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. Fifty Shades of Black
    At a minimum, a parody should be funnier than the film it’s sending up, but Fifty Shades of Black, a quick-and-dirty riff on last year’s S&M romance “Fifty Shades of Grey,” falls a laugh or two short of even that low standard.
  2. Eddie the Eagle
    The pic gets quite a lot of mileage out of several note-perfect musical choices...and Fletcher includes just enough odd angles and quirky compositions to suggest a slightly stranger, loopier vision for this film lurking somewhere beneath.
  3. Jim: The James Foley Story
    Oakes’ film may not share its subject’s hard-headed journalistic drive, but as an articulation of grief — directed by a childhood friend, with significant participation from the Foley family — it’s undeniably moving.
  4. Mekong Hotel (2012)
    The pic plays like a bonus track to the Thai auteur’s Palme d’Or winner, “Uncle Boomee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” its esoteric symbiosis of Thai folk culture, spiritualism and current sociopolitical conditions simplified, but no less mystifying.
  5. Dad's Army
    Amiable to a fault, with gags both broad and gentle, Oliver Parker’s pic prompts sporadic chuckles rather than guffaws.
  6. Indignation
    This may be Schamus’ directorial debut, but he’s no amateur, and his experience — both in cinema and in life — comes through onscreen.
  7. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
    For the most part, pic’s sheer good-naturedness pulls off a not particularly inspired crusty-old-coot-thawed-by-young-scamp concept, maintaining an agreeable tonal balance despite occasional wobbles between spoof, sentimentality and silliness.
  8. Goat
    To pretend that the pledges (who voluntarily submit to such harassment) are somehow the victims in an institution of exclusion, objectification and underage substance abuse goes far beyond disingenuous, and the resulting film falls far short of actually surprising those who already know a thing or two about fraternities.
  9. Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    Greenaway has wrought an outrageously unconventional and deliriously profane biopic that could take decades to be duly appreciated.
  10. Dark Night
    With a title easily confused for Christopher Nolan’s 2012 Batman sequel...Tim Sutton’s Dark Night is at once a glib play on words and a sobering rumination on the mindset of a suburban America simultaneously obsessed with and plagued by gun violence.
  11. Complete Unknown
    Luxuriously conversational in structure, it would make an outstanding stage play, and the two stars play it with chamber-piece rigor.
  12. Nina Forever
    Eccentric as this premise is, the Blaines’ screenplay trails behind their confident direction in terms of ringing interesting variations on a limited, somewhat repetitious theme.
  13. Captain Fantastic
    Ross doesn’t run from the resulting sentimentality the way so many other directors do; nor does he undercut it with irony or sarcasm as has become the regrettable tendency in independent cinema.
  14. Christine
    Far from the austere death march it might threaten to be on paper, this is a thrumming, heartsore, sometimes viciously funny character study, sensitive both to the singularities of Chubbuck’s psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by any woman in a 1970s newsroom.
  15. Certain Women
    As with Reichardt’s more streamlined miniatures, regional detail accounts for much of the film’s lingering resonance, as her characters are molded by (and, in some cases, rail against) the landscape they inhabit.
  16. The Birth of a Nation
    A biographical drama steeped equally in grace and horror, it builds to a brutal finale that will stir deep emotion and inevitable unease. But the film is perhaps even more accomplished as a theological provocation, one that grapples fearlessly with the intense spiritual convictions that drove Turner to do what he had previously considered unthinkable.
  17. Manchester by the Sea
    The persistence of grief and the hope of redemption are themes as timeless as dramaturgy itself, but rarely do they summon forth the kind of extraordinary swirl of love, anger, tenderness and brittle humor that is Manchester by the Sea.
  18. JeruZalem
    The movie’s occasional stabs at political commentary never quite pay off. Nor can the writer-directors, brothers Yoav and Doron Paz, fully sustain the film’s novelty into the second half, when the script reverts to timeless, tired monster-movie tropes.
