Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. Captain America: Brave New World
    It’s superhero meatloaf and potatoes served with just enough competence and dash not to feel like reheated leftovers.
  2. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
    It’s not another unhinged Bridget bash — more like a hearts-and-flowers finale.
  3. Suze
    This is a smart and emotionally immersive comfort movie where you get the happy with a side of sad in the same way that the messiness of our own lives often unfolds, with laughter and tears served as a pair in a package deal.
  4. Love Hurts
    Most audiences want action to feel like action, whereas Eusebio makes it look too much like choreography: No matter how dynamic, every fight scene seems rehearsed to within an inch of its life.
  5. Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
    Steeped in both unfaltering and pleasant humanity, Vargas’ characters are what some might deem “problematic.” But they ultimately depict complicated mentalities, with shades of true-to-life negative and redeeming traits.
  6. Mr. Nobody Against Putin
    Through the eyes of its delightfully brave, yet utterly relatable subject (also the de facto cinematographer), this terrifying, revelatory and poignant exposé offers an unseen human angle on an ongoing conflict that’s continues to be widely addressed in documentary cinema.
  7. One to One: John & Yoko
    The rare rock doc that’s a must-see.
  8. Seeds
    Although there are urgent economic and political challenges facing these families, this isn’t muckraking cinema. Instead, the filmmaker hews to the quotidian, the weekly, the annual. Shot in black and white, this portrait of a people is affecting and achy.
  9. André Is an Idiot
    The film is most enlightening and affecting when it settles into a perceptive, finely detailed examination of everyday domesticity lived under the weight of rushing mortality.
  10. Move Ya Body: The Birth of House
    While there’s more people talking than dancing and we never hear a full song, the editing adds a lively pulse to the storytelling that keeps it all moving forward entertainingly. That’s because the story itself is so amusing.
  11. The Librarians
    Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder’s illuminating documentary — premiering at the Sundance Film Festival — offers a rattling look at coordinated efforts to ban books. More importantly, it introduces viewers to the everyday and increasingly vital heroes pushing back: the librarians who sound the alarm to both legislative and grassroots attempts to pull books from school and public libraries.
  12. Green and Gold
    To put it bluntly, Nelson gives this clichéd indie a lot more than it ever gives him.
  13. Valiant One
    An unpretentious B-movie made with A-grade effort, “Valiant One” packs decent action and mostly sturdy drama into the tale of U.S. soldiers whose mission near the DMZ goes haywire and leaves them stranded in North Korea.
  14. OBEX
    More contained than “Strawberry Mansion” but with similarly expansive ideas, “Obex” feels opportune for the modern era.
  15. The Thing with Feathers
    The whole thing is oppressive and, in an odd way, not very interesting.
  16. Rabbit Trap
    The film’s barely-hidden secrets float just beneath the surface of a pool with no ripples — without meaningful texture to complicate or disguise its themes, or turn their unveiling into an emotionally-driven experience.
  17. Prime Minister
    As a portrait of struggles in the seat of power, the film presses all the right emotional buttons.
  18. Two Women
    The best that can be said for Robichaud’s film is that her two leads, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman and Laurence Leboeuf, give committed performances
  19. The Things You Kill
    With The Things You Kill Khatami turns in an absorbing and twisty take on introspection.
  20. Ricky
    Ricky is a movie that plunges into the depths and also lifts the spirit honestly.
  21. Plainclothes
    Plainclothes builds to an intense and ultimately cathartic climax, but there’s something retrograde about the shame Lucas feels. Emmi wants us to experience his protagonist’s sense of suffocation, when looking back from the present, we just want to shout: “It gets better!”
  22. Heart Eyes
    Thoroughly self-aware (perhaps to a fault), stocked with self-reflexive gags and gorily-orchestrated kills, the picture is endearing with its delightfully zippy charms.
  23. Oh, Hi!
    Gordon and Lerman are two committed performers with excellent chemistry and comic timing during these scenes, and much of Gordon’s physical work as the crazy soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend is genuinely impressive and funny. But the seams of Brooks’ writing show often, becoming impossible to ignore.
  24. Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
    Directed by Shoshannah Stern, who is hearing impaired, the documentary — made for the “American Masters” series and premiering at Sundance — is both straightforward and subtle.
  25. Lurker
    A tight, nifty, and unsettling little parable of the pathology of fame in our time.
  26. Last Days
    Even Yang, whose commitment is admirable, struggles to convey what’s inside John’s head — which, of course, is the whole point of this project.
  27. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
    I defy you to see It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley and not fall in love with Jeff Buckley’s voice. By the time the film is over, you want to find a way to go back and rescue him to let him live the life he should have.
  28. Folktales
    With the epic, primal beauty of its remote location, Folktales scores high on visual aesthetics, but rates lower on actual content, as the youth characters aren’t as fully-fledged as one could wish and the school experience is not enough of a trial to provide real drama.
  29. The Dating Game
    The feature is awkwardly compressed in its portrait of heartache and easily overwhelmed by the political portent of its subject.
  30. Bunnylovr
    Following Zhu’s peculiar white rabbit is never less than an intriguing experience, but in the end, it feels like a hollow one.
  31. Bubble & Squeak
    Not all movies need to serve up profound insights into the human condition, but the ones that don’t should at least be entertaining, and Twohy’s particular strain of absurdism is not just contrived, but deeply unfunny.
  32. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
    The film isn’t just richly textured, but rigorous in its unveiling of both history and modernity.
  33. Atropia
    While both its lampooning of U.S. militarism and its central character drama lack follow-through, the film contains bright comedic sparks in its keen observations about American media.
  34. All That's Left of You
    Spiritually guided by Dabis’ personal and familial memories, the narrative film is sometimes deeply stirring, other times clumsily heavy-handed, often hampered by Christopher Aoun’s bland cinematography.
  35. Together
    Audiences should have fun with Together, a body-horror movie about a serious thing — love — that never takes itself too seriously.
  36. Train Dreams
    Just because Malick’s influence can be felt does not mean that Bentley hasn’t found his own vocabulary to tell Grainier’s story. At times, Train Dreams feels almost quilt-like in the way its pieces fit together, with certain sounds and images flickering briefly, almost subliminally, across our consciousness, often to echo further on.
  37. Sorry, Baby
    If Sorry, Baby works, it’s because Victor strikes such a tricky tone: Her debut is warm and compassionate, advancing a conversation for which we’re still trying to find the words.
  38. Rebuilding
    I was touched, at moments, by O’Connor’s woeful countenance, but as written and directed by Max Walker-Silverman, Rebuilding has no motor.
  39. Opus
    With a confused tone stuck between satire and horror (that also informs Malkovich’s eccentric, out-of-place performance), and various half-baked ideas about cultural icons and toxic fandom, “Opus” mostly feels like a missed genre opportunity.
  40. You're Cordially Invited
    Whether they’re playing naughty or nice, Witherspoon and Ferrell are two of the rare stars who can be charming even when trying to sabotage someone else’s most important moment, and You’re Cordially Invited is most fun when they’re on the warpath.
  41. Dog Man
    It jams too many villains, themes and gags into a brief run time. Many of its bigger ideas focused on therapeutic conflict resolution fail to coalesce, leading to an overall tonal imbalance.
  42. Zodiac Killer Project
    Speaking to viewers who are cognizant of what films can and cannot be made, Zodiac Killer Project is a biting statement on how many artists have been funneled into a creative dead-end by a trend-chasing market.
  43. The Wedding Banquet
    While occasionally heavy on exposition, memorable dialogue thrives via the actors’ convincingly comfortable banter.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Colors Within
    Its alignment with its characters’ emotional currents is cemented by some of Yamada’s flourishes.
  45. Star Trek: Section 31
    This superficially diverting tangent is too convoluted and tonally wobbly to leave a lasting impression.
  46. The Ballad of Wallis Island
    Alive with plenty of droll British humor and with a music-filled, picturesque finale that is sincerely earned, The Ballad of Wallis Island is the best kind of crowd-pleaser: disarming, joyful and full of compassion for its oddball characters. This Sundance charmer doesn’t hit a false note.
  47. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    The musical finds rare shards of light — and an unlikely connection — in the most despairing of places.
  48. Predators
    Osit’s brilliant, subtly needling film leaves us unnerved and alert, but not certain of our convictions — an outcome, perhaps, that more true-crime programming should pursue.
  49. Peter Hujar's Day
    In its tiny-scaled staged-documentary way, Peter Hujar’s Day is exquisitely done and arresting to watch.
  50. The Legend of Ochi
    “Ochi” oozes wonder shot after shot, in part from the eye-popping environments produced through a combination of Evan Prosofsky’s lambent cinematography and the use of matte paintings.
  51. Porcelain War
    Porcelain War thrives on contrast, much of it poignant.
  52. Between Borders
    Between Borders runs on didactic writing that renders the Petrosyans’ plight into a derivative period drama.
  53. Brave the Dark
    Brave the Dark is a low-key inspirational indie that sensitively elicits empathy and sympathy without ever pushing too hard or simplifying complexities.
