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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Terminator 2: Judgment Day
    As with "Aliens," director James Cameron has again taken a first rate science fiction film and crafted a sequel that's in some ways more impressive - expanding on the original rather than merely remaking it.
  2. Hammer
    The pileup of disasters is such that this tale might easily have been spun as some kind of grotesque comedy. But writer-director Christian Sparkes’ second feature plays it straight, narrowly evading viewer disbelief via strong principal performances and sufficiently urgent execution.
  3. 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.
  4. The Plagiarists
    Wilfully student-video amateurish in form, but impishly sophisticated in content, a gleeful cultural curiosity fairly crackles off The Plagiarists, and it is highly contagious.
  5. The State Against Mandela and the Others
    The State Against Mandela and the Others outlines a complex network of motives and tensions underpinning this single sensational trial: Nothing here is exactly revelatory to those with a working knowledge of apartheid history, but few documentaries have gathered the stakes involved in the trial quite so deftly.
  6. Another Road Home
    Fascinating.
  7. The Boxer
    Intelligently conceived and well- acted, this compact, straightforward drama about two ordinary people caught in the ongoing political crossfire packs enough punch to command audience interest, but won't light up critics or the B.O. to the extent achieved by the team's previous outings, "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father."
  8. Together
    Audiences should have fun with Together, a body-horror movie about a serious thing — love — that never takes itself too seriously.
  9. By the Grace of God
    That the film works as stirringly as it does is largely because of that brash, heart-on-sleeve engagement with its characters’ messy, unfinished feelings, not to mention Ozon’s canny knack for playing on French star personae.
  10. Rich Hill
    Everything about the three principal teens registers as deserving of “human interest” to Rich Hill’s two helmers, whose generous attitude draws us into this deeply empathetic film.
  11. Dark Days
    Intimate and engrossing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kicking and Screaming
    The director is more successful in setting an easy, low-key tone, with nicely framed shots and subtle camera movements downplaying the script's pretensions.
  13. Martin Eden
    The outcome is an unwieldy intellectual sprawl whose incontestable visual pleasures (much like Marcello’s “Lost and Beautiful”) distract from the shallow characterizations. ... The overarching impression is of a film too much in thrall to theory.
  14. Captain America: Civil War
    This chronicle of an epic clash between two equally noble factions, led by Captain America and Iron Man, proves as remarkable for its dramatic coherence and thematic unity as for its dizzyingly inventive action sequences.
  15. Late Fame
    Kent Jones is a filmmaker who’s deeply and dramatically curious, and that’s a quality he shares with the film’s screenwriter, Samy Burch, who wrote May December.
  16. The Stones and Brian Jones
    It’s clear the filmmaker has never lost that besotted hero worship. The Stones and Brian Jones digs deep into the Jones mystique, trying to make the case for him as a misunderstood “genius.”
  17. The Ister
    Tyro helmers David Barison and Daniel Ross have sunk their teeth into a heady intellectual stew, and results are invigorating thanks to the filmmakers' inspired linkage of images and ideas and commentaries from three of the world's leading philosophers.
  18. The Desert of Forbidden Art
    Absorbing documentary is a natural for artscasters.
  19. Nina Forever
    Eccentric as this premise is, the Blaines’ screenplay trails behind their confident direction in terms of ringing interesting variations on a limited, somewhat repetitious theme.
  20. The Baltimorons
    Duplass is careful to make a film where it’s up to the people involved to make Christmas a special occasion, rather than any relying on the genre’s traditional trappings. In that regard, The Baltimorons has something to celebrate.
  21. Finding Vivian Maier
    [An] initially playful, ultimately haunting documentary.
  22. Frida
    Even those already familiar with the trajectory of Kahlo’s existence may find the delivery here raw, vulnerable, and refreshing.
  23. Super Dark Times
    It’s hard not to appreciate the astute ways the script captures the moment when carefree childhood turns into the loss of innocence.
  24. Middle of Nowhere
    Solidly acted but aloof and slow as molasses.
  25. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Opulently produced, fittingly enough, and quite entertaining as a surface ride through the up, down and somewhat up again life of one of the New Hollywood's most colorful characters.
  26. Startup.com
    Topical film, which goes beyond its potentially dry diet of facts to incorporate the juicy human drama of Machiavellian manipulations, ambition, torn loyalties and crushing betrayal.
  27. The Full Monty
    Bright and sassy, The Full Monty is a treat.