  19. Dirty Grandpa
    This contemptible fiasco is not only comfortable courting laughs through ugly mockery of minorities, but also doesn’t even have the courage of its own crass-as-I-wannabe convictions.
  20. Forsaken
    Refreshingly and unabashedly sincere in its embrace of Western conventions and archetypes, this pleasingly retrograde sagebrush saga should play exceptionally well with currently under-served genre fans.
  21. Belgica
    Big-picture cliches aside, this truth-blurring but thoroughly convincing portrait makes its case via the details.
  22. Synchronicity
    Synchronicity is best approached as a sort of Rubik’s cube, a series of shiny, sliding, interlocking surfaces that require dexterity to move and figure out, but contain nothing beneath of pressing value.
  23. Naz & Maalik
    The intense focus on the two lead characters emerges as both a strength and a weakness. There’s a lot of walking and talking, and what begins as rather charming ultimately turns tedious, even with a fleet 80-minute running time before closing credits factor in.
  24. The Boy
    Despite the assiduous grinding of plot mechanics by William Brent Bell (“The Devil Inside”) and scripter Stacey Menear, the movie never fully distracts its audience from the inherent silliness of its premise...and, as a result, is more likely to elicit laughs and rude remarks rather than screams and rooting interest.
  25. The Witness
    The Witness functions as a project of not only confrontation but resurrection, as Bill’s sleuthing sheds new light on Kitty’s personality, romances and career, and thus finally re-emphasizes her as a flesh-and-blood person rather than just a famous victim.
  26. Antarctica: Ice and Sky
    A colossally overproduced white elephant of a movie that obfuscates both its own protagonist and his important message with layer upon layer of unnecessary “style.”
  27. City of Gold
    At a moment when public discourse seems so often focused on exacerbating hostile divisions, this docu’s joyful embrace of human (as well as edible) variety as “the spice of life” seems particularly, well, filling.
  28. Prescription Thugs
    Engaging and enraging but also, alas, consistently superficial.
  29. Mojave
    Monahan isn’t required to satisfy bloodlust or to pay off conventional plot points, even if his screenplay for “The Departed” displayed an abundant talent for doing so. But he assumes too much in believing that the audience will connect in any way with a sour, prickly narcissist who’s trapped in the gilded cage of wealth and fame.
  30. A Prophet
    Though less pleasurably offbeat than the helmer’s well-received “Read My Lips” and “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” this is solid, sinewy pulp fiction.
  31. Bleak Street
    Certain images...leave lasting impressions, though Garciadiego’s script doesn’t seem to do enough with the story, other than laying it out in linear order for Ripstein to film.
  32. The Finest Hours
    Perhaps the worst one could say about Craig Gillespie’s film is that, rather than their finest hours, the whole cast and crew all put in a solid shift at the office making the movie, producing a perfectly entertaining, sometimes quite well-crafted disaster drama that nonetheless retreats from the memory almost as soon as the credits roll.
  33. Band of Robbers
    The performances are deft, the pacing is fleet, and the viewer is left with the agreeable impression that Band of Robbers is a promising work by filmmakers whose next one probably will be even better.
  34. Kung Fu Panda 3
    Emotionally, dramatically and perhaps most of all visually (it’s worth seeing in 3D), this delightful trilogy capper is almost as generously proportioned as its cuddly warrior hero, restoring a winning lightness of touch to the saga while bringing its long-running themes of perseverance and self-knowledge to satisfying fruition.
  35. Correspondence (La corrispondenza)
    Even if Tornatore were deliberately aiming for the artificiality that clings to nearly every frame, the pic would still feel needlessly airless, hampered by an Italian-to-English script translation that may be precise but lacks naturalism.
  36. Norm of the North
    With plot elements cobbled together from recent animated hits, the blandly executed pic might as well be titled “Happy Minions of Madagascar’s Ice Age.”
  37. The 5th Wave
    Enough of Yancey’s ambitious narrative has made the final cut to reflect an arrestingly original spin on trendy genre tropes.
  38. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
    It’s a nail-biter and a head-scratcher rolled into one: The mind may initially race to keep up with logistics, but eventually one acknowledges the futility of trying to make sense of a situation that Bay himself hasn’t managed to clarify.
  39. Ride Along 2
    Another tired, witless and potentially lucrative attempt to spin an exhausted buddy-cop template into action-comedy gold.
  40. King Jack
    Thompson and his appealing young cast enliven the material with authentic, ingenuous feeling; there’s a palpable understanding here of the substantial difficulties involved in growing up under any circumstances, and Thompson’s script never condescends to its teen subjects with dewy-eyed nostalgia for youth.
  41. The Masked Saint
    Veering from broad small-town comedy to heavy-handed vigilante dramatics, and marbled with the sort of spiritual epiphanies typically mastered in Sunday school rather than seminary, this Canadian indie seems unlikely to galvanize the faithful.
  42. Detective Chinatown
    A carefully constructed mystery that blends screechy comedy and crazed action in high-spirited but somewhat ungainly fashion.
  43. Diablo
    On the surface, Diablo would seem to have all of the proper ingredients for a rollicking retro Western, yet its sights are set a bit higher, which inspires both admiration for its moxie and disappointment that its script and direction aren’t up to the challenge.
  44. Intruders
    Less than a home run, then, Intruders is still an efficiently engineered suspenser, with solid performances and a tight pace.
  45. Solace
    Brazilian director Afonso Poyart (“Two Rabbits”) proves quite effective at building and sustaining a grim sense of suspense throughout.
  46. The Abandoned
    Despite the capable presence of Jason Patric in a thanklessly one-note role, this generic chiller clings so tightly to conventions that it fails to even moderately raise one’s pulse
  47. The Forest
    First-time director Jason Zada does generate an intermittently spooky sense of mystery that not even the muddled scripting can fully demolish.
  48. Embrace of the Serpent
    The film would nonetheless benefit from occasional tightening, its digressions and longueurs occasionally moving beyond the lyrical and into the belabored. Nevertheless, as a vision of the past, “Embrace of the Serpent” offers a stately, striking panorama and an entirely persuasive one.
  49. Other People's Children
    Ultimately there’s an intriguing arc here that rewards patience.
  50. Devil and Angel
    The leads’ chemistry is obvious, even when they’re at each other’s throats.
  51. Chevalier
    That Tsangari resists escalating the conflict, counting on subtle political insinuations to emerge as these perplexing social Olympics wear on, will leave as many viewers enervated as amused, but it’s an expertly executed tease.
  52. No Home Movie
    In its own highbrow way, the formally demanding and impossibly intimate video essay serves as an elegy to that sense of home that disappeared with the woman who, as far as the film is concerned, seems forever confined to her own bourgeois apartment.
  53. Martyrs (2008)
    French splatterfest Martyrs offers a few genuine scares early on, but they're quickly washed away by all the blood tossed around by writer-director Pascal Laugier.
  54. Yosemite
    Resolutely unshowy, sometimes almost too lower-case in its observations, Yosemite pays off in an authenticity that pervades both individual scene rhythms and performances.
  55. Daddy's Home
    Daddy’s Home isn’t so much a lump of coal as an empty box.
  56. Mojin: The Lost Legend
    Though the film lacks the spooky, macabre spirit expected of this subterranean subgenre, Mongolian-Chinese helmer Wuershan (“Painted Skin II: The Resurrection”) applies his outlandish visual panache to evoke an underground world of ethnic antiquity refreshingly distinct from traditional Han-Chinese culture.
  57. The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
    With its sultry two-tone, blue-and-bronze design, Sfar’s version certainly looks stunning, but it’s remarkably empty-headed.
  58. Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story
    The documentary adroitly sustains interest with a standard-issue mix of archival material, interviews with intimates and admirers, actors’ voiceovers and dramatic re-creations.
  59. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
    A mostly harmless yet plenty rough assemblage of musical numbers and rote chases that barely add up to a movie.
  60. The Creation of Meaning
    Throughout the film, the beauty of the landscapes and the totally natural insertion of human, animal and insect movement within the frame lend The Creation of Meaning a particular grace.
  61. The Winding Stream
    The Winding Stream is cogent and compelling as a pop-culture history lesson, and genuinely uplifting while it shows how contemporary artists — along with descendants like Rosanne and John Carter Cash — keep the legacy of A.P., Mother Maybelle, June and Johnny alive and thriving.
  62. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    The reassuring familiarity of Abrams’ approach has its limitations: Marvelous as it is to catch up with Han Solo, Leia and the rest of the gang, fan service takes priority here over a somewhat thin, derivative story that, despite the presence of two appealing new stars, doesn’t exactly fire the imagination anew.
  63. The Hateful Eight
    The movie absolutely delivers on the sheer moment-to-moment pleasures fans have come to expect, from dynamite dialogue to powder-keg confrontations.
  64. The Wave
    The Wave sticks mostly to the big-studio formula (albeit on a much smaller budget), introducing a handful of bland soon-to-be-victims before bombarding them with spectacular digital effects.
  65. The Ridiculous 6
    The scenery ain’t bad but the laughs are tumbleweed-sparse in The Ridiculous 6, a Western sendup so lazy and aimless, it barely qualifies as parody.
  66. Stinking Heaven
    Whether scenes tilt toward very mordant farce or gut-stabbing trauma, there’s a compelling sense — crafted or otherwise — that the actors are driving the tone from scene to scene, with Silver and his incisive editor Stephen Gurewitz determining the emotional transitions between them.
  67. Body
    The polished, bland low-budget presentation doesn’t raise much tension, and the script springs no real surprises
  68. Sisters
    Beneath the film’s entertainingly crude hijinks, there are actual human stakes here, as the two sisters recognize in each other the growing up they themselves need to do — though Pell’s script keeps the hugging and learning to a reasonable minimum.
  69. Sunday Ball
    Stunningly shot and marvelously edited to capture the rhythms of the game, the pic transcends its subject much in the way Roger Angell’s essays on baseball offer rare pleasures even to those uninterested in the game.
  70. Christmas Eve
    Christmas Eve isn’t likely to make anyone feel exceptionally merry. Still, it remains modestly diverting from scene to scene.
  71. The Fencer
    This well-acted, smoothly crafted drama tells a story of cross-generational bonding in the face of historical oppression, in touching if unsurprising fashion.
  72. The Club
    Those willing to enter The Club will discover an original and brilliantly acted chamber drama in which Larrain’s fiercely political voice comes through as loud and clear as ever.
  73. The Brand New Testament
    While the ultra-clever first act stockpiles sufficient admiration from audiences to sustain the film, the bulk of The Brand New Testament concerns itself with Van Dormael’s most persistent preoccupation: the tug-of-war between fate and free will.
  74. The Girl in the Book
    Cohn handles all the performers very deftly.
  75. Capture the Flag
    It’s quite possible that two or three generations of extended families will be entertained during group home-screen viewings of this antic and exciting trifle.
  76. Boy and the World
    Beyond its sheer, intense variety and ingenuity, Abreu’s animation remains so appealing throughout because it always feels handmade.
  77. Joy
    Despite another solid performance from Jennifer Lawrence, anchoring Russell’s sincerely felt tribute to the power of a woman’s resolve in a man’s world, it’s hard not to wish Joy were better — that its various winsome parts added up to more than a flyweight product that still feels stuck in the development stage.
  78. The Revenant
    In aiming to steer his dark, fatalistic vision toward something genuinely contemplative and cathartic, Inarritu has managed to appropriate the beauty of Malick’s filmmaking but none of its sublimity — another word for which might be humility. There is plenty of amazement here, to be sure, but all too little in the way of grace.
  79. Stink!
    No matter its cinematic derivativeness, Stink!’s outcry against continuing to use the American citizenry as chemistry experiment guinea pigs carries with it the unassailable whiff of common sense.
  80. Lamb
    Partridge navigates risky material with assurance, delicacy and a deepening sense of intimacy that can turn, without warning, into complicity: The more at ease we feel in the characters’ company, the more disturbingly questionable the situation becomes.
  81. Night Owls
    The execution here is impressively adroit, with a clever script enlivened by two charmingly compatible lead performances from Rosa Salazar and Adam Pally.
  82. The Letters
    Opting for dutiful, reverent beatification over flesh-and-blood characterizations (or insights), the film is merely a clunky primer on how poor storytelling can make even the grandest of figures seem small.
  83. Uncle Nick
    Even at a brisk 81 minutes, this indie can barely sustain its boozy comedic buzz.
  84. The World of Kanako
    While there’s something compelling about an antihero whose obsession is poised on the razor’s edge between love and hate, The World of Kanako buries it in grinding, agitated repetition.
  85. Krampus
    Krampus isn’t especially scary, but it generates goodwill nonetheless for treating its home-invasion-for-the-holidays setup with an appreciably straight face.
  86. Point Break
    The sense of living dangerously is somewhat lacking as Kurt Wimmer’s emotionally vacant screenplay fails to make audiences care enough about the characters to sweat over their physical exertions.
  87. In the Heart of the Sea
    In the Heart of the Sea feels stiff and unconvincing, weirdly devoid of texture, and populated by ciphers who speak primarily in the leaden language of exposition.
  88. Heneral Luna
    Anchored by a charismatic central performance by John Arcilla (“Metro Manila”) and peppered with exciting action sequences, the pic has the all-around energy to overcome the odd moment of bumpy storytelling and prosaic dialogue.
  89. The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young
    Annika Iltis and Timothy Kane’s debut feature documentary finds plenty of rooting interest and colorful characters in a competition whose willful perversity brings an inevitable, generous side helping of gallows humor.
  90. MI-5
    Bharat Nalluri’s chrome-colored thriller plays less as an organic extension of the series’ universe than an all-purpose genre piece nominally tailored to fit the “Spooks” franchise — not to mention the star quality of previously unaffiliated leading man Kit Harington.
  91. Bolshoi Babylon
    “Babylon” actually provides little more than a lot of vague insinuations. Exasperatingly, it doesn’t even offer more detail on the Dmitrichenko affair.
  92. Iraqi Odyssey
    The running time of two hours and 43 minutes is unquestionably self-indulgent; thankfully the clan’s charisma keeps attention from lagging too much despite frequent opportunities for trimming.
  93. A Royal Night Out
    Julian Jarrold’s brightly performed exercise in speculative history scores as a frothier, more feminine bookend to “The King’s Speech” — though it’s no less engaging or accomplished.
  94. Victor Frankenstein
    This reimagining features some fun production design and a performance of undiluted bug-eyed flamboyance from James McAvoy as the titular pale student of unhallowed arts, but its reservoirs of energy and ingenuity run dry long before the finale, leaving the film to lumber to its half-hearted conclusion.
  95. TransFatty Lives
    TransFatty Lives is an unusually playful and emotionally involving first-person chronicle of serious illness.
  96. Chi-Raq
    Lee’s vision of a scarred, gutted city may not please the tourism board, but his movie is better for it: Its seething dramatic texture captures a deeper, more elusive beauty that — like reconciliation, reform or any other human ideal — can only be achieved when the illusion of safety is left behind.
  97. Very Semi-Serious
    A delightful if never particularly deep survey of an American comic institution.
  98. Criminal Activities
    There’s nothing remotely fresh about this revival, but tight pacing and an overqualified cast keep things zipping along nicely.
  99. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words
    The lack of any significant investigation into performance styles is acutely felt, particularly given the very different methods of her major directors.
  100. Secret in Their Eyes
    Roberts brings an acrid sense of bitterness and sorrow to this exceedingly sharp-witted sleuth, registering the cruel passage of time and the toll of unspeakable tragedy in every careworn feature and vocal quaver.... it’s a skillful and humane turn from an actress whose darkly penetrating gaze comes closest to fulfilling the mystery of the title.
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