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. On the Beach at Night Alone
    Unfussy in form, open in expression and gentle in reach as its maker revisits such recurring preoccupations as loneliness, regret and the value of love in life and art.
  2. Final Portrait
    Rush and Tucci create a captivating portrait of an artist who’s at once elated, haunted, and utterly possessed.
  3. A Fantastic Woman
    Vega’s tough, expressive, subtly anguished performance deserves so much more than political praise. It’s a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting, nurtured with pitch-perfect sensitivity by her director, who maintains complete candor on Marina’s condition without pushing her anywhere she wouldn’t herself go.
  4. The Great & The Small
    Bias provides an emotionally and dramatically satisfying conclusion for his dramedy — which takes its title from a children’s book read aloud twice, each time with starkly different impact — by making sure that everyone gets what’s coming to them before the final credits roll.
  5. VooDoo
    Nearly two decades after the original “Blair Witch,” it’s a mystery why any filmmaker feels the need to be “purist” about the found-footage format when it’s been done to death.
  6. American Fable
    Gorgeously shot, and helmed with a sense of daring and verve that belies Hamilton’s greenness to feature filmmaking, this is a debut of obvious promise, although its story never quite rises to the level of its craft.
  7. Fist Fight
    A risible excuse for comedy that treats compulsory education as a joke and violence as a reasonable way to solve problems.
  8. Dream Big: Engineering Our World
    The film proves a rousing, and ravishing, call-to-engineering-arms for future generations.
  9. My Name Is Emily
    the film thrums with an urgency that’s both asset and liability, at once invested with deep feeling and undone by a barrage of flashbacks, allusions, and counterintuitive bits of wisdom.
  10. Buddies in India
    Crucially missing are credible human motivations or skilled balance of physical with verbal humor.
  11. From Nowhere
    Credible and creditable performances by a fine cast of promising newcomers and familiar veterans enhance the emotional impact of this low-key but compelling indie.
  12. XX
    Even at their least individually striking, each of these mismatched tasters stirs an appetite for a fuller, meatier meal from its maker — cooked as bloodily rare as possible, please.
  13. Pandemic
    This is a solid if not quite memorable entry in the ever-expanding canon of survivalist undead cinema.
  14. Stray Bullets
    It’s admirably well-crafted within its mostly savvy limitations.
  15. Chapter & Verse
    Despite its familiarity, Chapter & Verse manages to make its material both fresh and authentic.
  16. The Human Surge
    If the slender paradox at the heart of the film is that the thing that connects us most is the difficulty of connection, The Human Surge is a victim of its own effectiveness: It’s rigorous, rarefied, and utterly remote.
  17. Duckweed
    The film is sprinkled with witty grace notes and is crowd-pleasing without being too ingratiating or idiotic.
  18. Fall
    Odette edges viewers toward consideration of moral complexities, and places them in the uncomfortable position of observers who are by turns instinctively sympathetic and darkly suspicious.
  19. Fifty Shades Darker
    For all its structural and psychological deficiencies, it’s hard not to enjoy Fifty Shades Darker on its own lusciously limited terms.
  20. 13 Minutes
    What 13 Minutes fails to understand is that it’s a moral imperative to remember, but it’s an ethical minefield to remember in a simplified manner.
  21. Chasing Coral
    You walk out of Chasing Coral feeling that Richard Vevers is correct: The more that people see, and understand, the death of our coral, the more they’ll realize that climate change isn’t just about wrecking the planet, it’s about humanity destroying itself.
  22. A Cure for Wellness
    The movie deprives us of either a tragic villain or a sympathetic lead, hoping that its grab bag of squirm-inducing details — dental drills, stillborn livestock, flesh-eating eels — will suffice, when in fact, they reveal how a shorter, tighter treatment ought to have done the trick.
  23. John Wick: Chapter 2
    There’s a quality to the violence here that elevates it above the literal (and reprehensible) nihilism of movies like last year’s “Hardcore Henry,” and instead achieves something more akin to dance.
  24. Havenhurst
    Havenhurst grows less scary the more urgently action-packed it becomes. It’s not that Erin’s direction lacks energy when needed, but rather that his and Daniel Ferrands’ script never develops any of its numerous familiar but viable plot themes enough to really give the film a distinguishing edge.
  25. Kedi
    [A] splendidly graceful and quietly magical documentary.
  26. The LEGO Batman Movie
    The first thing to say about The Lego Batman Movie is that it’s kicky, bedazzling, and super-fun.
  27. Keep Quiet
    With far-right nationalist ideologies suddenly a matter of pressing interest to almost everyone, the timing is regrettably ideal for Keep Quiet. This fascinating documentary by co-directors Joseph Martin and Sam Blair finds a stranger-than-fiction hook for probing that disturbing global trend.
