Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
    Jim & Andy is fleetly edited and engrossing, animated by a sense of discovery.
  2. Relic
    Not everyone will appreciate the ambiguity of a climax that can be read as either an uplifting act of pure and selfless love or a depressing capitulation to the malign forces of inevitable decline, but either way, “art-house horror” has its 2020 tidemark set high.
  3. 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
    Silver (“Who is Dayani Cristal?”) keeps the focus outside the courtroom primarily on Davis’ parents, who see prosecution as their only hope of some closure in losing their only child. Their grief, bafflement and attempt to maintain some hope in the justice system lends 3 1/2 Minutes considerable poignancy.
  4. Advocate
    Tsemel’s hard demands on her family and co-workers alike are kept in view: “Advocate” isn’t a bland hagiography, but a textured nonfiction character study of complicated heroism. You can’t challenge the system, after all, without being a bit challenging yourself.
  5. Small Axe: Alex Wheatle
    “Alex Wheatle” is like a sketch for the biopic it might have been, but by the end you feel you’ve glimpsed the key fragment of a life.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ruby in Paradise
    A wonderfully expressive character study exhibiting a thoughtfulness and concern for real life rare in American cinema, Ruby in Paradise rewards the care put into it and the patience it asks of audiences. After an eight-year layoff from filmmaking after A Flash of Green, Victor Nunez has returned with a film of gentle, intelligent qualities, vividly portraying a young woman's inner life.
  7. Chi-Raq
    Lee’s vision of a scarred, gutted city may not please the tourism board, but his movie is better for it: Its seething dramatic texture captures a deeper, more elusive beauty that — like reconciliation, reform or any other human ideal — can only be achieved when the illusion of safety is left behind.
  8. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
    Its martial arts spectacle is scattered across a sprawling refugees-and-triads saga that, while adequately laying foundation for the aforementioned fisticuffs, is seldom coherent or engaging on its own.
  9. We Feed People
    [A] technically polished and emotionally stirring close-up view of celebrity chef José Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen.
  10. Thelma
    Thelma may bill itself as an unconventional action movie, but it’s more of a sitcom, really.
  11. Olga
    Even before Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion, Olga was an incredibly strong film, but now, the Kino Lorber release should be considered essential viewing for art-house audiences.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Saturday Night Fever
    The clumsy story lurches forward through predictable travail and treacle, separated by phonograph records (or vice versa).
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pump Up the Volume
    Writer-director Allan Moyle's story about a shy high school student who galvanizes an Arizona suburb with a rebellious pirate radio show has rambunctious energy and defiant attitude.
  14. Starving the Beast
    Starving the Beast repeatedly sounds cautionary notes that escalate to the level of fretful alarms. And yet, for all that, the movie never seems shrill or didactic.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Animal Crackers
    First give Paramount extreme credit for reproducing Animal Crackers intact from the stage, without too much of the songs and musical numbers.
  16. The Tuba Thieves
    Without the rigidness of a concrete story, O’Daniel is able to command the medium in an invigorating manner. Though it requires that audiences surrender to its unconventional tactics, the reward is the opportunity to rediscover the familiar with a fresh set of eyes and ears.
  17. Love Lies Bleeding
    Love Lies Bleeding turns consciously wild and garish, and you may think that the film is losing control, yet Rose Glass is fiercely in control of what she’s doing. She’s made a midnight noir that shoots over the top of our expectations but lands where it should, at a place where even valorous people have to go to extremes.
  18. The Invite
    The Invite is marvelously entertaining, but part of the reason for that is that I think a lot of people are going to see themselves mirrored in this movie, which for all its sharp-tongued bravura is humane enough to play a truth game that rings true.
  19. Girls State
    The film’s seven protagonists are the result of McBaine and Moss’s broad and deep interview process. Demographically diverse, the women are immensely watchable and touchingly articulate.
  20. Calvary
    Grounded by a performance of monumental soul from Gleeson as a tough-minded Irish priest marked for death by one of his parishioners, the film offers a mordantly funny survey of small-town iniquity that morphs, almost imperceptibly, into a deeply felt lament for a fallen world.
  21. Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
    While trying to confront grief with a sense of mischief, the movie’s impish tonal approach takes the sting out of death a little too often, rendering its catharsis null. It’s hard not to respect a big swing, but Wladyka ultimately misses.
  22. The House I Live In
    A ballsy mix of interviews and editorializing that's daring enough to question a costly crackdown that has long had the public's support.
