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. 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
    Silver (“Who is Dayani Cristal?”) keeps the focus outside the courtroom primarily on Davis’ parents, who see prosecution as their only hope of some closure in losing their only child. Their grief, bafflement and attempt to maintain some hope in the justice system lends 3 1/2 Minutes considerable poignancy.
  2. The Yes Men Are Revolting
    Another entertaining mix of agitpop, pranksterism and autobiography.
  3. Set Fire to the Stars
    Its appreciation of Thomas’ work remains superficial, while the polished filmmaking never quite finds its own poetry.
  4. Chagall-Malevich
    To call results over-the-top is less a criticism than a statement of intent. While it may be old-fashioned and silly in many respects, Mitta’s film is not dull, and its heedless embrace of cliche has a retro charm.
  5. Grandma
    Though likely to be variously praised and pilloried as a pro-choice film, Weitz’s film is really a movie about choice in both the specific and the abstract — about the choices we make, for good and for ill, and how we come to feel about them through the prism of time.
  6. Listen to Me Marlon
    The pic is a superbly crafted collage whose soundtrack is as complexly textured as the curation and editing of visual elements.
  7. Jurassic World
    It’s fun enough while it lasts, but somehow, finally, all too much and not enough. The problem isn’t that dinosaurs have ceased to impress us, but that dinosaurs alone are not enough to sustain us
  8. Alléluia
    Alleluia may be a remake, but its somber look couldn’t be more original — all the better for the film to spring its nasty surprises on auds, none more unexpected than the way certain shots remain seared into one’s subconscious in the days and weeks that follow.
  9. Doomsdays
    This kind of movie would be nothing without a terrific comic pairing, and Fitzpatrick and Rice make near-musicality of their mutual irritation.
  10. Patch Town
    Generally speaking, Goodwill doesn’t seem to know how to direct his cast, focusing more on big-picture details like the look and feel of the film. That makes for a frightfully uneven mix of acting styles, many of which are all too obviously from first-timers.
  11. Charlie's Country
    Charlie is the vessel through which de Heer navigates these turbulent waters, and the script was developed during sessions when the actor would throw out ideas and the director would structure the results. It is to both men’s credit that amid the suffering, there’s a ray of hope for Charlie in the end.
  12. Every Last Child
    Impressive though the results of the WHO’s campaign to eradicate polio may be, it is Zaidi’s lensing of the streets, waterways and people of Pakistan that lingers in the mind.
  13. Cartel Land
    There are no solutions posed; Cartel Land vividly conveys the sense that this cycle of violence can’t be stopped as long as anyone who tries to take charge (including, the film suggests, government forces in Mexico) is susceptible to corruption.
  14. Insidious: Chapter 3
    Whereas Wan (who retains a producer credit here, and makes a cameo appearance) is the sort of director who can effortlessly turn a billowing curtain or creaking floorboard into an unbearable portent of dread, Whannell rarely makes the neck hairs quiver, let alone stand at attention.
  15. Testament of Youth
    Deftly balancing restrained sentimentalism with tough-minded human tragedy, this impressive, unashamedly classical feature debut by TV helmer James Kent has the populist heft one expects from producer David Heyman, while preserving the solemn intimacy of Brittain’s account of lives and loves severed by the conflict.
  16. Entourage
    Sometimes funny, often dumb, with equal doses of inside-baseball references and broad bro-ish boorishness, Entourage will be loved by fans and despised by detractors, possibly for the same reasons.
  17. Survivor
    A sturdy wrong-woman thriller that feels grotesque in its citations of 9/11 and other intimations of real-world import, but also steals a few good moves from “North by Northwest” and “The Fugitive” for a solid middle section.
  18. Sunset Edge
    However oblique it remains, Sunset Edge feels like the work of curious filmmakers, searching for intangible truths in sights of people exploring both a past that’s been forgotten by most, and a present that can’t seem to quite move forward in any meaningful, appreciable way.
  19. I Believe in Unicorns
    A sensitively observed and arrestingly impressionistic drama that feels at once deeply personal and easily accessible.
  20. Aloha
    Unbalanced, unwieldy, and at times nearly unintelligible, Aloha is unquestionably Cameron Crowe’s worst film.
