Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Notes on a Scandal
    The riveting interplay between Dench and Cate Blanchett draws blood with every scene, thanks to a precision-honed script and Eyre's equally incisive direction.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Charlotte's Web
    Heartwarming entertainment.
  3. Softie
    Softie clearly sees a beam of long-term hope for Kenya’s future in Mwangi and his political allies — including his no-bull, vinegar-tongued campaign manager Khadija, as delicious a documentary scene-stealer as we’ve seen this year. Yet Soko doesn’t go in for easy, crowd-pleasing uplift.
  4. The Dig
    It’s hard to say whether the period this picture exhumes was any more innocent than what the world now faces, but that’s certainly the way Stone plays it, acting like an urbane orchidologist, cross-breeding contemporary art-house touches with the old-school refinement of a vintage Masterpiece Theatre production. Sometimes the best escape from the craziness of today is to lose oneself in history.
  5. Athena
    The result is nothing short of an urban war movie, as charismatic characters decide to do something about the outrage people have been expressing toward law enforcement in the real world.
  6. Good Manners
    Class, desire, motherhood, responsibility to society — all these themes are worked in, to varying degrees. Yet balancing the film’s two halves is less successful, and certain shifts between humor and dead-seriousness don’t quite work.
  7. The Taiwan Oyster
    Disguised as a drunken cartwheel through expat paradise, Mark Jarrett’s striking feature juggles questions of mortality along its rowdy cross-country path.
  8. The Fall of Fujimori
    Ellen Perry seems keenly aware, there is really no need to embellish the Fujimori story, which has enough unlikely melodrama for six Italian operas.
  9. Blood Tea and Red String
    Often grotesque, though never in the "Sick and Twisted" juvenile gross-out mode, dreamlike feature is as lovingly crafted as it is unsettlingly sour-sweet, with Mark Growden's avant-garde folk score in perfect synch.
  10. Clueless
    A fresh, disarmingly bright and at times explosively funny comedy well worth a trip to the mall, even if it eventually runs out of gas.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The City of Lost Children
    A vibrant, bubbling cauldron of breathtaking f/x, gross-out humor and in-your-face imagery.
  12. Approved for Adoption
    It’s impossible not to be charmed on some level by Jung Henin and Laurent Boileau’s Approved for Adoption, though it’s best not to ask for too much.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    That's Entertainment!
    An outstanding, stunning, sentimental, exciting, colorful, enjoyable, spirit-lifting, tuneful, youthful, invigorating, zesty, respectful, dazzling, and richly satisfying feature documentary commemorating its filmusicals.
  14. Sing Your Song
    Moving and enlightening as it serves up a crash-course in 20th-century history.
  15. Uprising (2013)
    Amid the flood of documentaries about the Arab Spring in general and the Egyptian Revolution in particular, Uprising takes a clear, cohesive approach to the spontaneous events at its center.
  16. A Picture of You
    Competently written and skillfully acted, the film seems to be melodrama-bound, when a shocking discovery and the sudden arrival of friends instead send it careening into comedy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Patch of Blue
    Film has very good scripting plus excellent direction and performances, including an exceptional screen debut by Elizabeth Hartman as the gal.
  18. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
    Like any mixtape, it offers some truly transcendent moments alongside a smattering of filler, and never quite assembles its pieces into a cohesive whole.
  19. The Blue Room
    While this appropriately brief film unravels its enigma at a tidy clip, it gathers neither enough heat, nor quite enough of a chill, to linger in the bones.
  20. Almost Holy
    Hoover’s style seems equally fit for a bleak documentary, suspenseful thriller, black comedy, dystopian sci-fi nightmare and grisly horror film.
  21. Leonor Will Never Die
    Escobar is after something deeper than parody. She wants audiences to question how fictional strongmen have been idealized as real-world saviors.
  22. Amreeka
    A culture-clash dramedy whose background in Middle-East conflict is leavened with vibrant energy, balanced politics and droll humor by first-time feature director Cherien Dabis.
  23. The Endless Trench
    The Endless Trench plunges us into a living nightmare with enough atmospheric precision of its own: It needn’t literally spell things out for us.
