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. Selah and The Spades
    Writer-director Tayarisha Poe’s cold and stylish debut, commands attention. More specifically, Simone’s Selah seizes it.
  2. The Same Storm
    It’s an often-touching time capsule of a harrowing moment in which rampant death and police brutality, white privilege and surging activism answered the call of so much grief.
  3. Diciannove
    Tortorici evidently remembers that disorienting sense of being released (or perhaps abandoned) into the world before you’ve quite found yourself; if you don’t, his funny, nervy, aptly unformed film will give you quivery flashbacks. It’s an auspicious arrival for both the filmmaker and his intense, mercurial young star Manfredi Marini, who holds the camera with the guilelessness of a newcomer and the ease of a natural.
  4. Fair Game
    Fair Game serves up impeccable politics with a bit too much righteous outrage and not quite enough solid drama.
  5. Good Morning, Night
    Numerous filmmakers have attempted to dramatize the terrorist activity that gripped Italy in the 1970s, but few have done so with the unsettling power of Marco Bellocchio's Good Morning, Night.
  6. Jodhaa Akbar
    A long-limbed story that is utterly simple in structure, but decorated with enough character interplay and side plots to keep the movie ticking over to a powerful finale.
  7. Nadia, Butterfly
    It’s not Nadia’s fault — or Savard’s — that she’s a bore. That’s just the way this oddly incurious movie, which assumes too much of its audience, has made her out to be. In the water, Nadia may be a powerful butterfly, but on land, she’s more of a moth.
  8. World's Greatest Dad
    The picture wobbles a bit before emerging a successful low-key satire of literary fraud and morbid personality cults.
  9. John Candy: I Like Me
    Hanks’ doc mostly shows how great it must have been to know John Candy when he was alive, although Conan O’Brien does a nice job of contextualizing how he inspired others. Amid all that adulation, Hanks might have scrapped the title “I Like Me” and called the movie “Everybody Likes Candy” instead.
  10. Dead of Winter
    Eventually, en route to a finale that strives for tragic poetry the rest of the film scarcely earns, the narrative ice wears so thin that it cracks under the weight of a moment’s thought.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Around the World in 80 Days
    Around the World In 80 Days, is a smasheroo from start to finish.
  12. The Old Oak
    Ebla Mari, the actor who plays Yara, makes Yara’s despair over her missing and possibly murdered father, and her agony at having had to abandon her country, incredibly layered and precise. Her performance doesn’t allow us to phone in our empathy.
  13. Guncrazy
    A shoot-'em-up exploitationer with a few interesting ideas floating around in it, Guncrazy lacks the exhilaration of a first-class lovers-on-the-run crime drama. After a promising beginning, competently made indie effort settles into a surprisingly somber mood that suppresses the possibilities latent in the story and actors.
  14. Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel
    “Dreaming Walls” sets out to capture not the history of the Chelsea, or even the experience of the people who’ve lived there, so much as the afterglow of the Chelsea. The aging residents it shows us can check out anytime (or get kicked out), but they can never leave.
  15. The Deepest Breath
    As a pure adrenaline-rush experience, however, The Deepest Breath is hard to argue with, coming closer than might seem possible to conveying the exhilaration and/or terror of descending further than the length of a football field into infinite aqua.
  16. Circle of Friends
    Naturally charming without being beautiful, Driver brings extraordinary intensity and tenderness to a role that easily could have become sappy.
  17. Whirlybird
    The doc is a fascinating insight into how individual choices can shape the news.
  18. Here Before
    The tension that drives Here Before is our curiosity as to whether or not the film is taking place in the world of the uncanny. In a way we want it to be, because that would make it scary fun; in another way we don’t want it to be, because that would make it corny scary fun.
  19. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
    The movie’s message, if it has one, is that you don’t have to be super to be a superhero. Teen Titans GO! is fun in a defiantly unsuper way, and that’s a recommendation.
  20. Romantics Anonymous
    A delicious comedy-romance with a sweet-toothed twist from Gallic director Jean-Pierre Ameris ("Lightweight").
  21. A Taxi Driver
    While the film clearly taps into the national zeitgeist, buoyed by a sweeping show of people’s power that ousted the president, international audiences should also appreciate the actors’ feisty turns.
  22. The Wasp
    The actors try to maintain the focus on the characters, but the screenplay fails them as it becomes more convoluted and trite, as if it’s merely trying to distract until the final twisty reveal.
  23. The Drop
    The Drop is at once upfront and highly effective in its manipulations, tugging at our heartstrings even as it flicks away at our nerves.