  21. Sunshine Superman
    First-rate assembly has a real dramatic grip as well as considerable lightheartedness, the obvious standout element being the large chunks of startling freefall and helicopter camera footage, both new and archival.
  22. San Andreas
    After providing some blissfully stupid B-movie thrills for its first hour, the film suffers from spectacle overkill.
  23. Paulina
    A fierce performance from Dolores Fonzi, as a heroine whose actions baffle those around her, helps to hold this conversation-starter together, but viewers’ own mileage and perceptions will vary — which is clearly by design.
  24. Rams
    As Hakonarson’s beautifully modulated film progresses, recurring images contrast and poignantly resonate with meaning.
  25. Land and Shade
    While mirthless in the extreme, Cesar Acevedo’s deliberately paced and distant-feeling debut works its way under audiences’ skin, weaving a haunting allegory through painterly compositions.
  26. Chronic
    Chronic may be a demanding movie to watch, but it’s also one with enormous potential for audiences to personalize, expanding in the hours and days that follow.
  27. The Assassin
    A mesmerizing slow burn of a martial-arts movie that boldly merges stasis and kinesis, turns momentum into abstraction, and achieves breathtaking new heights of compositional elegance: Shot for shot, it’s perhaps the most ravishingly beautiful film Hou has ever made, and certainly one of his most deeply transporting.
  28. Son of Saul
    The result is as grim and unyielding a depiction of the Holocaust as has yet been made on that cinematically overworked subject — a masterful exercise in narrative deprivation and sensory overload that recasts familiar horrors in daringly existential terms.
  29. Mountains May Depart
    If “Mountains” feels a touch schematic at times, and awkward in its third-act English-language scenes, the cumulative impact is still enormously touching, highlighted by Jia’s rapturous image-making and a luminous central performance by the director’s regular muse (and wife), Zhao Tao.
  30. Macbeth
    Fearsomely visceral and impeccably performed, it’s a brisk, bracing update, even as it remains exquisitely in period.
  31. The Measure of a Man
    Brize (“Mademoiselle Chambon”) makes compelling drama out of the most ordinary of circumstances, and draws a lead performance from frequent collaborator Vincent Lindon that is a veritable master class in understated humanism.
  32. Marguerite & Julien
    The film is a painfully silly, laughably naive Romance with a capital “R.”
  33. 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.
  34. Our Little Sister
    Koreeda’s sensitive yet lucid helming keeps the performances precise yet natural.
  35. The Sea of Trees
    This risibly long-winded drama is perhaps above all a profound cultural insult, milking the lush green scenery of Japan’s famous Aokigahara forest for all it’s worth, while giving co-lead Ken Watanabe little to do other than moan in agony, mutter cryptically, and generally try to act as though McConaughey’s every word isn’t boring him (pardon the expression) to death.
  36. Sicario
    The opening of Sicario unfolds at such an anxiety-inducing pitch that it seems impossible for Villeneuve to sustain it, let alone build on it, but somehow he manages to do just that. He’s a master of the kind of creeping tension that coils around the audience like a snake suffocating its prey.
  37. Youth
    Paolo Sorrentino, with Youth, delivers his most tender film to date, an emotionally rich contemplation of life’s wisdom gained, lost and remembered — with cynicism harping from the sidelines, but as a wearied chord rather than a major motif.
  38. Dheepan
    What keeps Dheepan engaging throughout is the tremendous charisma of the performers.
  39. The Little Prince
    A respectful, lovingly reimagined take on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic 1943 tale, which adds all manner of narrative bells and whistles to the author’s slender, lyrical story of friendship between a pilot and a mysterious extraterrestrial voyager, but stays true to its timeless depiction of childhood wonderment at odds with grown-up disillusionment.
  40. One Floor Below
    Like a pot set to bubble only every few seconds, the drama is tightly measured to ensure a controlled level of tension that remains discreetly constant, nicely melding with Muntean’s skilled construction of three-dimensional bourgeois life.
