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. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press
    What the film offers is evidence of a pattern, the shadows of a disturbing trend that add up to a warning: If we, as a society, don’t push back against the chipping away of the freedom of information, it’s only going to get worse, until it eats us alive.
  2. Margrete: Queen of the North
    The slower stretches — like the entire first hour — have a tendency to plod, which gives ample opportunity to feast your eyes on Søren Schwarzberg’s grandly gloomy production design and Manon Rasmussen’s superb, elaborate costuming, but also makes the story rather too easy to disengage from.
  3. Walking and Talking
    Eventually, the impression is created of notes for good scenes full of pungent observations and sharp asides, but without fully developed drama or emotion, leaving a sketchy, wispy feeling when all is said and done.
  4. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
    The entire project — including a handful of fun fourth-wall-shattering asides — is crafted with love and a genuine respect for the franchise.
  5. I Am Heath Ledger
    I Am Heath Ledger is a catchy and seductive portrait of an extraordinary artist, but it leaves you wanting more, because you know it’s not close to being all of Heath Ledger.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Separate Tables
    Much of the appeal of Terence Rattigan's play was due to the remarkable change in characterization they were able to make as they assumed different roles in each of the segents. Rattigan and John Gay have masterfully blended the two playlets into one literate and absorbing full-length film.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jailhouse Rock
    The production carries a contrived plot but under Richard Thorpe's deft direction unfolds smoothly. Director has been wise enough to allow Elvis Presley (in his third starrer) his own style, and build around him.
  8. The Last Mogul
    A refreshingly honest film about the life and times of Hollywood uber-power player Lew Wasserman.
  9. The Willoughbys
    While The Willoughbys might not be very original, its novelty comes through in the delivery and execution, owing to a witty screenplay (by Pearn and Mark Stanleigh) that combines nimble wordplay with highly compressed, well-paced plotting.
  10. The Secret Life of Words
    Sarah Polley gives a wonderfully searching performance, as a woman in a state of extreme isolation, in The Secret Life of Words, a compellingly claustrophobic drama set mostly aboard an oil rig.
  11. Fort Bliss
    Fort Bliss is a flawed little gem of a movie, but Monaghan’s flawless performance is its own quiet call to arms.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shanghai Ghetto
    The material is more interesting than the film's rather dry mode of presentation, which is somewhat hampered by a dearth of archival footage.
  13. Avengers: Infinity War
    It’s a sleekly witty action opera that’s at once overstuffed and bedazzling.
  14. A Vigilante
    As an actress, Olivia Wilde has been something of a shape-shifter, but in this movie she seems to be burning through all her previous roles to find something essential. She grabs hold of the spectacle of agonized female anger, and does it with a grace and power that easily matches that of Frances McDormand in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”
  15. I'm Fine (Thanks for Asking)
    “I’m Fine” teases the structure of comedies in which something must be achieved in too short a span. Only, instead of ha-ha challenges, Danny encounters the poignant, the frustrating, even the perilous.
  16. Maps to the Stars
    “Maps” is the most overtly comedic screenplay Cronenberg has ever directed, but he hasn’t tailored his lensing or editing style to fit. The laughs come anyway.
  17. Two Pianos
    The melodrama begins at such a high pitch in Desplechin’s latest, you might think it has nowhere to go but down, yet this earnestly inflamed tale of art, grief, betrayal and all-consuming amour on steroids keeps finding new, hysterical ways to surprise.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sorcerer
    William Friedkin's Sorcerer is a painstaking, admirable, but mostly distant and uninvolving suspenser based on the French classic The Wages of Fear [from the novel by Georges Arnaud]. Friedkin vividly renders the experience of several men driving trucks loaded with nitro through the South American jungle, yet the characters are basically functional. 'Sorcerer' is merely the name of one of the trucks.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fletch
    What propels this contempo LA yarn about a dissembling newspaper columnist on the trail of a nefarious con man (Tim Matheson) is the obvious and successful byplay between Chevy Chase’s sly, glib persona and the satiric brushstrokes of director Michael Ritchie. Their teamwork turns an otherwise hair-pinned, anecdotal plot into a breezy, peppy frolic and a tour de force for Chase.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    True Confessions
    Comes off as relatively mild fare which fails to pack a dramatic or emotional wallop.