  28. Roger Dodger
    fFts into that weird, dialogue-heavy quasi-genre that includes "In the Company of Men" and "The Business of Strangers" where high-stakes sexual power games mix with cutthroat office politics.
  29. Liberty Heights
    Barry Levinson goes deep with Liberty Heights, and the result is a grand slam.
  30. The Deserted Station
    Compelling underlying oddness may be enough to distinguish Deserted Station from similarly excellent humanistic Iranian fare.
  31. Kitchen Stories
    The film appears consistently poised to go deeper but instead hangs back, making it less substantial than it might have been. Yet the sweet-natured story's gentle humor and poignancy should draw appreciative audiences.
  32. Beauty in Trouble
    Recent history once again intrudes on the present-day lives of working Czechs in the masterful multicharacter drama Beauty in Trouble.
  33. The Square
    A tasty neo-noir from the James M. Cain school of lust-driven dirty dealings, The Square reps a promising debut by Aussie stuntman-turned-helmer Nash Edgerton.
  34. Sally
    While Ride and O’ Shaughnessy never wed. Her candor here marries a spectacular professional saga with the personal love story convincingly.
  35. Les amitiés maléfiques
    A movie so unrepentantly French that viewers who enjoy truly Gallic pics can start (tastefully) salivating now.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Born on the Fourth of July
    Oliver Stone again shows America to itself in a way it won't forget. His collaboration with Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic to depict Kovic's odyssey from teenage true believer to wheel-chair-bound soldier in a very different war results in a gripping, devastating and telling film about the Vietnam era.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Funny Face
    With a different book and new, added tunes, this is a lightly diverting, modish, Parisian-localed tintuner.
  38. Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
    Taken as a celebration, however, both of the woman herself and the food to which she has dedicated her life, “Nothing Fancy” is cinematic comfort food of the first order.
  39. Mayor
    It’s an acutely observed you-are-there procedural about a modern metropolis that dares to exist, even thrive amid the enduring repercussions of 1967’s Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the region.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dial M for Murder
    There are a number of basic weaknesses in the setup that keep the picture from being a good suspense show for any but the most gullible. Via the performances and several suspense tricks expected of Hitchcock, the weaknesses are glossed over but not enough to rate the film a cinch winner.
  41. 2 Autumns, 3 Winters
    Maintaining a bemused, sometimes comic distance, Betbeder traces how happenstance crystallizes into biography as his characters traverse the titular seasons.
  42. Heimat is a Space in Time
    The overall effect of Heise’s work is mesmeric, persuasive and cumulatively powerful, as each piece of the puzzle falls into place and he lands on overarching insights into a German century and what it portends for the future.
  43. Graceland
    While some of the sting goes out of the movie’s hitherto well-executed crime-thriller mechanics, the resolution and aftermath of the hostage crisis still pack a huge emotional wallop.
  44. Whitney
    Macdonald’s multi-faceted portrait of Houston allows us to touch the intertwined forces that did her in.
  45. Catch Me If You Can
    Like a trot around the track for the thoroughbreds involved, and one of the results is that it takes them far too long to get to the finish line.
  46. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    If the characters’ quandaries at times feel overly circumscribed, they’re also advanced with a bracing emotional directness, devoid of either cynicism or sentimentalism, that touches genuine chords of feeling over the course of the film’s fleet 130-minute running time.
  47. 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.
  48. Polite Society
    In many respects, Polite Society comes across as a giant pastiche of Manzoor’s favorite movie references, with homage paid to films from all over the globe via individual shots and sound cues throughout. But there’s no denying her creativity or the defiantly original voice she brings to her characters.
  49. Miss Violence
    Avranas’ film employs an irony-free meter that certainly distinguishes his work from that of Lanthimos or Athina Rachel Tsangari, and lends the film’s most explicitly severe sequences of domestic and sexual abuse a kind of cumulative numbing power.
  50. Thoroughbreds
    Thoroughbreds doesn’t look or sound anything like other teen-centric movies, but this is hardly a surface-only character study.
  51. The Bob's Burgers Movie
    Nothing in here makes an argument to be on the big screen. But it’s darned delightful, like a fizzy soda on a hot day.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Peggy Sue Got Married
    What makes this treatment unique is that the jokes aren’t so much derivative of pop culture, but are instead found in the learned wisdom of a middle-aged woman reacting to her own teenage dilemmas.
