Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,758 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 2.3 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: 9,121 out of 17758
  2. Mixed: 7,002 out of 17758
  3. Negative: 1,635 out of 17758
17758 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. What We Wanted
    It’s a handsome, sensitive entry in the genre — one that treats its internally bruised characters with the care of a patient, kindly therapist.
  2. Freaky
    As a meta entry in that most disposable of genres, the teen slasher movie, Freaky manages to feel original, which is saying something, since it’s basically warping conventions we’ve all seen a million times before.
  3. Fatman
    This, in other words, is not your father’s grungy one-joke yuletide action comedy. It’s “The Santa Clause” meets “Magnum Claus,” and it’s pitched to the Gibson faithful with the idea that they’ll follow him anywhere (which they probably will).
  4. Transhood
    While wholly sympathetic to the cause, Transhood isn’t just a work of blandly cheery activism: Liese frankly observes the practical obstacles and psychological swings endured by its four young subjects and their families, sometimes to upsetting effect.
  5. Monsoon
    Monsoon is a graceful and truthfully irresolute investigation into the strange, often poignantly unreciprocated relationship that many first- and second-generation emigrants have with the far-off foreign country of the past.
  6. Dirty God
    Much attention will deservedly be paid to Knight’s impressively nuanced performance – it’s one thing to cast an amateur who’s been through similar experiences, and quite another to get that person to inhabit a fictional character.
  7. Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist
    Essentially a single interview with Friedkin interspersed with repeatedly revisited clips, Leap of Faith chiefly examines — per its title — the film’s spiritual allusions and illusions, distinguishing it from just any old making-of doc.
  8. Hillbilly Elegy
    As long as Close is acting up an award-worthy storm (her performance is actually quite meticulous), Hillbilly Elegy is never less than alive. Adams does some showpiece acting of her own, but as skillful as her performance is, she never gets us to look at Bev with pity and terror.
  9. Mortal
    What surprises Mortal holds largely relate to the oddity of its construction and its tonal whiplash, as a thin, repetitive narrative skips from emo “Twilight” moping to dour Scandi-noir procedural to dollar-store Marvel ripoff.
  10. Kindred
    Kindred is a demonstration of how a naturalistic horror film can be derivative, in the most flagrant and shameless way, and still work.
  11. Mank
    Mank is a tale of Old Hollywood that’s more steeped in Old Hollywood — its glamour and sleaze, its layer-cake hierarchies, its corruption and glory — than just about any movie you’ve seen, and the effect is to lend it a dizzying time-machine splendor.
  12. The Killing of Two Lovers
    Crawford’s dominating performance makes David no hick but a sensitive and accommodating man a bit intimidated by his admittedly “much smarter” wife, flailing in his efforts to hold together a family unit he can’t go on without.
  13. Operation Christmas Drop
    An anodyne, friction-free romantic comedy that faintly distinguishes itself from its snow-sprayed genre brethren with enticingly balmy South Pacific scenery. If nothing else, it gives viewers something to daydream about while they keep half an eye on its story.
  14. Collective
    This is truly a documentary for our times, deserving of widespread exposure.
  15. Farewell Amor
    The simple humanism here makes the case for nurturing and celebrating America’s immigrant population in a more eloquent and persuasive way than a more polemical film ever could.
  16. Let Him Go
    Let Him Go isn’t subtle, but as a genre film it’s original and shrewdly made, with a floridly gripping suspense. And Lane and Costner give it their all in a casual way that only pros this seasoned and gifted can. They turn the movie into an unlikely thing: a touchingly bone-weary romance steeped in vengeance.
  17. The Donut King
    Gu’s to be commended for recognizing that the hollow part of a donut might provide such a rich window into another culture. There’s much to learn about the immigrant experience from her research, even if the movie leaves us craving two things: donuts, obviously, but also a more well-rounded sense of all the incredible personalities she too-politely engages with along the way.
  18. The Night
    Featuring excellent performances by Shahab Hosseini (“A Separation,” “The Salesman”) and Niousha Jafarian (“Here and Now”) as a married couple with a baby daughter and a frayed relationship, this predominantly Farsi-language production sneaks up on viewers and delivers a knockout final act.
