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. Dig!
    The terrific DIG! offers a unique chance to watch two classic rock band scenarios unfold simultaneously.
  2. Keep Quiet
    With far-right nationalist ideologies suddenly a matter of pressing interest to almost everyone, the timing is regrettably ideal for Keep Quiet. This fascinating documentary by co-directors Joseph Martin and Sam Blair finds a stranger-than-fiction hook for probing that disturbing global trend.
  3. Kneecap
    Bursting with unruly energy that practically escapes the confines of the screen, Kneecap is a riotous, drug-laced triumph in the name of freedom that bridges political substance and crowd-pleasing entertainment.
  4. A Poem Is a Naked Person
    Even the less immediately engaging material here helps build an uncannily cohesive snapshot of a very specific time and place, and the past decades have only given it a bittersweet edge.
  5. Leaning Into the Wind
    Riedelsheimer is well-matched to Goldsworthy’s methods and interests.
  6. Broken Embraces
    A restless, rangy and frankly enjoyable genre-juggler that combines melodrama, comedy and more noir-hued darkness than ever before, the picture is held together by the extraordinary force of Almodovar’s cinematic personality.
  7. Kandahar
    A visually exalting, emotionally horrifying view of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    My Beautiful Laundrette
    As always, director Stephen Frears does a superb job of work when given a good script, and this is a very good script. It’s peopled with interesting characters, allowing for a gallery of fine performances and situations.
  9. Brighton 4th
    The tender screenplay by Boris Frumin captures characters living in the new world in much the same fashion as they did in the old. It also offers a touching showcase for Levan Tediashvili, a non-professional actor and real-life wrestler.
  10. Father Mother Sister Brother
    Father Mother Sister Brother is consistently beautiful. It is not easy to create visual variety and interest in scenes in which by design the most important thing that is happening is that nothing is apparently happening.
  11. Blue Caprice
    Precision-honed performances and a nonsensationalistic approach distinguish this impressive first feature from French helmer Alexandre Moors, which avoids pat explanations as it offers a speculative glimpse into murderous minds.
  12. Spettacolo
    Though at its core the film is about a dying way of life, the location and photography here are so beguiling that they semi-perversely encourage just the kind of foreign tourism that factors into that slow death.
  13. Two Gods
    There’s solemn respect here for the fragile interior peace of others: This restrained, humane film seems most interested in how that serenity is reflected back into the world.
  14. Maggie's Plan
    Miller is greatly helped by all her major collaborators here.
  15. Heavy
    Character-driven to a fault, Heavy proceeds in such leisurely fashion that there are times one wishes it would shed a few minutes in order to get on with its business.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Sure Thing
    The Sure Thing is at heart a sweetly old-fashioned look at the last lap of the coming-of-age ordeal in which the sure thing becomes less important than the real thing. Realization may not be earth shattering, but in an era of fast food and faster sex, return to the traditional is downright refreshing.
  17. Adventureland
    A rather ordinary account of youthful summer misadventures that goes down easily thanks to a sparky cast, more than 40 pop tunes that anchor the action in the late '80s and characters who get high both on and off their jobs at a tacky amusement park.
  18. Testament of Youth
    Deftly balancing restrained sentimentalism with tough-minded human tragedy, this impressive, unashamedly classical feature debut by TV helmer James Kent has the populist heft one expects from producer David Heyman, while preserving the solemn intimacy of Brittain’s account of lives and loves severed by the conflict.
  19. Like Someone in Love
    As it turns out, it's the first, not the last, word of the title that's key to this droll, elegant but faintly trying study in emotional artifice.
  20. Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
    The enterprise would be something to celebrate if the movie itself weren’t so flawed, not just in scholarly terms but in her mania for visualizing seemingly every phone call she made in the hunt for Guy-Blaché material. Sadly, all these problems overwhelm Green’s noteworthy success in tracking down previously unknown documents and photos.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sid and Nancy
    The film’s dialog is extremely rough, the settings sordid, the theme of wasted lives (and talent?) depressing. But Sid and Nancy is a dynamic piece of work, which brings audiences as close as possible to understanding its wayward heroes.
  22. Lady Macbeth
    An impressively stark, narratively ruthless Victorian chamber piece that feels about as modern as its crinolines will permit, William Oldroyd’s pristine debut feature slowly reveals a violent moral ambiguity that needles the mind far longer than its polite period-piece trappings suggest.
  23. Inside Man
    A flashy cast, clever script and vibrant showcasing of New York City as the ultimate melting pot are strong plusses for Spike Lee's most mainstream studio venture.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fifi Howls from Happiness
    Though shy on background info, the docu offers a fascinating portrait.
  25. Much Ado About Dying
    Death isn’t an ending in this achingly funny-sad film, just an anxiety passed between loved ones.