  54. 2000 Meters to Andriivka
    Like its predecessor, this is an angry, viscerally illustrative film — but it’s a weary one too, occasionally narrating its first-hand view of military combat with the jaundiced sense of futility that comes with living through long-term conflict.
  55. 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.
  56. Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)
    Questlove confronts the life and legacy of Sly Stone, investigates it, holds it up to the light, tears it apart, and puts it back together like the bravura mixmaster he is.
  57. The Perfect Neighbor
    The tragedy here doesn’t stop with a white woman shooting her Black neighbor, but the underlying belief that she felt she could and still get away it.
  58. Twinless
    Sweeney recognizes that some of his laughs could be in poor taste, but isn’t shy about casting himself as a weirdo, when such discomfort can point the way to deeper truths.
  59. Omaha
    A humble marvel, Omaha introduces a filmmaker with a privileged sensibility to translate these opposing forces into a tapestry of scenes imbued with loving compassion for the characters experiencing them.
  60. Jimpa
    The acting feels genuine across the board, with Lithgow (who wrestles an impossible-to-geolocate accent) emerging as the most fearless in an all-around daring ensemble.
  61. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
    Delivering a feverish, raw-nerve performance sure to go down as one of the year’s greats, Byrne has never had a role even remotely this intense to prepare us for the emotional acrobatics her writer-director has in store.
  62. Modi - Three Days on the Wing of Madness
    Broad in tone and narrow in scope, the film is in thrall to the idea of creating art outside mainstream financial and aesthetic models, though its structure and outlook are not unfamiliar.
  63. Sister Midnight
    The story soon gets away from Kandhari, leading to a film that enraptures and delights in its first hour but gets so locked in to a singular approach by its second that it’s practically consumed by its own style, rendering it unable to keep pace with the bold ideas at play.
  64. 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.
  65. Midas Man
    Midas Man is never less than watchable, and it does capture something about Brian Epstein that’s honest and affecting.
  66. Color Book
    What this spare drama truly offers is a new category. Call it “deep fidelity,” in which the filmmaker captures without flash or pretense the material, emotional and even spiritual lives of his protagonists. Charles Burnett’s classic “Killer of Sheep,” or far more recently Garrett Bradley’s documentary “Time,” come to mind as analogues.
  67. Flight Risk
    A crude, unimaginative, suspenseless adventure whose tension mostly derives from deciding which of its three main characters will prove the most unlikable by the time it ends.
  68. Inheritance
    How the film conceives of Maya is somewhat limited by her being a naive pawn in a bigger picture, but Dynevor easily demonstrates the screen presence to sustain this whole enterprise.
  69. Back in Action
    The two actors are appealing; they’ve got marriage-as-domestic-fight-club chemistry. And when Glenn Close shows up as Emily’s British mother, a former superspy herself, the film calms down for a bit ­— and perks up.
  70. Companion
    Directing his first feature, Hancock brings an impressive degree of control to a project that’s entirely execution dependent. If the timing and tone weren’t just right, the satirical edge would sour, and the entire project might seem silly or in extremely bad taste.
  71. Night Call
    Blanchart proves himself adept at giving all his ensemble various shading, shifting the audience’s allegiances and making his film much more than the usual brutal actioner.
  72. Millers in Marriage
    The film dips into the melodramatic as it inches closer to the end and choices have to be made, but if its players are revealed to be starring in a movie, they are also shown to be movie stars, making relatively mundane miseries well worth watching.
  73. Else
    A tad too heady but quite visually arresting, Emin’s dream-turn-nightmare body horror film is as much a lockdown pandemic fable as it is a philosophical treatise on individuality.
  74. Love
    Love’s commentary on modern relations may be more complex and chewy than just “live and let live,” but the film’s calm embrace of whatever works for the individual is refreshingly humane, rhetorically exciting and more than a little hot.
  75. The Critic
    The film is a heady brew of period thriller, compelling melodrama and jet-black comedy, and the second most remarkable thing about it is how seamlessly these diverse elements gel.
  76. Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare
    You might hesitate to call a film this fixated on child terror, adult perversity and sadistic violence “good,” exactly. But there’s no question director Scott Jeffrey casts a skillfully disturbed spell over a tale that emerges a cross between “It” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
  77. Wish You Were Here
    Director Julia Stiles constructs something fresh. The actor-turned-filmmaker, who co-adapts with Carlino, instills the source material with a clear-eyed sense of emotional authenticity, from its fantastical romanticism to the characters’ delicately-faceted relationship dynamics.
  78. Alarum
    Michael Polish’s film gamely tries to compensate for unspectacular production values with a lot of action — but its staging is pedestrian at best. Alexander Vesha’s script never convinces, and the competent actors fail to spark, despite Sylvester Stallone’s presence as a reluctantly reunited former colleague.
  79. Autumn and the Black Jaguar
    You want to be moved by this seemingly conservation-minded affair, but Autumn and the Black Jaguar sadly turns into a cringe-inducing experience fast in a number of ways, undermining the intelligence and taste level of its young audience in the process.
  80. Disfluency
    If its ambitions never quite meet its execution, Disfluency is (clunky title aside) an amiable watch with its heart (and head) in the right place that still manages to charm, perhaps because it so exalts the very concept of imperfection.
  81. William Tell
    William Tell is most confident when Bang is allowed to commit to pulpy bravado, with long bellows of “No!” and “Go!” and an impressive 6’4’’ frame. He’s the tallest man in all the Alps; in a movie as silly and simple-minded as this one, of course that makes him the hero.
  82. One Of Them Days
    Palmer, though she has the “straight” role, is so witty in her attack that she commands the screen. And SZA, in her film debut, simply sizzles. She’s a volcano of camp fury. The director, Lawrence Lamont, is a helmer of hip-hop videos making his feature-film directing debut, and while it might seem his main task is to keep the comedy crackling, the film’s secret weapon is the visual and rhythmic flow he imparts to it.
  83. Wolf Man
    Both intellectually and emotionally, there’s something promising afoot, and yet, Whannell doesn’t go far enough.
  84. Checkpoint Zoo
    There’s no lack of suspense, human interest or unique animal footage in this engrossing feature.
  85. The Prosecutor
    As a Donnie Yen vehicle that showcases the star’s still-amazing physical skills and moves at a pacy clip for almost two hours, The Prosecutor has the storytelling energy and visual panache to smooth over the rough spots.
  86. Under the Open Sky
    Directed with piercing insight, emotional depth and true compassion by Miwa Nishikawa, Under the Open Skies tells the heartbreaking tale of a pariah whose soul is crushed by systemic discrimination and a world of hypocritical conformity.
  87. Super Happy Forever
    The poignancy of Super Happy Forever lies in its unseen tensions, its negative spaces, and the ellipsis of five years where its characters assumed they had all the time in the world to recreate this level of happiness.
  88. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
    Gudegast, for all his casualness toward plausibility, is an energizing filmmaker. He keeps the mano-a-mano standoffs humming, and he’s got a sixth sense for how to showcase Butler as a glamorously disheveled schlock version of Dirty Harry–meets–Popeye Doyle-meets– “Lethal Weapon”-gone-lone-wolf.
  89. Riefenstahl
    It’s a portrait that’s really a meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, the question of her guilt. And one of the things it does is to remind you of what a singularly provocative and insidious and mysterious figure she was.
  90. 40 Acres
    Though R.T. Thorne’s dynamic siege thriller has some familiar moves, it is full of fresh ideas.
  91. Los Frikis
    Rather than simplistically lionizing the frikis, the directors honor their plight by portraying them as an example of how the human spirit perseveres even when nearly crushed.
  92. Homestead
    The lead characters are well-cast across the board, with Chase and McDonough especially effective as complex, unpredictable characters whose sporadic conflicts go a long way toward developing a rooting interest in both men.
  93. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
    Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is wired-up synthetic fun. It’s a trivial kiddie flick that moves at the speed of your mind playing video games.
  94. Mufasa: The Lion King
    At nearly every step, Mufasa’s challenges mirror those that Simba must later overcome, but the movie doesn’t celebrate Mufasa’s might so much as his modesty.
  95. Scrap
    The well-acted, confidently crafted indie Scrap probes messy family dynamics with low-key but taut acuity, avoiding the usual poles of dysfunctional-clan comedy or high drama driven by yelling matches and shocking revelations.
  96. Young Werther
    The biggest single factor in making “Young Werther” an antic, pleasing gambit overall is English actor Booth. He channels a bit of the early Val Kilmer from “Top Secret!” and “Real Genius” in conjuring a hero who’s so nimble and amusing in his peacocking, we forgive him being his own biggest admirer.
  97. 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.
  98. Kraven the Hunter
    The action in Kraven the Hunter is fine as far as it goes, but it rarely incites or bedazzles you.
  99. The Bibi Files
    The Bibi Files is an important documentary, because it takes in the big picture of how Benjamin Netanyahu became so entrenched that he remade Israel in his own image, in much the same way that Trump has done in the U.S. and will now try to do even more.
  100. A Complete Unknown
    A Complete Unknown is a drama of scruffy naturalism, with a plot that doesn’t so much unfold as lope right along with its legendary, curly-haired, sunglass-wearing coffee-house troubadour hero. Yet the feel — the effect — is that of a musical.
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