Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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  1. Caught by the Tides
    Jia’s risky experiment is so uncannily successful that it is possible to come away from “Tides” with the whimsical impression that this was the film he was building toward all this time, as though all those lauded previous movies were simply him amassing the raw material for this one.
  2. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
    Errol Morris delivers a compelling, thoughtful and entirely involving documentary in The Fog of War.
  3. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
    If “All Dirt Roads” perhaps does not connect quite as powerfully as it could on a narrative level, it marks the arrival of an arresting new talent in Raven Jackson, at the very least as the creator of the kind of cinema you do not watch as much as touch and smell and taste.
  4. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
    Animism, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, sex with a catfish -- there's all that and more in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's wonderfully nutty Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.
  5. Brokeback Mountain
    This ostensible gay Western is marked by a heightened degree of sensitivity and tact, as well as an outstanding performance from Heath Ledger.
  6. Rose
    At once armored, guarded and intensely vulnerable, Hüller’s performance is the human factor here — a volatile, unpredictable element, but one nonetheless attuned to the film’s meticulous shaping and mise-en-scène.
  7. The Kid with a Bike
    The breakout here is 13-year-old Doret, the Dardennes' latest stunningly naturalistic, non-professional acting discovery.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mutiny on the Bounty
    Mutiny takes its time, and plenty of it, without being guilty of a single dull moment.
  9. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    In the end, while the movie’s wit is its most satisfying selling point, “Spider-Verse” proves too clever for its own good. But in this universe, where audiences are suffering from the very real phenomenon of superhero overload, ambition and originality are to be encouraged, especially it broadens the mythology to include women, people of color, and yes, even that hammiest of scene-stealers, Peter Porker.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Wicker Man
    Anthony Shaffer penned the screenplay which, for sheer imagination and near-terror, has seldom been equalled.
  11. The Tragedy of Macbeth
    It shows you, through the ironic empathy summoned by Washington’s performance, just how fast the human race can slip off the tracks. And it brings that drama into ravishing deep focus.
  12. Particle Fever
    For all their concentration on the human factor, the filmmakers by no means shortchange the aesthetic dimensions of LHC.
  13. Tarnation
    Getting so close to real-life mental illness, via footage that spans many years, renders Tarnation a uniquely potent experience.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Microcosmos
    A feature documentary about a day in the life of the bug universe, Microcosmos is a surprisingly entertaining, visually stunning treat.
  15. Flow
    The trouble with Flow is that it already looks dated — commendable to be sure, yet rudimentary at the same time. It’s as if Zilbalodis decided to dump an ocean’s worth of water in the Uncanny Valley. Still, animal-loving viewers will bond almost instantly with the cat and its motley companions.
  16. Murderball
    A blast and a half -- as entertaining as mainstream American docus get.
  17. Life Itself
    James cuts — as in all of his best work — straight to the human heart of the matter, celebrating both the writer and the man, the one inseparable from the other, largely in Ebert’s own words.
  18. The Shape of Water
    Perhaps the greatest of The Shape of Water’s many surprises is how extravagantly romantic it is, driven throughout by an all-conquering belief in soulmates as lifelines.
  19. Rewind
    Watching the movie is like staring at a blurred image of the past that gradually, over 86 minutes, comes into terrifying focus.
  20. Leila's Brothers
    The helmer constructs scenes with a bustling documentary energy, studiously avoiding melodramic tropes, even when they might serve to make the narrative more engaging, less unwieldy or simply easier to digest overall.
  21. Caché (Hidden)
    A tightly plotted and paced thriller whose not-so-hidden agenda is to expose the bad conscience of the world's haves toward its have-nots, "Hidden" is one of Austrian helmer Michael Haneke's most watchable and pungent works.
  22. Bisbee '17
    It’s an investigation into memory, intolerance, corporate-labor conflicts and race relations that’s as audacious as it is timely — and further confirms that director Robert Greene is one of America’s finest new voices in nonfiction.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adam's Rib
    Adam's Rib is a bright comedy success, belting over a succession of sophisticated laughs. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin have fashioned their amusing screenplay around the age-old battle of the sexes.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirty Harry
    Strip away the philosophical garbage and all that's left is a well-made but shallow running-and-jumping meller. Don Siegel produces handsomely and directs routinely.
  25. All About My Mother
    An emotionally satisfying and brilliantly played take on the ups and (mostly) downs of a group of less-than-typical female friends.
  26. Moneyball
    While a hopelessly awkward-looking Hill provides fish-out-of-water laughs, Pitt gives a genuinely soul-searching performance.
  27. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters
    Brief Encounters reps a must-see for art lovers.
  28. Resurrection
    For those who miss the way the movies used to act on us, it is a reminder of the uniquely paradoxical pleasures of immersion and surrender: a dazzlingly cineliterate lesson in the lost art of letting go.
  29. Rushmore
    Wickedly funny.
  30. The Duke of Burgundy
    An act of cinephilic homage that transcends pastiche to become its own uniquely sensuous cinematic object, Strickland’s densely layered, slyly funny portrayal of the sadomasochistic affair between two lesbian entomologists tips its hats to such masters of costumed erotica as Jess Franco, Tinto Brass and Jean Rollin, without ever cheapening its strange but affecting love story.
  31. The Tsugua Diaries
    Whether wholly performed or partially authentic, The Tsugua Diaries wittily evokes the volatile mood swings of lockdown — how concentrated time with the same people can yield either irritation or intensified closeness from day to day, particularly in a sticky-hot summer haze.
  32. My Golden Days
    Desplechin perfectly times the moment when drollery ends and anguish begins, and it’s that sense of vulnerability that lends the film an unexpected emotional force as it moves toward its return-home epilogue.
  33. The Wind Will Carry Us
    Takes the refined work of Iranian helmer Abbas Kiarostami up another notch to ever more metaphoric ground.
  34. What the Constitution Means to Me
    Director Heller does a better job of adapting Schreck’s play than the team behind Disney Plus’ recent “Hamilton” film, in part because the underlying production is so much simpler.
  35. Night Is Not Eternal
    Though it leaves one wanting for more hard-hitting, confrontational exchanges with Payá, “Night Is Not Eternal” evinces the road to change as winding, perilous, and far from immaculate.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Metro achieves in A Tale of Two Cities a screen classic.
  37. Force Majeure
    Visually stunning even in its most banal moments and emotionally perceptive almost to a fault.
  38. Good One
    Collias impresses in a role that doesn’t grant her any great extremes of expression. Sam’s temperate demeanor may simply be her nature, but Collias’s tautly wired performance shows how it’s also a defense.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tampopo
    A thoroughly offbeat but most enjoyable comedy on the subject of food.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Know Where I'm Going!
    I Know Where I'm Going! has all the values of a documentary as a foundation for the tale of a girl who is sure she knows where she is going until she gets sidetracked - and likes it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blow Out
    Writer-director Brian De Palma's Blow Out is a frequently exciting $18 million suspense thriller which suffers from a distracting emphasis upon homages to other motion pictures.
  42. Diane
    It’s a tender, wrenching, and beautifully made movie, and part of what’s revelatory about it is that it’s a story of boomers who are confronting the ravages of old age (disease and death, the waning of dreams), yet they’re doing it with a stubborn echo of the hopes and desires they had when they were younger.
  43. Ten
    10 dazzling and perceptive snapshots of women with which femmes everywhere can identify.
  44. Playground
    Wandel’s immersive, impressive debut is rigorous in its resolute focus on one little girl fighting a lonely, frightened battle for her future selfhood, in which what hangs in the balance is nothing less than the shape and measure of her developing soul.
  45. Tangerine
    Writer-director Sean Baker’s sun-scorched, street-level snapshot is a work of rueful, matter-of-fact insight and unapologetically wild humor that draws a motley collection of funny, sad and desperate individuals into its protagonists’ orbit.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    sex, lies, and videotape
    A sexy, nuanced, beautifully controlled examination of how a quartet of people are defined by their erotic impulses and inhibitions.
  47. The Remains of the Day
    All the meticulousness, intelligence, taste and superior This curious, cloistered piece... is continuously absorbing but lacks the emotional resonance that would have made it completely satisfying.