  41. A Perfect Day
    By the end, thanks to Leon de Aranoa’s steady direction and the actors’ slow-building character work, “A Perfect Day” manages to coalesce into a reasonably tough-minded, compassionate vision of the difficulties and rewards of trying to do the right thing in an intractable situation, though the film has to overcome more than a few flat, indolent stretches to get there.
  42. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    [Portman's] drearily empathetic film lacks whatever universality has made “Tale” such an international phenomenon.
  43. Cooties
    Amusing as the Cooties script manages to be, one gets the distinct impression that its authors didn’t bother to visit a school at any point in the research or writing process, missing out on any number of jokes they could have made at public education’s expense.
  44. Love
    Given the escalating ambition of Noe’s oeuvre and the pornographic promo materials teased in advance of the pic’s Cannes premiere, who would have thought that Love would ultimately prove to be Noe’s tamest film?
  45. Uncertain Terms
    Silver offers up a generally assured and compelling film here.
  46. Disorder
    Winocour hurtles into a violent, heart-in-mouth third act rife with look-behind-you peril. It’s a silly but robustly effective escalation of the latent suspense already conjured in the impressive, snakily extended party sequence.
  47. Louder Than Bombs
    Strangely, Louder Than Bombs manages to be glaringly obvious and admirably subtle in the same breath.
  48. In the Shadow of Women
    A tightly focused romantic drama that exudes the narrative terseness of a good short story and the lucid craftsmanship of a filmmaker in full command of the medium.
  49. Green Room
    Characterization and emotional investment, however, are in disappointingly short supply, while crucial tension is permitted to dissipate in an anti-climactic final third.
  50. Cemetery of Splendor
    While Cemetery of Splendor is unabashedly a work of slow cinema, the oft-hurled pejorative of “difficult” seems a particularly poor fit for a film whose unforced lyricism could scarcely be more graceful or inviting.
  51. Time Lapse
    A first feature for helmer Bradley King and co-scenarist BP Cooper (though the latter has produced several indies), Time Lapse works due to both their escalating pileup of well-thought-out complications and credible character psychologies nicely communicated by expert performances.
  52. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
    Six just wants to shock, though his imagination is so primitive that the effort is strained and a bit pathetic. Initially abrasive, the whole enterprise grows simply tedious well before the now-epically-scaled titular phenom is unveiled in the prison yard.
  53. Poltergeist
    Less a steadily escalating thriller than a guided tour through a county-fair-style haunted house, Poltergeist offers some quality jump scares, and Kenan has a knack for staging solid individual setpieces. But he proves weirdly incapable of modulation or mood setting here.
  54. Tale of Tales
    Taken together, the parables serve primarily to entertain — an effect that has as much to do with Garrone’s command of the cinematic language as it does the content itself.
  55. Carol
    Even high expectations don’t quite prepare you for the startling impact of Carol, an exquisitely drawn, deeply felt love story that teases out every shadow and nuance of its characters’ inner lives with supreme intelligence, breathtaking poise and filmmaking craft of the most sophisticated yet accessible order.
  56. Irrational Man
    Allen’s visual direction and editing rhythms are particularly sharp and precise this time around, as is his work with the actors.
  57. Love at First Fight
    Though the slow-boil chemistry is there, the script feels flat, content to rely on the surface friction between its lead actors, rather than creating scenes in which we can really get to know the pair’s respective personalities before testing their limits in the field.
  58. Inside Out
    In execution, Pixar’s 15th feature proves to be the greatest idea the toon studio has ever had: a stunningly original concept that will not only delight and entertain the company’s massive worldwide audience, but also promises to forever change the way people think about the way people think, delivering creative fireworks grounded by a wonderfully relatable family story.
  59. It's Such a Beautiful Day
    Had James Thurber worked in animation, the waggish result might look and sound a bit like It’s Such a Beautiful Day, indie cartoonist Don Hertzfeldt’s alternately poignant and absurdist triptych.
  60. Tomorrowland
    The glaring failure of Tomorrowland is that its central premise — children are the future — is almost completely negated by the preachiness of the execution and the clumsiness of the storytelling.
  61. Amy
    Hardly innovative in form, but boasting the same depth of feeling and breadth of archival material that made Kapadia’s “Senna” so rewarding, this lengthy but immersive portrait will hit hard with viewers who regard Winehouse among the great lost voices not just of a generation, but of an entire musical genre.
  62. I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
    As endless processions of friends and colleagues attest to Spinney’s genius, and the filmmakers wallow in never-before-seen behind-the-scenes imagery, they fail to fully capture the actual art of puppeteering, with woefully few substantial excerpts from the show itself.
  63. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
    The script never quite succeeds in making us care about Allan as a character (despite dubbing its quavering narration into English for the ease of American auds), but it finds an interesting balance for a personality who leaves a trail of disaster in his wake.
  64. Skin Trade
    Snapping necks and shooting limbs have rarely been carried out in service of such a principled cause — or been executed with such formulaic tedium.
  65. Preggoland
    An amusing, extravagantly implausible farce that nonetheless makes a pointed argument about the perceived marginalization of childless women in modern society.
  66. The Ocean of Helena Lee
    This plotless reverie is easy to admire texturally, including an original soundtrack composed with the helmer’s spouse, singer-songwriter Maria McKee. But despite those virtues, and the pic’s determinedly idiosyncratic take on autobiographically inspired material, most viewers will find the script’s narrative shapelessness and pretentiously poetic dialogue hard to take.
  67. Where Hope Grows
    Neatly avoiding temptations toward mawkish excess, writer-director Chris Dowling hits a solid double with Where Hope Grows, his intelligently affecting faith-based drama.
  68. One Cut, One Life
    Unlike more generally philosophical, life-affirming autobiographical docus about dying, “One Cut, One Life” rehashes old problems and tries to resolve multiple unresolved issues already exposed in previous films, proving as exasperating as it is weirdly compelling.
  69. The Lobster
    A wickedly funny protest against societal preference for nuclear coupledom that escalates, by its own sly logic, into a love story of profound tenderness and originality.
  70. Two Shots Fired
    The most remarkable aspect of Two Shots Fired is that, despite the distancing effect of the artificial performances and simplified, almost basic visuals, viewers manage to find enough diversion and attachment to care.
  71. (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies
    There’s no revelatory takeaway here, but this entertaining mix of anecdotal evidence, academic research and current affairs is a diverting survey.
  72. Every Secret Thing
    Berg’s narrative debut lacks much in the way of either poetry or realism, leaving only the clunky dynamics of a fairly predictable missing-persons case — for which screenwriter Nicole Holofcener carries at least part of the blame.
  73. Arlo & Julie
    Ultimately a sweet, simple ode to the virtues of honesty and commitment in a relationship, Arlo & Julie may be a trifle at day’s end, but it’s a deft and pleasurable one — steeped in affection for its characters, not too in love with its own quirkiness, and marked by a nice retro flavor apparent in the jazz records Arlo and Julie play (which make up most of the score) and the playful iris shots used as scene transitions throughout.
  74. Forbidden Films
    Contemporary issues pale before the fascination exerted by the generously sampled films themselves, executed throughout with masterful classical film vocabulary.
  75. Mad Max: Fury Road
    There is gargantuan excess here, to be sure — and no shortage of madness — but there is also an astonishing level of discipline.
  76. In the Name of My Daughter
    A mobster movie without whackings, a thriller without suspense and a courtroom drama without resolution, this turgid retelling of an unsolved missing-persons case functions mostly as a portrait of a young woman who loved too passionately and the manipulative creep incapable of reciprocating her affections.
  77. Pitch Perfect 2
    Kay Cannon’s script is even lighter on narrative than its predecessor, but fills any resulting void with a concentrated supply of riotous gags, and a renewed emphasis on the virtues of female collaboration and independence.
  78. Playing It Cool
    Even in a self-absorbed role, Evans, who also exec produces, manages to be eminently likable, though the narration he’s asked to spew isn’t half as smart as the filmmakers think it is. Monaghan is luminous, and indeed, the actors shake every last bit of believability out of the thin gruel that’s given them.
  79. Wild Horses
    Tonally dissonant and narratively disjointed, Wild Horses plays like a patchwork quilt of scenes excerpted from a much longer movie, or maybe even a miniseries.
  80. Hot Pursuit
    A few mildly tone-deaf jokes are hardly enough to sink Hot Pursuit. What does, however, is its tendency to belabor the laziest, most obvious gags beyond the point of reason.
  81. Just Before I Go
    Dull and tamped down throughout, Scott convinces well enough as a guy who wants be put out of his misery, and there isn’t an actor here who doesn’t look ready to join him.
  82. The Benefactor
    The movie ends in a more conventional place than the one where it begins, yet it still marks a surprising and graceful first fiction feature for writer-director Andrew Renzi.
  83. The Nightmare
    Whether it is the movies that have shaped our dreams or our dreams that have shaped the movies, it’s safe to assume that The Nightmare will find its place in that eternally recurring cycle.
  84. Maya the Bee Movie
    All told, in giving parents nothing to object to, director Alexs Stadermann (who got his start making straight-to-video sequels for Disney) has also given them little to get excited about, apart from the idea of sharing Maya with another generation of preschoolers.
  85. Planetary
    Despite all the globe-encircling eye candy, there’s a certain monotony of pacing imposed by the nonstop spoken input of various elders whose wisdoms seldom come in anything chewier than (at most) paragraph-length soundbytes.
  86. Anesthesia
    The ensemble labors sincerely to bring Nelson’s dense, frequently didactic writing to life, though it can be a hard task.
  87. Marie's Story
    A quarter-century ago, such an assured, emotionally satisfying French offering as this could have done significant business in the States, the way films like “Jean de Florette” once did.
  88. Hyena
    What Hyena lacks in invention, however, it makes up for in technical bravado and geographical specificity.
  89. Gerontophilia
    Maybe if the actors had been coached to actually act, it would have come across better, but their painfully stilted delivery is leaden rather than campily artificial.
  90. Iris
    A joyous celebration of creativity and razor-sharp wit sustained into old age, as evinced by outspoken nonagenarian fashion icon Iris Apfel, Iris also offers proof of Albert Maysles’ continued vitality as a documentarian.
  91. Soul Boys of the Western World
    TV-style and desperately in need of cutting, “Soul Boys” does convincingly position its subjects as key trendsetters, and their most memorable tunes continue to be enjoyable.
  92. Animals
    Throughout the first half of Animals, there is a welcome amount of humor and some flashes of romantic warmth to alleviate the ever-present undercurrent of dread. As director Collin Schiffli gradually tightens the screws and builds suspense, however, the mood darkens.
  93. Tu Dors Nicole
    The actors, some of whom have worked with Lafleur before, are entirely in tune with his intentions and display a beguiling chemistry.
  94. Ride
    Where the film falters is in the writing of its central relationship: That Jackie and Angelo love each other fiercely doesn’t make their interactions any less hard to take, and Australian newcomer Thwaites (“Maleficent,” “Son of a Gun”), despite his ample charisma and pitch-perfect American accent, can’t quite get past his character’s callow, whiny affect.
  95. After the Ball
    This basic-cable-quality farce is as unobjectionable as it is unmemorable.
  96. The Forger
    Nothing feels fresh here — not even Christopher Plummer hamming it up as a crusty-coot grandpa — and Philip Martin’s routinely polished direction only underscores the cliche-composting of Richard D’Ovidio’s script.
  97. The Adderall Diaries
    Franco’s cultivated impenetrability makes for a pain-ridden but peculiarly passionless experience, with multiple clashing subplots — on such insufficiently explored themes as parental abuse, uxoricide and masochism — obstructing an already opaque character study.
  98. Maggie
    Though Henry Hobson’s hugely promising debut feature is generating buzz from the casting of a fine, low-key Arnold Schwarzenegger as the anguished father of a semi-zombified teen, it’s Abigail Breslin’s gutsy, nuanced turn as the reluctantly undead title character — at once a heroine to be protected and a mutant threat to be destroyed — that makes the film unique within its grisly canon.
  99. The Great Museum
    There are no interviews, thankfully no voiceovers, and no music; Holzhausen respects the viewer’s intelligence, just as he respects the museum staff.
  100. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
    It’s all absorbing stuff, amply conveying the magnetism of a conflicted leader who drew fanatical adoration, yet who one suspects wasn’t easy company (especially in tandem with Love).
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