Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Uncle Nick
    Even at a brisk 81 minutes, this indie can barely sustain its boozy comedic buzz.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. TransFatty Lives
    TransFatty Lives is an unusually playful and emotionally involving first-person chronicle of serious illness.
  14. 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.
  15. Very Semi-Serious
    A delightful if never particularly deep survey of an American comic institution.
  16. Criminal Activities
    There’s nothing remotely fresh about this revival, but tight pacing and an overqualified cast keep things zipping along nicely.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. Creed
    With his “Rocky” spinoff, Creed, writer-director Ryan Coogler confirms every bit of promise he displayed in his 2013 debut, “Fruitvale Station,” offering a smart, kinetic, exhilaratingly well-crafted piece of mainstream filmmaking, and providing actor Michael B. Jordan with yet another substantial stepping stone on his climb to stardom.
  20. The Night Before
    Rogen’s zonked-to-insanity performance is the lifeblood of The Night Before, giving it the sort of joyous, madcap energy that comes from letting loose with one’s closest comrades, even to the point of potential oblivion.
  21. Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans
    Ultimately, Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans comes across as a portrait of the artist as a spoiled jerk, albeit a jerk whose charisma cannot be denied, and whose artistic ambitions elicit grudging admiration.
  22. The Funhouse Massacre
    Not the cleverest or most original horror comedy, Andy Palmer’s indie feature is nonetheless above average within that subgenre, offering fast-paced fun for fans.
  23. My All American
    Based on fact but mired in cliches, My All-American pays respectful tribute to U. of Texas football legend Freddie Steinmark (1949-71) with the sort of on-the-nose sincerity that transforms biography into hagiography
  24. Condemned
    Writer-director Eli Morgan Gesner (a clothing designer and skateboarder who previously helmed the skateboarding and hip-hop doc “Concrete Jungle”) could have milked the premise for gleeful counterculture exploitation (like a 21st-century “Basket Case”) or campy John Waters-style gross-out comedy, but settles for mean-spirited banality.
  25. The Dark Horse
    The Dark Horse is as good a title as any for a film that takes an overplayed genre — the inspirational mentor story — and still manages to surprise, sneaking up to deliver a powerful emotional experience within a formula we all know by heart
  26. The Good Dinosaur
    Cross-species bonding may have its limits, but it’s hard not to find beauty in a boy-meets-beast saga that, by the end, has made it hard to tell which is which.
  27. The Big Short
    There’s an unmistakable, scathing sense of outrage behind the whole endeavor, and it’s impossible not to admire McKay’s reckless willingness to do everything short of jumping through flaming hoops on a motorcycle while reading aloud from Keynes if that’s what it takes to get people to finally pay attention.
  28. 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.
  29. Return to Ithaca
    This airily shot talkfest doesn’t want for sensitivity, but overestimates viewers’ investment in a quintet of prickly characters whose personal histories take the film’s entire duration to assemble.
  30. Love the Coopers
    Decked out in the usual tinsel-and-mistletoe trappings, the film lurches awkwardly between gloominess and giddiness, never hitting the boisterously bittersweet groove it seeks.
  31. Casa Grande
    The pic is full of nicely observed vignettes that act as signifiers of caste, though at times the script turns overly didactic.
  32. Concussion
    Effective enough as a cautionary tale about willful ignorance and as a showcase for Will Smith...the film is let down by its confused and cliche-riddled screenplay, which struggles mightily to take a complex story and finesse it to fit story beats it was never meant to hit.
  33. Frame by Frame
    A piercing, poignant and — as befits its subject — beautifully composed exploration of the challenges and responsibilities faced by photojournalists in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban free press.
  34. Palio
    The film boasts characters as rich, and a narrative as entertaining, as might be found in the most crowd-pleasing of scripted sports sagas.
  35. Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict
    Guggenheim is such a fascinating figure that few will snipe at a character analysis that rarely gets below the surface.
  36. By the Sea
    By the Sea always offers something to tickle the eye and ear, even as it leaves the heart and mind coolly unstirred.
  37. Theeb
    Like all well-done adventure tales, especially those with an intimate human focus and an expansive, epic vision, “Theeb” works on multiple levels.