  48. The Tillman Story
    A riveting account of how a soldier's death in Afghanistan was spun into a web of public lies.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    To Be or Not to Be
    To Be or Not to Be, co-starring Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, under expert guidance of Ernst Lubitsch, is absorbing drama with farcical trimmings. It's an acting triumph for Lombard, who delivers an effortless and highly effective performance that provides memorable finale to her brilliant screen career.
  50. Room
    It’s a testament to the story’s underlying integrity that, even when deprived of some of the elements that made Emma Donoghue’s 2010 book so gripping, director Lenny Abrahamson’s inevitably telescoped but beautifully handled adaptation retains considerable emotional impact.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dog Day Afternoon
    The entire cast is excellent, top to bottom. Dog Day Afternoon is, in the whole as well as the parts, film-making at its best.
  52. The Wolf House
    It’s an endless metamorphosis that unfolds like some kind of real-time art installation, and in all honesty, it can be a touch overwhelming to take in at times — which is why the digital release of The Wolf House is a blessing in disguise, as audiences can rewind to fully appreciate this awe-inspiring film’s layers of details.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
    It’s satisfying without being indulgent, but most of all, it’s a monument to Beyoncé’s status as one of pop’s most enduring figures, and everything it takes to get there.
  54. Anatomy of a Fall
    From the opening scene, set in an unfinished chalet in the French Alps, it often feels as if the movie is eavesdropping on moments too intimate to be shared.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The English Patient
    A respectable, intelligent but less than stirring adaptation of an imposingly dense and layered novel.
  56. Fallen Leaves
    It’s a nice but exceedingly minor movie. It leaves little imprint.
  57. Nebraska
    Throughout, Payne gently infuses the film’s comic tone with strains of longing and regret, always careful to avoid the maudlin or cheaply sentimental.
  58. Ordinary People
    A powerfully intimate domestic drama, Ordinary People represents the height of craftsmanship across the board.
  59. Under the Sand
    An exquisite reflection on personal bereavement.
  60. Divine Love
    The new age of Brazilian protest cinema begins here, and “Divine Love” has kicked it off in dancing shoes.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Written on the Wind
    Tiptop scripting from the Robert Wilder novel, dramatically deft direction by Douglas Sirk and sock performances by the cast give the story development a follow-through.
  62. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    They’ve done it. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse doesn’t just extend the tale of Miles Morales. The film advances that story into newly jacked-up realms of wow-ness that make it a genuine spiritual companion piece to the first film. That one spun our heads and then some; this one spins our heads even more (and would fans, including me, have it any other way?).
  63. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
    Consistently fascinating and suspenseful.
  64. Heavenly Creatures
    An exhilarating retelling of a 1950s tabloid murder, it combines original vision, a drop-dead command of the medium and a successful marriage between a dazzling, kinetic techno-show and a complex, credible portrait of the out-of-control relationship between the crime’s two schoolgirl perpetrators.
  65. Dreamcatcher
    Conventionally constructed but remarkable for the honest, intimate rapport it achieves with highly vulnerable human subjects.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Richard III
    Spirited acting, machine-gun pacing and ominous Art Deco settings combine to rousing effect in this Richard III, a sure-fire crowd-pleaser among recent Shakespeare movies.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    They Were Expendable
    The picture vividly portrays the big job the little boats did. The battle scenes in which the P-Ts go after Jap cruisers and supply ships were exceptionally well directed.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Narcissus
    The cast has been well chosen, but Kerr gets only occasional opportunities to reveal her talents.
  69. Million Dollar Baby
    Staying at the top of his game when most of his contemporaries have long since hung up their gloves, Clint Eastwood delivers another knockout punch with Million Dollar Baby.
  70. Last Days in Vietnam
    The docu’s accomplished summary of tension-filled events as they transpired from minute to minute comes at the expense of wide-angle historical context.
  71. Krisha
    Shults’s approach craftily favors observation over exposition, and he proves as attentive to Krisha’s surroundings as he is to her inner life.
  72. Dawson City: Frozen Time
    The remarkable thing is that the movie acquires the quality of a time machine. You don’t just watch “Dawson City.” You step into it to and draw back a magical curtain on the past, entering a world of buried memory that’s the precursor to our own.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rebecca
    Picture is noteworthy in its literal translation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel to the screen, presenting all of the sombreness and dramatic tragedy of the book in its unfolding. More important, it commands attention in establishing Joan Fontaine as a potential screen personality of upper brackets.