  19. Spell
    This is a decently stylish thriller with occult elements that should satisfy viewers’ genre requirements, though few will demand a second watch (or sequel).
  20. Us Kids
    If it seems more of a flashback than a flashpoint — particularly as impeachment proceedings seem to crowd out discussion of anything else — Us Kids nonetheless reminds that this issue too often comes down to children, and whether our society places enough value on that supposedly most-precious-resource to meaningfully protect them.
  21. The Life Ahead
    The film, modest and often maudlin on its own storytelling terms, runs on a current of beyond-the-screen devotion that makes it compelling. Without that unquantifiable x-factor presence in the frame, it’s hard to say what reason this Netflix release would really have for being.
  22. Holidate
    Briskly directed by John Whitesell, written by Tiffany Paulsen, Holidate won’t change your mind about the tread-worn challenges of romantic comedies, but its leads leverage their charms nicely.
  23. Come Play
    Even though the kid is the hero we should clearly be rooting for, the filmmaker conjures equal amounts of empathy and compassion for the monster. That serves to add complexity to the characterizations, but balancing both sides muddles the poignancy of the climax.
  24. The Craft: Legacy
    The original “Craft” may be a mess, but it does have a legacy, and this ain’t it.
  25. Belushi
    In the film, Belushi’s own letters betray his fear that he had reached the point of no return. Yet there can be a shadow hint of intentionality to all that. Belushi was a bighearted person who craved no limits. In some terrible way, he went out like the rock star he was.
  26. Crazy, Not Insane
    You may not agree with everything Dorothy Lewis says in “Crazy, Not Insane,” but you come out of the movie alive to the place where evil and insanity meet and then fall back apart.
  27. After We Collided
    “After” was merely awful. After We Collided is atrocious. Naturally, it’s proving an enormous pandemic-era hit.
  28. Radium Girls
    Scrupulously sincere in its approach and well-meaning to a fault in intention, the film aims for inspirational true story, but is sadly uninspired, and its relationship to real history is obscured by the schematic way it is fictionalized.
  29. Coming Home Again
    While this is not exactly a premise with mass appeal, Wang’s movie is still an unassuming exercise, defiantly in contrast to Hollywood’s typically over-sentimental terminal illness fare.
  30. Friendsgiving
    This vagueness of purpose wouldn’t matter much if the film were genuinely, raucously funny, but comedian-turned-filmmaker Paone’s best gags are the kind to raise a smile rather than a laugh.
  31. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
    Borat has lost none of his bite, treading that same fine line between sophomoric humor and pointed political satire.
  32. White Noise
    White Noise is a deadly serious movie, but it is also, in a certain way, a funny one, because it captures the comedy of how much trouble even the influencers of hate now have squaring their lives with their belief systems
  33. The Witches
    Anne Hathaway’s performance provides the film with a sick-joke center of gravity, and Zemeckis, sticking to Dahl’s elemental storyline, stages it all with a prankish flair that leaves you buzzed.
  34. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds
    “Fireball” is a documentary about meteorites, but what makes it a Herzog film is that it’s in love with meteorites.
  35. Pink Skies Ahead
    The catchy title’s a clever way of saying “It gets better,” and in the end, that feels as true for Winona as it does for the high-potential writer-director who created her.
  36. The Opening Act
    Becoming a successful stand-up comic is an uphill climb, one that not everybody is cut out for, and The Opening Act is a likable ode to those hard knocks.
  37. The Devil Has a Name
    What should have been a galvanizing David-versus-Goliath story pales in comparison with Amazon series “Goliath,” which is comparably colorful but far more coherent as it hits so many of the same beats.
  38. Shithouse
    This is a modest film, well-acted but rather clumsily assembled, that almost certainly would have benefited from an in-person SXSW, where it’s possible to bask in the shared laughter of an enthusiastic first screening.
  39. I'm Your Woman
    This is the kind of movie where the most dynamic thing in every scene is the art direction, followed by the natty retro costumes (which Jean must have used the cash to buy, since she didn’t have time to pack), and only then comes the people.
  40. The Kid Detective
    Both entertainingly old-fashioned and defiantly fresh.
  41. What the Constitution Means to Me
    Director Heller does a better job of adapting Schreck’s play than the team behind Disney Plus’ recent “Hamilton” film, in part because the underlying production is so much simpler.