  23. Vinyl Nation
    The clichéd word that’s most bandied about by vinyl enthusiasts really does apply to the movie that’s been made about it: “warmth.”
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Breakfast at Tiffany's
    Out of the elusive, but curiously intoxicating Truman Capote fiction, scenarist George Axelrod has developed a surprisingly moving film, touched up into a stunningly visual motion picture.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hustle
    The film’s drawbacks are simply a lack of some restraint, since otherwise all the elements are present for a sensational, hardhitting human story.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tom Jones
    It has sex, Eastmancolor, some prime performers and plenty of action. Tony Richardson has directed John Osborne’s screenplay with verve, though, occasionally, he falls back on camera tricks and editing which are disconcerting.
  27. Suzume
    Come for Shinkai’s skies, stay for the feels.
  28. Apprentice
    The movie feels a little too sparse and literal in places.
  29. Apples
    What might have been the latest oddity of the Greek Weird Wave — or else a surreal collection of live-action “The Far Side” cartoons — instead feels soulfully relevant as reality aligns with the speculative world Nikou imagined.
  30. People's Republic of Desire
    People’s Republic of Desire is provocative and unsettling as it brings us on a guided tour through the digital marketplace for something resembling human contact.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Fish
    Blessed with stellar performances, especially by lead Cate Blanchett as an ex-junkie looking for a fresh break, this sophomore feature by Australian director Rowan Woods marks a strong return after his powerful debut, "The Boys" (1998).
  32. Two Lottery Tickets
    Two Lottery Tickets is an existential-absurdist, dirty-kitchen-sink vision of ordinary lives that’s just funny and invigorating enough to hit a note of truth.
  33. The Hunt
    Mikkelsen impresses here as a warm-hearted man who finds himself caught up in a situation way beyond his control.
  34. Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
    At the end, Bruce, speaking to us in voiceover, says that he plans to just keep going, to play in concert “until the wheels come off.” Watching Road Diary, you hope they never do.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hoosiers
    An involving tale about the unlikely success of a smalltown Indiana high school basketball team that paradoxically proves both rousing and too conventional.
  36. A Touch of Sin
    There’s a certain pleasure to be had in seeing a revered auteur go off the disreputable deep end, and there’s no denying A Touch of Sin packs a visceral wallop.
  37. The Beguiled
    Coppola, in attempting to elevate the material, doesn’t seem to realize that The Beguiled is, and always was, a pulp psychodrama. Now it’s pulp with the juice squeezed out of it.
  38. On the Adamant
    On the Adamant is most moving when it stands back, letting its most disenfranchised subjects talk, or shout, or sing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Winter Kills
    If there's a decent film lurking somewhere in Winter Kills, writer-director William Richert doesn't want anyone to see it in his Byzantine version of a presidential assassination conspiracy [from a book by Richard Condon].
  40. The Heiresses
    The film exquisitely balances character study with shrewd commentary on the precarious hierarchy of class distinctions, the turbulent persistence of sexual desire and the lingering privileges of Paraguay’s elite.
  41. The Mustang
    It’s a touching and original piece of bare-bones sentimental humanism, and Schoenaerts is terrific in it.
  42. Somers Town
    Basically a comedy but with typically Meadowsian dark edges, it forms an affectionate tribute to cross-cultural friendship and the rapidly changing landscape known as Somers Town.
  43. Scratch
    Works best as a straightforward appreciation of the music. Though docu's structure wears out full viewer interest after an hour or so, few will come away with staid prejudices (i.e. that turntablism isn't "real" musicianship) intact.
  44. Shanghai Noon
    This enjoyable East-meets-Western likely will succeed on its own terms as a sure-fire, long-legged crowd-pleaser.
  45. Daughter from Danang
    An intelligent, well-observed and ineffably poignant study of an Amerasian woman's attempt to trace her roots by journeying back to Vietnam.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tazza: The High Rollers
    Writer-director Choi Dong-hoon, whose grifter dramedy "The Big Swindle" was an unheralded gem two years ago, considerably ups the ante in his second feature, a long-limbed yarn centered on a bunch of ruthless professional gamblers. But involving characters and devil-may-care tone make the long running time hardly a stretch.
  47. Mission Blue
    The majesty and imperiled status of the world’s aquatic life are vividly captured in Mission Blue.
  48. Presenting Princess Shaw
    That rare Princess whose wishes do come true, Montgomery’s what is known as a “genuine discovery.”
