Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Give Me Liberty
    Give Me Liberty catches us off guard with its sense of humor, which amplifies the sheer absurdity of certain situations while respecting the fundamental humanity of its characters — further reflected in the choice of casting actors with disabilities.
  2. The Tomorrow Man
    If the ultimate effect is a little more slight than one might’ve hoped, Jones and his appealing cast nonetheless sustain a low-key charm even after the enigmatic initial promise burns off like morning fog.
  3. The Farewell
    What makes The Farewell so effective is that in delving into such a specific case, the film invites audiences to reflect on the passing of relatives close to them.
  4. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
    In my judgment, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is an honestly unsettling and authentic inquiry into the question of who Ted Bundy was, how he operated, what his capture and trial and ongoing infamy has meant, and what, if anything, his existence tells us about our individual relationship to toxic evil.
  5. Divine Love
    The new age of Brazilian protest cinema begins here, and “Divine Love” has kicked it off in dancing shoes.
  6. Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    Cold Case Hammarskjöld doesn’t offer the last word about the issues it raises. But it’s a movie that should be seen, grappled with, argued with, and experienced, because the questions it plants in us are dark enough to reverberate as powerfully as answers.
  7. Clemency
    If Woodard is hoping for her overdue second Oscar nomination after 1983’s “Cross Creek,” she’s got a decent shot with this excruciating character arc. Yet, the actress is even better in the scenes where Bernadine simply gets drunk, even if she still can’t talk about anything but work.
  8. David Crosby: Remember My Name
    In David Crosby: Remember My Name, Crosby is more than just a rock ‘n’ roll survivor nursing a lifetime of second thoughts. He’s a romantic witness to a time that was genuinely about following the road of excess to the palace of wisdom.
  9. Sharkwater Extinction
    A testament to its maker’s staunch belief in the cause of shark preservation, it’s a plea for transparency and conservation whose gorgeous 4K cinematography should make it an enticing proposition for nonfiction cinephiles and activists alike.
  10. Alita: Battle Angel
    This manga-based cyberpunk origin story is a pretty zappy effects showcase, weighed down by a protracted, soul-challenged Frankenstory that short-circuits every time it gets moving.
  11. The Unicorn
    Lead players Lauren Lapkus and co-scripter Nick Rutherford are amply engaging and sympathetic, even when the behavior of their characters is cringe-worthy embarrassing. No, never mind: Make that especially when those characters are humiliating themselves for our enjoyment.
  12. Then Came You
    Since the filmmakers’ hearts are clearly in the right place, it’s a shame its parts couldn’t knit together a bit more seamlessly. The narrative’s lifeblood is the sweet friendship that develops between Calvin and Skye — and the actors’ magnetic chemistry keeps that alive.
  13. Miss Bala
    Miss Bala no longer serves as a critique of a system that might allow innocent people to get caught in the crossfire of the drug war, but as the kick-ass origin story for a new kind of action hero.
  14. Brittany Runs A Marathon
    This terrifically engaging debut feature by playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo is the best kind of “crowdpleaser”: one that earns every emotional beat that might seem formulaic in four out of five similar enterprises.
  15. Animals
    It’s the performances that punch through the illusion, as Grainger and Shawkat’s dynamic turns on a dime from raucous, debauched complicity to savage mutual confrontation — the kind of close, cold truth-telling that, where best friends are involved, results more often than not in hurtful lies being told.
  16. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
    Competently mounted yet plodding, it’s manifestly a labor of love that becomes a bit of a labor to watch.
  17. Blinded by the Light
    It’s the sort of unguarded drama they used to make in the ‘80s — a coming-of-age tale of unabashed earnestness — but it’s also a delirious and romantic rock ‘n’ roll parable.
  18. Big Time Adolescence
    Big Time Adolescence isn’t bad, but it’s a trifle.
  19. Apollo 11
    Apollo 11 is a cool, meticulous, at times enthralling documentary that captures the Apollo 11 flight in its entirety through raw footage drawn from the NASA vaults.
  20. After the Wedding
    Granted, Freundlich has the benefit of Bier’s screenplay contributions to guide him, but in his particular execution, the story feels grounded for a very different strategy from Bier’s: Rather than going out of his way to include recognizable human moments, he strips away anything excessive, allowing subtext to surface in the quiet spaces between dialogue.
  21. Adam
    Though too insider-hip (and sometimes sexually graphic) a movie for more conservative viewers, this ingratiating and nuanced tale has plenty to offer those accepting of but not particularly knowledgeable about trans culture.
  22. Braid
    Braid does look great. But Mitzi Peirone’s debut feature is so void of any substance beyond the pretentiously pictorial that one suspects her real calling is in music videos or advertising.
  23. Fighting with My Family
    Fighting With My Family may not be an Oscar contender but it has enough wit, heart, energy and good cheer to make it a fun watch even for non-wrestling fans.
  24. Cold Pursuit
    By pumping up the darkly comedic undertones, augmenting the frigid chill of the original, Moland’s terrific, riveting noir-tinged picture distinguishes itself from other rote, reductive remakes.
  25. Velvet Buzzsaw
    In her capacity as a film critic — and the sort of populist who was allergic to snobs like Morf — Pauline Kael famously quipped, “Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.” Gilroy doesn’t even aspire to making great art, but he’s getting better at delivering the latter.
  26. High Flying Bird
    It’s certainly more interested in ideas than characters, and the film stumbles when it makes half-hearted attempts at romantic intrigue or tragic backstories, but its subversive view of race, money and power in modern sports couldn’t be more timely.
  27. In Like Flynn
    Efficiently engineered by veteran Aussie director Russell Mulcahy (“Highlander,” “Razorback”) to achieve a hugely satisfying balance of seriocomic action sequences and sometimes boisterous, sometimes sentimental male bonding.
  28. Soni
    With an intelligent, subtle script and camerawork so organically natural one doesn’t immediately realize that each scene is shot in one take, the film draws on a subject much in the news and spins it into a multilayered yet low-key study without preaching or sensationalizing.
  29. Tito and the Birds
    Employing a darkly iridescent fusion of oil paint and digital embellishment, it renders a growing dystopia in shifting, seasick colors, distorted into about as much exquisite, Expressionist-inspired nightmare fuel as its family-film remit will allow.
  30. One Cut of the Dead
    “One Cut” captures all the craziness and exhilaration of movie-making on a minuscule budget. High-energy performances from a cast of little-knowns are perfectly tuned to the material. The outstanding technical package is a great example of how to create a Poverty Row look for what’s actually a very sophisticated filmmaking exercise.
  31. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    The Lego Movie 2 ought to have raised the bar, and while it’s faster, denser, and jam-packed with all sorts of catchy new songs (including one, “Catchy Song,” that’s insidiously engineered to get stuck inside your head), all that energy only goes so far to cover for the wobblier foundation on which this film is built.
  32. Styx
    This is "All Is Lost” with a spinning moral compass and a topical dimension that proves even more gripping than its brilliantly achieved visceral action.
  33. The Breaker Upperers
    It’s a terrific showcase for the duo and their entire cast, which, besides a pop-up bit from Clement, is curated from a local talent pool that Hollywood has yet to spelunk. After this, it should.
  34. Pledge
    This third feature for director Daniel Robbins is no delicate flower of cinematic art, but a lean and mean shocker that tells its tale of collegiate hazing run amuck with brute efficiency.
  35. King of Thieves
    As the film slackens its pace and shifts awkwardly from caper mode to sober moral deliberations, its one-note characters can’t quite carry it.
  36. Polar
    Gratuitous sex, gruesome torture, copious amounts of gore, and garish imagery populate the picture. Those qualities might be reason enough for some to watch, although a great many others would do well to scroll right past it on their Netflix feeds.
  37. Serenity
    Serenity sees a usually reliable screenwriter-turned-director take a bold swing and miss the mark completely, so intent on pulling the rug out from under you that he never notices you weren’t even standing on it.
  38. St. Bernard Syndicate
    A wily left turn into narrative filmmaking for celebrated docmaker Mads Brügger (“The Red Chapel”), St. Bernard Syndicate deftly extends the dry satirical streak of his non-fiction work into a more heightened vein of farce; rarefied cult status awaits.
  39. Don't Come Back from the Moon
    The movie captivates and fascinates as a free-form dream constantly poised on a knife edge between roiling nightmare and reassuring resolution. The surprising yet satisfyingly ambiguous ending allows for either option.
  40. Who Will Write Our History
    A vital and sobering documentary directed by Roberta Grossman, always knew that they were drafting the record of an existence whose memory — were it not for them — would be wiped away.
