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. Doctor Strange
    Yes, this new project shares the same look, feel, and fancy corporate sheen as the rest of Marvel’s rapidly expanding Avengers portfolio, but it also boasts an underlying originality and freshness missing from the increasingly cookie-cutter comic-book realm of late.
  2. Ma
    While the entire project seems to be commenting on all the ways that social pressures try to trap or confine us, the cinematic medium has seldom felt as free as it does in Rowlson-Hall’s hands.
  3. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    The Rise of Skywalker is, to me, the most elegant, emotionally rounded, and gratifying “Star Wars” adventure since the glory days of “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” (I mean that, but given the last eight films, the bar isn’t that high
  4. Fraulein
    Staka’s interested in subtleties and looks at the different coping mechanisms of immigrants, from Ruza’s overly efficient life to Ana’s carefree existence.
  5. Night Owls
    The execution here is impressively adroit, with a clever script enlivened by two charmingly compatible lead performances from Rosa Salazar and Adam Pally.
  6. Among the Believers
    The filmmakers quietly expose conflicts and contradictions without the intrusion of voiceover, and with only occasional intertitles furnishing factual information.
  7. Sing
    While there are no profound life lessons to be found in these subplots, Jennings and his cast manage to deliver a steady supply of laughs, while respecting one of Illumination’s core principles: It’s OK to be silly.
  8. 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.
  9. Bad Moms
    Where Bad Moms plunges into zesty new satirical terrain is in capturing the ruthless one-upmanship of the mommy-wars era, when all the progressive thinking of the last 40 years has only ratcheted up the perfectionistic demands on children and parents alike.
  10. Closet Monster
    Canadian writer-director Stephen Dunn’s first feature treads no new ground in basic outline. But the risk-taking confidence with which he weaves in sardonic magical-realist elements, not to mention his unpredictable yet assured approaches to style and tone, make this a most auspicious debut.
  11. Early Man
    The result is a welcome return to a form of stop-motion that takes pride in the technique’s inevitable imperfections (such as thumbprints in the modeling clay), while putting extra care into the underlying script, with its daffy humor and slightly-off characters.
  12. Tallulah
    Page is simply superb in a complex role that perfectly plays to her gift for balancing deadpan comedy with surprisingly deep emotional reserves.
  13. Captain Fantastic
    Ross doesn’t run from the resulting sentimentality the way so many other directors do; nor does he undercut it with irony or sarcasm as has become the regrettable tendency in independent cinema.
  14. Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    Greenaway has wrought an outrageously unconventional and deliriously profane biopic that could take decades to be duly appreciated.
  15. The Invitation
    This well-acted, beautifully modulated exercise represents director Karyn Kusama’s strongest work in years, revealing an assurance of tone, craft and purpose that haven’t been in evidence since her Sundance prize-winning debut, “Girlfight.”
  16. The Witness
    The Witness functions as a project of not only confrontation but resurrection, as Bill’s sleuthing sheds new light on Kitty’s personality, romances and career, and thus finally re-emphasizes her as a flesh-and-blood person rather than just a famous victim.
  17. Sing Street
    The truest and most tearduct-tugging relationship here is that between Conor and his lank-haired college-dropout brother, played with spaced-out warmth and wistful good humor by the ever-likeable Reynor.
  18. The Birth of a Nation
    A biographical drama steeped equally in grace and horror, it builds to a brutal finale that will stir deep emotion and inevitable unease. But the film is perhaps even more accomplished as a theological provocation, one that grapples fearlessly with the intense spiritual convictions that drove Turner to do what he had previously considered unthinkable.
  19. Audrie & Daisy
    [A] powerful, well-crafted documentary.
  20. The Fits
    Even at its conclusion, Holmer’s film refuses to provide easy answers regarding its meaning, instead using poised formal techniques to impart that which is not spoken — and, in the process, portends impressive things to come from its confident, capable director.
  21. Kate Plays Christine
    Greene encourages our curiosity (and even a hint of caution) about documentary perspectives and techniques that other films prefer viewers to take as given.
  22. 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.
  23. The Lovers and the Despot
    While a more thorough archival survey of Choi and Shin’s work together (pre- and post-abduction) would have allowed for a deeper perspective, this real-life romantic thriller/escape saga still boasts enough fascinating details and angles to qualify as essential stranger-than-fiction viewing.
  24. The Lure
    This kooky-monster escapade is never less than arresting, and sometimes even a riot.