  24. CODA
    Siân Heder, who came up as a writer and story editor on “Orange Is the New Black,” has directed just one previous feature (“Tallulah”), but she’s got the gift — the holy essence of how to shape and craft a drama that spins and burbles and flows.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Polyester
    A fitfully amusing comedy of not so ordinary people.
  26. Fire Island
    Yang may be the MVP in this ensemble, though the cast is terrific across the board.
  27. Will-o'-the-Wisp
    Rampantly horny and unapologetically silly, Will-o’-the-Wisp appeals to more primal desires and thought processes in its audience, even as it repurposes a Greta Thunberg speech or references the racially charged work of 18th-century Portuguese painter José Conrado Roza.
  28. 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.
  29. Bros
    Bros is confident enough being about queer characters that it doesn’t have to make them all likable.
  30. Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical
    The film, on balance, is cheery, sherbet-colored stuff, bursting with goodwill for all good people. What you remember from it, however, is each scene in which elder malevolence deliciously spoils the party.
  31. Stevie
    A forceful, affecting experience.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Song for Martin
    A moving love story with two exquisite central performances.
  33. Road to Perdition
    Sam Mendes' much-anticipated second effort after his Oscar-winning "American Beauty" finds him working in a very different key while displaying an even more pronounced attentiveness to tone, genre variations and artistic niceties.
  34. Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
    Rick McKay's exceptional new documentary Broadway: The Golden Age presents a veritable avalanche of interviews with some of the biggest names in the history of the American theater, preserving for posterity their wise words and disarming anecdotes.
  35. The Dish & the Spoon
    Gerwig, charmingly unflappable in "Greenberg," lets it all hang out here, unafraid to sacrifice likability to over-the-top hysteria as someone who cannot control herself, despite a lingering sense of her own absurdity. Alexander proves a worthily understated foil, his self-deprecatory whimsy recalling that of a young Johnny Depp.
  36. Hagazussa
    This is a frequently ravishing film, as attuned to the mysticism of landscapes as prime Herzog, while capable of jolting us with the occasional brutal image.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bishop's Wife
    Henry Koster's sympathetic direction deftly gets over the warm humor supplied by the script, taken from Robert Nathan's novel of the same title.
  38. Timestalker
    Timestalker may get a lot of mileage out of unrequited affection, but it still gives audiences plenty to love.
  39. Ammonite
    Ultimately more symbolic than satisfying, the project leaves one grateful that two stars of this caliber would take on such a story, while wishing their efforts had left us with a more resonant artifact.
  40. Climates
    Immaculately shot and composed as always, and moving at Ceylan's usual measured pace, this one is slightly enlivened by more likable perfs and a trim 98-minute running time.
  41. Skate Kitchen
    Skate Kitchen has plenty to say about the lengths to which young women must go to clear out a little breathing room in testosterone-heavy spaces, but it is first and foremost an irresistible hangout movie.
  42. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
    I defy you to see It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley and not fall in love with Jeff Buckley’s voice. By the time the film is over, you want to find a way to go back and rescue him to let him live the life he should have.
  43. The Devil's Candy
    Accomplished visually and busy sonically, it nonetheless falls short with a story of rock ‘n’ roll demonic possession that scarcely begins to exploit the ideas embedded in its serviceable premise.
  44. Gone Baby Gone
    Moral ambiguity is the real star of Ben Affleck's helming debut, Gone Baby Gone, an involving Boston-set tale of mixed motives, selflessness and perfidy in the wake of a 4-year-old girl's disappearance.
  45. Iron Crows
    Virtually an experimental film -- the humanity is rich, but pure image and sensation are what makes it tick.
  46. The Last Stop in Yuma County
    It’s a lean, tight, and stylishly clever B-movie about a bank robbery gone wrong.
  47. The Insult
    Toward the end, Doueiri attempts to give his two leads a little more nuance, but Tony’s overwhelming anger steamrolls over occasional conciliatory behavior, which winds up feeling just manipulative.
  48. Fremont
    In its final moments, the potency of Fremont sneaks up on you. You go in reluctant and even skeptical, and come out wondering how and why you’re moved to tears.
  49. Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune
    Briskly constructed and rich in Ochs' music and period notables, Kenneth Bowser's film will be a must for the artist's fans, but its fresh take on an overexamined decade should also appeal to Kennedy-era completists.
