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. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
    “Humanist Vampire” doesn’t want us to think too deeply, and aims mostly to charm. Largely it succeeds, which is its own kind of critique in this post-“Titane” and -“A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” era, when some viewers might expect provocation or transgression from their horror archetypes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lethal Weapon 2
    Loaded with the usual elements, Lethal Weapon 2 benefits from a consistency of tone that was lacking in the first film. This time, screenwriter Jeffrey Boam and director Richard Donner have wisely trained their sights on humor and the considerable charm of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's onscreen rapport.
  3. Studio 54
    The film shows you the club from every angle, and seems to be gawking at every patron. It puts us right inside.
  4. Mother of Flies
    It’s a densely textured, quite gorgeous dive into folkloric witchiness that avoids nearly all anticipated clichés, finally arriving at something not so much terrifying as unexpectedly poignant.
  5. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
    Too much of “Bombshell” skims over Lamarr’s more troubling and troubled aspects to paint her in somewhat stock terms as the victim of keep-her-on-that-pedestal misogyny.
  6. 21 Grams
    Ambitiously structured in non-chronological fragments that form a fascinating puzzle, this raw drama about grief, guilt and redemption becomes ultimately overextended and overwrought in its final stretch.
  7. The Cat Returns (2002)
    Animated by Hiroyuki Morita -- a protege of Hayao Miyazaki -- story draws more from fairy tales than the eerie transformative productions by Studio Ghibli. Result is catchy entertainment for kids and adults.
  8. Merchants of Doubt
    An intelligent, solidly argued and almost too-polished takedown of America’s spin factory — that network of professional fabricators, obfuscators and pseudo-scientists who have lately attempted to muddle the scientific debate around global warming — this is a movie so intrigued by its designated villains that it almost conveys a perverse form of admiration, and the fascination proves contagious.
  9. Martin Margiela: In His Own Words
    The grandest irony to emerge is that despite its unquestionable sincerity, soft-spoken iconoclast Martin Margiela’s insistent non-image may yet turn out to be fashion’s canniest bit of image-making of all.
  10. Ted K
    Quite what we gain from the experience is uncertain, with most viewers likely to leave the film understanding little more of the Unabomber than they did two hours before. Still, Ted K is impressive and oppressive in equal measure.
  11. The Lady in the Van
    Low on narrative drive, and marred by a misjudged final-act swerve into extravagant whimsy, Nicholas Hytner’s amiable luvvie-fest is enlivened by Smith’s signature irascibility.
  12. The Letter: An American Town and the 'Somali Invasion'
    An especially dramatic, if needlessly frantic, work of polemical reportage on racism in America.
  13. Benjamin
    Benjamin wrings a lot of warmly perceptive, occasionally acidic humor. The film might be termed a romantic comedy, though the will-they-won’t-they dynamic that usually powers the genre feels beside the point here.
  14. Eyes Wide Open
    Quietly devastating picture reps a natural draw for gay, Jewish-interest and upscale audiences.
  15. Queen to Play
    Like Sebastian Silva's "The Maid," Queen posits a radically different approach to class and gender empowerment.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bellboy
    From an artistic standpoint, The Bellboy is minor-league screen comedy, the victim of its energetic star's limited craftsmanship.
  17. Caramel
    Fresh from commercials and musicvids, novice helmer (and star) Nadine Labaki gathers five women around a Beirut beauty salon to address a range of issues facing Lebanese women -- from extramarital affairs to religious dictates. Low on calories and not especially original but always diverting.
  18. Save the Green Planet!
    Though certainly not to everyone's tastes, this looney-tunes pic about a deranged serial killer who thinks he's helping Earth by killing off supposed aliens works on a variety of levels, from gruesome slapstick comedy through social critique to genuinely chilling Grand Guignol.
  19. Rampart
    While the film is drenched in atmosphere and packs a verbal and visceral punch, its relentless downward spiral makes for an overdetermined, not entirely satisfying character study.
  20. The Painting (Le Tableau)
    Jean-Francois Laguionie’s consistently enjoyable, inventive and beautifully crafted tale is a color riot suitable for all ages.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Poseidon Adventure
    The Poseidon Adventure is a highly imaginative and lustily-produced meller that socks over the dramatic struggle of 10 passengers to save themselves after an ocean liner capsizes when struck by a mammoth tidal wave created by a submarine earthquake.
  22. Your Friends & Neighbors
    Like Mamet, LaBute's approach is precise, stylized and detached, and he also follows Mamet the director in positioning his characters close to the camera, as if they were addressing the audience directly, without much depth of field -- or air to breathe.
  23. Pure
    The film belongs to Eden, who creates a winning personality out of a combination of vulnerability, resourcefulness, toughness and fragility. It's an outstanding juvenile performance.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Camp 14: Total Control Zone
    There are some subjects so horrific, so far beyond our understanding, that the mind goes numb. Such is the case with Marc Wiese’s chilling docu Camp 14: Total Control Zone.
  25. Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back
    Axelrod plays along with her eccentric subject’s insouciant attitude vis à vis his own identity to mostly delightful effect.
  26. MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A.
    It’s a film as compellingly all over the shop as its subject, even if it doesn’t quite have her beat on stylistic verve and risk.
  27. Mug
    Szumowska...wants to tackle manifold issues, often unrelated to each other, and her attention feels magpie-ish and unsettled.
  28. Emergency Declaration
    Believe it or not, Emergency Declaration was conceived before the pandemic, but it’s just about the most thrilling way a film can capitalize on our fears — of the virus, of flying, of governments making a problem worse — without directly exploiting the international nightmare we’ve all been living lately.
  29. Alone
    Accomplished in all its tech and design departments, Alone is easily the best of several recent hunted-woman-in-the-wilderness films, including fellow indies “Ravage” and “Range Runners” as well as the flashier French “Revenge.” It doesn’t necessarily need the structural gimmickry of onscreen “chapter” titles (“The Road,” “The Rain,” etc.), but that’s a minor quibble.
  30. I Swear
    Written and directed by Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine”), the film wrestles enthusiastically and mostly successfully with the potential pitfalls of making a funny yet respectful project about a condition that sometimes lends itself to laughter, even as it wreaks havoc with Davidson’s life in serious ways.
  31. Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe
    Good cartoon characters tend to be ageless, and Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe is just clever enough not to feel like an anachronism. The duo’s creator and forever naughty guiding light, the writer-director Mike Judge (who also does their voices), flows the characters into the present day without a hitch in style or a stitch in time.
  32. Late Night
    The film wants to be a puckish media satire and an earnest workplace dramedy about “growing,” and the fusion doesn’t always gel.
  33. Sacco and Vanzetti
    Does a superb job of condensing an overwhelming mass of documentation, archival imagery and artistic representation into a concise yet passionate history lesson whose relevance could not be timelier.
  34. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
    “Weird,” it turns out, isn’t a real biopic. It’s a movie that does to the biopic form what Weird Al did to songs like “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Beat It” — imitates it, razzes it, throws mud at it, turns it inside out. And all with supreme affection.
  35. Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry
    I’d call it a deftly sincere and canny portrait, one that works precisely because it takes the time to sweat the small stuff.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Duellists
    It does not quite achieve a more lusty visual feel for the times and the strange relations of these two men to themselves and to the women in and out of their lives.
  37. Knife + Heart
    Gonzalez has mastered the art of creating atmosphere and tone, but not tension, and the movie feels meandering and slow at times, since audiences are not invested in anyone’s survival.
  38. Ginger Snaps
    A quietly subversive my-sister-is-turning-into-a-werewolf movie that doesn't wimp out at the end.
  39. Gentle Monster
    Gentle Monster is a meticulously plausible depiction of the dissolution of a family under the most trust-annihilating of circumstances, but that is all it is.
  40. Clerks
    A randy, irreverent, slice-of-life no-budgeter that's played for laughs and gets them.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    RoboCop
    Robocop is as tightly worked as a film can be, not a moment or line wasted.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cat's Eye
    The three stories just don’t connect and efforts to join them never work. However, an excellent roster of talent does try its best.
  43. The Last One for the Road
    You don’t leave The Last One for the Road with the feeling that you have seen something life-affirmingly original. But there is still a sense of disarming comfort in the film’s down-to-earth demeanor, and Giulio’s rewarding if predictable arc.
  44. The Boys in the Band
    What holds the movie together, apart from Quinto’s dreamy geek mystique and delectable delivery of every line, is the tormented passion that Jim Parsons brings to it.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lady in White
    This probably is as good a nightmare as any impressionable boy could have and still be suspenseful enough to get most adults’ hearts going.
  46. Brimstone & Glory
    Mixing sheer spectacle with modest but pleasing human-interest threads, Viktor Jakovleski’s first directorial feature is a poetical, entrancing documentary.
  47. Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation
    It’s a pleasure to spend an hour and a half in the resurrected company of these two intellects, but the experience feels like the lazy alternative to reading biographies about either man, while the iMovie-style editing strategy of slow-fading between layers of old photographs makes them feel like ghosts of a long-forgotten past.
  48. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
    The result, though intermittently stirring and often luminously shot, represents something of a chore for all but the most ardent Jia completists — and even some of them may be left adrift by the literary scope of a film that does surprisingly little to contextualize its subjects for viewers unfamiliar with their work.
  49. Belén
    Belén might never regain the vivid rage and terror of its opening minutes, but Fonzi’s film ends up carrying viewers on its own wave of pride and upright conviction, ultimately delivering the hope its promises
  50. All About Nina
    Nina’s confessional set takes the already-raw portrait to a whole other level. All About Nina is very funny, but with that scene, it breaks our hearts, forcing us to reevaluate Nina’s recklessness while reiterating the lesson of the last year: that we never know what someone has been through until that person chooses to share it, and that going public takes courage, as there’s no going back.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Murder!
    Well photographed and mounted, it contains all the gadgets of the pet Alfred Hitchcock technique, from quick cutting to skillful dialog blending. The dialog is very well written. Long episodes have clever satirical values as attacks on the conventional and lower-class English.
  52. A Town Called Panic
    A sparkly little gem.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Under the Volcano
    Although this voyage into self-destruction won’t be to the taste of many, there will be few unmoved by Finney’s towering performance as the tragic Britisher, his values irretrievably broken down, drowning himself in alcohol and practically inviting his own death.
  54. About Baghdad
    The writer discovers a people physically and psychologically worn down by decades of dictatorship, sanctions, war and occupation.
  55. The Old Guard
    It’s like an immortal-mercenary hangout movie. Chunks of the picture are logy and formulaic (it dawdles on for two hours), but the director, Gina Prince-Bythewood (making a major lane change after “Love & Basketball” and “The Secret Life of Bees”), stages the fight scenes with ripe executionary finesse, and she teases out a certain soulful quality in her cast.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cimarron
    An elegant example of super film making and a big money picture. This is a spectacular western away from all others. It holds action, sentiment, sympathy, thrills and comedy - and 100% clean. Radio Pictures has a corker in Cimarron.
  57. Golden Voices
    [A] neatly observed, rueful Israeli dramedy.
  58. !Women Art Revolution
    Anyone seeking a dialectic, of course, can look elsewhere, but Hershman Leeson's film is a valuable resource on a movement whose issues remain relevant.
  59. Contagion
    Without fully rounded characters, it's hard to care who lives or dies in what amounts to an extended procedural on how disease prevention organizations might respond to such a scenario.
  60. Fido
    Brightly packaged and steadily amusing.
  61. Black Coal, Thin Ice
    A bleak but powerful, carefully controlled detective thriller in which — as with all the best noirs — there are no real heroes or villains, only various states of compromise.
  62. The School of Flesh
    A skillful blend of fire and ice that subtly conveys the emotional extremes fraught in the relationship.
  63. Adanggaman
    Dramatically naive at times, but still represents a refreshingly ambitious, imaginative film in a period of creative underachievement for African cinema.
  64. En la ciudad sin límites
    The pluses outweigh the minuses: Pic is thought-provoking, visuals are spot-on, and the heavy-duty cast pulls the film round even in its wobblier moments.
  65. Pieces of April
    A Thanksgiving family reunion comedy that sparkles with acerbic wit, original characters and genuine heart.
  66. Blood Stripe
    While its storytelling wavers, there’s nothing unsteady about the movie’s overall packaging craftsmanship.
  67. The Ugly Stepsister
    Contrasting how her female characters feel with the expectations men put on them, Blichfeldt makes clear that impossible beauty standards are the unfairest of them all, whether in the real world or this twisted fictional kingdom.
  68. Bad Santa
    First-rate talent and a uniquely dyspeptic mood separate this effort from more routine, populist stabs at tasteless yukkage.
  69. Waking Sleeping Beauty
    The documentary has but one revelatory insight -- that "The Lion King" can be read as an allegory of the territorial peeing match between big cats Michael Eisner, Roy Disney and, least flatteringly, Katzenberg.
  70. It Might Get Loud
    Musically and visually sumptuous.
  71. The Nile Hilton Incident
    Like the finest noir, what springs forth from Saleh’s film is the dreary belief that the bad sleep well while the rest are left to suffer in the streets.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Places in the Heart
    Flawlessly crafted, Benton creates a full tapestry of life in Waxahachie, Texas circa 1935, but filmgoers may find his understated naturalistic approach lacking in dramatic punch.
  73. Jethica
    If the mix of dead-serious themes and playful, why-the-hell-not approach gives off a youthful, almost film-studenty energy, the actual craft is well above amateur-level. Ohs wears well the hats of director, editor and co-writer (alongside the entire cast of four who also get script credit), but especially as cinematographer, he does a sterling job of maximizing a doubtless threadbare budget.
  74. Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna
    Mason, a close friend of Hutchins, constructs a propulsive and compelling narrative by skillfully interlacing interviews with people involved in the tragedy — including the OSHA investigator who uncovered a pattern of risky behavior on the “Rust” set — with news footage, police interrogations, and video recorded on cellphones and police minicams.
  75. Color Out of Space
    Entertaining but uneven, the result is a deliberately over-the-top sci-fi horror exercise that loses some focus as the action grows more psychedelically unhinged — its oscillating tone not necessarily helped by Nicolas Cage growing likewise, in one of his less inspired gonzo-style performances.
  76. District B13
    Fast, dumb fun.
  77. Yellow Rose
    Like Andrew Ahn’s “Driveways” earlier this year, Yellow Rose is ultimately a film about kindness. The world can be cruel, but the film’s characters tend not to be. Group those movies with Sundance prize-winner “Minari,” and audiences have three terrific indies about growing up Asian in America — although this is the only one that sets the experience to music.
  78. Warlords
    Laden with gritty action, but with an emotional undertow that carries the drama even through its weaker moments, picture reps a strong comeback by Hong Kong helmer-producer Peter Chan.
  79. The Peanut Butter Falcon
    An odyssey audiences won’t soon forget.
  80. Standing Up, Falling Down
    Thanks largely to the performers (and Crystal in particular), the end result is diverting enough if unmemorable.
  81. Double Lover
    Sure, it’s kinky, but Ozon is having fun with it, to the extent that the entire film rewards that fetish all moviegoers have in common — voyeurism — offering up a kind of equal-opportunity objectification.
  82. 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.
  83. Epicentro
    It’s a fascinating moment for cultural stock-taking. Yet despite the filmmaker’s evident fondness for the people and nation, this impressionistic feature feels frustratingly obtuse, unfocused and unstructured.
  84. Berlin Syndrome
    Between more trickily opaque stretches of character development, Shortland nails a handful of straight-up, nerve-shredding tension sequences, teasing a version of the film that might have tilted into full-bore horror.
  85. The Day Shall Come
    The title suggests that the revolution Moses is praying for will someday arrive, but that shouldn’t be nearly as scary to Americans as the fact that his own government is trying to push people like him over the edge. That day is already here.
  86. Summertime
    This fleet-footed, kaleidoscopic showcase is all about finding your voice so that the world can start to appreciate what it doesn’t know about those it hears from far too seldom.
  87. Materialists
    It’s a sharp and serious social romantic drama full of telling observations about the way we live now, and about how connected that is (or not) to the way we’ve always lived. And there’s a dark side to it. It’s “Sex and the City” filtered through a sobering reality check.
  88. Fearless
    Manages to pack a satisfying emotional punch.
  89. I.O.U.S.A.
    Highly informative documentary reps a heady mix of charts, graphs and talking heads... superb packaging and timely subject matter.
  90. A Cantor's Tale
    Delightful documentary A Cantor's Tale casts a fond eye back at the "golden age" of chazzanut (Jewish liturgical music) and its star performers in the Brooklyn of yesteryear.
  91. East Side Sushi
    Writer-director Anthony Lucero’s delectable debut feature has its share of on-the-nose writing and Cinderella-story contrivances, but for the most part folds its cross-cultural insights into a pleasing underdog narrative as deftly as its heroine presses together rice and nori.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Farewell, My Lovely
    Farewell, My Lovely is a lethargic, vaguely campy tribute to Hollywood's private eye mellers of the 1940s and to writer Raymond Chandler, whose Phillip Marlowe character has inspired a number of features. Despite an impressive production and some firstrate performances, this third version fails to generate much suspense or excitement.
  93. War Pony
    If Larry Clark had ever found his way onto the Pine Ridge Reservation, he probably would have come away with a film like “War Pony,” which observes its young Native American characters hustling, skating and stealing drugs from otherwise distracted adults.
  94. If You Were the Last
    Hooray! A romantic comedy that revives the screwball formula where two people talk themselves silly — and we only had to go to the end of the solar system to make it happen.
  95. The Phoenician Scheme
    The dense but undeniably enjoyable saga doubles as a moving father-daughter tale and ultimately seems far more interested in exploring the robber baron spirit of 20th-century capitalism than its consequences.
  96. Louder Than Bombs
    Strangely, Louder Than Bombs manages to be glaringly obvious and admirably subtle in the same breath.
  97. Cedar Rapids
    Though not as uproarious as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," director Miguel Arteta's consistently entertaining white-collar laffer could do for Helms what that film did for Steve Carell.
  98. At the Edge of the World
    A nonfiction pirate movie that tickles one’s inner eco-radical.
  99. Radical
    Radical isn’t so much an irresponsibly magical against-the-odds yarn as a truthful one, in which a well-intentioned outsider can only go so far in protecting underprivileged students from certain grim paths.
  100. Scarred Hearts
    Emanuel’s likeability (more apparent in the film than in Blecher’s novel) unquestionably helps bridge the extended running time, and Solange is a fascinating character, liberated yet still drawn to the scene of her hospitalization. The film also has a sense of humor...but the project never quite comes together.
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