  38. Sembene!
    Utilitarian in construction but personally invested, it’s a duly humble career overview that doesn’t risk much individual interpretation of such rich, essential films as “Black Girl,” “Xala” and “Moolaade” — though it should leave viewers eager to make (or regain) their acquaintance.
  39. Sand Dollars
    Chaplin’s performance is characterized by a lack of vanity and an almost magical combination of empathy and pathos.
  40. In the Basement
    Grabby and grubby in equal measure, this meticulously composed trawl through the contents of several middle-class Austrians’ cellars (a space, according to Seidl, that his countrymen traditionally give over to their most personal hobbies) yields more than a few startling discoveries.
  41. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
    One could argue that “Mockingjay” didn’t really merit being split in two (and surely a single three-hour movie could be made of it), but we benefit from the fact that the film has been given room to breathe, which allows for subtle character moments...and the gradual building of suspense during the actual siege in the Capitol.
  42. Magallanes
    Adapting Alonso Cueto’s novel “La pasajera,” del Solar turns the screws on the audience expertly, but the thriller elements never distract from the moral crisis of a man — and a country — whose decades-old mistakes cling to him like a tattoo.
  43. Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (1971)
    Its mind-bending storytelling and themes of play and paranoia make it perhaps the quintessential Gallic movie of its era.
  44. Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
    This earnest, slight romance doesn’t generate enough sparks to overcome the anxiety of its obvious influence. But as a simple valentine to Hong Kong’s expat nightlife, the film makes for charming, breezy viewing, and the director shows promise going forward.
  45. Of Men and War
    The film’s rigorous approach will appeal to documentary purists while challenging more general audiences who might care to know more about Pathway, Gusman and his philosophy.
  46. The Peanuts Movie
    For those who know the strip well, The Peanuts Movie should feel like the first day of a new school year, reunited with a classroom full of familiar faces.
  47. Freaks of Nature
    Aiming to give teens everything they ostensibly like, and yet coming up with little more than a steaming pile of mash-up nonsense, Freaks of Nature proves a lifeless combination of alien invasion saga, zombie thriller, vampire romance and high-school drama.
  48. Hard Labor
    Hard Labor teeters uncertainly between horror and social commentary. It feels as if the helmers tried to imagine what Bunuel would have done if he had made a horror film.
  49. The Price We Pay
    This well-crafted documentary from director Harold Crooks (“Surviving Progress”) offers a concise, engrossing and occasionally infuriating overview of the ways multinationals avoid taxes by stashing profits in offshore havens.
  50. Fathers and Daughters
    In its shape and sheen, Fathers and Daughters seems dated even before Michael Bolton surfaces to cough up a gelatinous closing-credits ballad.
  51. The 33
    In broad strokes, the events that unfold are undeniably riveting.... The trouble is, The 33 only knows broad strokes. Lacking any specific angle on the ordeal, the filmmakers give the once-over-lightly treatment to every aspect of it, which ensures that none of them will be properly served.
  52. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse
    A witless undead retread served up as a vulgar revenge-of-the-dorks comedy.
  53. Asthma
    Ritter’s performance is the liveliest thing in a callow, shallow cautionary tale, which wears its influences on its artfully frayed sleeve and no closer than that to its heart.
  54. Christmas, Again
    The pic’s charm comes from its moments of unforced naturalism: little observations about the way people behave, paired with details and anecdotes that Poekel himself lived during his years operating McGrolick Trees, the same stand where the film was shot.
  55. The Royal Road
    While this free-ranging agenda might easily have seemed overly random or pretentious, Olson’s confessional tenor lends it all a stream-of-consciousness intimacy.
  56. How to Change the World
    Jerry Rothwell’s film focuses engagingly on the human dynamics, particularly the role of late leader Bob Hunter.
  57. The Daughter
    Deeply involving and emotionally searing, The Daughter reps a confident and profoundly moving bigscreen debut for established theater director Simon Stone.
  58. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
    There may well be new and novel ways to spark audience shivers from not-so-bright homeowners inexplicably using their cameraphones to check out bumps in the night, but this series clearly has neither the patience nor the inclination to look for them anymore.
  59. A Wonderful Cloud
    Though highly improvisational and slapdash a la mumblecore, Kotlyarenko’s pic proves more anarchic and satirically energetic, showcasing individual actors almost like performance artists.
  60. India's Daughter
    Leslee Udwin’s hour-long activist documentary India’s Daughter makes for grim, infuriating and sadly necessary viewing, its despair tinged with the faintest hope that the protestors’ call for gender equality may yet be reignited.
  61. Tokyo Tribe
    The latest from the culty maker of “Suicide Club,” “Love Exposure” and last year’s TIFF Midnight Madness audience-award winner, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” is so insistently over-the-top from the start that the results are just fairly amusing when they ought to be exhilarating.
  62. The Sound and the Fury
    The Sound and the Fury is certainly a folly, failing to capture the weird, entrancing, often maddening ambiance of the great writer’s elliptical masterpiece, and its surfeit of half-baked film-student flourishes and needless cameos occasionally give it an amateur-hour feel.
  63. A Fistful of Fingers
    Loaded with unashamedly sophomoric humor, but fired with a kind of early Richard Lester-esque elan that doesn’t run out of gas, A Fistful of Fingers shows more wit and invention than most of its no-budget Brit saddlemates.
  64. The Wannabe
    Since Thomas’ character is incapable of change or variation, and the film’s only engaging supporting players occupy a small fraction of the running time, it falls squarely upon Arquette to carry the film.
  65. Jem and the Holograms
    Against all odds, “Nashville” series regular Peeples keeps the film watchable, delivering a capable star turn with enough flashes of soul to belie the script’s artifice and credible pop vocals to boot.
  66. SPECTRE
    What’s missing is the unexpected emotional urgency of “Skyfall,” as the film sustains its predecessor’s nostalgia kick with a less sentimental bent.
  67. Mediterranea
    While many of their feelings are universally relatable, it can be hard work trying to follow what these two characters are thinking at any given moment, in part because of Carpignano’s grainy, handheld style.
  68. Burnt
    Although John Wells’ dramedy is energized by its mouth-watering montages and an unsurprisingly fierce lead turn from Cooper, Steven Knight’s script pours on the acid but holds the depth, forcing its fine actors (including Sienna Miller and Daniel Bruhl) to function less as an ensemble than as a motley sort of intervention group.
  69. Rock the Kasbah
    Laughs are few, attempts at feel-good catharsis fizzle out limply, and all of Murray’s most elaborate performance setpieces — especially his endless rendition of “Smoke on the Water” for tribal elders — fall embarrassingly flat.
  70. Kill Your Friends
    The film has its razor-sharp grace notes and a seductive stylishness, neither of which can override its relentlessly adolescent worldview.
  71. The Last Witch Hunter
    There are certainly enough dopey diversions here for The Last Witch Hunter to be considerably more fun than it is, but even its most extravagant bouts of silliness are hampered by desultory plotting and Eisner’s oppressively synthetic mise-en-scene.
  72. Woodlawn
    This overly long yet consistently involving period drama... could be described, accurately, as equal parts “Remember the Titans” and revivalist tent meeting. But until the balance tips rather too blatantly toward the latter during the final minutes, the overall narrative mix of history lesson, gridiron action and spiritual uplift is effectively and satisfyingly sustained.
  73. The Russian Woodpecker
    Deftly cramming a terrific amount of history, breaking news, personal drama, culture and context into a trim runtime, The Russian Woodpecker is surprisingly inventive, even buoyant in its presentation of several issues that could scarcely be more sobering.
  74. Crimson Peak
    Aflame with color and awash in symbolism, this undeniably ravishing yet ultimately disappointing haunted-house meller is all surface and no substance, sinking under the weight of its own self-importance into the sanguine muck below.
  75. The Virgin Psychics
    Watching Sion Sono’s unruly telepathic sex comedy The Virgin Psychics is a bit like having a dog hump your leg for the better part of two hours; it’s filthy and monotonous and fairly interminable, but after a while you’ve been so thoroughly numbed that you have to admit it’s kind of sweet.