  24. The Company Men
    The pain feels cushioned and secondhand, the characters are not terribly sympathetic or interesting other than for their misfortune, and the film shows little interest in analyzing the situation other than to point fingers at greedy CEOs.
  25. Chicago 10
    A vibrantly crafted evocation of a convulsive moment in 20th century American history, Chicago 10 is far less interested in offering a fresh, probing look at what took place on the streets during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the circus trial that followed than it is in celebrating the stars of the anti-war movement and rallying the current generation to follow their examples.
  26. The Wild Thornberrys Movie
    Balances intelligent humor, slapstick, Blighty reserve and Yank spunk along with environmentalism.
  27. Goyangileul butaghae
    Engaging, highly accessible movie that marks a slick feature debut by helmer Jeong Jae-eun.
  28. Divided We Fall
    Confronts an incendiary topic head-on with grace, style, compassion and exquisitely practical wit.
  29. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    A strange, fun and densely textured work that gets better as it goes along.
  30. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
    Given its impressive balance of charm and bite, it looks like anything but suicide.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Salvador
    The tale of American photojournalist Richard Boyle’s adventures in strife-torn Central America, Salvador is as raw, difficult, compelling, unreasonable, reckless and vivid as its protagonist.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Death of a Gunfighter
    Widmark elicits certain sympathy for his actions in his hardboiled interpretation.
  33. Martha
    It’s a movie that captures how Martha Stewart’s penetration into American culture seems, in hindsight, as inevitable as it was unlikely.
  34. One Life
    Although the film as a whole struggles to match the poignancy of its finale . . . it nevertheless serves as an urgent reminder of the importance of individual action at a time when the world refugee crisis is at a scale not seen since the Second World War.
  35. American Relapse
    The aesthetic devices used by the directors to embellish their material — including educational and archival videos, split-screens, slow-motion, time-lapse footage, and lingering close-ups of needles and money — are a bit too self-consciously stylish for their own good. Nonetheless, their film captures the recurring nightmare of substance abuse.
  36. 3 Backyards
    Helmer-writer Eric Mendelsohn returns with his first feature in a decade and the proposition that art film still has a place in the world -- which is an exhilarating idea, especially as represented by 3 Backyards, an exquisite example of calculated execution in pursuit of elusive ideas.
  37. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
    With Michael Cera in the title role, twentysomethings and under will swiftly embrace this original romancer.
  38. The Go-Getter
    An unusually fresh-feeling indie with a nice sense of style. The potentially predictable story of a young man who undertakes an impromptu journey to resolve some unfinished family business emerges as an appealing tale of personal growth with hand-crafted contours.
  39. Fear(s) of the Dark
    An omnibus of black-and-white animation with a couple exceptionally clever episodes tied together by an unnecessary recurring monologue.
  40. Operation Filmmaker
    Picture raises pithy questions sure to provoke animated discussions pro and con. Credit Davenport for a mostly unbiased presentation that presents her own disenchantment in a balanced manner.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A League of Their Own
    Penny Marshall’s gangly fourth film benefits from a fresh, unusual subject, the joy of baseball being played by women having the time of their lives and a wonderful central performance by Geena Davis. Downside includes contrived plotting, obvious comedy and heart-tugging, some hammy thesping and a general hokiness.
  42. Fahrenheit 11/9
    The movie, in its way, summons something ominous and powerful. It’s not a screed — it’s a warning. It says, quite wisely: Take action now, or you may no longer have the opportunity to do so.
  43. Happiest Season
    The film is cheeky and blithe and situational, suffused with enough upscale Christmas froth to get the audience high on spiced-cocktail fumes. In a key scene near the end, it’s more than willing to go over-the-top. Yet Happiest Season is also a deft and humane dramedy of manners that’s really about something.
  44. Get Duked!
    That kind of all-around ineptitude puts the Get Duked! ensemble in the company of such classic Zucker and Abrahams movies as “Airplane” and “The Naked Gun,” and should appeal to lovers of old-fashioned lowbrow farce, provided they’re willing to accept a few lame hip-hop references.
  45. The Spy Gone North
    This well-crafted work deserves to be seen for its thorough account of intricate workings of secret service and political skullduggery.
  46. Jim Henson Idea Man
    If it’s easy to wish “Idea Man” were as bold as its subject, though, it’s just as easy to be won over by this deservedly heartfelt tribute to him.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Performance
    Co-director Nicolas Roeg’s lensing is tricky, the characters gamey, the dialog dull, performances flat, impact none.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
    An Arabian Nightish saga told with some briskness and opulence for the childish eye, yet ultimately falling short of implied promise as an adventure spree.