  21. Girl Model
    While Girl Model falls a bit short in the delivery of hard facts and incriminating evidence, it more than makes up for that with its knotty psychological profile of Arbaugh.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Drunken Master
    The idea of having a couple of drinks prior to fighting add an off-beat touch to the disciplined art of kung-fu. The storyline as can be expected is practically nil but the humour is universal enough.
  23. F1: The Movie
    We go into “F1” excited about being excited, and the film makes good on that. It’s nothing if not an adrenaline high. Yet it’s a high that may leave you feeling a bit empty afterwards.
  24. John Wick
    If you can stomach the setup, then the rest is pure revenge-movie gold, as Reeves reminds what a compelling action star he can be, while the guy who served as his stunt double in “The Matrix” makes a remarkably satisfying directorial debut, delivering a clean, efficient and incredibly assured thriller.
  25. 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.
  26. The Way, Way Back
    The story of a teen desperate for a father figure who finds encouragement from a wild-and-crazy water-park employee -- rather than from the guy auditioning to be his stepdad -- can be explosively funny in parts, but overall feels pretty familiar, relying more on its cast than the material to win favor.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Americanization of Emily
    Primarily interesting for the romance between Andrews and Garner.
  28. The Desert Bride
    It’s a loving showcase for its star’s most finely wrought powers of expression, but equally beguiling as a display of its first-time helmers’ gentle observational acuity and surprisingly inventive visual storytelling.
  29. Sometimes I Think About Dying
    It’s a thin, practically anemic observational movie for audiences who recognize themselves in Fran’s awkwardness.
  30. Chef
    The final destination is entirely predictable — right down to the deus ex machina reappearance of an erstwhile antagonist — but the trip itself is never less than pleasant, and often extremely funny.
  31. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    For all the information here, Gibney is unusual among investigative documentarians in that he never forgets he's making cinema.
  32. Detropia
    Among several recent documentaries about Detroit, the elegiac Detropia is perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing, if not the most informative or insightful.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    House of Wax
    Andre de Toth's direction, while uneven, nonetheless gears it to the medium.
  34. Missing Link
    Sooner or later, Laika was bound to branch out, which makes this funnier, more colorful film the link previously missing between the company’s Goth-styled past and whatever comes next.
  35. Why We Fight
    Picture sets the gold standard for political documentaries.
  36. Dream Horse
    This is a well-cast, artfully handled effort that exercises sufficient restraint to really earn its requisite laughter and tears.
  37. Women Without Men
    Has striking moments comparable to the best of Neshat's potent imagery. But the script jettisons most of the book's more powerful sections.
  38. Tales from the Golden Age
    Though Mungiu's presumed two shorts have the most individual feel, the other helmers -- Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Hoefer, Razvan Marculescu and Constantin Popescu, all feature novices -- show a plethora of styles within the so-called "Romanian New Wave."
  39. Anita
    Anita may be a tribute doc, but it’s one with real heft.
  40. The Lesson
    The naturalistic style of the storytelling is stealthily enthralling, as is the lead performance by Margita Gosheva as a provincial Bulgarian schoolteacher who is slowly, inexorably driven to the edge by crushing debt.
  41. Active Measures
    While it’s not as if the film comes up with some smoking gun that Robert Mueller hasn’t yet, it fills in the Trump-Russia connection in a dogged, rigorously reported, eyebrow-raising way.
  42. Down Terrace
    Cleverly channeling gangster tropes through a British kitchen-sink soap opera, TV scribe-helmer Ben Wheatley has concocted a nifty black comedy, with a little help from his friends, in Down Terrace.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On Golden Pond
    The film’s most moving interlude, (spoiler omitted), is saved for the end, and both Fonda (pere) and Hepburn are miraculous together here, conveying heartrending intimations of mortality which are doubly powerful due to the stars’ venerable status.
  44. Journey to the West
    [A] mostly entertaining action-fantasy-comedy.
  45. Twister
    Another theme park ride of a movie without an ounce of emotional credibility to it, Twister succeeds on its own terms by taking the audience somewhere it has never been before: into a tornado's funnel.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sophie's Choice
    Sophie's Choice is a handsome, doggedly faithful and astoundingly tedious adaptation of William Styron's best-seller.
  47. My King
    French actress-turned-helmer Maiwenn is concerned first and foremost with her characters, who rank among the most vividly realized of any to have graced the screen in recent memory.
  48. The Harvest
    Nothing about the circumstances revealed in The Harvest could be called normal, and yet it’s a credit to a fertile imagination that the film proves so terrifyingly relatable.