  74. Josephine
    While some might find it triggering, “Josephine” dares to confront the life-shattering intersection of sex and violence in our culture, facing the toughest of “adult situations” with clear eyes.
  75. The Inheritance
    Brainy, mannered, dryly amused, “The Inheritance” can appear willfully inexpert; the self-conscious acting feels both deliberate and the work of a director who hasn’t spent much time working with actors. But Asili dives confidently into big ideas — ideas as ideology, as wondrous inspiration, as both.
  76. The Babadook
    This meticulously designed and directed debut feature from writer-director Jennifer Kent (expanded from her award-winning short, “Monster”) manages to deliver real, seat-grabbing jolts while also touching on more serious themes of loss, grief and other demons that can not be so easily vanquished.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Ringers
    Cronenberg handles his usual fondness for gore in muted style.
  78. Little Men
    Ira Sachs’ Little Men is a little movie brimming with little truths about modern life. It won’t change the world, but it does understand it
  79. Boogie Nights
    Darkly comic, vastly entertaining and utterly original.
  80. The Kids Are All Right
    Sparked by wonderfully lived-in performances from Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right is alright, if not up to the level of writer-director Lisa Cholodenko's earlier pair of new bohemian dramas, "High Art" and "Laurel Canyon."
  81. Welcome to Chechnya
    The ironically inviting title only hints at part of the story in this wholly devastating documentary: The crisis, it turns out, is all around us.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Straight Story
    Lynch has directed his most satisfyingly disciplined movie.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Great Escape
    Producer-director John Sturges has fashioned a motion picture that entertains, captivates, thrills and stirs.
  84. Manakamana
    For all its manipulations and self-imposed restrictions, Manakamana is expansive, intricate and surprisingly playful.
  85. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    Filtering the world's oldest paintings through the latest in cinematic technology, Werner Herzog delivers a one-of-a-kind art-history lesson in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
  86. Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)
    A slow-burning, increasingly incensed unraveling of a horrific murder case underpinned by colonialist privilege and prejudice, it too demands patience of its viewers — though it rewards them with steadily rising emotional impact and a long view of Latin American history that transcends any true-crime trappings.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Big Sleep
    Brittle Chandler characters have been transferred to the screen with punch by Howard Hawks' production and direction, providing full load of rough, tense action most of the way.
  88. King of the Hill
    King of the Hill has all the rich satisfactions of a fine novel.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carrie
    Carrie is a modest but effective shock-suspense drama about a pubescent girl, her evangelical mother and cruel schoolmates. Stephen King's novel, adapted by Lawrence D. Cohen, combines in unusual fashion a lot of offbeat story angles.
    • Variety
  90. The Red Turtle
    Michael Dudok de Wit’s hypnotizing, entirely dialogue-free The Red Turtle is a fable so simple, so pure, it feels as if it has existed for hundreds of years, like a brilliant shard of sea glass rendered smooth and elegant through generations of retelling.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hope and Glory
    Essentially a collection of sweetly autobiographical anecdotes of English family life during World War II.
  92. How to Survive a Plague
    A concise overview's clarity and an epic narrative shape, with a happy ending to boot.
  93. My Happy Family
    Providing certain vivid detail but rather lacking in vitality, Ekvtimishvili’s screenplay is stronger on sociology than drama.
  94. 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.
  95. Loveless
    The dramatic aesthetic of a movie like Loveless — rock-solid yet leisurely in its observance, grounded yet metaphorical — makes it a quietly commanding film.
  96. Showing Up
    In its minimalist quotidian way, Showing Up is a movie made by someone in masterly control of her medium.
  97. In the Bedroom
    Beautifully acted by a diverse ensemble, this Good Machine production is carefully crafted and deliberately paced.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thin Man
    The Thin Man was an entertaining novel, and now it's an entertaining picture.
  99. EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
    There’s a purity and natural-born dazzle to EPiC. What you see is what you get: Elvis in the raw, driven by the awareness that it doesn’t get any better than that.
  100. Barbara
    A story of love and subterfuge in 1980 East Germany that never quite accelerates into an outright thriller, Barbara reps another assured collaboration between director Christian Petzold and his main muse, actress Nina Hoss.
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