  42. 2 Hearts
    It’s a softheaded piece of morbid romantic treacle — two parallel cloying love stories for the price of one.
  43. Love and Monsters
    In Love and Monsters, love is good, monsters are bad and feeling like Tom Cruise is “awesome.”
  44. A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting
    A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting simply pushes forward insistently and efficiently in a spirit of organized, slushie-colored fun, which isn’t quite the same as a sense of humor, much less a sense of urgency.
  45. Rebecca
    For about three-quarters of the running time, Rebecca does a respectable job of navigating between respect for the source and establishing its own distinct identity. And then, at precisely the moment where it stands to make a few enlightened improvements . . . this Rolls-Royce of an adaptation veers off the road.
  46. Honest Thief
    It’s a serviceably energized and routine action crime movie, with a few slammin’ fistfights and gun battles, and it proves once again that Liam Neeson is an actor who will take a paycheck gig without treating it like one.
  47. French Exit
    Yes, French Exit blisters amid the rarefied air of Tom Wolfe or Whit Stillman, but it’s nicely cut with the schadenfreude of “Schitt’s Creek.”
  48. Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World
    It’s exciting, cloak-and-dagger stuff, no less exciting (or valid) for having been done from someone’s armchair at home. Pool pulls some cheap shots by cutting to Putin, Trump, and Kim Jong-un whenever he needs to personify who they’re up against. But in a world where those three are leading the charge to break the news, Bellingcat are doing their best to put it together again.
  49. Over the Moon
    Sometimes it’s OK for an adventure to be just an adventure, and this one gets in the way of its own assets, while pointing to the potential of future journeys from the Netflix animation team.
  50. The War with Grandpa
    The combat is neither funny nor intense. The War with Grandpa is like “Home Alone” replayed as a tit-for-tat battle of logistical booby traps that never rises above the innocuous slapstick benign.
  51. Meeting the Beatles in India
    There’s some fan value here, all spiritual quests aside, in seeing how accepting the individual Beatles could be of someone they could have taken as an interloper in their lofty midst. Maybe that’s the revelation, then: Sweet, the Beatles.
  52. Yellow Rose
    Like Andrew Ahn’s “Driveways” earlier this year, Yellow Rose is ultimately a film about kindness. The world can be cruel, but the film’s characters tend not to be. Group those movies with Sundance prize-winner “Minari,” and audiences have three terrific indies about growing up Asian in America — although this is the only one that sets the experience to music.
  53. Books of Blood
    With a certain kind of horror, a laugh’s as good as a scream, and Books of Blood delivers plenty of the former.
  54. Siempre, Luis
    Siempre, Luis winds up sidelining the bulk of Luis’ life to focus disproportionately on a recent achievement: his part, alongside that of his son, in bringing “Hamilton” to a Puerto Rican audience. The perky but lopsided result isn’t particularly revelatory on either front, and so relentlessly glowing that it’s hard not to feel some of Luis’ political expertise at play.
  55. The Lie
    The Lie is far from a total success, but it has enough tension and talent to make you hope that Blumhouse keeps aiming a quiet thriller or two at adults.
  56. Totally Under Control
    Subsequent docs will surely tell a different story, after survivors have risen up and confronted the individual they deem responsible — and Gibney et al. want this film to be instrumental in that solution.
  57. Hubie Halloween
    Director Steve Brill (another regular Sandler ally) keeps a lot of colorful balls in the air, even if the pacing is lumpier than you’d like in an enterprise this sketchy: Set pieces and one-off visual gags are simply stuffed in wherever they fit, like the cinematic equivalent of Hubie’s over-decorated Halloween front yard.
  58. The Wolf of Snow Hollow
    The movie does get some zingers in there, and it balances the humor with some nicely atmospheric creepy small town vibes (courtesy of DP Natalie Kingston), but the tone is all over the place and a far cry from the “Fargo”-y Coen brothers feel Cummings seems to be going for.
  59. Small Axe: Red, White and Blue
    Yet Red, White and Blue mostly lacks the gritty period flavor of the other Small Axe films. It’s a little glossed over. The (minor) daring of the movie is its downbeat narrative. It’s structured like the air seeping out of a tire, so that it presents us with a character of idealistic strength, commitment, and personal heroism only to plop him into a set of circumstances that won’t allow him to be a hero.