  50. Where Is Kyra?
    The emotional range of Pfeiffer’s riveting performance isn’t a broad one, though this frequently nonverbal film is entirely reliant on her cutting powers of expression as she progresses from harrowed to exhausted and back, at risk of disappearing into herself entirely.
  51. Zodiac Killer Project
    Speaking to viewers who are cognizant of what films can and cannot be made, Zodiac Killer Project is a biting statement on how many artists have been funneled into a creative dead-end by a trend-chasing market.
  52. Magic Mike
    Ladies are gonna love Magic Mike, a lively male-stripper meller inspired by Channing Tatum's late-teen, pre-screen stint as an exotic dancer.
  53. Straight Outta Compton
    If “Compton” is undeniably of the moment, it’s also timeless in its depiction of how artists and writers transform the world around them into angry, profane, vibrant and singular personal expression.
  54. Tale of Tales
    Taken together, the parables serve primarily to entertain — an effect that has as much to do with Garrone’s command of the cinematic language as it does the content itself.
  55. Juror #2
    As always, Eastwood respects our intelligence. And yet, Juror No. 2 registers as something of an anomaly in his oeuvre: It ranks among his quietest films, forgoing spectacle in favor of self-reflection.
  56. 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.
  57. Shithouse
    This is a modest film, well-acted but rather clumsily assembled, that almost certainly would have benefited from an in-person SXSW, where it’s possible to bask in the shared laughter of an enthusiastic first screening.
  58. White Palms
    An uncommonly resonant sports drama in which a talented yet troubled gymnast comes to terms with a turbulent past.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Scarecrow
    Scarecrow is a periodically interesting but ultimately unsatisfying character study of two modern drifters.
  60. Joy of Man's Desiring
    Static, strikingly composed documentary stretches are interspersed with actors playing workers who voice a variety of complaints, appreciations and parables that deliberately, even pointedly, fail to encompass the sense of being there amid the unfolding spectacle.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pumping Iron
    The most fascinating aspect of this film is the dedicated training that turns average-built young men (frequently they refer to themselves as weaklings in their early youth) into superbly-created physical edifices.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cooley High
    Cooley High is pitched as a black American Graffiti, and the description is apt. Furthermore, you don't have to be black to enjoy it immensely. The Steve Krantz production is a heartening comedy-drama about urban Chicago high school youths, written by Eric Monte.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There Was a Crooked Man...
    It is the type of action drama in which neither the actors nor director appear to believe the script or characters.
  64. Milli Vanilli
    As a documentary, Milli Vanilli brings off something at once strategic, artful, and humane: It presents what happened to Milli Vanilli so that we empathize directly with these two young men who were drawn, like sacrificial virgins, into the pop maelstrom.
  65. Family Portrait
    While free-floating and airy in its construction, the film’s deceiving familiarity slowly erodes, morphing into an unsettling, formally astute brain-tickler observing the placid domesticity of an affluent Texas family in their natural habitat.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kid Glove Killer
    Kid Glove Killer is one of those moderately-budgeted programmers that appear at long intervals to rise far above the level intended. Spotlight shines brightly on Van Heflin in the lead. His skillful timing and delivery of lines holds interest in many sequences that might easily have crumbled in less capable hands.
  67. Matilda
    A delightfully twisted fairy tale that artfully juggles broad tomfoolery and sly drollery, along with a generous serving of sight gags enhanced by special effects. Even though it's being pitched primarily at younger moviegoers and their parents, pic is exuberantly quirky enough to please almost anyone.
  68. New York Doll
    A charmer whose lack of profane language or images renders it unexpectedly viable for general broadcast.
  69. DJ Ahmet
    The sort of film that urges one to tell everyone about it so that they too can bask in its wondrous pleasures, “DJ Ahmet” is a revelation in that it seamlessly straddles the line between laugh-out-loud crowd-pleaser and art-house gem with affecting gravitas.
  70. Mahjong
    Pic is the eclectic Taiwanese helmer’s most accessible work since the 1986 “The Terrorizer” but is flawed by hit-and-miss scripting and performances.
  71. All the Money in the World
    We may never know how Spacey would have been, but Plummer is easily the best thing about a film that is technically accomplished, yet a bit too mechanical in the way it sets up and executes the high-stakes kidnapping at its center.