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Westworld
    Westworld is an excellent film, which combines solid entertainment, chilling topicality, and superbly intelligent serio-comic story values. Michael Crichton's original script is as superior as his direction.
  50. Mrs. Fang
    This is a merciless film, and whether the process of teasing its meaning out for yourself feels like a punishment or a reward will depend entirely on your patience and your point of view.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Star Is Born
    Although not the first film which has attempted to capitalize the international reputation of Hollywood, it is unquestionably the most effective one yet made. The highly commendable results are achieved with a minimum of satiric hokum and a maximum of honest story telling.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Basket Case
    Basket Case is an ultra-cheap monster film created by neophyte filmmaker Frank Henenlotter with a tongue-in-cheek approach.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Village of the Damned
    Tapers off from a taut beginning into soggy melodrama. Wolf Rilla’s direction is adequate, but no more.
  54. The Apollo
    You should never take for granted a documentary that fills in the basics with flair and feeling. Especially when the basics consist of great big gobs of some of the most revolutionary and exhilarating popular art ever created in this country.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Carnal Knowledge
    Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowlede is a rather superficial and limited probe of American male sexual hypocrisies.
  56. Chang Can Dunk
    Chang Can Dunk doesn’t go the way you’d expect, and that’s a good thing.
  57. The Holy Girl
    A mystifying film that holds the audience in suspense over where it's going and what it might mean for almost its entire running time.
  58. Clara Sola
    Mesen’s delicate yet earthy, thoughtful yet sensual movie never tips its hand as to whether Clara’s abilities are real or imaginary — indeed it makes the line between fact and fantasy seem as nonsensical as it might to a horse — and it pays off in one of those obscurely uplifting endings.
  59. Philomena
    It’s an undeniable whopper of a yarn and, coming after a string of middling efforts from Frears, easily the director’s most compulsively watchable picture since “The Queen."
  60. First Love
    First Love may be a fluffier, more eager-to-please bauble than Miike’s more challengingly outré titles, but like the cutesy mechanical toy puppy that turns up yapping in the middle of the film, it is wired to explode, and it is a blast.
  61. Get Low
    With a mix of sly humor, homespun grace and affecting poignancy, Get Low casts a well-nigh irresistible spell.
  62. Jauja
    In Jauja, Alsonso saves his most dazzling trick for last: a sudden plunge down a Lynchian rabbit hole that should, by all means, rupture the film’s hypnotizing atmosphere, but instead pulls the viewer in even deeper.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blue Collar
    Paul Schrader's directorial debut is an artistic triumph. Schrader has transformed a carefully researched original screenplay penned by him and his brother Leonard into a powerful, gritty, seamless profile of three automobile assembly line workers banging their heads against the monotony and corruption that is the factory system.
  64. Changing the Game
    Unadventurous in its design — Barnett goes for a conventional mélange of clips and talking heads to structure the story — Changing the Game admittedly benefits from a traditional approach that slowly familiarizes the audience both with the subjects and the layers of an ongoing discriminatory debate around fairness.
  65. The Immigrant
    This rich, beautifully rendered film boasts an arrestingly soulful performance from Marion Cotillard.
  66. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
    Outstandingly realized on all levels.
  67. The Best Intentions
    An epic story of mismatched love shaped in the most intimate terms, the Ingmar Bergman-scripted The Best Intentions packs a sustained emotional wallop that lightens its three-hour span.
  68. The Amusement Park
    Shot on delightfully grainy 16mm and featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors, the film is so alluringly disorienting that, by its end, some viewers will find themselves struggling to remember how this fever dream started.
  69. Detroit
    Bigelow, working from a script by her regular collaborator Mark Boal (it’s their first film since “Zero Dark Thirty”), has created a turbulent, live-wire panorama of race in America that feels like it’s all unfolding in the moment, and that’s its power. We’re not watching tidy, well-meaning lessons — we’re watching people driven, by an impossible situation, to act out who they really are.
  70. The Edge of Seventeen
    It’s a teen movie that starts off funny ha-ha but turns into something more like a light-fingered psychological thriller. The drama is all in Nadine’s personality, in how far she’ll go to act out her distress.
  71. Logan
    Each time the violence explodes, it’s slashingly satisfying, because it’s earned, and also because Mangold knows just how to stage it.
  72. 28 Years Later
    Typically, we look to adrenaline-fueled entertainment for catharsis. Boyle’s thrilling reboot offers enlightenment as well.
  73. Stephanie Daley
    A taut, provocative, sometimes overreaching but always absorbing thriller.