  60. Death of Me
    Bousman’s film pulls off some effectively nasty jolts and jabs: its feverish, whispery, eventually shrieking island-of-lost-souls claustrophobia may be rooted in cliché, but cliché takes root for a reason.
  61. Sno Babies
    It’s the casualness of the drug use, extreme yet just another part of life, that’s the 2020 element. Kristen wants to have her dope and eat it too. And that means turning herself into an invisible junkie.
  62. 2067
    The result is a movie that seems unaware just how generic the should-be-distinguishing details of its earnest eco-cautionary tale have turned out.
  63. Possessor Uncut
    On a technical level, the film is just astonishing, especially as regards the two lead actors’ performances.
  64. A Call to Spy
    In a world hungering for depictions of national valor and compassion, the movie’s variations on heroism are a boon.
  65. Rocks
    The film wants to prove that hope isn’t fools gold. And when it does, Rocks glows.
  66. Jiang Ziya
    Directors Teng Cheng and Li Wei have dedicated serious attention to creating a stunning dramatic atmosphere for a story that, truth be told, is still plenty confusing to non-Chinese audiences.
  67. Eternal Beauty
    With an assist from Sally Hawkins’ valiantly committed lead performance, the result occasionally summons the genuinely disoriented perspective of an unstable protagonist, but more often, it’s the filmmaking that seems to spiral out of control.
  68. The Human Voice
    The Human Voice, in all its delicious absurdity and kitsch extravagance, ties into the concerns of emotional abandonment and disrupted communication that have long run through his [Almodóvar's] more ostensibly serious works.
  69. Lupin III: The First
    The unflaggingly perky caper has no down time, so one can’t help wishing for more the laid-back gamesmanship and boyish banter of the older renditions.
  70. Small Axe: Mangrove
    This may be “television” (in the sense that Amazon will release the films via streaming), but McQueen approaches it with all the seriousness of cinema.
  71. The Artist's Wife
    It’s entirely possible that The Artist’s Wife would have hit the same pitch-perfect notes had it been set during a long hot summer. But the wintery ambiance enhanced by Ryan Earl Parker’s evocative cinematography feels altogether appropriate for a story about one life winding down, and another on the verge of a restorative spring.
  72. The Boys in the Band
    What holds the movie together, apart from Quinto’s dreamy geek mystique and delectable delivery of every line, is the tormented passion that Jim Parsons brings to it.
  73. Misbehaviour
    Misbehaviour says good riddance to a bad era in the brightest, politest way possible: too politely, perhaps, if you’re seeking a feminist comedy that actually lives up to the raucous promise of its title.
  74. Night of the Kings
    With this project, in which magical realism lends everything a mystical dimension, Lacôte confidently delivers on the promise of his 2014 Cannes-selected “Run.”
  75. Shortcut
    With lackluster character development, a few ill-conceived situations in the second half and dialogue that sounds like it’s been run through Google Translate, there’s only a modest amount of entertainment value found therein.
  76. The Trial of the Chicago 7
    Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 is the rare drama about the 1960s that’s powerful and authentic and moving enough to feel as if it were taking place today.
  77. Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
    What’s most moving about Oliver Sacks: His Own Life is that Sacks, whose extreme love of existence was there in every sentence he wrote, could embrace death because it would be the most out-there adventure of his life. What he saw is that we were all, in our ways, afflicted and all unique. And therefore all extraordinary.
  78. The Last Shift
    A gut punch with a side of anguish.
  79. On the Rocks
    On the Rocks turns into a boozy humanistic hang-out caper movie, one that’s light-spirited and compelling, mordantly alive to the ins and outs of marriage, and a winning showcase for Murray’s aging-like-fine-whisky brand of world-weary deviltry.
  80. Supernova
    But it’s Firth’s Sam who finally carries the film’s heart, and exquisitely so, as his fear, anger and mounting insecurity lash out the more he tries to remain undemonstrative. (He also pulls off some able, plaintive piano-playing by his own hand.)
  81. MLK/FBI
    MLK/FBI leaves you wanting more, but it provides a gripping chapter in the story of how the forces of American power set out to destroy one of America’s greatest leaders, even as his private behavior had the effect of handing them a weapon.