  49. Stations of the Cross
    The fixed gaze of each “station” is an appropriate choice for illustrating unbending dogma, and helmer Brueggemann always makes interesting use of the frame.
  50. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
    Thanks to stunning advances in performance capture technology, director Rupert Wyatt successfully ditches the cumbersome makeup appliances of past chapters, building the story around a cast of photoreal CG simians convincing enough to identify with as characters, rather than just special effects.
  51. The Innocent
    This film is a slightly slipperier customer than a topline summary would suggest, with tonal shifts that shouldn’t work, but somehow do.
  52. Won't Anybody Listen
    Richly satisfying both as subversive, music-biz primer and as gritty, true-life underdog story.
  53. Son of the Bride
    Unflaggingly genial and universally funny.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Black Balloon
    Collette acts as an anchor for the ensemble, but the young leads credibly hold their own onscreen.
  55. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
    Competently mounted yet plodding, it’s manifestly a labor of love that becomes a bit of a labor to watch.
  56. The Party's Just Beginning
    The movie, a wayward portrait with surrealist touches, is trying for something genuine. Yet despite some good scenes, some tart lines...and an atmosphere of saintly desperation that suggests “Trainspotting” redone as a darkened YA fable, the movie is wispy and meandering; it doesn’t gather power as it goes along.
  57. Timecrimes
    Timecrimes welds a B-movie plotline to precision-engineered writing and a down-to-earth style; add an engagingly sloppy, nonplussed hero, who remains unfazed by the time-bending scrape in which he finds himself, and the result is memorably offbeat.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yentl
    In league with ace cinematographer David Watkin, Streisand has created a fine-looking period piece, working on Czech locations and in English studios.
  59. Friends with Money
    Stealing the show is Jane, whose rage-fueled rants and scarcely concealed mutterings are loaded with sarcastic bon mots that are delivered to the hilt by McDormand.
  60. Enola Holmes
    The movie has contemporary issues of gender equality on the mind — and an endearingly radical protagonist in Enola.
  61. My Friend Dahmer
    As you watch the movie, its central idea — that Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t just born, he was made; that he started off as an actual human being — has a shocking validity that never undercuts the extremity of his crimes.
  62. Casting About
    Film's warm disposition and deliberate lack of razzmatazz will hook discerning, mature viewers.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hair
    The spirit and elan that captivated the Vietnam protest era are long gone, and what Forman tries to make up with splash and verve fails to evoke potent nostalgia.
  64. Mad Detective
    A neat idea that doesn't quite hit the bull's-eye.
  65. Bethlehem
    The film comprises an impressive directorial debut for Adler who demonstrates a confident grasp of pace, place and thesp handling.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jesús
    Jesús investigates the darkest side of adolescence, raising a number of moral questions without providing easy answers. The top-notch cast is the icing on the cake, with Goic stoically embodying Chile’s hopes and failures while young Durán mesmerizes with his stunning androgyny.
  67. Come True
    With sterling command of its malevolently dreamy tone, it casts a disquieting spell.
  68. Omen
    At a fleet 91 minutes, Omen could stand a little more character-building. But the larger atmospheric payoff lingers; the film first gets under the skin, then sits in the skeleton like a trapped, restive spirit.
  69. A Quiet Place: Day One
    “Day One” ought to have been the mind-blowing origin story, and instead it’s a Hallmark movie, where everyone seems to have nine lives — not just that darn cat.
  70. Crime 101
    Crime 101 is an underworld drama that’s clever and compelling in unusual ways.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Cousin Vinny
    Tomei, sashaying through the proceedings as kind of a sexy hood ornament, creates a buoyant chemistry with her combative boyfriend.
  72. X2: X-Men United
    About twice as good as the original...bigger and more ambitious in every respect, from its action and visceral qualities to its themes.
  73. Red Obsession
    The film’s rather simplistic cultural juxtapositions, pitting artistic appreciators against status-seeking philistines, work best when narrowly focused on the subject of wine.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Carny
    Edgy tale [from a story by Phoebe and Robert Kaylor and Robbie Robertson] of three born outsiders living on a tightrope vividly recalls, both in style and content, the doom-laden films noir of the late 1940s.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It Came from Outer Space
    Direction by Jack Arnold whips up an air of suspense and there is considerable atmosphere of reality created, which stands up well enough if the logic of it all is not examined too closely.