  53. Bring Her Back
    The old-school classicist in me wishes that “Bring Her Back” were more tidy and logical, but the Philippous work in a mode that’s impressionistic in an accomplished enough way to justify itself. They don’t care about tying up every bloody loose end. They’re after a feeling, a lavish sensation of malevolent shock.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silent Movie
    The slender plot of Silent Movie [from a story by Ron Clark] is basically a hook for slapstick antics, some feeble and some very fine (notably a wonderful nightclub tango with Anne Bancroft). Harry Ritz, Charlie Callas, Henny Youngman, and the late Liam Dunn are standouts.
  55. The LEGO Batman Movie
    The first thing to say about The Lego Batman Movie is that it’s kicky, bedazzling, and super-fun.
  56. 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.
  57. A Prairie Home Companion
    Rib-ticklingly funny at times and genial as all get-out.
  58. Mid-August Lunch
    A surefire pleaser for crowds of a certain age.
  59. Vision Portraits
    Bolstered by the writer-director’s own journey, recounted via a collage-like aesthetic that eloquently conveys his circumscribed condition, it’s a nonfiction study of artistic creation and, also, of individual courage and perseverance.
  60. Afterimage
    While this grim story is one worth telling, it’s a pity that in relating the bum’s-rush Strzeminski got in later life, Wadja couldn’t have communicated more of what sustains his legacy as a great artist and innovator.
  61. Funny or Die Presents: Donald Trump's the Art of the Deal: The Movie
    Other than skewering Trump, both personally and politically, this is obviously a rather slim construct. And while Depp throws his all into perhaps his hammiest role since Jack Sparrow, it probably would have benefited from a bit less length and a tighter focus.
  62. La Cocina
    A chaotic symphony of nearly two dozen characters, this black-and-white indie confection (garnished with sparing touches of color) mixes biting social critique with stylistic bravura.
  63. Monica
    Conceived with uncommon sensitivity toward the interior lives of its characters, as well as to the shifting codes of trans representation, “Monica” is a film about making amends.
  64. Microbe and Gasoline
    With Microbe and Gasoline, the French writer-director has wisely restrained his usual flourishes, allowing the two teenage leads in his relatively calm summer-vacation coming-of-age comedy to assume centerstage, imbuing them with creative agency rather than forcing them to compete with the film’s own style.
  65. Trainwreck
    A somewhat shaggy, frequently hilarious romantic comedy that, like much of Apatow’s best work, delicately balances irreverent raunch with candid insights into the give-and-take of grown-up relationships.
  66. Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
    Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, directed by Daniel Raim, is a passionate and beguiling movie-love documentary that shines a light on two of the unsung artisan heroes of Hollywood.
  67. Sister Midnight
    The story soon gets away from Kandhari, leading to a film that enraptures and delights in its first hour but gets so locked in to a singular approach by its second that it’s practically consumed by its own style, rendering it unable to keep pace with the bold ideas at play.
  68. Secret Ballot
    An enjoyable absurdist comedy.
  69. The Believer
    Those who see it at fests, and in carefully tailored specialized release, will be struck by the adroitness with which it addresses touchy issues, as well as by the outstanding performance of Ryan Gosling in the difficult leading role.
  70. About a Boy
    Pleasant and engaging, rather than laugh-out-loud funny or emotionally involving.
  71. In This World
    Makes engrossing viewing for much of the way...but stumbles dramatically in its final leg.
  72. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
    Superbly researched and constructed, pic is an improvement over last year's "The Weather Underground," which backed away from judging political terror on the left.
  73. Down by Love
    A terrific performance by young actress Patricia Kovacs makes the high-stakes gamble of Down by Love -- a light psychodrama almost entirely centered on one character in an apartment -- into an engrossing 90-odd minutes.
  74. Emily
    O’Connor’s well-modulated debut doesn’t pretend to be a faithful recreation of the facts of the Brontës’ lives. Instead it succeeds on a much trickier level, giving us a psychologically vivid Emily who did not write “Wuthering Heights” because a real-life romance unlocked her passionate nature, but whom we’d love to imagine having had such a grand affair, because she was always the woman with “Wuthering Heights” inside her.
  75. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    Never really addresses why aspects of the ratings don't work, proposes concrete improvements or compares the system to those in other countries. Still, picture's bracing, hilarious and out-there elements make it a landmark.
  76. 10,000 km
    From first frame to last, the filmmaking exudes intelligence and control, with none of the chilly emotional distance those qualities can imply. Form and content are in near-perfect balance.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Orlando
    Orlando provides exciting, wonderfully witty entertainment with glorious settings and costumes and Tilda Swinton’s sock performance in the title role.
  78. When Lambs Become Lions
    When Lambs Become Lions thoughtfully and provocatively articulates a collision of social and environmental crises in which man is both victor and victim: a circle of life that stalls us all.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Foreign Affair
    While subject is handled for comedy, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder have managed to underlay the fun with an expose of human frailties and, to some extent, indicate a passive bitterness among the conquered in the occupied areas.
  80. Origin
    The film will get people thinking and talking. The way DuVernay directs it, Origin is a swirling tornado of ideas.
  81. Rebuilding
    I was touched, at moments, by O’Connor’s woeful countenance, but as written and directed by Max Walker-Silverman, Rebuilding has no motor.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bastard Out of Carolina
    The pic is a quality item earmarked for serious auds by its nonexploitative handling of potent material, the strong work of debuting helmer Anjelica Huston and striking perfs from young newcomer Jena Malone, Jennifer Jason Leigh and others.
  83. Point Blank
    Unlike John Boorman's trippy 1967 L.A. noir of the same title, frenetic Gallic suspenser Point Blank provides few existential thrills but plenty of heart-racing action as it follows one man's marathon dash to save his kidnapped wife from execution.
  84. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words
    The lack of any significant investigation into performance styles is acutely felt, particularly given the very different methods of her major directors.
  85. Billy the Kid
    One of the more irresponsible eruptions in the current rash of populist nonfiction cinema.
  86. Jar City
    A taut police procedural that craftily blends ripped-from-the-headlines genetic issues with foreboding Icelandic stoicism, Jar City reps a supremely confident stride into mass-appeal genre fare for Icelandic hyphenate Baltasar Kormakur.
  87. Coexistence, My Ass!
    While there is nothing hilarious about these topics, Eliassi and Coexistence, My Ass do the impossible and deliver radical ideas through humor. Rarely has comedy felt this serious and urgent.
  88. A House of Dynamite
    It’s easy to watch, it’s wired to be exciting, with a showy hot-button relevance, but the problem with the movie is that it isn’t quite convincing. It’s trapped between trying to be a “serious” thriller and a piece of glorified schlock.
  89. Okja
    Downright charming at times and irrepressibly gonzo at others, Okja hews to an all-too-familiar trajectory.
  90. National Bird
    National Bird should cast an impressive shadow, inspiring some real debate in op-ed and public radio forums.
  91. The Great Flood
    Morrison has always closely collaborated with musicians, but here the helmer goes one better, making music the ultimate product of the Great Flood.
  92. Happyend
    As befits the son of the late Ryuichi Sakamoto (and director of acclaimed documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus) Sora displays a subtly fervent faith in music as perhaps the ultimate expression of nascent individuality, and therefore, ever and eternally, a threat to regimes that rely on conformity and obedience.
  93. Omar
    Deliberately ambiguous in how it approaches the inexorable nexus of violence, Omar will trouble those looking for condemnation rather than the messiness of humanity.
  94. Maurice
    Maurice, based on a posthumously published novel by E.M. Forster, is a well-crafted pic on the theme of homosexuality.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Manhunter
    An unpleasantly gripping thriller... Interesting Hitchcockian guilt transference territory and Mann's grip on his material is tight and sure. Director is at all times preoccupied by visual chic.
  96. Full River Red
    With a twist-packed plot to match its labyrinthine location, Zhang’s fast-paced film motors along nicely as an engaging “Knives Out”-style whodunnit before stumbling a little in the protracted final act.
  97. Titane
    With Titane, audiences occasionally just have to give themselves over to the movie’s demented momentum, taking whatever perverse pleasure they can from Ducournau’s willingness to push the boundaries
  98. Scheherazade Tell Me a Story
    Though treating women's oppression as a political issue isn't exactly new, the clarity with which it's spelled out in Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story is both bold and brave.
  99. Joy
    If all the performances here feel lived-in, it’s because they’re literally just that — but even within that context, Alphonsus is an electric find, silently signaling Joy’s clashing moral impulses with a complexity that would defeat many a professional.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fail-Safe
    Fail Safe is a tense and suspenseful piece of filmmaking dealing with the frightening implications of accidental nuclear warfare. It faithfully translates on the screen the power and seething drama of the Eugene Burdick-Harvey Wheeler book.
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