  82. Sportin' Life
    There’s at least something honest about the messiness and occasional superficiality of the documentary, as a ragged, unsynchronized collection of events and ideas — whether personal, trivial or globally resonant — that have passed through Ferrara’s eyes and his mind in the last year.
  83. Infidel
    Although Caviezel’s character is meant to stand in for all Americans unjustly imprisoned by Iran, it would be irresponsible to take the film’s “inspired by true events” claim too seriously. That doesn’t mean it’s not satisfying to watch Liz and several co-conspirators raid the facility in an attempt to liberate Doug and all those unjustly detained political prisoners. In this fantasy telling, at least, God is on his side.
  84. Mainstream
    A brittle, exasperated satire on social media celebrity, her sophomore film, like the tacky messiah it creates in Andrew Garfield’s YouTube sensation, soon becomes the very thing it sets out to expose: a glittery, jangly image machine that manufactures little of actual substance, except the conclusion that social media = bad.
  85. Laila in Haifa
    Gitai’s latest is a murky, largely po-faced affair, in which no character’s story urgently distinguishes itself from, or even within, a general morass of discontent.
  86. The Dark and the Wicked
    Ireland conveys subtle differences between paranoia and white-knuckled fear with an appealing fragility, while Oliver-Touchstone invites sympathy and disquiet with just a few twitches of her wrinkles. However, the glaring absence of any background to the main characters’ lives and relationships gives the cast less to work with than they deserve.
  87. The Way I See It
    The Way I See It mostly feels like a love letter to Obama.
  88. Rifkin's Festival
    A scenic summer-wind romcom that was presumably a good time for everyone involved. Saying the same for the audience would be a stretch, but on the spectrum of late Woody Allen clunkers, it registers on the mild, instantly-evaporating end of the scale, unlikely to change the positions of any loyalists, detractors, ex-fans or distributors with regard to the controversy-tailed filmmaker.
  89. Somebody Up There Likes Me
    The rocker, while never downplaying the danger of the fire he’s played with throughout his life, has to chuckle as he admits he’s led a largely charmed life. We end up charmed, too, if never really riveted.
  90. Small Axe: Lovers Rock
    Lovers Rock is nothing more (or less) than a snapshot of an era, a moment, a series of lives. Yet it lingers like a song you don’t want to get out of your head.
  91. Shadow in the Cloud
    Hardly a minute of the movie registers as “realistic,” but that hardly matters, since Liang so fully commits to its over-the-top sensibility that you’ll be clutching the armrest and grinning with glee for most of the ride.
  92. H is for Happiness
    Provides feel-good entertainment for the entire family without pandering — and definitely without sacrificing style or substance.
  93. Lost Girls & Love Hotels
    William Olsson’s film works as an atmospheric mood piece and sometime erotic drama. It’s less successful as a character study.
  94. Run Hide Fight
    Merely pedestrian at the levels of direction, craft and performance, the film instead makes a grab for attention by peddling an ambiguous line on gun control and eye-for-an-eye morality. Any controversy that ensues, however, won’t disguise the phoniness of this exploitation exercise, which milks the worst fears of millions in pursuit of empty tension.
  95. Penguin Bloom
    Shrewdly, Watts goes for something subtle and soft here — instead of clichéd garishness, her performance hinges on her doleful gaze and melancholic tinge, ultimately helping Penguin Bloom honor its real-life character’s journey with some respect.
  96. The Best Is Yet to Come
    The Best Is Yet to Come is superbly well-made, making a compelling case for recognizing the humanity of others even in the midst of illness, even when ignorance and politicized paranoia threaten your compassion. It’s not hard to discern the relevance.
  97. The Secrets We Keep
    This “Death and the Maiden”-like suspense drama is neither fully convincing nor particularly original, its narrative running a course that feels somewhat predictable from the outset. But it’s still strong enough to be effective.
  98. I Care a Lot
    A sleekly unnerving thriller.
  99. Mandibles
    Mandibles is as brazenly and riotously stupid as it sounds, but with a chill, dopey sweetness that makes it stick.
  100. Limbo
    Limbo sincerely and intelligently finds its own way.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »