Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Red Cliff
    Balances character, grit, spectacle and visceral action in a meaty, dramatically satisfying pie that delivers on the hype and will surprise many who felt the Hong Kong helmer progressively lost his mojo during his long years stateside.
  2. Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed
    Solid, straightforward docu should prove a durable broadcast and educational item for years to come.
  3. The Limey
    One has no problem praising the bravura acting of the entire ensemble.
  4. Behind the Sun
    Consummately crafted and stunningly shot in magnificent locations deep in Brazil's remote northeastern badlands, the film unapologetically courts the commercial curve of the international arthouse arena with its rustic exotica and sensory overload of poetic imagery, giving it something of a grandiose air.
  5. My Terrorist
    Sometimes first-person to a borderline-indulgent fault, docu still offers potent spur for discussion on the blurry line between forgiveness and tolerance toward terrorism.
  6. Keep the Change
    It’s an ode to self-discovery and acceptance that’s as funny as it is sweet.
  7. The Tale of King Crab
    It’s an old-fashioned literary fable, spiked with shots of grimacing men with sunburned faces blasting one another with shotguns that wouldn’t be out of place in a Sergio Leone movie.
  8. Rust and Bone
    A tender yet heavily de-romanticized love story between a boxer with broken hands and an orca trainer with missing legs, Rust and Bone serves as an impressive if somewhat overblown exercise in contrasts.
  9. Inland Empire
    Inland Empire may mesmerize those for whom the helmer can do no wrong, but the unconvinced and the occasional admirer will find it dull as dishwater and equally murky.
  10. The Rape of Recy Taylor
    Timing alone makes The Rape of Recy Taylor something close to essential viewing. But Buirski’s approach is oddly diffuse, lacking the clarity of rage that has informed so many recent touchpoints in social-issue documentary.
  11. Eye in the Sky
    A rivetingly suspenseful drama that deftly intertwines elements of ticking-clock thriller and tragic farce.
  12. Kiki
    Regrettably, Kiki seems far less interested in entertainment than activism.
  13. Concrete Utopia
    It’s a fractious, blood-soaked drama about the will to survive that feels like “Earthquake” crossed with “Lord of the Flies.” What’s gripping is that you watch it and think, “If I were in this movie, what would I do?”
  14. Down in the Delta
    Poet Maya Angelou's debut feature directing effort is a solid and affecting piece of work.
  15. Frantz
    Frantz plays like classic melodrama, and has certain charms.
  16. Val
    What makes Val a good and heartfelt movie, rather than just some glorified movie-star-as-trashed-parody-of-himself piece of reality-show exploitation, is that Kilmer brings the film an incredible sense of self-awareness.
  17. The Fight
    America is so punch-drunk that The Fight often feels like it’s whacking old bruises. But that is the national psyche’s problem more than the filmmakers’. For their part, they have made a worthwhile record of the civil rights advocates combating the country’s backslide into stripping away rights for voters, immigrants, pregnant women and the LGBTQ community.
  18. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    For all its digressions and occasional flat moments, Iwai's movie is a remarkable, acutely involving one, working on an emotional level that can only really be expressed through music -- a strong component in all of Iwai's pics.
  19. Robin's Wish
    A documentary that’s honest and scary, wrenching and moving.
  20. Wordplay
    Punsters, linguists and crossword puzzle fanatics everywhere couldn't ask for a more bracing tribute than helmer Patrick Creadon's buoyant and exhilaratingly brainy documentary Wordplay.
  21. Cheech and Chong's Last Movie
    I’d never spent a minute thinking about how these two put their act together, but the evolution of their career, which took shape with not much more calculation than the comedy bits they often improvised, turns out to be a story at once fascinating and enchanting.
  22. Like Father, Like Son
    The director retains his controlled style even as he moves toward a more traditional narrative mode.
  23. Most Beautiful Island
    The movie’s payoff is every bit as delicious as its build-up.
  24. 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.
  25. Filmworker
    Filmworker is a brisk, compelling movie that’s pure candy for Kubrick buffs, yet there are oddities about it.