  25. Morris from America
    This coming-of-age dramedy explores how the challenges of being young, black and misunderstood can be compounded in a foreign environment, but goes about it in a grounded, character-driven way that never smacks of manipulation or special pleading.
  26. Operation Avalanche
    Operation Avalanche demonstrates that there’s still plenty of room left within the found-footage format to craft fresh, high-concept projects, regardless of the fact that no one’s falling for their alleged authenticity any longer.
  27. Southside with You
    Richard Tanne’s writing-directing debut deepens into a pointed, flowing conversation about the many challenges (and varieties) of African-American identity, the need for both idealism and compromise, and the importance of making peace with past disappointments in order to effect meaningful change in the future.
  28. Under the Shadow
    Slyly merging a familiar but effective genre exercise with a grim allegory of female oppression, Babak Anvari’s resourceful writing-directing debut grounds its premise in something at once vaguely political and ineluctably sinister.
  29. Lovesong
    Lovesong makes a virtue of restraint as it traces a complex emotional history in two parts, and innumerable (and sometimes quite literal) shades of gray.
  30. 4th Man Out
    [A] thoroughly ingratiating, touchingly heartfelt comedy.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One False Move
    Working for the most part in straightforward style, director Carl Franklin achieves considerable suspense by pitting the frailties of each party against the other.
  32. Bopha!
    Bopha! is a heartfelt and anguished cry. Though moored in historic/geographic specificity, it is an easily understood and universal tale.
  33. John Wick: Chapter 2
    There’s a quality to the violence here that elevates it above the literal (and reprehensible) nihilism of movies like last year’s “Hardcore Henry,” and instead achieves something more akin to dance.
  34. Fastball
    A film that captures the underlying essence of baseball at the beginning of the 21st century: both humbly wistful and progressively cutting-edge.
  35. The Handmaiden
    It’s sybaritic, cruel and luridly mesmerizing.
  36. Fatima
    This poignant slice-of-life proves as modest in length (78 minutes) as it is generous in rueful insight and emotional complexity.
  37. After the Storm
    Such is the finesse of Kore-eda’s script that it builds to neither the vehement confrontation nor the comforting reconciliation that melodrama decrees. Instead, it imparts those rare, liberating moments when characters revert to their most honest selves and pluck up the courage to express their deepest, albeit unattainable wishes.
  38. Patriots Day
    It’s genuinely exciting megaplex entertainment, informed by extensive research, featuring bona fide movie stars, and staged with equal degrees of professionalism and respect.
  39. Everything Is Copy
    Anything but a morose tale of a bright light snuffed out far too soon, Bernstein’s documentary is an inspiring heartstring-tugger.
  40. Don't Think Twice
    Portraying a cutthroat business in which little is “fair,” Don’t Think Twice acknowledges the bloodshed, but applies the razor with enough empathetic delicacy to earn its cautiously upbeat fade.
  41. The Birth of Saké
    A richly immersive documentary that plays like an elegy for a time-honored but slowly vanishing way of life.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Batman Returns
    Burton has once again managed to pursue his quirky personal concerns in the context of broadly commercial entertainment, although the idiosyncracies of the villains clearly interest him far more than the programmable heroics of the title character and the related mandatory action sequences.
  43. As I Open My Eyes
    Sharply yet subtly capturing the atmosphere of fear fostered by the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, this skillfully made drama is especially attuned to the myriad forms of surveillance, from the prurient to the political.
  44. Last Cab to Darwin
    It’s not so much the destination but the physical and emotional journey embarked on in this thoughtful, culturally authentic road trip.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Only Angels Have Wings
    In Only Angels Have Wings, Howard Hawks had a story to tell and he has done it inspiringly well.
  46. Time to Choose
    Time to Choose may come off, at moments, like the “Koyaanisqatsi” of environmental devastation, but it is also a dreadfully beautiful achievement. It shows us what the building blocks of climate change look like.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Richard III
    Spirited acting, machine-gun pacing and ominous Art Deco settings combine to rousing effect in this Richard III, a sure-fire crowd-pleaser among recent Shakespeare movies.
  48. How He Fell in Love
    Mature and moving in its navigation of convoluted, conflicting desires, it’s an indie as assured in its silences as it is in its speeches.
  49. Jia Zhangke, A guy from Fenyang
    An intelligent, restrained but warmly intimate cinematic conversation with the Sixth Generation Chinese trailblazer.
  50. Tikkun
    Austere but fascinating.
  51. The Innocents
    Hope and horror are commingled to quietly moving effect in Agnus Dei, a restrained but cumulatively powerful French-Polish drama about the various crises of faith that emerge when a house of God is ravaged by war.
  52. Under the Gun
    It’s not necessarily artful, but it’s also never less than compelling. If anything, Soechtig has only refined her skills at packaging a slick, audience-friendly documentary with a subject that feels even more urgent.
  53. Almost Holy
    Hoover’s style seems equally fit for a bleak documentary, suspenseful thriller, black comedy, dystopian sci-fi nightmare and grisly horror film.
  54. Kaili Blues
    Led by performances imbued with barely concealed sorrow, regret and longing to come to terms with that which has been lost, Kaili Blues affords a view of people, and a nation, caught in between a haunting yesterday and — as implied by the film’s conclusion — a hopeful tomorrow.
  55. Sieranevada
    [Puiu] manages to weave a tapestry — or family quilt, if you will — in which deception and the hopeless search for truth is judged both on the micro level (as in extramarital affairs) and a more global scale (which is where questions of Romania’s Communist past, 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo fit into the picture), and where disturbances in either sphere ripple out into the world at large.
  56. Two Lovers and a Bear
    Somehow, in the final stretch, Nguyen has transformed what felt like a relatively generic, un-special indie love story into something totally unpredictable, taking full advantage of the gorgeous widescreen lensing to convey the atmosphere and magic of his locations.
  57. The Student
    The Student is a film that never stops to think; it thinks (and speaks, and shouts) while prodigiously on the move.
  58. Clash
    Boasting superb camerawork from d.p. Ahmed Gabr and stellar crowd direction, Clash might strike some as crossing too often into hysteria, yet this is bravura filmmaking with a kick-in-the-gut message about chaos and cruelty (with some humanity).
  59. Pervert Park
    The documentary broadens well beyond a portrait of this particular facility to address the underlying causes of these crimes and to question how society might more constructively deal with the issues, where offering counseling to abuse victims becomes as important as, if not more so than, persecuting their abusers.
  60. Divines
    In her aces debut feature Divines, Houda Benyamina has what ought to be a career-making film on her hands.
  61. The Final Master
    It’s a passionate comic book in which the combat has meaning.
  62. Les Cowboys
    Bidegain, who for years has served as the muscle behind Jacques Audiard’s scripts, advances his ongoing deconstruction of genre-movie masculinity in his uncompromising, anti-romantic directorial debut.
  63. The Girl Without Hands
    Each shimmering frame is composed of multiple layers of diverse drawing and painting techniques and washes of color combined with 2D computer animation.
  64. The Blackcoat's Daughter
    In addition to everything else he does right in February, Perkins plays fair: When you replay the movie in your mind after the final fadeout, you realize that every twist was dutifully presaged, and the final reveal was hidden in plain sight all along.
  65. Almost Christmas
    David E. Talbert, the writer-director of Almost Christmas, has assembled a gifted cast and given them a chance to stretch out and play with their roles. He has made a heartwarming gripe-and-grouchfest that pushes a lot of buttons, though with a vivacity that’s exuberantly funny and sincere.
  66. Summertime
    Summertime celebrates the unique couple’s chemistry, allowing their smiles to convey the transformative effect they have on one another.
  67. War on Everyone
    While his American competition practices the right to remain silent, McDonagh writes his clever, coal-black heart out, delivering another firecracker script.
  68. Maborosi
    This visually lush but sometimes ponderously slowfilm is a poetic saga of love and loss.
  69. Sunrise
    A gripping psychological drama set in the seediest quarters of Mumbai, the pic cleverly weaves fantasy and reality so that neither can be taken at face value. The result is an intense, very well-performed tale.
  70. In Order of Disappearance
    Schemes like this have a way of spiraling out of the characters’ control, but Moland and Aakeson maintain a firm grasp on the pacing, progressively building both carnage and suspense as the situation escalates toward a Mexican standoff of which even Sam Peckinpah would be proud.
  71. Under the Sun
    While at about the two-thirds mark, Under the Sun begins to seem a bit attenuated, its obvious (if only implied) points already made, the ending is a stunner.
  72. Bleed for This
    Teller is terrific, which should come as no surprise to “Whiplash” fans, though no less significant, the film represents a significant return for writer-director Ben Younger.