  41. Dragon Ball Super: Broly
    If you’re among the heretofore uninitiated drawn to this new Dragon Ball extravaganza, which has been dubbed into English and booked into 1,440 North American theaters, you may often find yourself experiencing similar frustration as you struggle to make sense of a patchwork plot that seems derived from various strands of the ongoing mythos, and is filled with apparently major characters whose backstories are only fuzzily defined.
  42. All These Small Moments
    Though this sweet, subtle, and sentimental work is a smidge too simplistic in narrative design, it wins over any resistance with its quiet refinement and heartrending insight.
  43. Fyre
    Fyre, in the end, understands that the McFarlands of the world, changing the culture online but also wreaking havoc in the very real world, are bound to affect us all.
  44. Adult Life Skills
    For the most part, the film is similarly content to repeat the past, all the way through to its predictable liberating-feel-good wrap-up.
  45. The Kid Who Would Be King
    With its retro-video-game score and “Goonies”-style gang of misfit characters, the movie plays like a throwback to Spielberg-produced adventure films of the ’80s. And yet, the premise feels wobbly at best.
  46. Replicas
    How late can a thriller spring a plot twist that at least partially compensates for all the cavernous plot holes, risible dialogue, and ludicrously illogical behavior that precede it? Probably not nearly as late as the makers of Replicas wait before introducing a third-act reveal that brazenly acknowledges just how silly things have been up to that point.
  47. And Breathe Normally
    What might, in other hands, be melodramatic or emotionally manipulative remains resolutely unsentimental here.
  48. Perfect Strangers (Perfectos Desconocidos)
    Released in Mexico late last year, Caro’s seriocomic adaptation alternates between a tense, well-acted chamber drama and an at times overly didactic parable, but its focus on our newfound willingness to collect all of our darkest secrets behind such an easily pierced veil – do we realize how precarious that tightrope we’re walking is? On some level, are we secretly hoping we might fall? – provides for plenty of squeamish entertainment.
  49. A Dog's Way Home
    For every shameless trick the filmmakers employ to pluck our heartstrings, resonant chords are struck elsewhere, teaching audiences about family, the power of unconditional love, and the ripple effects of compassion.
  50. Glass
    It’s good to see Shyamalan back (to a degree) in form, to the extent that he’s recovered his basic mojo as a yarn spinner. But Glass occupies us without haunting us; it’s more busy than it is stirring or exciting.
  51. West of Sunshine
    Arriving at a moment when parenting and child development are being closely analyzed and discussed, West of Sunshine is a timely and intelligent essay on the eternal theme of how fathers can both inspire and alienate their sons.
  52. American Hangman
    American Hangman belongs to that species of grade-Z movie that’s at once grisly and pretentious. It’s trash with a lot on its mind.
  53. Animal Crackers
    Though inevitably derivative in some ways (it won’t be hard to spot the influence of “Shrek” and various Disney classics), Animal Crackers asserts its own identity, combining some of the most distinctive voices with an ensemble of personality-rich, sequel-ready characters.
  54. The Vanishing
    Falling between the stools of thriller and drama, this speculative tale grows steadily less satisfying, despite a handsome look and a strong cast.
  55. The Venerable W.
    “Evil” is one of those tricky words usually best avoided, since its quasi-mythological sense of moral absolutism tends to downplay the human agency involved. Yet as Barbet Schroeder well knows, there are times when no other term properly conveys the insidious nature of intolerance and carnage robed in the trappings of power.
  56. Communion
    While Communion holds tight to its own private mysteries, it scores a perfect 10 in drawing out viewer empathy, leaving us hoping anxiously that things will turn out all right for its protagonists.
  57. Escape Room
    The first part of the film gets some airy momentum going. Then, however, we learn the secret of what the characters have in common, and it gives you that slightly sinking feeling of one contrivance too many.
  58. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    Here, the visuals outdo anything we’ve seen before, to such a degree that we might almost overlook the subtler innovations in the character animation: the nuances of expression on both the human and reptilian faces, and the wonderful nonverbal tactics these artists use to convey emotional intricacies neither Hiccup nor Toothless have had to communicate before, all of which pays off in an unforgettable final scene.
  59. Life and Nothing More
    Whereas a Hollywood director might use subjective framing or emotional soundtrack cues to nudge audiences’ reactions in a certain way, Esparza strips away nearly all those techniques to a pure, neorealist approach: life and nothing more.
  60. Hale County This Morning, This Evening
    The movie has won year-end attention (it made this year’s Oscar documentary short list), and once you let yourself glide onto its wavelength, it’s got a cosmically becalmed addictive quality.
  61. Buffalo Boys
    All in all, this Eastern western is a jovial genre cocktail, but it’ll be more interesting to see if its director can bring greater nuance to whatever his next project turns out to be.
  62. Holmes & Watson
    The trouble is, Sherlock Holmes exists so large in audiences’ minds already that the pair’s uninspired take feels neither definitive nor an especially fresh take, but just an off-brand, garden-variety parody.
  63. Swing Kids
    A brash, busy and often bizarre genre mashup from South Korean blockbuster merchant Kang Hyeong-Cheol, this far-fetched tale of an African-American G.I. finding terpsichorean kinship with a group of Asian misfits in a POW camp brings a bit of “Footloose”-style pep to an otherwise bloodily solemn anti-war tragedy.
  64. American Renegades
    While not particularly inspired, memorable or suspenseful, the action here is impressively scaled, from a tank plunging off a bridge to helicopter stunts and all that diving activity. It may have been a bad investment, but technically first-rate American Renegades does put its considerable budgetary resources right up there onscreen.
  65. All Is True
    The result is a revisionist fiasco, too dense with Shakespeare allusions for casual moviegoers, and too fast and loose with the facts for those who know a thing or two about the man. In short, All Is True takes the English language’s most gifted dramatist and reduces his sunset years to a sloppy soap opera.
  66. Second Act
    Even though Second Act shouldn’t work, it does (sort of). It’s got flow, a certain knowing ticky-tackiness about its own contrivances. You know you’re watching a connect-the-dots comedy, but the dots sparkle. And Lopez gives her first star performance in a while. Age has enriched her talent; she brings curlicues of experience to every scene.
  67. Welcome To Marwen
    The film is far from incompetent, and it brims with ambition, but too much of the time what’s happening just sits there. It’s a lavishly odd concoction, like a feel-good movie for OCD miniature-world Barbie-doll fetishists.
  68. They Shall Not Grow Old
    if They Shall Not Grow Old is head-spinning for its jolting animation of creakily shot battle scenes — tricked out with ingeniously integrated sound editing and seamlessly retimed from 13 frames a second to 24 — its greatest revelation isn’t one of sound and fury. Rather, it’s the film’s faces that stick longest in the mind.
  69. Nona
    Nona greatly improves if you view it not as a problematic, lopsided attempt to convey the personal danger and political urgency of current migration trends, but as a small, impressionistic two-character piece that veers earnestly if misguidedly into larger issues in its closing lap.
  70. Vice
    The movie, though it pretends to reveal how power works, is ultimately content to remain on the outside, sticking its finger in the eye of power.
  71. Backtrace
    Throughout most of the movie’s running time, Modine is tasked with the majority of the heavy lifting, and he handles the burden admirably.
  72. Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki
    Had Arakawa widened the portrait just a bit to include other voices — whether artistic collaborators or the young audiences still just discovering his work — the film would easily have demonstrated how his legacy will live forever. Then again, it’s assumed that anyone watching “Never-Ending Man” knows that already.
  73. Dumplin'
    Indeed, from its unpatronizing body-positive messaging to its restrained, tactful faith-based concessions (a given with Parton on board), Dumplin' has been so carefully calculated, it’s a wonder it plays as warmly and sincerely as it does.
  74. The Quake
    There’s nothing terribly profound or innovative about what The Quake achieves. But like “The Wave” before it, it’s just intelligent and serious enough to give you your escapist cake — deluxe popcorn perils in all their big-screen glory — without making you eat the familiar guilt of empty-calorie overload.
  75. The Mule
    There’s nothing inherently wrong with presenting bigoted people onscreen, since heaven knows they exist in real life, but the trouble with The Mule is that it invites audiences to laugh along with Earl’s ignorance.
  76. 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.
  77. Aquaman
    Aquaman gets his own adventure, and it’s kind of a shock that it doesn’t suck, but only if you’re willing to sit through two hours of water-logged world-building before the movie finally takes off.
  78. Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle
    The film is not without spectacle, but it is strangely without soul. That would’ve made it a disappointment to anyone buying a movie ticket, but perhaps at home, it will make for a more welcome distraction.
  79. Bumblebee
    Bumblebee shows that there’s room for a bit more nuance within the formula, but if you break it down, this relatively enjoyable film is made entirely from recycled parts.
  80. Bathtubs Over Broadway
    Anyone who loves musical theater owes it to themselves to see Bathtubs Over Broadway, a delightful deep-dive documentary into one man’s obsession with the obscure world of industrial musicals — corporate-sponsored song-and-dance revues from the golden age of American capitalism.
  81. Back Roads
    It now takes more than it once did to shock us, and Back Roads wants to do just that, but the effect, in this case, is more audacious than it is convincing.
  82. Asher
    That blend of action genre content and character study is a comfortable mix for Perlman, even if Asher doesn’t quite have the stuff to be truly memorable on either count.
  83. All the Devil's Men
    Resourceful and energetic, All the Devil’s Men is better than it might have been. But it’s still not very good.
  84. Bitter Melon
    The complex tonal, textural and thematic mix here doesn’t always work, but it’s always interesting and often invigorating.
  85. Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes
    In the piercing and perceptive documentary Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, it’s fascinating, in an outrageous and distressing way, to witness the moment when Ailes transformed the nation’s political landscape virtually overnight.
  86. Mortal Engines
    The film never captures the bonkers, go-for-broke energy that made the ill-fated likes of “Cloud Atlas” or “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” such enjoyable noble failures, too caught up in hitting the same old blockbuster beats to stop and wonder where the story’s weirder threads might have lead.
  87. The American Meme
    The American Meme is a film I very much recommend, since it’s both highly entertaining and an essential snapshot of the voyeuristic parasitic American fishbowl.
  88. The Charmer
    Alami and Ingeborg Topsøe’s finely whittled screenplay plays its revelations patiently, putting a lot of early trust in their leading man’s powers of silent implication and the serene foreboding of Sophia Olsson’s charcoal-streaked cinematography.
  89. Ghostbox Cowboy
    This original if sometimes befuddling vision blurs the line between fiction and documentary elements, conventional storytelling and improvisational collage, all to oft-bracing effect.
  90. Sicilian Ghost Story
    The filmmaking doesn’t simply tell a story but makes us feel its impact.
  91. Song of Back and Neck
    Because Lieberstein is an inherently likable actor, we identify with his plight, even if it takes a while to realize that he’s essentially brought this situation upon himself.
  92. Never Look Away
    One of the subtler strengths of Never Look Away is the canny evocation of a war-weary, defeated population who did not experience communism as a revolution but a substitution. The insignia and the catechisms changed, but the underlying attitudes remained grotesquely similar in their callous prioritization of dogma over decency.
  93. The Possession of Hannah Grace
    Viewers hooked on the spectacle of demonic possession tend to like their satanic tropes served neat. The Possession of Hannah Grace serves them sloppy, if not without a certain random soupçon of grisly style.
  94. Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer
    A would-be new “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” it’s energetic and polished enough to avoid feeling like a rip-off — “Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny,” this is not — but there the compliments pretty much end.
  95. Anna and the Apocalypse
    “Anna” picks itself up, dusts itself off, and comes home with a finale that’s so satisfying and sincere, it’ll make some viewers misty-eyed.
  96. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    In the end, while the movie’s wit is its most satisfying selling point, “Spider-Verse” proves too clever for its own good. But in this universe, where audiences are suffering from the very real phenomenon of superhero overload, ambition and originality are to be encouraged, especially it broadens the mythology to include women, people of color, and yes, even that hammiest of scene-stealers, Peter Porker.
  97. The Great Buddha+
    This ballad of sad losers mixed with satire on parochial politics is convulsively funny yet uncompromisingly bleak, bridging art with entertainment.
  98. The Cleaners
    The Cleaners has the effect of scanning three dozen grim tweets. There’s not much to latch onto besides an overwhelming sense of helplessness; like the internet itself, it’s crowded with opinions but lacking in intimacy.
  99. Robin Hood
    Robin Hood is no classic, but if it sometimes seems like it’s trying to be “Baz Luhrmann’s Robin Hood,” more power to it. The movie is a diverting live-wire lark — one that, for my money, gets closer to the spirit of what Robin Hood is about than the logy 1991 Kevin Costner version or the dismal 2010 Russell Crowe version.
  100. Creed II
    Creed II has been made with heart and skill, and Jordan invests each moment with such fierce conviction that he makes it all seem like it matters.
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