  49. Above and Beyond
    Above and Beyond reps an uneasy combo of two very different kinds of documentary, one of them personalizing the past and the other “objectifying” political advocacy.
  50. The Passengers of the Night
    An airy, low-key drama that doesn’t suffer for its lack of narrative tension, The Passengers of the Night further proves the old adage about the journey mattering more the destination.
  51. The Outfit
    If you’re picturing shades of Kubrick’s “The Killing,” but with better clothes, fewer bullets and a self-effacing English fellow quietly trying to defuse the situation, you wouldn’t be far off.
  52. Cha Cha Real Smooth
    Cha Cha Real Smooth works overtime to be an honest movie, and it also works overtime to ingratiate itself. In a sense, it accomplishes both aims, but I’m not sure that they entirely go together.
  53. Crazy Love
    While the competent filmmaking package lacks much of its own personality, the sheer fascinating strangeness of the people documented could earn the picture a minor cult following a la "Grey Gardens."
  54. Song of Lahore
    The filmmakers eavesdrop on intimate musical interludes at home and in the workplace, where it becomes immediately apparent that these forgotten maestros consider themselves representatives of families who have practiced their art for centuries, passing on their musical knowledge from generation to generation.
  55. The Grizzlies
    Like any good, inspirational athletic adventure, the film forges a strong connection with the human side of the story.
  56. Our Souls at Night
    It’s hard to deny that the small screen may be the most natural fit for Batra’s film, given its pleasantly mollified storytelling and blandly unassuming visual style.
  57. Man Up
    The upshot of this loopy masquerade is more predictable than it is progressive, but considerably pleasurable thanks to Morris’s generous supply of pithy one-liners and the resourceful, ribald skills of Bell, as engaging and elastic a comic everywoman here as she was in her impressive directorial debut “In a World … ”
  58. The Exploding Girl
    Both comely leads offer engaging presences, and there’s some pretty imagery, shot adequately on HD, but it’s all so slight and featherweight one viewer sneezing could blow it all offscreen.
  59. Dayveon
    The more Dayveon attempts to up the dramatic and moral stakes of its narrative, the less persuasive it is as idiosyncratic, indigenous storytelling.
  60. Sacramento
    Angarano has the showpiece role, but it’s Cera who proves himself, more than ever, to be a major actor.
  61. Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
    It’s an entertaining flashback to an always-diverting countercultural epoch, with a touching footnote of a semi-famous love story at its center.
  62. Starter for 10
    Showcasing the considerable talents of ubiquitous thesp James McAvoy ("The Last King of Scotland," "Penelope") and several other up-and-coming Brit actors, picture garnishes fairly standard college-set plot with wit, warmth and unexpected turns.
  63. 22 July
    It’s intelligently stern, storm-gray filmmaking, as we’ve come to expect from Greengrass; if it feels a bit mechanical as well, perhaps this is a near-impossible story to film with both tact and soul.
  64. Bloody Oranges
    Few movies swap genres halfway through, and even fewer do so successfully. “Bloody Oranges” does both.
  65. Stephen Curry: Underrated
    With enough fresh stories to keep basketball fanatics engaged and a coda that every soccer mom will appreciate, this is a film that’s worthy of its subject.
  66. The Good, the Bad, the Weird
    East meets West meets East again, with palate-tingling results, in The Good the Bad the Weird, a kimchi Western that draws shamelessly on its spaghetti forebears but remains utterly, bracingly Korean.
  67. The Elephant Queen
    There’s no denying the emotional pull of Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble’s storytelling or the vivid rapture of the images, but “The Elephant Queen” adheres too closely to the parameters of family-friendly nature docs, and the formula doesn’t always serve it well.
  68. The Bridges of Madison County
    Given the intelligent restraint of the treatment, this is about as fine an adaptation of this material as one could hope for, although there is still something of a gap between the impressive skill of the filmmaking and the ultimately irredeemable aspects of the source.
  69. Kurt Cobain About a Son
    Some fans will find the approach (which avoids Nirvana music and perf footage) too arty and indirect; but others will welcome the specialized theatrical release and the subsequent DVD.
  70. Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
    It's a pungent study of fads, trends and the way everything once genuine ends up being homogenized and exploited beyond recognition by corporate America -- a fine companion piece to Stacy Peralta's "Dogtown and Z-Boys," but with a more raw, punkish aesthetic.
  71. Intimacy
    A tortured reflection on the complex relationship between love, sex, desire and obsession, distinguished by courageously raw performances from leads Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox.
  72. The Cuckoo
    Charming, smart and funny.