  28. In Dubious Battle
    The movie gives us bits and pieces of drama, but in a larger way it doesn’t invite us in.
  29. The Grace of Jake
    Hicky presents welcome surprises throughout The Grace of Jake, often introducing plot developments that would lead to melodramatic outcomes in more conventional films.
  30. Eloise
    Reasonably slick but empty, Eloise is no “Session 9” as far as haunted-former-mental-hospital horrors go. Heck, it’s not even a “Grave Encounters 2.”
  31. Wheeler
    The term “vanity project” doesn’t come close to adequately describing the hubristic folly that is Wheeler, an excruciatingly dull and self-indulgent faux documentary
  32. Rings
    The movie, which will be lucky to eke out a weekend’s worth of business, isn’t scary, it isn’t awesome, and it doesn’t nudge you to think of technology in a new way. But it does make you wish that you could rewind those two hours, or maybe just erase them.
  33. This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous
    This glossy doc uncovers very little conflict or depth in a personality more colorful than it is interesting, at least as presented here.
  34. T2 Trainspotting
    Where “Trainspotting’s” dive into the void was targeted, bristling with snarky anger at a Conservative system that provided few lifelines, “T2” — despite landing in a Britain once more under divisive Tory rule — is mostly content to let its characters alternately indulge and excoriate themselves.
  35. The Space Between Us
    If romance-seeking audiences know what’s best for them, they’ll put some space between themselves and this movie.
  36. Super Dark Times
    It’s hard not to appreciate the astute ways the script captures the moment when carefree childhood turns into the loss of innocence.
  37. A Good American
    If the doc’s ultimate argument is less than wholly persuasive, A Good American nonetheless paints a fascinating picture of Binney’s mind, and the way in which he first envisioned ThinThread as a giant neural network-like globe filled with graphically linked nodes.
  38. Headshot
    In terms of sheer, punchy physical vigor, Headshot is a knockout.
  39. Oklahoma City
    What makes Oklahoma City a haunting experience is that the movie, in laying out the road that led to his humanity withering and dying, demonstrates a disquieting continuity between the anti-government wrath of Timothy McVeigh and the fervor of anti-government wreckage that has just been given a new credibility in America.
  40. Mr. Gaga
    The result here may not be fully revealing of his process, but it’s as close as we’re going to get.
  41. Lovesong
    Lovesong makes a virtue of restraint as it traces a complex emotional history in two parts, and innumerable (and sometimes quite literal) shades of gray.
  42. Dina
    The connection they share isn’t the kind that would pass for conventionally romantic, and yet, theirs is a compelling love story all the same — one the filmmakers follow with open minds, focusing on the lead-up to and days immediately following their wedding.
  43. War on Everyone
    While his American competition practices the right to remain silent, McDonagh writes his clever, coal-black heart out, delivering another firecracker script.
  44. The Lure
    This kooky-monster escapade is never less than arresting, and sometimes even a riot.
  45. To the Bone
    It’s not an easy sit, nor a terribly entertaining one, but in the hands of writer-director Marti Noxon, it delivers painful insights in a relatively fresh way.
  46. Patti Cake$
    In the end, it’s the ensemble’s collective attitude, plus the palpable chemistry between Patti and her friends, that defines the experience, not the stock desire to be discovered. Though if Patti Cake$ really did exist, this movie would certainly make her star.
  47. Newness
    The trouble with Newness — and the reason it’s shot in such a clinical vérité fashion — is that it’s a thesis movie, heady and ambitious yet overly thought out.
  48. My Happy Family
    Providing certain vivid detail but rather lacking in vitality, Ekvtimishvili’s screenplay is stronger on sociology than drama.
  49. Marjorie Prime
    Though it mostly resists contrived “opening-out” devices, and preserves the decidedly low-tech visualization of the play’s sci-fi premise, Michael Almereyda’s well-cast film never finds a suitably complex cinematic language for its tangle of intellectual and emotional ideas.
  50. Manifesto
    Audiences needn’t be intimidated: Manifesto may not adhere to any conventional narrative structure, but it’s compulsively watchable all the same
  51. The Hero
    Haley and Basch have mistaken what the AARP calls “movies for grownups” for a kind of mushy feel-good pablum, throwing together a handful of familiar clichés in the hope that Elliott’s charm will carry the day.
  52. Golden Exits
    Many will accuse Perry of navel-gazing here, but that’s partly the point: Golden Exits means to frustrate, even to abrade, in its coolly articulate portrait of cosseted people who want for nothing and vaguely desire everything.
  53. God's Own Country
    Skipping some of the more predictable narrative obstacles we’ve come to expect from the coming-out drama, this sexy, thoughtful, hopeful film instead advances a pro-immigration subtext that couldn’t be more timely amid the closing borders of Brexit-era Britain.