  76. Delirious
    An all-or-nothing perf from old DiCillo hand Steve Buscemi and a script that leaves no ironical stone unturned make this laugh-out-loud fare.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stripes
    Stripes is a cheerful, mildly outrageous and mostly amiable comedy pitting a new generation of enlistees against the oversold lure of a military hungry for bodies and not too choosy about what it gets. There’s little in the way of art or comic subtlety here, but the film really seems to work.
  78. Paranormal Activity
    Paranormal succeeds in staying unnervingly "real."
  79. Theater of War
    What emerges from Walter's docu is not a sense of failure, but a recognition that the play's the thing, enriched by every flawed performance, perfection almost irrelevant to its cry of anguish.
  80. We the Parents
    While no doubt a more evenhanded documentary remains to be made on this issue, the Takatas’ effort is polished and convincing on its own terms.
  81. No Time to Die
    No Time to Die is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neo-classical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A River Runs Through It
    A skilled, careful adaptation of a much-admired story, A River Runs Through It is a convincing trip back in time to a virtually vanished American West, as well as a nicely observed family study.
  83. Dear Diary
    Offering intimate self-exposure, Moretti solders his bond with fortysomethings who have lived through years of political disenchantment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swimming to Cambodia
    Spalding Gray's free-associating recollection of his experiences in Thailand during the making of The Killing Fields had an exhilarating immediacy which is mostly absent in this compressed filmed performance of Swimming to Cambodia.
  85. Honeydripper
    The result is one of Sayles' best films. The music, a mix of blues, seminal rock and newcomer Gary Clark Jr.'s performance, will be an obvious draw, as will the performances by some leading African-American actors.
  86. Ne Zha 2
    What’s remarkable is that even if one fails at grasping in full the plot and its many conflicts, Ne Zha 2 has the power to flood the senses and convince anyone who watches it that they have just witnessed an animated production that holds absolutely nothing back.
  87. The Double
    Undeniably impressive as a visual-psychological construct, The Double is ultimately a rigid, one-joke movie that feels hard pressed to sustain any sort of momentum over the course of its 92-minute running time.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Semi-Tough
    Semi-Tough begins as a bawdy and lively romantic comedy about slap happy pro football players, then slows down to a too-inside putdown of contemporary self-help programs.
  89. Soni
    With an intelligent, subtle script and camerawork so organically natural one doesn’t immediately realize that each scene is shot in one take, the film draws on a subject much in the news and spins it into a multilayered yet low-key study without preaching or sensationalizing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Citizens Band
    The CB dialog exemplifies the good-natured horsing around that marks those channels, at the same time the serious emergency traffic that often saves lives.
  91. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
    At every turn, we can sense what’s going on behind Kumiko’s doleful, downcast eyes; Kikuchi pulls us deeply into her world.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Turning Point
    The Turning Point is one of the best films of its era. It's that rare example of synergy in which every key element is excellent and the ensemble is an absolute triumph.
  93. Rafiki
    Even when Rafiki irons out its emotions a little too neatly, however, Mugatsia and Munyiva’s relaxed, sparking chemistry quickens its heartbeat.
  94. The Beauty Academy of Kabul
    In an act of "selfless service," a group of American women, backed by industry giants like Clairol and Vogue, open a beauty school in war-ravaged Afghanistan. The anomalies are manifold: Gun-toting soldiers patrolling the streets are visible through the windows as rookie beauticians busily snip, perm and tweeze.
  95. Erleuchtung garantiert
    Ochsenknecht and Wohler are a strong double act, displaying exemplary comic timing and making the brothers a problem-plagued but likable pair.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Memories of Tomorrow
    Pulses with firm conviction and gentle sincerity. For Western audiences, opening reels may seem a tad melodramatic, but by journey's end there won't be a dry eye in the house.
  97. The Method
    Smartly and seamlessly blending a cast of talented Argentine and Spanish thesps, Pineyro seems to be testing how much cinema he can derive from a restricted space.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Night on Earth
    An easy to take followup to his previous pic Mystery Train. Beginning with an outer-space shot gradually zeroing in on planet Earth, the director covers in five separate segments his favorite theme of lonely people interacting but ultimately facing the great void alone.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    French Connection II
    Hackman’s performance is another career highlight, ranging from cocky narc, Ugly American, helpless addict, humbled ego and relentless avenger.
  100. Bad Apples
    Ultimately, this odd, wicked little amorality tale winds up siding with no one: The children are indeed the future, we’re left to conclude, but will they make it any better than the present?
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