  74. Water
    Deftly balancing epic sociopolitical scope with intimate human emotions, all polished to a high technical gloss, Deepa Mehta's Water is a profoundly moving drama.
  75. The Rape of Europa
    This mesmerizing morality play, rich in rare archival footage and complete with heroic Allied saviors, merits a full-fledged arthouse run before reaching larger PBS and cable auds.
  76. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
    At once tightly controlled and simmering with righteous fury, it’s gorgeously lensed, atmospherically scored and moves inexorably toward a gratifying payoff.
  77. Italian for Beginners
    The most nonconfrontational and thus accessible title in the Dogma lot to date, and will speak the international language of proletariat love to arthouse auds who go for such fare.
  78. Bukowski: Born into This
    Makes a compelling case for raising him (Bukowski) from cult status to the top rank of 20th century U.S. literary figures -- while providing ample evidence of a very colorful life and times.
  79. Monsoon Wedding
    Splashy, noisy and downright fun.
  80. Home of the Brave
    di Florio emerges with a serenely powerful, handcrafted film that navigates into a place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called "the tangled discords of our nation."
  81. Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe
    Candace Against the Universe has been made for “Phineas and Ferb” believers, and like such hipster kiddie brand extensions as “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies,” it’s not necessarily more fun than three good episodes of the show stacked together. But that’s fun enough.
  82. Gerald's Game
    Taken strictly on its own terms, the film adaptation is an arrestingly and sometimes excruciatingly suspenseful psychological thriller lightly garnished with horror-movie flourishes...and driven by a compelling lead performance that is entirely worthy of a description too often misapplied to lesser work: tour de force.
  83. The Last Race
    This graceful, ruminative fragment of scrap-metal Americana marks a distinguished foray into feature filmmaking for renowned narrative photographer Dweck.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Plot Against Harry
    The Plot against Harry is hilarious and often poignant.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big Easy
    Until conventional plot contrivances begin to spoil the fun, The Big Easy is a snappy, sassy battle of the sexes in the guise of a melodrama about police corruption.
  86. Code Black
    At 81 minutes, Code Black feels like a brisk, vital report from the frontlines of emergency medicine, forged and rooted in the most intense sort of personal and professional experience.
  87. The Wife
    The Wife is Close’s film from start to finish, and several of the supporting performances fail to rise to her level, with Pryce and Slater the only ones who manage to impress in her orbit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bedazzled
    Bedazzled is smartly-styled and typical of certain types of high British comedy.
  89. And Tomorrow the Entire World
    The filmmaking is muscular and immersive, with athletic camerawork and ringing sound design keeping us in the stressed headspace of its young protagonist throughout.
  90. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    If necessity is the mother of invention, then DreamWorks’ desire to extend the Dragon franchise has propelled the creative team in the most admirable of directions, resulting in what just may be the mother of all animated sequels.
  91. Career Girls
    Mike Leigh has made one of his most modest pictures, although one that offers quite a few laughs and other quirky pleasures.
  92. Around The World In 50 Concerts
    A magnificent tapestry of sounds and images, this documentary interweaves multiple leitmotifs that flow through the film like familiar old friends, surging to the forefront only to be reabsorbed and casually encountered farther on.
  93. Dheepan
    What keeps Dheepan engaging throughout is the tremendous charisma of the performers.
  94. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
    As someone who’s absorbed bits and pieces of the Miles Davis story over the years but never felt like I had the big picture, I found “Birth of the Cool” to be intensely gratifying. Nelson is a filmmaker with a sixth sense for how to nudge history into the present.
  95. Promare
    Every bit as loud and ambitious as one might expect from a visual artist with such a hyperactive imagination, sci-fi action-adventure Promare checks all the conventional anime boxes — post-apocalyptic setting, mecha suits and plenty of fan service — but it’s still an exciting watch.
  96. The Disaster Artist
    Somehow, in accentuating Wiseau’s weirdness, Franco overlooks his soul.
  97. Bill Cunningham New York
    Rarely has anyone embodied contradictions as happily and harmoniously as octogenarian New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham.
  98. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
    The virtual future may be now, but “Lo and Behold,” with its stimulating volley of insights and ideas, always feels persistently, defiantly human.
  99. Service (Serbis)
    Brillante Mendoza’s latest opus that revels in shock value.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Nightmare on Elm Street
    A Nightmare on Elm Street is a highly imaginative horror film that provides the requisite shocks to keep fans of the genre happy.
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