  26. The Silence of Others
    Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo’s straightforward but emotionally acute documentary works as both a thorough history lesson and a work of contemporary activism.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Who'll Stop the Rain
    Film has a hardnose progression and solidity in its characterizations. Nolte earns his star stripes here, displaying presence and perceptiveness in socking home his character, while Weld and Moriarty are also effective.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mystify: Michael Hutchence
    While Mystify in many ways amplifies the tragedy of Hutchence’s death, it also goes a long way toward explaining and humanizing it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Major Barbara
    Adapted from an old Shaw play, circa 1905, it still carries the lightning thrusts of Shavian caustic satire at any and all levels of society.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Marked Woman
    Marked Woman has no romance to sell. This is a hard-hitting yarn of five girls working for a vice king.
  31. Fair Play
    The key to the film’s potential success isn’t just that it’s made in a commercial genre. It’s that Fair Play, while full of sex, money, corporate backstabbing, and a lot of other things that are fun to watch, really is a good little movie.
  32. Colewell
    The film’s finely crafted serenity is in keeping with its main character’s secluded state of affairs, and mind.
  33. She Will
    As a superbly crafted, thematically rich fable, it administers a potent dose of #MeToo vengeance, all while wearing its nasty sense of humor like a red-lipstick grin applied to a perfectly masklike face.
  34. Queen of Katwe
    The film’s strongest assets are undoubtedly its actors.
  35. Werewolf
    For all her attempts at documentary-style verisimilitude, filmmaker Ashley McKenzie doesn’t really cover much new ground with Werewolf.
  36. Pop Aye
    This bucolic escape from big-city life is anchored by a solid script filled with characters who, despite reaching the end of the road, find ways to make peace with the world.
  37. Time
    Script is sometimes confusingly structured, and in its second half doesn't move as smoothly from scene to scene as in Kim's best pics.
  38. A Field in England
    Clearly, Wheatley is bored with the paint-by-numbers approach of his horror contemporaries, but has swung so far in the opposite direction here, the result feels almost amateurishly avant garde at times, guilty of the sort of indulgences one barely tolerates in student films.
  39. I'm Not There.
    Stylistically audacious in the way it employs six different actors and assorted visual styles to depict various aspects of the troubadour's life and career, the film nevertheless lacks a narrative and a center, much like the "ghost" at its core.
  40. Of Mice and Men
    Well-mounted and very traditional, Of Mice and Men honorably serves John Steinbeck’s classic story of two Depression-era drifters without bringing anything new to it. Fine performances down the line and sensitive handling justify this attempt to introduce a new generation to the small tragedy of George and Lennie, although lack of any edge or fresh motivation to tell the tale will keep enthusiasm, and B.O. results, at a moderate level.
  41. Inside Out 2
    Inside Out 2 is a transporting fable about the desire to fit in, to be validated by the Cool Culture that’s, more and more, our collective seal of approval and success. And while the movie is an enchanting animated ride of the spirit (be prepared for it to help save summer at the box office), it may also be the most poignantly perceptive tale of the conundrums of early adolescence since “Eighth Grade.”
  42. The Proposition
    Hillcoat and Cave have here found their most fertile ground yet for allegory-rich examinations of life and death in remote, pressure-cooker environments.
  43. The Son's Room
    While devotees expecting Moretti's wry worldview may feel shortchanged, others will find this a profoundly moving experience, giving it fuel to cross borders into the arthouse niche.
  44. Derrida
    An affectionate but aptly complex view of one of our epoch's great philosophers.
  45. The Man Who Wasn't There
    The Coen brothers tread into James M. Cain territory with The Man Who Wasn't There, but with less tasty results than either Cain or the Coens themselves at their best.
  46. The Bourne Supremacy
    The action is confusing at first and the hyperventilated editing style at times goes beyond the pale, so pic ultimately emerges as an erratic but not unworthy sequel to its gritty, genre-invigorating predecessor.
  47. You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo
    Luc Cote and Patricio Henriquez's You Don't Like the Truth demonstrates, through excerpts from an actual videotaped interrogation at Guantanamo, the process by which human will can be systematically broken down to force an admission of guilt, regardless of truth.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    Regarded as essentially unfilmable by many observers, so Philip Kaufman has pulled off a near-miracle in creating this richly satisfying adaptation.
  49. Crystal Swan
    No community is as straightforward as it seems in Zhuk and Landauer’s irony-rich, tone-switching script: What begins as a kookily comic quest is complicated by the emergence of human tragedy, prejudice and sexual threat.
  50. Hill of Freedom
    Hill of Freedom, its noble implications lending outward grandeur to a romantic triangle that reps a cream puff even by Hong’s trifling standards. Cream puffs have their merits, though — principally the aerated, uncomplicated sweetness that characterizes this barely feature-length distraction, the light emotional foibles and regrettably careless cinematic construction of which are of a piece with the helmer’s swiftly produced recent work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The King of Comedy
    The King of Comedy is a royal disappointment. To be sure, Robert De Niro turns in another virtuoso performance for Martin Scorsese, just as in their four previous efforts. But once again – and even more so – they come up with a character that it’s hard to spend time with. Even worse, the characters – in fact, all the characters – stand for nothing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Robin and Marian
    Robin and Marian is a disappointing and embarrassing film: disappointing, because Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, the brilliant Robert Shaw, Richard Harris and a screenplay by James Goldman ought to add up to something even in the face of Richard Lester's flat direction; embarrassing, because the incompatible blend of tongue-in-cheek comedy, adventure and romance gives the Robin Hood-revisited film the grace and energy of a geriatrics' discotheque.
  53. The Fall Guy
    The Fall Guy is funny, it’s sexy, and it features the boy toy version of “Barbie” MVP Ryan Gosling — which is to say, this time around, he embodies the ultimate action figure.
  54. Creed III
    Creed III is a sports drama that feels like a thriller with an urgent conscience.
  55. Wicked
    Instead of feeling bloated, Wicked has found its ideal form, where every frame comes crammed with the kind of detail that could easily have been distracting, had a lesser talent than Cynthia Erivo been asked to carry it.
  56. The Lavender Scare
    Essential and absorbing documentary.
  57. The Biggest Little Farm
    Both deeply personal and remarkably objective, The Biggest Little Farm offers a firsthand account of the ups and downs of married duo John and Molly Chester’s trial-and-error attempt to start a biodiverse agricultural operation on land that had long since been stripped of nutrients.
  58. I Wish You All the Best
    The pleasant, polished drama provides a compassionate take on a high schooler undergoing considerable change, its only debit being the arguably too-neat depiction of that transitional circumstance.
  59. Laurence Anyways
    The clearest achievement of Dolan’s typically self-indulgent eye-popper comes in equating its gender-bending protagonist’s metamorphoses with those in any relationship that lasts for years.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pillow Talk
    A sleekly sophisticated production that deals chiefly with s-e-x.
  61. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
    The movie is diligent and, to a degree, absorbing — a legal/business saga that’s also the story of a family in crisis.
  62. Dukhtar
    A handsomely made, nicely modulated fugitive drama with forceful social overtones that decries the ongoing practice of marrying child brides in tribal regions of the country’s mountainous north.
  63. Les Destinées
    A massive undertaking and an accomplished piece of filmmaking in a solid tradition of intelligent, meticulous literary adaptations.
  64. 1971
    The film offers surprisingly cogent, lived-in evocations of a period too often glossed over in impersonal, by-the-book montages.
  65. Hounds of Love
    A harrowing ride that morphs from discrete horror to probing character study and back again in a vivid yet admirably restrained 108 minutes.
  66. See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary
    An outstanding documentary exploration of the travails of four deaf entertainers.
  67. A Most Wanted Man
    Corbijn succeeds here in large part because his attention to nuance and detail so fully complements that of the German operatives at the story’s core.
  68. The World Is Yours
    These criminals may be out of their league, but Gavras orchestrates it all with a surfeit of style and an irreverent sense of humor that spares no one, no matter their background.
  69. Not Going Quietly
    Along with his editor Kent Bassett, Bruckman weaves these events together rather conventionally yet thoughtfully, making plenty of room for Barkan’s home life and appealingly chipper character that he somehow manages to maintain through all his battles.
  70. Arbitrage
    Between this cast and the conviction Jarecki brings to the table, the film feels incredibly accomplished for a first feature.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Somersault
    Sexual compulsion accelerates adolescent angst in the arty Down Under drama, but while Shortland shows a notable eye for detail, her distracted approach to narrative and an attitude to her characters that's cold as the movie's snowfields make pic most likely to be embraced by serious-minded fest auds.
  72. Blue Beard
    This offbeat but compelling take on the tale, arguably the first serial-killer yarn, emphasizes sisterly bonds but still gets to the original story's heart of mysterious darkness with impressive results.
  73. The Princess and the Frog
    This cheeky update of a classic fairy tale boasts almost as many talking points as merchandising opportunities.
  74. 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.
  75. Memory Box
    Through an ingenious blend of image and music, Memory Box opens channels that allow our own experience to empathetically blend with those of the characters in a mix of imagination and reality.
  76. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
    The film is at once old-fashioned and refreshingly, realistically up to date in its take on modern courtship.
  77. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
    One of the world's great cities comes vibrantly alive through its music and musical denizens in Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul.
  78. A Disturbance in the Force
    To be sure, the fans will appreciate it a lot more than casual viewers. But it’s also an irresistible hoot for anyone with fond memories of star-studded 1970s musical/variety TV specials.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    El mariachi
    Spanish lingo crime meller has a verve and cheekiness that's partly a smart wedding of such influences as Sergio Leone, George Miller and south-of-the-border noir.
  80. Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
    Although the outcome is public record, picture is undeniably gripping as it reveals a distressing degree of voter complacency.
  81. 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.
  82. The World to Come
    This is filmmaking as attuned to incremental shifts in light and landscape (Romania’s, in fact, gorgeously filling in for undeveloped upstate New York) as the ebb and flow of a character’s interior joy, written in a face unaccustomed to smiling.
  83. The Brothers McMullen
    Good old-fashioned virtues of three-dimensional characters, fine dialogue, recognizable life situations and meat-and-potatoes content.
  84. ABC Africa
    Kiarostami shoots Africa with an uncanny verisimilitude, coming close here to his idea of a "poetic cinema" indebted more to poetry and music than the theatrical novelistic storytelling tradition.
  85. Urbania
    A darkly intriguing drama that probes the very nature of love and the lasting effects of loss.
  86. The Execution of Wanda Jean
    At its best, Garbus' account quietly depicts a set of wasted lives, and a closing image of Allen's plywood casket carted away by a bulldozer is emblematic of the tragedy.
  87. Cuban Rafters
    Noteworthy for its detail and evenhandedness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Something Wild
    Conceptually and stylistically compelling under Jonathan Demme's sometimes striking direction.
  89. *Corpus Callosum
    Watching *Corpus Callosum and marveling at its sprightliness, its joyous, imaginative air, its effortless attenuation to all that is wonderful and horrible and comical about modern technology, makes you want to jump up and shout for joy, too.
  90. Strange Fruit
    Where pic excels is in the depiction of a rich leftist movement, with several cultures interacting expressively in the 1930s and '40s.
  91. School Life
    There’s considerable poignancy in the contrast between this eccentric pair’s mutual sense that their lives are winding down and the vast, still-unshaped futures of their young charges, but Ní Chianáin’s film largely resists sentimentality of the “Greatest Love of All” variety.
  92. Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
    With the aid of Johnsen’s doc to overcome the obstacles China has put in his path, Ai’s voice carries louder than ever before.
  93. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    Farrell and Kidman are astonishingly gifted at playing the subtext of every scene.
  94. Wind River
    Wind River adds up, and skillfully, but in the end it’s not all that exciting. It’s a vision of the new American despair — not an inner-city movie, but an inner-wilderness movie — and it could have used another twist or two.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One, Two, Three
    Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three is a fast-paced, high-pitched, hard-hitting, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Story is so furiously quick-witted that some of its wit gets snarled and smothered in overlap. But total experience packs a considerable wallop.
  96. Air
    Air reveals how an exceptional Black athlete leveraged his talent and the power of being pursued by a bunch of white men in suits, to change the game. Not just basketball, but the whole field of celebrity endorsements.
  97. Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)
    “Hit Me Hard and Soft” is a concert film that doesn’t look and feel like other concert films. It’s a true experience, because of a combination of the show itself and the way that Cameron has filmed it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Marnie
    Marnie is the character study of a thief and a liar, but what makes her tick remains clouded even after a climax reckoned to be shocking but somewhat missing its point.
  99. Spider-Man
    Pic's happiest surprise is Tobey Maguire in the title role, as the young actor provides an emotional openness and vulnerability that gives this $120 million production its most distinctive flavor.
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