  54. Dayveon
    The more Dayveon attempts to up the dramatic and moral stakes of its narrative, the less persuasive it is as idiosyncratic, indigenous storytelling.
  55. Don't Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl!
    Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl! aims for poetry yet, like its ridiculously clumsy title, manages only an odd mix of magical realism with over-heated Lynchian touches.
  56. Kung Fu Yoga
    As the leading man, Chan keeps the ball rolling with an assortment of neat acrobatic tricks and martial arts sparring, but his days of life-risking physical exertion is over.
  57. Brigsby Bear
    Rather than milking the outre premise for broad comedy, everyone involved strives to keep the characters and situations grounded and warm.
  58. Axolotl Overkill
    Hegemann deserves considerable praise for avoiding the standard pitfalls of both the neophyte director and the writer-turned-filmmaker: Her movie is not overly wordy, and is anything but over-explained.
  59. Crown Heights
    Crown Heights doesn’t break much new ground, and it takes a while to find its footing, but thanks to strong, unshowy performances from Lakeith Stanfield and Nnamdi Asomugha, the film does project the feelings of helplessness and frustration that come from fighting against such an immovable object.
  60. Lost in Florence
    Bland even for the armchair traveler, “Lost” is as inoffensive as a picture-souvenir booklet, and equally unmemorable.
  61. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
    A few individual scenes of hand-to-hand and foot-to-face combat are undeniably exciting, and Jovovich once again impresses with her kinetic athleticism. Overall, however, the repetitiveness and occasional incoherence of the nonstop action leave the audience exhausted for all the wrong reasons.
  62. City of Ghosts
    What City of Ghosts does best is to humanize those who’ve suffered most from the conflict in Syria, educating us through both outrage and compassion.
  63. The Polka King
    When it comes to the film’s overall success, these wildly amusing situations take a back seat to the contributions of an excellent cast.
  64. Pop Aye
    This bucolic escape from big-city life is anchored by a solid script filled with characters who, despite reaching the end of the road, find ways to make peace with the world.
  65. The Yellow Birds
    The film keeps acting like it has something big to tell us; it plods and broods with self-importance. Yet in almost every crucial way, The Yellow Birds is a flat and listless piece of moviemaking, a monotonous indie dirge.
  66. Beatriz at Dinner
    Hayek’s performance, by the end, grows unexpectedly moving. Yet Beatriz at Dinner is a little tidy. It seizes and charms without soaring.
  67. Beach Rats
    Writer-director Eliza Hittman has a sensitive ear for the way adolescents reveal themselves through evasion: It’s a tension crucial to this anxious, tactile, profoundly sad study of a young man’s journey of sexual self-discovery and self-betrayal.
  68. Whose Streets?
    Whose Streets? is not a movie intended for those seeking an explanatory recap, let alone “balanced” analysis, of the original case itself. What it does offer, however, is a pulse-taking of one community’s response — variably constructive, occasionally chaotic — to perceived institutionalized abuse by law enforcement.
  69. Trophy
    Trophy’s wealth of conflicting facts, figures, and arguments routinely force one to re-calibrate their feelings about the issues at hand. The result is a lament for both the animals at the center of so many crosshairs, and for a modern world seemingly only capable of saving lives by taking them.
  70. The Last Word
    Watching MacLaine’s Harriet embrace her life, after spending too much time rejecting it, leads The Last Word to a touching finish. MacLaine has something that shines through and elevates a film like this one. The movie is prefab indie whimsy, but she gives it an afterglow.
  71. Wilson
    In Wilson, Daniel Clowes’ voice, which was once acerbically hip, sounds dated.
  72. A Dog's Purpose
    Viewed in a vacuum, it’s hard to fault the movie’s earnestness; Hallström’s canine cinema pedigree (which includes the superior “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale”) shows through; and Rachel Portman’s score is understandably sentimental without going completely saccharine.
  73. Wind River
    Wind River adds up, and skillfully, but in the end it’s not all that exciting. It’s a vision of the new American despair — not an inner-city movie, but an inner-wilderness movie — and it could have used another twist or two.
  74. Mudbound
    Though the sheer scope of the material overwhelms “Pariah” director Dee Rees at times, she finds shoots of optimism among the mire that couldn’t be more welcome at a moment when the country seems more divided than ever.
  75. Get Out
    Blending race-savvy satire with horror to especially potent effect, this bombshell social critique from first-time director Jordan Peele proves positively fearless — which is not at all the same thing as scareless.
  76. 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.
  77. Before I Fall
    While the story easily could have fallen into a broken-record rut, “Nobody Walks” director Russo-Young finds ways of making the day in question feel fresh each time Sam lives it, while giving the overall presentation a look, feel, and voice that’s distinct from the vast swatch of YA movies.
  78. The Little Hours
    A medieval convent comedy for the megaplex crowd.
  79. Call Me by Your Name
    Even as he beguiles us with mystery, Guadagnino recreates Elio’s life-changing summer with such intensity that we might as well be experiencing it first-hand. It’s a rare gift that earns him a place in the pantheon alongside such masters of sensuality as Pedro Amodóvar and François Ozon, while putting “Call Me by Your Name” on par with the best of their work.
  80. Landline
    Landline is a dramatic comedy about a family full of secrets, and what’s mature — and, in its way, reassuring — about the film is that it views this state of affairs as an all-too-natural one.
  81. It Happened in L.A.
    First-time writer-director (and also star) Michelle Morgan brings just enough specificity, and a surprisingly sharp eye, to make the film an interesting calling card for future work.
  82. 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.
  83. A Ghost Story
    While Lowery’s actual method of delivery may not be scary, it’s sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience.
  84. The Discovery
    Though The Discovery starts out with a great premise, its mystery dissipates over a somewhat tepid course as the concept ultimately heads in a direction we’ve seen many times before, and depends overmuch on chemistry that fails to materialize between stars Jason Segel and Rooney Mara.
  85. The Big Sick
    Comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani and writer Emily V. Gordon mine their personal history for laughs, heartache, and hard-earned insight in The Big Sick, a film that’s by turns romantic, rueful, and hilarious.
  86. Icarus
    Given all the attention on Russia in recent news coverage, Fogel’s Putin-centric approach will likely prove more effective than a deeper investigation into just how widespread such behavior is around the globe. But the greater takeaway is that the game itself is rigged, and the Russians only lost because they got caught.
  87. The Incredible Jessica James
    Writer-director Jim Strouse (“Grace Is Gone,” “The Winning Season”) places Williams at the center of a thoroughly conventional indie narrative — trusting his star’s sensibility to freshen up otherwise stale scenarios. Fortunately, Williams delivers on every count.
  88. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
    Gore has been talking up this issue for 25 years now, and as the film makes clear, he isn’t tired of talking. You feel he’s got enough wind to power another sequel. What’s extraordinary is that this one, after a decade of global-warming fatigue, feels as vital as it does.
  89. The King's Choice
    It has a few traumatic and bedazzling scenes of combat, but mostly it’s about the backroom bureaucratic gamesmanship of war.
  90. Parents (Forældre)
    Parents may feel a bit uneven and over-ambiguous as a whole, but its off-center mix of slightly black comedy and drama is never less than interesting.
  91. They Call Us Monsters
    They Call Us Monsters, alas, is so taken with its access to kids facing such legal circumstances that it forgets to form a compelling argument about them.
  92. I don't feel at home in this world anymore.
    It’s the perfect role for Lynskey, who’s wise enough to underplay her character, which allows audiences to pour their own fears and frustrations into everything Ruth represents. And what emerges is a stalwart actress’s best work yet, delivered by an exciting new director to watch.
  93. The Resurrection of Gavin Stone
    Jenkins and Nasfell refrain from hard-selling anything, so that Gavin never really comes off as an obnoxious jerk, his chaste relationship with Kelly — so chaste, they never even kiss — progresses at a credible pace, and the movie’s religious elements, while respectfully given due dramatic weight, are scarcely more conspicuous here than in many more secular entertainments.
  94. My Father Die
    Not all of it works, but this is a bold and talented debut, all the more impressive for transcending (while embracing) some shameless exploitation tropes.
  95. xXx: Return of Xander Cage
    Rarely do five minutes elapse between some sort of laugh-out-loud absurdity, and the distinction between the film’s intentional and unintentional comedy grows hazier as it goes.
  96. Donald Cried
    In virtually every closeup, Donald Cried practically seethes with barely suppressed emotion, though Avedisian cannily couches his characters’ very real, raw feelings amid a ridiculousness born of Donald’s wholesale weirdness.
  97. Fraud
    Fleischer-Camp and editor Jonathan Rippon’s subtle recontextualizations illuminate the family’s attempt to live their lives as outlined in omnipresent commercials as both illogical and understandable — this is not a film intent on hanging its subjects out to dry.
  98. This Beautiful Fantastic
    Everything about “Fantastic” is designed to charm, and its success in that respect will depend upon the viewer’s susceptibility to cuteness and contrivance ladled on with some proficiency but no subtlety whatsoever.
  99. Detour
    It may be tempting, and not entirely inaccurate, to describe Christopher Smith’s Detour as “Sliding Doors” reimagined by Quentin Tarantino, but this cleverly twisty neo-noir thriller turns out to be more substantial and surprising than such logline shorthand might suggest.
  100. Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends)
    It’s an engrossing, ultimately poignant chronicle.
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