  73. Monsieur Ibrahim
    Unshaven and twinkling-eyed, Sharif is professionally light and entertaining in the title role.
  74. Changing Lanes
    Captures the excitement of lightning in a bottle.
  75. Itzhak
    Good music and good company make “Itzhak” a pleasure, though those seeking a methodical career overview should look elsewhere than this genial personality sketch of the world-famous violinist.
  76. Swinging Safari
    A cheerfully vulgar, consistently amusing and sometimes hilarious parody of life in a suburban Aussie cul-de-sac in the mid-1970s.
  77. Hitler's Children
    The sins of the fathers have seldom weighed so heavy as in the odd, intriguing and ultimately moving Hitler's Children.
  78. The Black Godfather
    The Black Godfather does yeoman’s work introducing a figure that few outsiders have likely heard of, but who needs no introduction in the power corridors of the entertainment industry.
  79. Magpie
    The first-time director, Sam Yates, working from a utilitarian script by Tom Bateman, slathers on mood, yet there’s a primitive charge to the film’s no-frills staging.
  80. Carry-On
    Although Collet-Serra brings creative solutions to each of the action sequences, the project is actually most effective when audiences are honed in on the core characters.
  81. Ong Bak
    Strongly recalls Hong Kong kung-fu movies of the late '60s and '70s, with physical grit, over-the-top heroics and inventive fight choreography providing the entertainment.
  82. Do Not Resist
    The doc is stylistically uninspiring, with a tedious threatening sound design, but the powerful subject matter largely overcomes such missteps.
  83. We Live in Public
    This astounding new documentary burrows into the thin and darkly funny spaces between artistry and vanity, isolation and community, collaboration and exploitation, sanity and madness.
  84. Sightseers
    The satire is firmly seated in character, and no one understands how well a good homicide can elucidate character better than Wheatley.
  85. The Pink Cloud
    Gerbase’s thoughtful, precise little film would have marked an impressive enough arrival under normal circumstances. As it is, it might endure as more era-evocative than many of the intentional pandemic dramas to come.
  86. The Milk of Sorrow
    At first, the picture seems a slow-moving, particularly well-framed ethnographic study of life in the big city in Peru; it only gradually becomes clear that Llosa's second feature perfectly aligns form and content.
  87. Uncertain Terms
    Silver offers up a generally assured and compelling film here.
  88. The Harder They Fall
    As much fun as Majors, Elba, Beetz and King are to watch in roles that allow for plenty of scenery chewing (and oh what scenery!), it’s Stanfield who steals the show here as the part-Indian, part-Black Cherokee Bill.
  89. Compliance
    In taut, gripping and deeply disturbing fashion, writer-director Craig Zobel measures the depths to which rational individuals will sink to obey a self-anointed authority figure in Compliance.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Dry White Season
    A wrenching picture about South Africa that makes no expedient compromises with feel-good entertainment values, A Dry White Season displays riveting performances and visceral style.
    • Variety
  91. Infamous
    Writer-director Douglas McGrath's boldest stroke is to impose a more overtly gay interpretation on a central relationship in which the attraction was generally supposed to be unspoken.
  92. Star Trek Beyond
    It’s a sturdily built movie that gets the job done, and it’s got a likable retro vibe.
  93. A Sinner in Mecca
    Sensationalizing every moment of his hajj (pilgrimage) while calling attention to his devotion, the helmer comes across as far too pleased with himself, though countering the demonization of Islam is a necessary goal.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Martin
    Pittsburg-based auteur George A. Romero is still limited by apparently low budgets. But he has inserted some sepia-toned flashback scenes of Martin in Romania that are extraordinarily evocative, and his direction of the victimization scenes shows a definite flair for suspense.
    • Variety
  95. 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.
  96. BuyBust
    BuyBust is a superbly executed action film about drug squad members fighting for their lives in a maze-like Manila slum that resembles nothing less than hell on earth.
  97. Primo Levi's Journey
    Sensitive, sobering, and tinged with respectful melancholy, Primo Levi's Journey retraces the enforced peregrinations of the great Italian chemist following his release from Auschwitz.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gloria
    Gena Rowlands is excellent as the tired woman who decides to take her chances for the boy. The kid is a right blend of understanding and childish tantrums.
  99. North Country
    An emotionally potent story told with great dignity.
  100. Bullhead
    Though the story is told and edited in a way that too often obscures rather than enhances its central tragedy, much is compensated by a career-defining, powerfully physical lead perf by Matthias Schoenaerts and ace lensing by local widescreen wiz Nicolas Karakatsanis.
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