    A Love Song should resonate with those who seek truth more than incident from their movies.
  35. Speed
    First-time helmer Jan De Bont, the ace lenser of most of Paul Verhoeven's films as well as "Die Hard" and numerous other large-scale pix, handles the action with great nimbleness and dexterity; film can hardly be faulted for its visual presentation of very complex action.
  36. At the Ready
    An unsettling, often tender and thoroughly well-timed film.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Detective Story
    William Wyler has polished the legit hit by Pulitzer-prizewinner Sidney Kingsley into a cinematic gem. Scripters have stuck almost to the letter of the original play. Even the location seldom changes from Kingsley's single set, the realistic headquarters room of the detective squad.
  38. Non-Fiction
    This story of two couples dealing with change in their personal and professional lives, so packed with intellectual sparring, gets progressively lighter as it moves along, acknowledging the primacy of human interaction (foibles and all) over doctrine.
  39. Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
    To paraphrase an admonition from a classic Rolling Stones album: This movie should be played real loud. And in venues where people can, if they choose, get up and dance.
  40. Eve's Bayou
    Anchored by a strong cast, including Samuel L. Jackson (also credited as a producer), Lynn Whitfield and Diahann Carroll, this talented debut by a black female writer-director is a well-made, if also old-fashioned, multi-generational drama.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dr. No
    First screen adventure of Ian Fleming's hardhitting, fearless, imperturbable, girl-loving Secret Service Agent 007, James Bond, is an entertaining piece of tongue-in-cheek action hokum. Sean Connery excellently puts over a cool, fearless, on-the-ball, fictional Secret Service guy. Terence Young directs with a pace which only occasionally lags.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tex
    What Tex will probably best be remembered for is breaking new ground at Disney Studios in representing some of the real problems confronting today’s young people. The teenagers are put in the milieu of drugs, alcohol, sex and violence. Family life is not necessarily rosy and well-scrubbed. Where the picture ironically goes awry is in trying to tackle all of these problems in the space of 103 minutes.
  43. The Earth Is Blue as an Orange
    It’s when the film’s natural and metatextual components overlap and disrupt each other that The Earth Is Blue as an Orange is most arresting.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miracle in Milan
    Miracle in Milan, an involved and rambling screenplay, originally written by Cesare Zavattini in 1940 and later published as a novel entitled Toto the Good, contrasts sharply with the simplicity and warm humanity of [the same writer-director team's] Bicycle Thief and gives director Vittorio De Sica less opportunities to guide his thespers to those extremely human, heart-warming performances which are his speciality. Whereas Thief was aimed at the audience heart, Miracle is aimed at the brain.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ball of Fire
    A simple gag is hardly enough on which to string 110 minutes of film. And that's all - one funny situation - that Samuel Goldwyn's director and writers have to support Ball of Fire. It's sufficient, however, to provide quite a few chuckles.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mississippi Masala
    Washington is savvy and attractive as the enterprising carpet cleaner destined for a brighter future. Choudhury is a discovery as the Americanized Mina, who calls herself a kind of masala (mixed spices). Together, they carry the film smoothly and agreeably.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Scum
    Given that Scum, a relentlessly brutal slice of British reform school life, is strongly directed by Alan Clarke, and acted with admirable conviction, it is a pity that the hard-hitting screenplay is more passionate tract than powerful entertainment.
  48. Dead Mail
    Set in the 1980s Midwest with a mix of the drab and the eccentric, Dead Mail is an effective, twisty thriller with a singular edge of off-kilter black comedy.
  49. Holding Liat
    The camera’s non-interventionist nature becomes vital. The visual approach embodies the Beinin family’s loss of control, and the growing uncertainty around them and what they believe.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ruthless People
    Ruthless People is a hilariously venal comedy about a kidnapped harridan whose rich husband won’t pay for her return.
  51. Up and Down
    A vibrant, immediate treatise on love and cultural identity in a complex new world of fluid borders and deep suspicions in the stunning new Czech drama Up and Down.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lost in America
    Brooks, who directed and cowrote with Monica Johnson, is irrepressible but always very human.
  53. Endless Poetry
    Make no mistake: Endless Poetry is still very much a Jodorowsky film, dotted with his trademark phantasmagorical conceits, which are like candified bursts of comic-book magic realism. Yet more than any previous Jodorowsky opus, it’s also a work of disciplined and touching emotional resonance.
  54. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
    Wilkerson doesn’t mean to suggest ambiguity with his title, since no one questions the identity of the culprit, but it is regrettably indicative of his naval-gazing focus on family skeletons, combined with a deeply annoying tendency to sensationalize the obvious.
  55. Beach Rats
    Writer-director Eliza Hittman has a sensitive ear for the way adolescents reveal themselves through evasion: It’s a tension crucial to this anxious, tactile, profoundly sad study of a young man’s journey of sexual self-discovery and self-betrayal.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Enchanted April
    A slim comedy of manners about Brits discovering their emotions in sunny Italy, Enchanted April doesn't spring many surprises. Strong cast's reliable playing is undercut by a script that dawdles over well-trod territory
  57. The Last Mistress
    Adapting a book by semi-notorious novelist and critic Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-89), Breillat freely stamps her strong and singular feminine insights on a man's material.
  58. Live-In Maid
    A fairly successful attempt at satire, though given the subject, there's a lot of darkness under the carpet.
  59. The Saddest Music in the World
    Almost as much an art piece as a film, this playful Prohibition-era tale is visually inventive and initially amusing but, at feature length, becomes somewhat wearing in its cacophonous eccentricity.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thief
    Although there are points where he gets bogged down in the technical aspects of thievery, the film is a slick Chicago crime-drama with a well-developed sense of pathos running throughout.
  61. The Charmer
    Alami and Ingeborg Topsøe’s finely whittled screenplay plays its revelations patiently, putting a lot of early trust in their leading man’s powers of silent implication and the serene foreboding of Sophia Olsson’s charcoal-streaked cinematography.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Two for the Road
    As far as producer, director, femme lead and screenwriter are concerned, this attempt to visually analyze the bits and pieces that go into making a marriage, and then making it work, is successful. If it drags a bit here and there, blame it on the stodgy performance of actor Albert Finney who is unable to convey the lightness, gaiety and romanticism needed.
  63. Barbarian
    To Cregger’s credit, the sense of dread he creates is the stuff that the very best horror movies are made of.
  64. Tracks
    Anchored by a fine and flinty performance from Mia Wasikowska, director John Curran’s gorgeously rendered adventure saga succeeds not only in capturing the harshness and wild beauty of Davidson’s journey, but also in mapping a delicate interior pathway into the heart of this most atypical explorer.
  65. The Princess of Montpensier
    There's no subtextual allusion really to contempo France or civil wars elsewhere in the world today, just the feeling that this is an interesting story in its own right, fascinating precisely because it's so at odds with modern sensibilities.
  66. The Social Dilemma
    Densely packed yet lively and entertaining documentary, whose accessibility is heightened by some narrative play-acting.
  67. The Fearless Freaks
    Will please devotees without attracting many, if any, new converts.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Buddy Holly Story
    The Buddy Holly Story smacks of realism in almost every respect, from the dramaturgy involving Holly and his back-up band, The Crickets, to the verisimilitude of the musical numbers.
  69. Magnolia
    A remarkably inventive and audacious film that almost overcomes its flaws.
  70. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
    Delivering a feverish, raw-nerve performance sure to go down as one of the year’s greats, Byrne has never had a role even remotely this intense to prepare us for the emotional acrobatics her writer-director has in store.
  71. Tempestad
    Mexican-Salvadorean helmer Tatiana Huezo superimposes her subjects’ recollections over lyrical images that complement the emotions conveyed by their voices.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Barbarosa
    Australian director Fred Schepisi does a careful job of bringing the western legend to light with endearing performances from actors Willie Nelson and Gary Busey.
  73. Frankenstein
    Technically, “Frankenstein” was made for Netflix, and though the streamer will give it whatever theatrical run it’s contractually obliged to honor, the visual effects weren’t rendered for big-screen consumption. Alexandre Desplat’s baroque score, on the other hand, makes up for it in grandeur.
  74. Sorry to Bother You
    Paradoxically, the more ridiculous Riley’s gonzo social critique gets, the more boring it becomes, to the point that its out-of-control second half starts to feel like some kind of bad trip.
  75. The Case Against 8
    There are engaging, articulate personalities here that maintain interest through a mountain of strategizing sessions and court reversals, though helmers Ben Cotner and Ryan White strike a rote note of tele-friendly inspirational uplift while risking tedium with too much repetitious content.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Midnight Run
    One of the most entertaining, best executed, original road pictures ever.
  77. The Devil Came on Horseback
    While the point of view of privileged, Anglo observers on African issues usually raises hackles, such is not the case with The Devil Came on Horseback, a tense account of former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle's witnessing of the genocide in Sudan's western province of Darfur.
  78. Teza
    Ultimately rewards the viewer's patience with a potent sense of Ethiopian history and culture.
  79. August Winds (Ventos de Agosto)
    Mascaro isn’t interested in psychology and instead simply sketches in thoughts and motivations (Shirley’s boredom, Jeison’s father’s dissatisfaction) without exploring them, much in the manner of an observational documentary. The real connective tissue is the locale.
  80. Away
    For those with the opportunity to see Away in a theater, the experience will either mesmerize or annoy, as the project feels like a promising first pass — a rough-rendered showcase of Zilbalodis’ myriad gifts, which are better suited to world-building and scenic design than character animation.
  81. Those Who Remained
    In his sophomore feature, the France-born, Budapest-based helmer (perhaps best known for his prize-winning 2018 short “Chuchotage”) sensitively establishes and sustains an affecting but understated dramatic tone, aided by his superb leads.
  82. The Human Factor
    Moreh offers no analysis — an especially unfortunate stance given explosive feelings and wildly variable interpretations of events. Finally, the film pushes the deeply disquieting assumption that the United States knows what’s best for those troublesome people in the Middle East, whose tantrums kiboshed all the hard work and emotional investment put in by the sainted Americans.
  83. Only You
    It might do writer-director Harry Wootliff a disservice to call her mature, thoughtfully conceived debut feature Only You one of the latter, but the tinderbox connection between stars Laia Costa and Josh O’Connor is what elevates this grown-up relationship study from respectable to lovable.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Moby Dick
    Moby Dick is interesting more often than exciting, faithful to the time and text [of the Herman Melville novel] more than great theatrical entertainment. Essentially it is a chase picture and yet not escaping the sameness and repetitiousness which often dulls the chase formula.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All That Heaven Allows
    Although this story of a long-suffering woman who, at 40 or so, finds romance with a man between 10 and 15 years her junior, is hardly designed to ignite prairie fires, scripter Peg Fenwick nevertheless has managed to turn the Edna L. and Harry Lee story into a slightly offbeat yarn with some interesting overtones that accent the social prejudices of a small town.
  86. 1917
    Astonishing as his filmmaking can be at times, it’s Mendes’ attention to character, more than the technique, that makes 1917 one of 2019’s most impressive cinematic achievements.
  87. A Simple Life
    Suffused with the gentle, unforced humanity viewers have come to expect from Hong Kong helmer Ann Hui, A Simple Life is a tender ode to the elderly, their caregivers and the mutual generosity of spirit that makes their limited time together worthwhile.
  88. Kedi
    [A] splendidly graceful and quietly magical documentary.
  89. Waste Land
    Lucy Walker's Waste Land takes his (Vik Muniz) project one step deeper by actually getting to know Muniz's models, which brings a compelling human-interest dimension to the sort of art documentary otherwise better suited for TV.
  90. Goldstone
    Goldstone is nothing if not a focused, unified piece.
  91. Limbo
    Limbo joins a long line of fine Australian films taking to the desert to disinter racial trauma, to rebury the bones with more care and awareness, but also enduring fury.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gaslight
    Patrick Hamilton's London stage melodrama, is given an exciting screen treatment by Arthur Hornblow Jr's excellent production starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten.
  93. The Substance
    The Substance is the work of a filmmaker with a vision. She’s got something primal to say to us.
  94. Murderous Maids
    Rigorous but creepy drama.
  95. Last Orders
    Delicately handled and superbly textured, this fine adaptation of Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel deals with all the really big subjects: love, friendship, death, life.
  96. Ça commence aujourd'hui
    A warm, often invigorating and ultimately moving ode to community values.
  97. Son frère
    Todeschini has the most physically demanding role, with a gaunt face and ravaged body that utterly convinces of the brutality of the ailment.
  98. Afghan Star
    Not the slickest or most crowd-pleasing among many recent performance-competition docus, it's nonetheless absorbing for the light it casts on those many Afghanis who want an end to guns and fanaticism, and the return of a social liberalism.
  99. The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
    A superb, eye-opening and often absurdly funny deconstruction of the myths and realities of global terrorism that is marked by a balance, broadmindedness and sense of historical perspective so absent from many recent political-themed documentaries.
  100. The Aura
    The Aura is far from being simply "Nine Queens2." Leisurely paced, studied, reticent and rural, The Aura is a quieter, richer and better-looking piece that handles its multiple manipulations with the maturity the earlier picture sometimes lacked.
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