  73. Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny
    “Dream Is Destiny” is a pleasurably crafted career snapshot that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
  74. Train to Busan
    Train to Busan pulses with relentless locomotive momentum. As an allegory of class rebellion and moral polarization, it proves just as biting as Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi dystopia “Snowpiercer,” while delivering even more unpretentious fun.
  75. Sand Storm
    The director juggles different points of view with aplomb, and her strong script addresses with impressive subtlety the gap between what people say and what they do under extreme pressure.
  76. The Alchemist Cookbook
    This unclassifiable miniature involving a man in a trailer in the woods trying to contact the Dark Lord is as funny and distinctive as it is near-plotless.
  77. Split
    Shyamalan’s goal is to keep us guessing, and in that respect, Split is a resounding success — even if in others, it could have you rolling your eyes.
  78. Mary Poppins Returns
    It’s a rapturous piece of nostalgia — a film that devotes itself, in every madly obsessive frame, to making you feel happy in the guileless way a movie still could back in 1964.
  79. 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.
  80. Little Sister
    Clark’s fifth feature is marked by his characteristic brand of distorted realism, though a classically redemptive arc — with even a hint of spiked sentimentality — sounds a new note in his oeuvre.
  81. Neither Heaven Nor Earth
    The ensemble commits to the premise with utmost gravity and conviction, enabling our belief in even the most improbable interpretations of its core enigma.
  82. When Two Worlds Collide
    The film makes its case powerfully, and the myriad parallel situations in which private commercial interests continue to trump environmental ones worldwide makes that viewpoint easy to accept as valid.
  83. Land of Mine
    Zandvliet’s script and direction avoid milking an innately loaded situation for excess melodrama or pathos, sticking to a discreet economy of approach that accumulates considerable power.
  84. One More Time with Feeling
    If it’s sometimes a rambling, indulgent experience, it’s also a beautiful one.
    • 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.
  86. Ferdinand
    In what’s been an underwhelming year for big-studio animation, it’s the best of the bunch: sincere, likable, surprisingly funny, and overall true to its source material.
  87. Bobby Sands: 66 Days
    This finely crafted docu may well long stand as the most balanced among such treatments, as it respectfully examines Sands’ folk-heroic legacy rather than simply amplifying it.
  88. Cameraperson
    Without narration or a conventional storyline, it’s a uniquely insightful memoir-cum-critical-treatise.
  89. Miss Hokusai
    Animation proves the ideal medium for Miss Hokusai’s relatively tame story, allowing audiences to admire the family’s artwork within a world that they were partially responsible for creating.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blazing Saddles
    Although Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder head a uniformly competent cast, pic is handily stolen by Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn. Kahn is simply terrific doing a Marlene Dietrich lampoon...Rest of cast is fine, although Little’s black sheriff doesn’t blend too well with Brooks’ Jewish-flavored comic style. Wilder is amusingly low-key in a relatively small role.
    • Variety
  91. Three Colors: Blue
    Bold final sequence is a visual and aural crescendo calibrated to show that while each person is fundamentally alone, every life inevitably touches other lives.
  92. Peter and the Farm
    With this rueful, cantankerous yet hugely charismatic figure at its center, Tony Stone’s beautiful documentary reveals the twin burdens of working the farm alone while beating back an encroaching inner darkness.
  93. Free Fire
    The fact that they could all lay down their weapons and finish the deal heightens Wheatley’s generally irreverent approach, all of which serves to remind that guns don’t kill people; insecure, overcompensating idiots do.
  94. Amanda Knox
    A gripping and incisive documentary.
  95. Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids
    Demme proves he’s still a wily master of the craft, and the director’s work here makes this more than just a fans-only proposition.
  96. Barry
    You could almost watch Barry even if you’d never heard of Barack Obama: The movie is simply interested in what it looks like when a guy who’s got this much going for him has a piece missing.
  97. The Woman Who Left
    This occasionally transcendent opus finds Diaz’s formal powers — not least his own incisive monochrome lensing — at full strength.
  98. My Name Is Albert Ayler
    My Name is Albert Ayler brings a sense of logic and humanity to a man whose music was as unsettling as it was untethered to the tenets of jazz.
  99. Chicken People
    An illuminating and amusingly entertaining look at the thriving subculture of competitive poultry breeders.
  100. Kékszakállú
    It takes an uncommon talent to keep the mundane from seeming inert, and through Solnicki’s lens, the absence of outer conflict doesn’t mute the turmoil within.
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