  26. Chico & Rita
    Think of Chico and Rita as a test, one that gauges whether your love of Cuban jazz can exceed your threshold for lousy animation -- a real "good tunes/bad toons" quandary.
  27. Something in the Air
    Decidedly not revolutionary cinema, Something in the Air instead quietly demystifies its subject. The tone of the piece is wryly affectionate but never indulgent; the experiences depicted feel emotionally true and lived-in without ever catching the viewer up in a rush of intoxication or excitement.
  28. Dolemite Is My Name
    A total motherf—kin’ blast. ... You might have to go all the way back to the ’80s to find a Murphy performance driven by this much pleasurable funky verve.
  29. Guardians of the Galaxy
    Director James Gunn’s presumptive franchise-starter is overlong, overstuffed and sometimes too eager to please, but the cheeky comic tone keeps things buoyant — as does Chris Pratt’s winning performance as the most blissfully spaced-out space crusader this side of Buckaroo Banzai.
  30. Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
    What keeps Ain’t in It for My Health from being a really satisfying portrait isn’t a lack of access, but a lack of intimacy.
  31. Nancy, Please
    For Semans’ conceit of an obsessively narrow world to really work, he needed to have established an initially more expansive milieu.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Birdman of Alcatraz
    Birdman of Alcatraz is not really a prison picture in the traditional and accepted sense of the term. Birdman reverses the formula and brings a new breadth and depth to the form. In telling, with reasonable objectivity but understandably deep compassion the true story of Robert Stroud, it achieves a human dimension way beyond its predecessors.
  33. Lore
    Lore offers a fresh, intimate and mostly successful perspective on Germany's traumatic transition from conqueror nation to occupied state.
  34. We Are Little Zombies
    No pulsating, psychedelic, pop-punk phantasmagoria ought to be as moving and smart as We Are Little Zombies. But Makoto Nagahisa’s explosively ingenious and energetic debut (imagine it as the spiritual offspring of Richard Lester and a Harajuku Girl) holds the high score for visual and narrative invention, as well as boasting [insert gigantic-beating-heart GIF] and braaaains, too.
  35. A Prayer Before Dawn
    At once exhausting and astonishing, this no-holds-barred adaptation of British junkie-turned-pugilist Billy Moore’s Thai prison memoir is a big, bleeding feat of extreme cinema, given elevating human dimension by rising star Joe Cole’s ferociously physical lead performance.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    When Harry Met Sally...
    Rob Reiner directs with deftness and sincerity, making the material seem more engaging than it is, at least until the plot machanics begin to unwind and the film starts to seem shapeless.
  37. Jesus' Son
    An intermittently compelling and occasionally hilarious road movie.
  38. In America
    Warm and borderline sentimental...also brimming with true and privileged moments, as well as an optimism in the face of tough circumstances that serves as a corrective to some of the more fashionably grim modern accounts of similar stories.
  39. Morning Sun
    Admirably balanced production that pulls the curtain back slightly on a little-charted period of modern Chinese history.
  40. Corsage
    Full of odd glitches and deliberate flubs in period detail, the film feels like an invitation into a secret conspiracy to reach back through time and, with deft, irreverent 21st-century fingers, loosen the stays on Empress Elisabeth’s corsetry just a little.
  41. The Army of Crime
    Guediguian's lengthy period yarn features a wide array of characters filmed with his habitual simpatico eye, but loses the dramatic thread in too many plots, too little action and not enough originality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Escape from Alcatraz
    Screenwriter Richard Tuggle and director Don Siegel provide a model of super-efficient filmmaking. From the moment Clint Eastwood walks onto The Rock to the final title card explaining the three escapees were never heard from again, Escape from Alcatraz is relentless in establishing a mood and pace of unrelieved tension.
    • Variety
  43. Dirty Wars
    It takes pains to make the political personal, forging the viewer’s identification with Scahill by making persistent use of his voiceover narration and keeping him oncamera throughout.
  44. Grosse Pointe Blank
    The zeal and good nature of the cast overcome the artificial quality of the situations.
  45. Machuca
    Richly human in focus, the drama steadily cranks up its political and emotional charge.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Boyz n the Hood
    Ultra socially responsible, sometimes to the point of playing like a laundry list of difficulties faced specifically by the urban black community.
  47. Red Rocket
    Everything in Red Rocket happens just a little too easily, which is one of the weaknesses of a self-indulgent regional satire that stretches its perhaps-80-minute plot over more than two hours.
  48. 3:10 to Yuma
    James Mangold's remake walks a fine line in retaining many of the original's qualities while smartly shaking things up a bit.
  49. Jane Eyre
    The candlelight flickers exquisitely even as the passions are slow to ignite in this spare, shrewdly acted but not especially vital retelling of Jane Eyre.
  50. Wolf Children
    Embracing the patient, poetic style of such Japanese masters as Ozu and Mizoguchi, Hosoda sees no need for the manic energy and manufactured conflict of other recent toons.
  51. Actress
    Robert Greene's extraordinary collaboration with actress Brandy Burre is a playful, provocative examination of self-performance.
  52. Children of the Revolution
    Brimming with almost too many ideas for its 99-minute running time, Duncan's film boasts a strong cast of top actors who flesh out a group of bizarre yet recognizable characters involved in the political scene from the '50s to the present day.
  53. A Monster Calls
    We’ve heard the same lesson countless times before in other movies, and though it’s certainly impressive to see Conor’s anxieties manifest themselves in such a stunning Ent-like being, as monsters go, Bayona’s creation is all bark and no bite.
  54. Buck
    Warmly engaging Buck is a portrait of Buck Brannaman, a trainer whose remarkable way with equines provided a model for "The Horse Whisperer" in both novel and movie forms.
  55. Elza (Le bonheur d'Elza)
    Suffused with buoyant, sunlit sensuality, like its free-flying heroine, Elza confounds logic while seducing the senses.
  56. Machines
    This simultaneously beautiful and abjectly unhappy film is forced to close by silently admitting its limitations.
  57. Shaun of the Dead
    A classic example of a clever idea that could easily have run out of steam halfway. However, co-scripters Pegg and Wright structure it as a classic three-acter (set-up, journey, finale) with enough twists, character development and small set pieces to keep the comedy boiling.
  58. Their Finest
    Their Finest is the sort of crowd-pleaser that knows the difference between satisfying its viewers and flattering them, all the while showcasing surprising performances from Gemma Arterton and Sam Claflin, and an entirely unsurprising one from Bill Nighy — a master scene-stealer pulling off yet another brazen heist.
  59. Creepy
    The film supplies a headlong rush of tension and cruelty all the way to a gratifying final payoff.
  60. The White Tiger
    The White Tiger isn’t a fairy tale, but by the end the movie still leaves you feeling that it has made a wish into a command.
  61. Syriana
    A weighty and deeply intriguing look at the many-tentacled beast that is the international oil industry. Wide-ranging and restlessly probing, Stephen Gaghan's second directorial effort uses the same mosaic storytelling technique as in his Oscar-winning screenplay for "Traffic."
  62. The Stroll
    The Stroll is a powerful piece of trans history-making, a document that feels wounded, lived in, and yet joyfully alive.
  63. Confessions of a Good Samaritan
    Despite being a tad too long and a trifle repetitive, the documentary essay “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” from American helmer Penny Lane is a thought-provoking personal investigation into a subject rarely examined: the nature of altruism.
  64. Silent Souls
    Beautifully assembled, but emotionally inert despite its focus on bereavement and love's endurance, Russian art film Silent Souls reps at the very least a significant step up for its helmer, Aleksei Fedorchenko.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stand by Me
    Scripters have written inspired dialog for this quartet of plucky boys at that hard-to-capture age when they’re still young enough to get scared and yet old enough to want to sneak smokes and cuss.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Reds
    Reds bites off more than an audience can comfortably chew. Constant conflicts between politics and art, love and social conscience, individuals versus masses, pragmatism against idealism, take the form of intense and eventually exhausting arguments that dominate the script by Beatty and British playwright Trevor Griffiths.
  67. Islands
    A lean but revealing film of unexpected existential heft.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Colors Within
    Its alignment with its characters’ emotional currents is cemented by some of Yamada’s flourishes.
  69. The Baader Meinhof Complex
    An explosive performance by Johanna Wokalek gives some relief to an otherwise long and humdrum series of characters.
  70. Retrograde
    There’s not a dull shot in the entire movie, which is remarkable, considering how little actual action Heineman films.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Snake Pit
    The Snake Pit is a standout among class melodramas. Based on Mary Jane Ward's novel, picture probes into the processes of mental illness with a razor-sharp forthrightness, giving an open-handed display of the make-up of bodies without minds and the treatments used to restore intelligence.
  72. It Felt Like Love
    The writer-director’s stress on the small, degrading details that attend yearning as well as her protagonist’s desperation and self-deception make it more mood piece than straightforward narrative, but the ultra-confident production proves that Hittman’s a talent to watch.
  73. Intimate Stories
    Endowed with captivating simplicity, gentle humor, rich humanity and infectious generosity of spirit.
  74. Dreamgirls
    Finally. After "The Phantom of the Opera," "Rent" and "The Producers" botched the transfer from stage to screen, Dreamgirls gets it right. Bill Condon's adaptation of the 1981 show about a Motown trio's climb to crossover stardom pulls off the fundamental double-act those three musical pics all missed: It stays true to the source material while standing on its own as a fully reimagined movie.
  75. I Am: Celine Dion
    Like all things Celine Dion, “I Am” feels intensely personal and sincere, but also managed to within an inch of its life.
  76. Outside In
    Outside In feels eventful, even somewhat suspenseful, as we worry that being around so many screwups of one sort or another might endanger Chris’ still-fragile freedom.
  77. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    A fascinating story, albeit with some missed opportunities in the telling.
  78. Zappa
    It’s a multimedia immersion, filled with rare footage of Zappa from his teenage years on and assembled with the loving dexterity we’ve come to expect from Alex Winter as a filmmaker.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Peter Pan
    James M. Barrie's childhood fantasy, Peter Pan, many times legit-staged, and previously filmed with live actors, is a feature cartoon of enchanting quality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Greatest Show on Earth
    As has come to be expected from DeMille, the story line is not what could be termed subtle. While it may draw some critical catcalls, it does effectively serve the purpose of a framework for all the atmosphere and excitement of the circus on both sides of the big canvas. In any case, what bleacher fan wants to get mixed up with a plot he’s going to have to wrestle with?
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Escape from New York
    Although execution doesn’t quite live up to the fabulous premise, Escape from New York is a solidly satisfying actioner.
  82. The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
    Driven by both empathy and a passion for justice, “How to Survive a Plague” director David France’s stellar documentary charts an investigation into the still-unsolved death of trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, along the way illuminating the persistent discrimination that exists today, and the bonds of community designed to counter it.
  83. Flight
    Denzel Washington is aces as a commercial airline pilot who pulls off a miraculous mid-air stunt while flying with a 0.24 blood alcohol concentration, only to face his demons on the ground.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tucker: The Man and His Dream
    Tucker represents the sunniest imaginable telling of an at least partly tragic episode in recent history.
  85. 99 Homes
    This dynamically acted, unapologetically contrived pic reps the filmmaker’s best chance to date of connecting with a wider audience — one likely to share the helmer’s bristling anger over corruptly maintained class divides in modern-day America.
  86. Father of My Children
    Marked by moments of remarkable stillness amid its emotional tumult, the film's classy, perceptive treatment of potentially maudlin material merits wider arthouse attention than it's likely to receive.
  87. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
    Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a moving, wrenching, compellingly well-made documentary about Reeve’s life that inevitably ends up centering on his accident and its aftermath.
  88. 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.
  89. Cloud
    An offbeat internet-age drama that devolves into a vengeance actioner so deconstructed it’s almost existentially abstract: Beckett giving it both barrels.
  90. A Cop Movie
    At times, A Cop Movie seems unnecessarily convoluted in its structure, but by the end, the brilliance of its design becomes clear: This is nothing short of an existential inquiry into what it takes to be a cop.
  91. Flora and Son
    It’s catchy and touching, it weaves the music into the story with a spontaneity that can leave you laughing with pleasure, and it navigates an honest path from despair to belief, which is Carney’s disarmingly sweet calling card.
  92. The Lunchbox
    Batra adeptly plays on the tension of will they or won’t they meet, making good decisions based on character and situation rather than the need to uplift an audience.
  93. Citizen K
    Authoritative and dense — though never dull — at over two hours, Citizen K is the prolific docmaker’s most rewarding feature in several years, attaching his typically methodical research to a cheerfully slippery, charismatic human subject who, even on the side of right, is cagey in the face of investigation.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dave
    A delightful, buoyant new take on an old theme, deftly mixing political cynicism with elements of Mr Smith Goes to Washington.
  95. Shine a Light
    Martin Scorsese’s energetic account of a Stones concert at Gotham’s Beacon Theater in fall 2006 takes full advantage of heavy camera coverage and top-notch sound to create an invigorating musical trip down memory lane, as well as to provoke gentle musings on the wages of aging and the passage of time.
  96. Menace II Society
    Fierce, violent and searing in its observation, the film makes previous excursions seem like a stroll through the park.
  97. The Sleepy Time Gal
    Bisset throws herself into what is by far the most emotionally demanding role of her career and emerges honorably.
  98. Blue Car
    This melancholy, insightfully scripted coming-of-age drama is moving without being manipulative and makes an assured calling card for writer-director Karen Moncrieff.
  99. This So-Called Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs the Late Henry Moss
    Not as insightful as "Topsy-Turvy" or "Vanya on 42nd Street" about the process of putting on a show, it's nonetheless a fascinating meeting of the minds -- between iconic New York indie filmmaker Michael Almereyda and laconic American cowboy and dramatist Shepard.
  100. A Very Long Engagement
    Told with a blend of visual mastery and emotional intimacy, ambitious venture sustains a special melding of romance and pragmatism that should engage discerning audiences.
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