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. Let It Be Morning
    This is a farce of stasis, not frenzied activity. By holding his characters literally captive — as the village is held, absurdly but violently, under siege — Kolirin forges an actual microcosm through which to examine the social and political status of Israel’s Arab community.
  2. Transition
    Watching this steadfast person survive in such close quarters with those most unaccepting of his situation offers remarkable insight into issues of gender expression and acceptance, which might well translate to the social strictures back home.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mrs. Miniver
    Superbly catching the warmth and feeling of Jan Struther’s characters in her best-selling book of sketches, “Mrs. Miniver,” Metro has created out of it a poignant story of the joys and sorrows, the humor and pathos of middle-class family life in wartime England.
  4. Wild Tales
    Szifron does a terrific job of pacing thanks to expert editing (he shares credit with Pablo Barbieri) within each episode and a genuinely subversive sense of humor.
  5. Corpus Christi
    All of this makes for compelling dramatic conflict, and it’s satisfying to watch an impostor shake up the status quo. But there’s also a soap opera-like dimension to Corpus Christi that threatens the more thoughtful aspects of the script.
  6. Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
    Laced with colorful stories. ... The movie is mostly content to be a portrait of Ronstadt the artist, and it’s more than satisfying on that front.
  7. Buoyancy
    In doing justice to the stories of thousands, Rathjen has somewhat undersold the personal story of its single protagonist.
  8. The Royal Hotel
    Green is a storyteller with such control that we don’t leave the theater feeling patronized or hectored. She’s thought everything out, and planned it so that every scene in The Royal Hotel is as gripping as it is pointed.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kramer vs. Kramer
    Kramer vs. Kramer is a perceptive, touching, intelligent film about one of the raw sores of contemporary America, the dissolution of the family unit.
  10. The Story of Film: A New Generation
    There’s room for infinite points of view behind the camera, as well as among those who do the watching. Offering the tools for unpacking potentially challenging movies, Cousins teaches people how to be better spectators — not by telling them the right way to watch, but by encouraging them to engage more deeply with what they see.
  11. Best of Enemies
    Both fascinating as a glimpse at the not so distant past, and provocative as an account of what arguably was an early step in the decline of political discourse on television.
  12. On Body and Soul
    It’s to the credit of Borbély’s intelligent, melancholically understated performance that Maria remains sympathetic even as she becomes more of a condition than a character — and to the richness of the writer-director’s ideas that they move and intrigue even when they’re most artificially expounded.
  13. Buzzard
    Giving not an inch to any sort of readable moral paradigm, this third installment in Potrykus’ Grand Rapids-set animal trilogy (including his 2010 short “Coyote” and his 2012 feature “Ape”) proves as fascinating as it is off-putting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WarGames
    Although the script has more than its share of short circuits, director John Badham solders the pieces into a terrifically exciting story charged by an irresistible idea: an extra-smart kid can get the world into a whole lot of trouble that it also takes the same extra-smart kid to rescue it from.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monty Python's Life of Brian
    Just as wacky and imaginative as their earlier film outings. (Review of Original Release)
  16. 24 Frames
    It’s an elegantly oblique movie, even for Kiarostami, whose art thrums with quiet ethereal metaphor.
  17. God's Country
    Julian Higgins’ first feature can be taken as a drama with thriller elements or a low-key thriller with atypical dramatic nuance, working either way as a quietly effective balance between genre, social issue and character study elements.
  18. Shanghai Triad
    Triad oozes a confidence that carries the viewer almost without pause to its shocking climax and ironic close.
  19. Apolonia, Apolonia
    Gazing upon great art often clears our minds, sharpens our thinking and invites new ideas in; in Apolonia, Apolonia, tracing the long-term push-pull of someone else’s artistic process appears to do the same for the woman behind the camera.
  20. The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo
    Whether the love it features on screen is simple or complex, and whether it’s romantic, platonic or maternal, the film lands on tremendously moving moments that stir the soul by scrutinizing the dueling cruelty and tenderness found within its characters.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Three Musketeers
    The Three Musketeers take very well to Richard Lester’s provocative version that does not send it up but does add comedy to this adventure tale [by Alexandre Dumas].
  22. Personal Shopper
    This reunion between Kristen Stewart and the director who gave her one of her best-ever roles in 2014’s “Clouds of Sils Maria” is a broken, but never boring mix of spine-tingling horror story, dreary workplace drama and elliptical identity search, likely to go down as one of the most divisive films of Stewart’s career.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Open Hearts
    Poignant, thoughtful and utterly absorbing, Susanne Bier's Dogme film Open Hearts is a gem.
  24. 8 Mile
    The rough power, as well as the humor and sensitivity, of pop phenom Eminem is delivered intact in 8 Mile.
  25. A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake
    Beautifully evokes the enduring appeal of English singer-songwriter Nick Drake.
  26. Once Were Warriors
    Pic deserves nurturing, because it’s one of the best to emerge from New Zealand in quite a while. Tamahori, working from Riwia Brown’s intelligent script, has done a marvelous job in depicting the day-to-day horror of the Heke family, which is held together only by its women, the sorely tried Beth and her eldest daughter, 16-year-old Grace.
  27. In Search of Memory
    Petra Seeger's beautifully crafted documentary about neurobiologist Eric Kandel, In Search of Memory, interweaves experience and experiments, autobiography and science as seamlessly as the Nobel Prize winner's same-titled book.
  28. The Ghost Writer
    What the picture most needed was a complete cinematic rethink and, yes, even some action to move it along.
  29. Ailey
    Ailey, directed by Jamila Wignot, doesn’t always answer the questions you expect it to. It can be a tantalizing watch, but it’s a poetic and meditative documentary that often skimps on the nuts and bolts.
  30. The Teacher
    Although dealing with weighty matters, Jarchovsky’s script (which is based on a real-life incident he experienced during primary school) is leavened with welcome humor and irony.... As usual, Hrebejk’s direction is smooth and the ensemble performances top-notch.
  31. Babyteeth
    Babyteeth works best as an abrasive four-hander, though Murphy’s limber, sensually electric direction leaves the film with little clear evidence of its theatrical origins.
  32. The Jungle Book
    Maintaining the buoyant heartbeat beneath all the digital flash, Favreau never loses sight of the fact that he’s making an adventure story for children.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Zulu
    Joseph E. Levine makes an impressive debut in British film production with Zulu, a picture that allows ample scope for his flamboyant approach to showmanship.
  34. Human Nature
    The real achievement of Human Nature is that it takes a complex subject and distills it into such an engaging 95-minute package. That’s the successful experiment underlying this particular project, in which viewers happen to serve as the guinea pigs in how such technical information can be presented in a more effective way.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Guys and Dolls
    A bangup filmusical in the topdrawer Goldwyn manner.
  36. The Hunting Ground
    This sort of doc is a legal minefield, but it never seems to sacrifice urgency or cogency, although like Dick’s previous films, it may irk those who prefer a wonkier, less button-pushing approach.
  37. While We're Young
    Though While We’re Young is primarily a comedy — and a very funny one at that, managing to be both blisteringly of-the-moment and classically zany in the same breath — Baumbach has bitten off several serious topics, for which laughter serves as the most agreeable way to engage.
  38. Inu-oh
    Basically, Inu-oh is to Noh as spray-painted graffiti is to traditional Japanese calligraphy.
  39. Urchin
    The film makes no claims to represent an entire disenfranchised demographic, but there’s resonant human texture and political feeling in its close-up individual portrait.
  40. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    The buoyant little comedy 12:08 East of Bucharest puts its finger on the problem in the best tradition of East European humor, savvy but concrete, gentle but sharp as a knife.
  41. Nagi Notes
    Nagi Notes, however, happily sees the director returning to the form of his 2016 breakout Harmonium, with the precision of its characterization and the balance between heartfelt emotional candor and pensive silence in its finely worked script.
  42. Shut Up & Sing
    It's the rare thorough documentary on a musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should win over fans of the Chicks on the fence and of music docus and perhaps create a little cultural stir as well.
  43. Mediterranea
    While many of their feelings are universally relatable, it can be hard work trying to follow what these two characters are thinking at any given moment, in part because of Carpignano’s grainy, handheld style.
  44. Miss Sharon Jones!
    One can’t help but feel inspired by both Jones’ sparkplug attitude and the gentle way those around her respond to her needs.
  45. Jockey
    Jockey could be seen as a fairly conventional estranged-family drama. As sports movies go, it’s far more radical, showing relatively little interest in the outcome of any particular race. But in either genre, the movie stands apart from — and above — its peers. That’s a testament not only to the performances but also to Bentley’s approach, which begs to be seen on the big screen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Verdict
    There are many fine performances and sensitive moral issues contained in The Verdict but somehow that isn't enough to make it the compelling film it should be. David Mamet's script [from a novel by Barry Reed] offers little out of the ordinary.
  47. Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)
    Questlove confronts the life and legacy of Sly Stone, investigates it, holds it up to the light, tears it apart, and puts it back together like the bravura mixmaster he is.
  48. Dallas Buyers Club
    The film manages to educate without ever feeling didactic, and to entertain in the face of what would, to any other character, seem like a grim life sentence.
  49. Better Man
    [Gracey's] angle is frustratingly familiar, though the execution is downright astonishing — we’re talking Wachowski-level ingenuity as Gracey fashions sophisticated montages where you can’t even spot the cuts.
  50. Prophet's Prey
    Berg’s interviews with past members of the polygamy-practicing Mormon denomination make for damning testimony, but the lasting power of “Prey” is its grim insight into the mentality of the deceived, and its despairing recognition that spiritual and psychological bondage doesn’t end simply by putting a monster behind bars.
  51. Notre musique
    Recognizably Godard with its playfulness and wordplays, but deeply human at the same time.
  52. The Cockettes
    Joyously re-creates the brief but resplendent reign of the legendary freakadelic drag troupe.
  53. The Imposter
    The Imposter makes slick work of its wily subject, using atmospheric reenactments and stark, soul-baring interviews to explore a mind-boggling case of false identity.
  54. The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
    This portrait of the artist as an old woman is a gentle-hearted gem, as profoundly subtle as it is subtly profound.
  55. Left-Handed Girl
    Left-Handed Girl is an assured and lovely portrait of difficult motherhood and painful daughterhood, but it’s perhaps most entrancing for its turning-kaleidoscope-view of the director’s native city, where the characters are the bouncing beads, but Taipei is the glitter and the dazzle.
  56. Güeros
    The personalities here feel genuine, as if a group of friends had banded together to make a movie just a few degrees removed from their real lives — a la “Clerks” or “Swingers,” though not nearly as conceptual, plot-wise.
  57. Unlovable
    There are times when you’re tempted to turn away when Joy makes the latest in a long line of really bad, even self-destructive choices. But deGuzman’s performance is so arresting and engaging, you keep your eyes glued to her — if only so you don’t miss the next development that will be hilarious or heartbreaking or both.
  58. Win It All
    Funny, warm, and broken-in in all the right ways, Win It All marries Swanberg’s loping, observational style with a plot that wouldn’t have been out of place in an old-school Warner Bros. melodrama, and ends up dealing a surprisingly strong hand.
  59. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
    It’s the unique rhythm of the way that this film is written and cut that elevates it beyond a standard millennial malaise movie.
  60. Winter Nomads
    Von Stuerler’s debut showcases nature, but its real theme is its subjects’ engagement with their work.
  61. And Breathe Normally
    What might, in other hands, be melodramatic or emotionally manipulative remains resolutely unsentimental here.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Porgy and Bess
    As screen entertainment, Porgy and Bess retains most of the virtues and some of the libretto traits of the folk opera.
  63. Josep
    The strong subject matter as well as the eponymous subject’s storied life makes one wish for a longer running time than 72 minutes.
  64. The Promised Land
    Notionally rooted in historical fact, but embellished with storybook romance and flouncing cartoon villainy, this roundly enjoyable Venice competition entry finally owes all its residual gravitas (and at least half its considerable handsomeness) to the expressive woodcut visage of one Mads Mikkelsen.
  65. A Single Man
    Like the speck of sand that seeds a pearl, it’s the tiny fleck of kitsch at the heart of “A Single Man” that makes it luminous and treasurable, despite its imperfections.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Brilliant Career
    This Australian film is a charming look [from the book by Miles Franklin] at 19th-century rural days in general and the stirrings of self-realization and feminine liberation in the persona of a headstrong young girl who wants to go her own way.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Color of Money
    A keenly observed and immaculately crafted vision of the raw side of life. Pic has a distinctive pulse of its own with exceptional performances by Paul Newman and Tom Cruise.
    • Variety
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Harder They Come
    Perry Henzell emerges a director with a solid visual flair who can mix action and inchoate rage sans excess to give the film a taut pacing and use the local color and a basically predictable tale with a few new twists.
  69. Introduction
    This tiny little movie makes seemingly effortless work of convincing us that a comment, a story, a film and maybe even a whole filmography can be both important and casual — in Hong’s case, radically casual — at the same time. It makes Introduction as bracing as a brief dip in a freezing sea after a rather too soju-soaked luncheon.
  70. The Messenger
    Nobody plays angry like Ben Foster, but compassion is something new for the actor, who softens his crazy-man shtick to deliver a complex and moving performance in The Messenger.
  71. Private Fears in Public Places
    Despite a perfect cast of Resnais regulars plus the master's own impeccable crafting, the characters fail to grip, and with approximately 50 short scenes, development comes in fits and starts.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Play It Again, Sam
    The placid direction of Herbert Ross keeps Allen in the spotlight for some good laughs, several chuckles and many smiles.
  73. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    Picture is particularly well-crafted, managing to avoid the ambulance-chasing tenor that might easily have turned this into a voyeuristic freakshow.
  74. Sin Nombre
    Fukunaga refrains from artificially amping up excitement for its own sake, maintaining an intimate, observational style that offers up a host of things to look at and think about.
  75. Children of Heaven
    Much humor and suspense is wrung from incidents that would be minuscule from anything but a child’s p.o.v., many repeated until they become ingenious running gags.
  76. Marona's Fantastic Tale
    Provides pleasures for all ages, but especially for dog lovers.
  77. Incitement
    While Incitement is a compelling watch, with archival footage neatly woven in, and offers a salutary warning about how easily democracies are endangered, this psychological profile of a political assassin nevertheless falls into a kind of moral trap.
  78. The Nightingale
    Kent’s elemental revenge tale attains a near-mythic grandeur over the course of its arduous, ravishing trek. Some stricter editing wouldn’t go amiss, particularly in a needlessly baggy, to-and-fro finale, but it’s a pretty magnificent mass of movie.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mountain Patrol
    Exquisite to behold and with a stimulating storyline that mixes guns with ecological consciousness, picture is a considerable change of pace for director Lu Chuan.
  80. Grandma
    Though likely to be variously praised and pilloried as a pro-choice film, Weitz’s film is really a movie about choice in both the specific and the abstract — about the choices we make, for good and for ill, and how we come to feel about them through the prism of time.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Man Who Knew Too Much
    An unusually fine dramatic story handled excellently from a production standpoint. Built along gangster lines, but from an international crook standpoint, with a lot of melodramatic suspense added.
  82. Presence
    You want the movie to add up to something, but what it adds up to is another half-diverting, half-satisfying Soderbergh bauble, only this time he’s the ghost in the machine.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Road Warrior
    Director Miller keeps the pic moving with cyclonic force, photography by Dean Semler is first class, editing is supertight, and Brian May’s music is stirring.
  84. I, Tonya
    It’s a serious blast, with a plot that zigs and zags (but only because it sticks, within reason, to the facts), and a cast of characters who are so eccentrically scuzzy that maybe no one could have dreamed them up.
  85. God Loves Uganda
    Roger Ross Williams’ forceful polemic succeeds to a startling degree, rightly decrying the use of the gospel to incite homophobia, and allowing the most fervent interviewees to damn themselves with their own proselytizing words.
  86. Evolution
    With its linear narrative and clear sense of a protagonist, Evolution is both more beautiful (thanks to gorgeous widescreen cinematography, including stunning underwater and nighttime footage, from “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” d.p. Manu Dacosse) and accessible than “Innocence,” though the two films clearly function best as the twisted diptych that they are.
  87. Obsession
    Like the novelty gift that causes all the trouble, Obsession initially seems simplistic, and even a bit silly, in its rehash of the age-old monkey’s paw trope. Like the consequences of that ill-considered wish, however, it proves eerily hard to shake.
  88. Fat Girl
    Despite the disappointing conclusion, it's hard not to be affected by the film, because of the director's frank approach to her subject and the sheer skill with which she tells her story.
  89. Ulee's Gold
    Nunez achieves a rare, and rarely earned, emotional depth that rewards the moderate demands he makes on contemporary viewers' short attention spans.
  90. Grindhouse
    Planet Terror delivers only momentary kicks...while Tarantino's Death Proof is a juicy, delicious treat, its pleasures stem much less from the play with genre conventions than from great dialogue and electric performances.
  91. How to Change the World
    Jerry Rothwell’s film focuses engagingly on the human dynamics, particularly the role of late leader Bob Hunter.
  92. The Price of Freedom
    The Price of Freedom is an absorbing, disturbing, and scrupulously well-researched documentary.
  93. The Pool
    Smith's utterly natural filmmaking there is impressive.
  94. Benda Bilili!
    Audiences will find the group's triumph inspiring.
  95. The Twentieth Century
    The more familiar one is with Canadian history, the funnier it is. But even without prior knowledge of our neighbor to the north, it can be enjoyed for its combination of supreme creativity, jaw-dropping audacity and amusing tongue-in-cheek dialogue.
  96. The War Tapes
    The picture's deepest fascination lies in the soldiers' complicated reactions to the war, perceived simultaneously as funny, horrific, stirring and traumatic.
  97. Maestro
    Maestro can’t help but be dominated by the grandeur of Bernstein’s passion, his outsize flaws, and the tightrope he walked between the need to find the meaning of beauty and the desire to stay fancy free. Yet Cooper and Mulligan make the movie a duet to remember.
  98. Jerry Maguire
    An exceptionally tasty contempo comedic romance.
  99. Songs from the Second Floor
    One of the most highly crafted pics in recent memory, and certainly the most original in vision of the 23 features competing at Cannes this year, Songs From the Second Floor rapidly wears out its welcome after the first few reels to finish up as a perplexing objet d'art.
  100. Project Hail Mary
    Project Hail Mary will likely be a hit, but the movie we need right now — or, really, anytime — is one whose drama extends beyond its ability to push our buttons.
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