Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Seasons
    While it features some of the most breathtaking nature photography this side of BBC’s “Planet Earth” miniseries, this gorgeously cinematic docu ties said footage to a leaden all-purpose eco-consciousness message that nearly spoils the otherwise timeless experience.
  2. Love Life
    Koji Fukada’s Love Life unabashedly embraces melodramatic contrivance in its examination of modern middle-class love tested as much by social prejudices as by personal demons; it just does so with such pallid, polite reserve that its sentimentality never becomes transcendently moving.
  3. This Is It
    There’s an incredible amount to enjoy here, and the star’s fans will be in rapture.
  4. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
    Porumboiu so carefully intellectualizes every outwardly inconsequential exchange that the picture has no room to breathe, forcing audiences to work hard to catch the sly playfulness and cunning within.
  5. Be with Me
    A curate's egg of a movie that starts intriguingly but becomes increasingly frustrating.
  6. The Way We Get By
    Although the trio's work as "troop greeters" is the film's ostensible subject, their renewed and somewhat tenuous sense of purpose gives the doc its bite.
  7. Somewhere
    The ever-perceptive writer-director further hones her gifts for ruefully funny observation and understated melancholy with this low-key portrait of a burned-out screen actor.
  8. Smile 2
    The film climaxes with a body-horror maximalism coupled with a minimum of logic. Until then, though, it wrings honest jolts out of the unnerving hothouse of unreality that is pop stardom.
  9. Frequency
    An oddly schizophrenic fantasy thriller that ultimately succumbs to a fatal case of sentimentality.
  10. Home Movie
    A modest charmer.
  11. In Heaven Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery
    Her (Wauer) attempt to relieve uncomfortable events with happy stories makes for a disturbing superficiality, and a "make your own Jewish grave" student project is plain offensive. Score is omnipresent and insufferable.
  12. Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives
    Warm, spirited and occasionally slathered in goo, Birth Story is a celebratory tribute to the endangered art of midwifery and its most influential practitioner, Ina May Gaskin.
  13. All Creatures Here Below
    It’s a decently acted and crafted drama that nonetheless seems built on a foundation of phony pathos, revolving around doomed lovers whose fate seems more a matter of contrived miserabilism than authenticity.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dracula
    Director John Badham and Frank Langella pull off a handsome, moody rendition, more romantic than menacing.
  15. Lost Girls
    In Lost Girls, Liz Garbus takes the serial-killer thriller and turns it on its head, insisting that we see the victims as larger than the crimes that destroyed them.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wind and the Lion
    Generally literate and very commercial period action drama, well written and better directed by John Milius.
  17. Oxygen
    A clever example of creativity thriving within the strict protocols of the coronavirus pandemic, tense confinement thriller Oxygen plays like “Buried” in outer space.
  18. The Alpinist
    The images here are often dizzying and dazzling.
  19. Barbershop: The Next Cut
    The movie derives its energy almost entirely from the bristling quality of the dialogue and the easy ensemble flow of the performances.
  20. The Book of Life
    The Book of Life is undoubtedly stuffed with more business than its fleet, kid-friendly running time can properly handle. Yet Gutierrez’s confident delivery of the material remains so buoyant and passionately felt throughout that he almost gets away with it.
  21. The Wrecking Crew
    This nostalgia-drenched rockumentary remains a hugely entertaining treasure trove of witness-at-creation anecdotes and enduringly potent ’60s pop hits.
  22. The Contestant
    Titley consistently anchors her unfolding chronicle to the kind of backstage emotional truths often hidden from the audience, and in the process, she crafts something halfway between sensationalist exposé and intimate confessional — a remedy to reality TV based on its own format — co-authored by her subjects
  23. The Page Turner
    Scripter-helmer Denis Dercourt's sixth feature is spare but classy, with an impressively controlled perf by Deborah Francois (the young mother in the Dardenne Bros.' "L'enfant") opposite popular and spot-on vet Catherine Frot.
  24. Flanders
    A somber, beautifully acted reflection on the barbarity of war and the bestiality of man.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Unbelievable Truth
    The Unbelievable Truth is a promising, reasonably engaging first feature of the art school film variety. Very consciously designed and stylized in all departments, pic has a minor-key feel to it.
  26. White Elephant
    The lensing is flawless in White Elephant, but the same can't be said for the script, which tries to keep too many thematic balls in the air without privileging any one.
  27. The Final Member
    The Final Member finds hilarity in humanity.
  28. The Workers Cup
    What emerges is a nuanced, if somewhat undernourished, portrait of the poorest inhabitants of the richest country in the world.
  29. The Future
    For all the superficial hilarity of July's approach, a much sadder streak runs deep through the entire film, reinforced by Jon Brion's score (more tones than melody). Still, it's curious that this is the feeling she chooses to leave us with in the end.
  30. North Face
    An often grippingly staged mountain movie that's good but not great.
  31. The Balconettes
    The directorial energy being channelled here is closer to that of early Pedro Almodóvar, as Merlant piles up saturated, hot-hued melodrama, garrulous female bonding and cheerful lashings of blood and sex.
  32. Workingman's Death
    Pic reps a sequel of sorts to his 12-part "Megacities" about poor folk in separate burgs, and comes soaked in good old-fashioned humanist respect for the dignity of labor, but eventually grows a little monotonous.
  33. 3 Idiots
    3 Idiots takes a while to lay out its game plan but pays off emotionally in its second half.
  34. The House by the Sea
    The House by the Sea feels like the work of a filmmaker gazing back over his own filmography as one might across a sparkling blue sea, and observing its tides.
  35. Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
    The film is undeniably overlong, and far more engaging in its first half, which covers Ferragamo’s hard-up Neapolitan beginnings and lively career as a shoemaker to the stars in 1920s Tinseltown with a mixture of romantic evocation and chewy historical expertise.
  36. Cinderella
    Though this Cinderella could never replace Disney’s animated classic, it’s no ugly stepsister either, but a deserving companion.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alice
    Performances are strong all around, with a succession of top actors making the most of their brief turns. But the center of the pic is Farrow, who’s funny and touching.
  38. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
    While soccer fans will rep the core aud, even non-fans can enjoy.
  39. She Dances
    Directed by actor Rick Gomez in his feature filmmaking debut and co-written with actor Steve Zahn, the sweet yet uneven dramedy “She Dances” is a proud family affair both on screen and off.
  40. Mr. Holmes
    The more vital subject of Mr. Holmes turns out to be our need for stories themselves and, in particular, the role of fiction as an escape from the pain and loss of everyday life.
  41. Worth
    Though Feinberg is a singular figure in modern American history (few else could, or would, do his job), Worth hammers his story into a standard biopic template — Grinch Finds Heart — as though one man discovering empathy is truly priceless.
  42. A Whisper to a Roar
    A Whisper to a Roar traces a too-familiar step-by-step political pattern: the transformation of a liberator into a despot, his subsequent reign of tyranny and the popular uprising against it.
  43. Web Junkie
    With filmmakers Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia granted extraordinary access to one facility, they make for a bizarre and entertaining documentary.
  44. Ruby Sparks
    There's little doubt that Kazan has written a sly, amusing portrait of male self-absorption and artistic tyranny.
  45. Rock School
    Irresistibly entertaining and full of unique character portraits.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Time Machine
    The social comment of the original has been historically refined to encompass such plausible eventualities as the physical manifestation of atomic war weapons. But the basic spirit of Wells' work has not been lost.
  47. You Will Be My Son
    There are no big surprises in store in terms of where this setup is headed...But the pic’s pleasures are nonetheless numerous, starting with its talented cast.
  48. Demonlover
    Sure to turn off general viewers due to its emotional inaccessibility, multitude of narrative problems and preoccupation with a torture Web site.
  49. A Simple Favor
    The film feels a lot like the Serge Gainsbourg number that Stephanie dances to in the kitchen: jazzy, a little sleazy, and worth a cult following.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witches of Eastwick
    With a no-holds-barred performance by Jack Nicholson as the horny Satan, it’s a very funny and irresistible set-up for anyone who has ever been baffled by the opposite sex.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fiddler on the Roof
    Sentimental in a theatrical way, romantic in the old fashioned way, nostalgic of immigration days, affirmative of human decency, loyalty, bravery and folk humor.
  52. Time to Leave
    Francois Ozon's Time to Leave reps one of the helmer's most straightforward, but perhaps least interesting pics.
  53. The Dutchman
    The Dutchman exists in a tense space between reverence and reinvention. It is an adaptation so aware of the power and legacy of Baraka’s text that it never fully trusts its own instincts. The result is a film that provokes thought more than feeling, one that invites discussion, while denying audiences the emotional dimension that might have driven home its relevance.
  54. Gabriel
    An admirable if downbeat character study, Gabriel still sinks into a psychological quagmire.
  55. I Saw the Devil
    Repugnant content, grislier than the ugliest torture porn, ought to have made the film unwatchable, but it doesn't, simply because Kim's picture is so beautifully filmed, carefully structured and viscerally engaging.
  56. The Eclipse
    A film of such seductive grace, humor and startling side trips into buttocks-clenching ghastliness that auds won't know what to make of it (although it won't keep them from wanting to visit Ireland immediately).
  57. Kill List
    Displaying both a nasty edge and a playful sense of humor -- but thankfully, never at the same time -- Brit import Kill List is several cuts above its fellow midbudget horror brethren.
  58. Giant Little Ones
    The story is somewhat predictable in its beats, and arrives at a free-at-last conclusion that’s not entirely convincing. But the Sault Ste. Marie-shot film is ultimately ingratiating and slickly crafted enough to rise above those limitations.
  59. Blink Twice
    [Kravitz] composes the movie out of vibrant close-ups, using each shot (a cocktail, a glance, a social-media cutaway) to tell a story, drawing us into the center of an encounter, so that we’re staring at it and experiencing it at the same time. Her technique is riveting; this is the work of a born filmmaker.
  60. Whisky
    A whimsical piece of deadpan drollery, Whisky plays like Aki Kaurismaki, South American style.
  61. We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
    A suitably unfussy tribute to a band that disdained even the slightest rock-star flash, We Jam Econo tells the story of the Minutemen, whose regrettably brief but brilliant career did much to expand punk's parameters during the early 1980s.
  62. Tupac: Resurrection
    Lazin has without question skillfully assembled an entertaining, strongly narrative nonfiction package.
  63. Two Girls and a Guy
    Often a gutsy, intelligent writer, Toback has yet to prove himself decisively as a director, and this, his first fictional effort behind the camera in a decade, shows his talents to be as variable as ever.
  64. Looking for Eric
    As in many of Laverty's scripts, problems of overall tone and character development aren't solved by Loach's easygoing direction, though when it works, "Eric" has many incidental pleasures.
  65. 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.
  66. Himizu
    Because Sono tries to set the manga’s storyline, with its stylized violence, in the very real, post-earthquake/tsunami disaster area, Himizu struggles to find a coherent tone.
  67. The Apostate
    Gonzalo’s dalliances add up to precious little, but Veiroj’s comic tone finds purchase in his absurd run-ins with the bishop and a church so unwilling to lose a member from the rolls that they’ll stick him in a bureaucratic roundabout until he gives up.
  68. Dealt
    The final scenes of Dealt are all the more affecting for illustrating Turner’s newfound willingness to accept things he once deemed unacceptable without significantly compromising his personal code of honor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Journey of Natty Gann
    More a period piece of Americana than a rousing adventure, The Journey of Natty Gann is a generally diverting variation on a boy and his dog: this time it's a girl and her wolf.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Boys Next Door
    Unfortunately the film itself doesn’t live up to the expectations. Even if intentions are worthy, it emerges glib and uninvolvingly.
  71. Speak No Evil
    McAvoy’s big grin full of knives quickly dissolves any semblance of social credibility. But the film matches Paddy’s boorishness and commits to being a comedy about a bad marriage crumbling under the fist of a freak-of-nature vacation host.
  72. World Trade Center
    World Trade Center yields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience.
  73. Wonder
    It’s a very tasteful heart-tugger — a drama of disarmingly level-headed empathy that glides along with wit, assurance, and grace, and has something touching and resonant to say about the current climate of American bullying.
  74. Jimi: All Is by My Side
    Unsatisfying on a musical level, it’s nonetheless a well-acted, sporadically impressive piece of filmmaking.
  75. To Be Takei
    A unique blend of camp and conviction, To Be Takei deftly showcases George Takei’s eclectic personality and wildly disparate achievements.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Breakfast Club
    Does director John Hughes really believe, as he writes here, that 'when you grow up, your heart dies.' It may. But not unless the brain has already started to rot with films like this.
  77. Al otro lado
    Viewers unaware of the music --hugely popular among Mexicans -- and the often intensely nationalist sentiments behind it, may blanch at the open chauvinism and celebration of outlaw lifestyles. But part of the pic's strength is its presenting the cultural strain as it is, without comment.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Innerspace
    Quaid is engagingly reckless and gung-ho as the pioneer into a new dimension, although he is physically constrained in his little capsule for most of the running time. Short has infinitely more possibilities and makes the most of them, coming into his own as a screen personality as a mild-mannered little guy who rises to an extraordinary situation.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Take
    Makes its points effectively, but could have benefited from a burst of creativity.
  80. The Girl Who Played with Fire
    This subpar Nordic crimer, leaves ample room for improvement for the inevitable U.S. remake.
  81. Everything Else (Todo Lo Demás)
    Though the concept of the gendered gaze can be over-pushed in film theory circles, in this case there’s no mistaking Almada’s privileging of a woman’s perspective, with its sympathetic non-judgmental stance and sense of female solidarity.
  82. The Trip to Spain
    That The Trip to Spain is unabashedly more of the same is good news…but not entirely good news.
  83. The Wind
    Horror hounds may find themselves getting a little impatient with “The Wind,” especially when Tammi begins on such an unflinchingly nasty note ... but then elects to keep the gore to a minimum until the grisly climax. The film is much more successful, however, as a feminized reworking of the western mythos.
  84. Honor Society
    This stylishly bouncy teenage romp mostly reaps the rewards of its fearless gambles, not least its willingness to treat teenagers as in-progress humans with a dark side.
  85. Borgman
    A sly, insidious and intermittently hilarious domestic thriller.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Candidate
    The Candidate is an excellent drama starring Robert Redford as a naive liberal political novice who wises up fast...Redford’s superior acting talents, which not-often-enough are tapped by the scripts he decides to do, are nearly all on display herein in a virtuoso peformance.
  87. Zelary
    Managing to be at once epic and intimate, Zelary matches a resilient urban woman against a compassionate rural man in the spectacular Moravian countryside during World War II. Results rep a triumph of regional filmmaking, but in the David Lean tradition.
  88. What Keeps You Alive
    This thriller about a lesbian couple whose weekend takes a drastic turn is less one-note as a narrative conceit than “It Stains the Sand Red,” though it too ultimately stretches inspiration a tad thin. Nonetheless, it’s an entertaining and well-crafted effort.
  89. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
    An ingeniously twisted mockumentary.
  90. The Tenth Man
    This is the sort of quiet, well-observed comedy that is characteristic of Burman’s oeuvre, and it’s in ample supply here.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Ipcress File
    Pic does not build up to the type of suspense usually demanded of such thrillers.
  92. Son of Rambow
    A sweetly raucous adventure. Widely quoted comparisons to "Billy Elliot" and Tim Burton overstate the case for what is really a modestly eccentric entertainment.
  93. In Good Company
    An often lively comedy-drama that lands some nice jabs at the mega-corp ethos, In Good Company makes for pretty good company until going soft when it counts.
  94. The Phenom
    It’s not necessary, of course, for The Phenom to be an all-out sports drama, but writer-director Noah Buschel sets up the rare opportunity to explore what makes a jock tick, then doesn’t follow through.
  95. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead.
    Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is an extended pilot, however, it’s a pleasingly cinematic one: unresolved and ragged with small open wounds, but self-contained in its fevered, filling-to-burst energy.
  96. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    Though it never disguises its sympathies for Kasparov and contempt for a powerful corporation's machinations, documentary is finally a speculation on the limits of the human mind and how truth can never be fully known.
  97. Cop Car
    Watts demonstrates masterful control, pushing right up against the limits of what we can take (even non-parents will be rattled watching the boys mishandling loaded weapons), and yet, at every turn, the screenplay falls short of the picture’s full potential, missing opportunities that could have made this a classic.
  98. Werewolves Within
    Maintaining a lean sense of suspense throughout, the scribe fashions all her characters with memorable attributes and plenty of social observations, yielding a compelling range of suspects none of which you can write off entirely.
  99. On the Outs
    Skillfully entwines stories of three young women drifting in and out of a Jersey City juvenile detention center.
  100. Much Ado About Something
    Utterly fascinating, playfully probing mystery story.
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