  76. Flowers
    The three lead actresses, beautifully cast, form just enough of a contrast to each other to create extratextual tension while maintaining a high degree of sympathy.
  77. Censored Voices
    Loushy skillfully and briskly excerpts the material, although the film falls somewhere on the line between formal documentary and assemblage.
  78. Ixcanul
    What emerges, finally, is a film that gives an urgent, original voice to a people too frequently marginalized in both movies and society at large.
  79. Tab Hunter Confidential
    Drawing on a rich array of archival materials, Tab Hunter Confidential is lively and entertaining.
  80. Miles Ahead
    Don Cheadle flails about trying to channel the spirit of late jazz-trumpeting legend Miles Davis in Miles Ahead, a biopic that rejects typical genre conventions to the point of chasing itself down lame, tangential paths.
  81. The Treasure
    Porumboiu’s particular brand of farce is always shot through with the pulse of everyday life and its Sisyphean struggles. He is, simply put, one of our great contemporary observers of the human comedy.
  82. Junun
    Favoring long, unbroken takes that allow the rhythmic, full-bodied songs to breathe as they ebb and flow from beginning to end, Anderson’s aesthetics unobtrusively capture the magic of Greenwood and company’s global partnership
  83. Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom
    Getting swept up in the immediate excitement is entirely understandable, but ignoring the less savory elements, such as ultra-nationalist rhetoric, is problematic at best.
  84. Xenia
    Brashly uneven and wildly overlong, this comedy of brotherly love and outsider acceptance nonetheless boasts a spirited, audience-pleasing core.
  85. Dukhtar
    A handsomely made, nicely modulated fugitive drama with forceful social overtones that decries the ongoing practice of marrying child brides in tribal regions of the country’s mountainous north.
  86. (T)error
    A vital expose of American law enforcement carried out with almost reckless zeal.
  87. Guilty (Talvar)
    Khan conveys equal measures of cynical wit and authoritative gravitas as Kumar.
  88. Goosebumps
    The ADD overload combined with an understandably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one’s ever in real danger, and the monsters are never too scary) results in a disposable product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to resonate with no one.
  89. Bridge of Spies
    While the helmer’s myth-making approach makes for great Capra-esque entertainment, younger auds may find it terribly old-fashioned — and they’d be right to think so, although Spielberg would be the first to admit it was his intention to play things classical.
  90. Sherpa
    This film from experienced Aussie documaker Jennifer Peedom packs an emotional punch to match its awe-inspiring imagery.
  91. Hitchcock/Truffaut
    While the interview-driven documentary may not adhere to Hitchcock’s cinematic ideal, it welcomes one and all into the medium’s embrace.
  92. Bone Tomahawk
    Bone Tomahawk may seem over-indulgent at 132 minutes, yet it’s the wayward digressions of Zahler’s script — navigated with palpable enjoyment by an expert, Kurt Russell-led ensemble — that are most treasurable in a film that commits wholeheartedly to its own curiosity value.
  93. A Christmas Horror Story
    None is particularly original (though there is one good final twist), but they’re all reasonably entertaining.
  94. The Forbidden Room
    Delightful and ingenious as much of this is on a moment-to-moment basis, it becomes somewhat wearying over the long haul.
  95. 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.
  96. Going Away
    Garcia, co-scenarist Jacques Fieschi and the excellent cast (including a welcome Dominique Sanda as Baptiste’s regal mother) bring a sense of depth and shared history to even those figures we meet just briefly.
  97. Shanghai
    This derivative, ploddingly plotted WWII-set thriller goes through all the motions of an old-school wartime spy pic with plenty of technical competence but zero panache.
  98. This Changes Everything
    This Changes Everything is genuinely stirring as it details improbable victories and green-economy opportunities.
  99. Nostalgia for the Light
    Part of the beauty of Nostalgia is that the many metaphors and surprising parallels between the universe, archaeology and Chile’s recent past rise organically from the material.
  100. The Pearl Button
    What “Nostalgia for the Light” did for the desert, The Pearl Button is meant to do for water, but the deft melding of past and present that characterized Patricio Guzman’s earlier film becomes muddied here by the Natural Science 101 voiceover and an unsatisfying bridge between two rather disparate subjects.
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