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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    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker
    Night Warning is a fine psychological horror film. As the maniacally possessive aunt and guardian of a 17-year-old boy, Susan Tyrrell gives a tour-de-force performance.
  2. Lady
    If her filmmaking style is relatively straightforward, it’s a rich, raw sense of place that gives this Sundance entry — premiering in world dramatic competition — vitality and danger.
  3. A Quiet Place Part II
    It can be hard to believe that both the sequel and the instant-classic 2018 original were produced by Michael Bay, a filmmaker who has pushed the moviegoing experience to ear-splitting extremes, since Krasinski so effectively embraces the opposite strategy: Less is more, suggestion can be scarier than showing everything, and few things are more unnerving than silence.
  4. River of Grass
    River of Grass works much better as a jokey , theoretical piece of genre revisionism than as a real movie.
  5. Mad Hot Ballroom
    Perky and effortlessly smooth.
  6. Mr. Gaga
    The result here may not be fully revealing of his process, but it’s as close as we’re going to get.
  7. The Sheep Detectives
    The filmmakers have lightened and brightened their source material to a kid-friendly degree — even the English countryside, as glisteningly shot by George Steel, has never looked less overcast. Yet there’s wisdom amid the silliness, as the story gently makes a case for the necessity of grief, mindfulness and mortal awareness, even in a life otherwise unburdened by adult human responsibility.
  8. Bronson
    Too smart/arty for the slasher set, and too violent for high-brows, Bronson may have a tough time finding its niche, although it has "cult hit" written all over it.
  9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    As classy a film as could be made from Stieg Larsson's sordid page-turner, David Fincher's much-anticipated return to serial-killer territory is a fastidiously grim pulp entertainment that plays like a first-class train ride through progressively bleaker circles of hell.
  10. The Cage Fighter
    An engaging and sympathetic documentary.
  11. Searching for Ingmar Bergman
    It’s an investigation in the form of a highly personalized meditation.
  12. The Outpost
    Such a film may suffer from home viewing, and yet, The Outpost represents the most exhilarating new movie audiences have been offered since the shutdown began.
  13. The Spanish Prisoner
    The picture is a devilishly clever series of reversals that keeps you guessing to the very end.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Desperately Seeking Susan
    Rosanna Arquette does more than her share in the pivotal part of a bored Yuppie housewife who follows the personal ads, wondering about the identities behind a desperately seeking Susan item that runs from time to time.
  15. Predator: Badlands
    In the end, “Badlands” is about the value of teamwork and learning that “alpha” and “apex” don’t mean the same thing where Predators are concerned.
  16. The Booksellers
    The Booksellers is a documentary for anyone who can still look at a book and see a dream, a magic teleportation device, an object that contains the world.
  17. The Last Laugh
    Pearlstein’s very deft assembly manages to raise all these ideas and others for viewer consideration while underlining that there are few, if any, definitive responses to them.
  18. 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.
  19. Swingers
    Engaging, refreshingly human in its humor and becomingly modest in its aspirations, this hip look at being out of it announces some promising new talent and will play well with young audiences looking for comfortable entertainment that doesn't feel manufactured.
  20. Shadow Dancer
    Shadow Dancer is admittedly slow to gather force and momentum over its 101-minute running time, though by the third act, the deliberately paced drama has exerted a hypnotic grip.
  21. Syndromes and a Century
    By the end, nothing much has happened, but all the same, picture casts a witchy kind of spell with its deep-breath pacing and undertow of unspecified malaise.
  22. Horton Hears a Who!
    The real stars of the movie are the animators, who imbue even the overgrowth in Horton's jungle with a certain floppy Seuss-ishness.
  23. The Wonder
    An evenhanded but ultimately preposterous adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel, co-written by the author herself (with an assist from Alice Birch).
  24. Emma.
    There’s something quite comforting in seeing her (Austen) work returned to a more natural habitat: adapted into handsome, clever, faithfully unambitious films like Autumn de Wilde’s Emma.
  25. The Nomi Song
    An absorbing homage to obscure but fascinating late '70s-early '80s German stage artiste Klaus Nomi.
  26. Falcon Lake
    Coming-of-age movies are usually, like growing up itself, some combination of funny, sad, rueful, awkward or frightening, but rarely are they so successfully all those things at once as in Falcon Lake.
  27. Collapse
    Unnervingly persuasive much of the time, and merely riveting when it's not.
  28. Damage
    A complex look at an illicit affair that ends in disaster for everyone in its vicinity, "Damage" is a cold, brittle film about raging, traumatic emotions. Unjustly famous before its release for its hardly extraordinary erotic content, this veddy British-feeling drama from vet French director Louis Malle proves both compelling and borderline risible, wrenching and yet emotionally pinched, and reps a solid entry for serious art house audiences worldwide.
  29. The Disappearance of My Mother
    The Disappearance of My Mother is a successful piece of documentary filmmaking inasmuch as it’s entertaining and dextrously crafted. But its precise intent is unclear.
  30. Disco Boy
    Even when Disco Boy threatens to be too much or too little, however, Rogowski’s strange, sparse, plaintive performance keeps its soul intact, and its most poignant query afloat above all the flash and dazzle and neon lights: just how much of themselves people will sacrifice for a paper identity.
  31. Mansfield Park
    But there's little sense of a longer dramatic arc stretching across the characters: Rozema can't seem to hold a single tone for more than a few minutes, and she has too many other axes to grind besides just getting the story up on the screen.
  32. Divan
    Offers a testimonial to the devastation caused in Hungary by the Holocaust, a glimpse into the richness of Yiddish folklore, a passive-aggressive assault on the patriarchal fastness of Hasidic orthodoxy and a vast self-reflexive joke.
  33. Deadline
    Potent docudocu by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson makes a strong case against capital punishment by pointing up the fallibility of the justice system, while offering an inspiring portrait of one politico who actually seems guided foremost by conscience.
  34. Next Stop Wonderland
    Low on plot but high on charm and personality, Next Stop Wonderland is a sly, hand-crafted indie that is very alive and attentive to its characters' feelings and foibles.
  35. No Date, No Signature
    All four main actors are in top form, but it’s Mohammadzadeh who steals the show in his scene at the poultry plant, when his desperate monologue takes on an epic, Shakespearean quality as he throws all his physical force into a verbal storm of pained outrage.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Man of Her Own
    It is largely the good cast, direction and some of the comedy arising mostly out of the wisecracks that makes No Man of Her Own acceptable film fare.
  37. Macbeth
    Fearsomely visceral and impeccably performed, it’s a brisk, bracing update, even as it remains exquisitely in period.
  38. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
    "The Caine Mutiny,” for all the tinkering, remains a warhorse of a play. And that’s both a good and a limited thing. The way Friedkin has directed it, it certainly plays.
  39. 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.
  40. Warrior
    An improbably effective and affecting mix of raw emotions and exciting smackdowns.
  41. Ms. Purple
    Though not in their class, Ms. Purple aims for something of the bruised romance of alienation and ennui that Antonioni made his name on (most notably “La Notte” and “L’Eclisse”). The fact that it even lands in the same ballpark without growing too pretentious or mannered — though it’s admittedly a little of both — is admirable, not least for simply being so out-of-step with any current cinematic vogue.
  42. Far from the Madding Crowd
    What does register at every turn is a vibrant sense of time and place that pulls us into Hardy’s bygone world even when the drama falters.
  43. Sleepwalk with Me
    An endearing indie feature about the day-to-day indecisions and nocturnal perambulations of a commitment-phobic New Yorker.
  44. Pleasantville
    Ingeniously conceived and impressively executed, Pleasantville is a provocative, complex and surprisingly anti-nostalgic parable.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Blackmail
    Blackmail is most draggy. It has no speed or pace and very little suspense.
  46. The Perfect Candidate
    At every step, Al Mansour feeds the audience exactly what she thinks will make them feel good about positive change in Saudi Arabia, setting up conflict and resolution with all the nuance of a by-the-numbers construction kit.
  47. The Bergman Trilogy
    Ingmar Bergman lays his soul on the line in Marie Nyreroed's gentle, intimate and thorough documentay.
  48. Against All Enemies
    A grim diagnosis of a fast-spreading cancer, Against All Enemies may provide much less reassurance than cause for alarm, but its wakeup call is certainly worth heeding.
  49. Requiem for a Dream
    It’s technically striking filmmaking, to be sure, but what it’s presenting is nothing that many people will want to look at.
  50. Separate Lies
    With Separate Lies, Fellowes has made a truly adult film -- not because of its content or themes, but because it knows that real drama often lies in the accepted and unspoken realms of life.
  51. No One Knows About Persian Cats
    Strings an improvised tale around Tehran's underground indie-rock scene. Good-looking, shot-on-the-fly fifth feature by Bahman Ghobadi ("Half Moon," "Turtles Can Fly," "A Time for Drunken Horses"), which blends exciting musical performances with an undernourished narrative.
  52. Where the Wild Things Are
    Director Spike Jonze's sharp instincts and vibrant visual style can't quite compensate for the lack of narrative eventfulness that increasingly bogs down this bright-minded picture.
  53. Fallen Angels
    Abetted by the piercing images of lenser Christopher Doyle, the picture has a vivid, nightmarish quality that's more inviting than repellent. But the filmmaker mutes the impact by repeatedly cutting away to other settings, as if he lacked confidence in the power of the moment.
  54. Paint It Black
    As directorial debuts go, Amber Tamblyn’s Paint It Black is kind of a mess, but then, so are its characters, which makes the film’s raw, off-kilter style somehow right for the material.
  55. 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.
  56. Little Fish
    A portrait of life’s impermanence, it’s a bittersweet small-scale saga whose occasional sluggishness is offset by its sensitivity.
  57. Enzo
    There’s no defiling of peaches or precocious sexual experimentation between the roughly decade-apart duo, though the ambiguous subtext proves infinitely more fascinating, leaving everyone who sees it with a different interpretation.
  58. Run & Jump
    With remarkable warmth and immediacy, Green and co-scripter Keogan have managed to capture the beauty of an obviously flawed family, one neither too perfect nor too demographically balanced to ring true, and imbue it with a sense of plenitude that seems to flow as much from the sun-drenched land itself as from the quirkily particular personalities involved.
  59. Animals
    Throughout the first half of Animals, there is a welcome amount of humor and some flashes of romantic warmth to alleviate the ever-present undercurrent of dread. As director Collin Schiffli gradually tightens the screws and builds suspense, however, the mood darkens.
  60. Ingrid Goes West
    A semi-ironic, yet still-empathetic “Single White Female” for the Facebook generation, Spicer’s squirm-inducing directorial debut understands both the pleasures and frustrations of judging one’s worth via virtual connections.
  61. In Search of Beethoven
    Beautifully lensed and intelligently crafted.
  62. Blood Brother
    Despite its ostensibly depressing subject and a few tough-to-watch sequences, Blood Brother is never less than engrossing, and it’s often delightful.
  63. Revoir Paris
    It’s a modest film with a heart very much on its torn sleeve, given force and ballast by another fine dramatic turn from the hard-working Virginie Efira.
  64. RBG
    This spry celebration reveals that the real Ginsburg is neither beast nor badass, but an even-tempered, soft-spoken mediator—not typically the traits that inspire rousing high-fives, but qualities that honor the slow, uphill slog of positive change.
  65. Indigo Girls: It's Only Life After All
    Bombach’s movie finds its real flavor in exploring the differences in the duo’s two very distinct personalities, which up till now might have seemed like a fuzzy, singular unit by all but the most hardcore fans.
  66. Roman de gare
    Picture gets an undeniable boost from the ace performance of the short, beady-eyed Pinon.
  67. Carnage
    Audience patience undergoes a far more brutal butchering than anything onscreen in Delphine Gleize's wildly over-reaching feature debut, Carnage.
  68. Carandiru
    A low-structure, high-involvement Brazilian free-for-all destined to take its place among hellish prison films, Carandiru plants a fist in the viewer's stomach.
  69. Twin Falls Idaho
    Lacks narrative push...atmospheric drama that casts a minor but distinctive spell.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Woman Is a Woman
    Only intermittently bright. Too much homage to Yank musicals and comedies point up the lack of polish.
  71. Collateral
    Occupying a dramatic, philosophical and sensory twilight zone that casts a considerable spell, this intensely focused piece soars not only on the director's precision-tooled style but also on the outstanding interplay between leads Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.
  72. Wild Men
    The wonderful thing about Wild Men, a movie that suggests a dream-team collaboration of Hal Hartley and the Coen Brothers, is that everyone involved takes themselves extremely seriously, even as they behave and speak in ways that cause viewers who get the joke to smile, chuckle and occasionally laugh out loud.
  73. The Third Wife
    This is the rare debut that derives its freshness not from inexperience but from a balance between compassion and restraint that most filmmakers take decades to achieve.
  74. The Survivor
    The Survivor is a Holocaust movie that’s fresh enough to make you laugh between the tears, the gasps of terror, the long road out of the inferno.
  75. Eternal Beauty
    With an assist from Sally Hawkins’ valiantly committed lead performance, the result occasionally summons the genuinely disoriented perspective of an unstable protagonist, but more often, it’s the filmmaking that seems to spiral out of control.
  76. House of Sand and Fog
    A faithful, powerful and superbly acted adaptation of Andre Dubus III's international bestseller.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
    Central performance by Mirjana Karanovic is instantly endearing. Unfortunately, film coasts on thesp's ability to evoke sympathy and leaves her stranded in this yarn that's all setup and little payoff.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Tenant
    A tale of a paranoid breakdown of a little bureaucratic clerk that wastes no time in trying to be clinical. It has a humorous tang, underlying the macabre. (Review of original release)
  79. Lourdes
    Either a subtly subversive black comedy, a deeply spiritual portrait of physical rebirth or a whole lot of nothing in a self-consciously arty package, Lourdes isn't about to reveal its true colors anytime soon.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Testament
    Testament is an exceptionally powerful film dealing with the survivors of a nuclear war. Debuting director Lynne Littman brings an original approach to the grim material.
  81. Clockers
    A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize.
  82. Euthanizer
    The script’s more grotesque aspects integrate well enough into a portrait of everyday life among the least-reputable citizens of a grime-flavored community...while the film’s grungy aesthetic likewise keeps the bizarre story feeling at least somewhat grounded.
  83. Alien on Stage
    Amusing, but not outrageous, and while I’m glad Kummer’s camera was there to capture it, the movie doesn’t reveal enough about the performers’ backgrounds or personalities.
  84. Manhattan Murder Mystery
    Woody Allen once described himself as "thin but fun," and the same could be said for his latest effort, Manhattan Murder Mystery. Light, insubstantial and utterly devoid of the heavier themes Allen has grappled with in most of his recent outings, this confection keeps the chuckles coming and is mainstream enough in sensibility to be a modest success.
  85. Don't Breathe
    A muscular exercise in brutal, relentless peril that should please genre fans.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
    Latest excursion is warmer, wittier, more socially relevant and truer to its TV origins than prior odysseys.
    • Variety
  87. Molly's Game
    Molly’s Game delivers one of the screen’s great female parts — a dense, dynamic, compulsively entertaining affair, whose central role makes stunning use of Chastain’s stratospheric talent.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You're a Big Boy Now
    Francis Coppola has drawn topflight performances from his talented cast.
  89. Beyond the Gates
    Although in many respects a more stylish, authentic, tougher-minded film than "Hotel Rwanda," director Michael Caton-Jones' respectable and well-intentioned Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) still falls into the trap of filtering an inherently African story through the eyes of a noble white protagonist -- in this case, two of them.
  90. Training Day
    Ominously atmospheric study of police corruption dangles danger and sinister motives at every turn.
  91. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger
    "Whitey” emerges as yet another of Berlinger’s gripping, irony-laced snapshots of the American criminal justice system, in which his eponymous subject comes across as an incontestable monster who may, nevertheless, also be an unwitting patsy.
  92. I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
    As endless processions of friends and colleagues attest to Spinney’s genius, and the filmmakers wallow in never-before-seen behind-the-scenes imagery, they fail to fully capture the actual art of puppeteering, with woefully few substantial excerpts from the show itself.
  93. Strongman
    A strange and strangely beautiful movie.
  94. Aliens of the Deep
    Documentary's visual wonders and well-pitched enthusiasm happily outstrip its clunkily ingenuous ain't-science-fun narrative.
  95. Makala
    French helmer-lenser Emmanuel Gras’ camera embraces the subject’s every move with such rapt intimacy and cinematic poetry it’s easy to forget this is not a fictional drama.
  96. Mayor of the Sunset Strip
    Spectacular song selection gives the docu an appropriate rock 'n' roll swagger and accompanying soundtrack would be a valuable overview of the bands championed by Rodney on the ROQ.
  97. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah!
    Director Sammi Cohen and screenwriter Alison Peck bestow this hilarious, heartrending adaptation of Fiona Rosenbloom’s novel with an uplifting, effervescent vision and vitality, giving voice to a young Jewish girl’s struggle to figure out who she is before the most important night of her life so far.
  98. 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.
  99. Fixing Frank
    Full of bold dramatic strokes and complex character shadings.
  100. Home
    Though no "Love and Diane," this modest film nevertheless reveals the fragility of hope in survivalist mentalities pre-programmed to expect the worst.
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