  72. One Week and a Day
    This sentimental film takes things one step at a time.
  73. A Screaming Man
    Haroun’s tender but unsentimental regard for his characters allows his storytelling a natural gravitas thoroughly suited to the simultaneously unfolding private and national tragedies.
  74. Nanny
    Jusu meticulously calibrates the interactions between her characters, revealing a nuanced understanding of race and class relations.
  75. The Island President
    In the face of rising sea levels, the Maldive Islands are the Alamo, and environmental crusader Mohamed Nasheed is their Davy Crockett. Boasting astonishing access, director Jon Shenk's The Island President documents a brave battle against overwhelming odds.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Our Nixon
    A brisk, eye-opening documentary about the Nixon White House as seen from the inside, this triumph of editing is composed of home movies shot by the president’s staff, accompanied by later TV interviews and priceless audio from the secret tapes, making it a must-see for anyone interested in Americana.
  77. The Cabin in the Woods
    Not since "Scream" has a horror movie subverted the expectations that accompany the genre to such wicked effect as The Cabin in the Woods, a sly, self-conscious twist on one of slasher films' ugliest stepchildren: the coed campsite massacre.
  78. American Pain
    It’s hard to think of a prior chronicle quite so luridly indicting as American Pain.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miami Blues
    This quirky and sometimes brutally funny film strings together terrific moments but never takes a point of view.
  80. Friendship
    Robinson’s brand of middle-class psycho surrealism works perfectly in bite-size sketch-comedy doses. Stretched out to feature length, a character like Craig simply stops making sense.
  81. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    Entertaining and fabulously imaginative in many ways, this second bigscreen rendition of the late author's modest morality tale on the wages of unbridled excess sports excesses of its own.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's Alive
    Stomach-churning.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lady in Red
    Lewis Teague, a former second-unit director, guides his large cast reasonably well through John Sayles’ craftsmanlike script.
  84. Headhunters
    A smooth, intriguing opening and a predictable but emotionally satisfying home stretch bookend helmer Morten Tyldum's otherwise by-the-numbers Norwegian thriller Headhunters.
  85. Quinceañera
    This is a fresh, spirited drama, charming and unpretentious. It mines a similar vein to recent Latino-themed pics such as "Raising Victor Vargas" and "Real Women Have Curves."
  86. Union County
    Life has a way of getting complicated when you introduce temptation, and though Union County can be frustratingly simple at times, the stakes are life and death.
  87. Marcel Proust's Time Regained
    Engrossing despite its chaotically fragmented form.
  88. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    A chilling history lesson in realpolitik.
  89. Stone Reader
    A debut of enormous craft, surety and resourcefulness -- a superlative, soul-baring non-fiction work that will generate torrential word-of-mouth among auds lucky enough to catch it.
  90. All or Nothing
    The wealth of behavioral detail and observational humor make for some rewarding drama that will resonate with many viewers.
  91. Bowling for Columbine
    The sparks fly thanks to Moore's patented blend of curveball research, expedient juxtaposition, genuine satire and bottomless chutzpah.
  92. 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.
  93. Sea of Shadows
    Told with straightforward investigative nous and a judicious teardrop of anguished sentimentality, the film makes a virtue of its many clashing participants: journalists, scientists, activists, navy officials and fishermen, each with a slightly different stance on the matter.
  94. Alléluia
    Alleluia may be a remake, but its somber look couldn’t be more original — all the better for the film to spring its nasty surprises on auds, none more unexpected than the way certain shots remain seared into one’s subconscious in the days and weeks that follow.
  95. Millennium Mambo
    A slow, empty, over-mannered snoozer that shows Taiwanese helmer Hou Hsiao-hsien asleep at the wheel.
  96. Girl with a Pearl Earring
    An intelligent, visually ravishing adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    JFK
    Oliver Stone's JFK is electric muckraking filmmaking.
  98. Promising Young Woman
    Haphazard as “Woman” can seem, it all somehow pulls together at last with a satisfying smack.
  99. Easier with Practice
    Amusingly predicated on the romantic possibilities of phone sex, Easier With Practice pushes past its titillating premise to become a quietly provocative love story about emotionally stunted manhood and the risks some guys will take to connect.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sabrina
    A slick blend of heart and chuckles makes Sabrina a sock romantic comedy.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »