Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Portrait of Wally
    Turning over rocks in and around the New York art world, helmer Andrew Shea finds a lot of ugly stuff while chronicling what amounts to a 60-year hostage drama centered around the Egon Schiele oil painting that gives the film its title.
  2. Under African Skies
    Under African Skies is appreciably smarter than most celebrity musician documentaries.
  3. 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.
  4. Sleepwalk with Me
    An endearing indie feature about the day-to-day indecisions and nocturnal perambulations of a commitment-phobic New Yorker.
  5. White House Down
    Itself owing much to such lone-man-of-action hallmarks as “Die Hard” and “Speed,” this welcome throwback to an earlier, more generously entertaining era of summer blockbusters delivers a wide array of close-quarters combat and large-scale destruction, all grounded in an immensely appealing star turn by Channing Tatum and ace support from imperiled POTUS Jamie Foxx.
  6. Bonsái
    By turns gentle, deadpan, droll and sarcastic, Jimenez's film reflects on Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" to track a sweet but doomed love affair between literary -- and pleasurably randy -- college students.
  7. Indie Game: The Movie
    The picture scores big points by drawing a sharp distinction between corporate vidgame programmers and indies.
  8. The Good Doctor
    Daly deftly creates a disturbing, Chabrol-like tension that plays on immediate identification with the handsome medico's lonely, shy vulnerability and slow-building horror at the depths to which his self-delusion can sink.
  9. Hit and Run
    Above all, real-life couple Shepard and Bell bring genuine chemistry to this high-energy excursion.
  10. Pitch Perfect
    As spirited and irresistible as the college a cappella craze it celebrates, Pitch Perfect is a cheeky delight.
  11. Found Memories
    Though the focus is on one older woman (effectively played by Sonia Guedes) the film's spirit is embodied by the whole town, which lingers in the memory.
  12. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
    An intelligent overview that makes a radical artist's work comprehensible to audiences with no previous awareness of her or her chosen path.
  13. The Invisible War
    An aptly infuriating expose of sexual abuse within the U.S. military, Kirby Dick's documentary The Invisible War calls high-ranking officials to account for turning a blind eye to a violent epidemic.
  14. The Heat
    Breaking it down, The Heat has been engineered to deliver the laughs, and the result certainly does, despite coming alarmingly near to botching the procedural elements along the way.
  15. Corpo Celeste
    Rohrwacher's picture offers a Dardennes-esque look at a working-class teen's growing pains in a backwater parish in southern Italy. Minor tonal inconsistencies are overcome by this intimate tale's naturalistic thesping and loose lensing style.
  16. Americano
    Though Demy's approach breaks no new ground, directorially speaking, Martin's personal journey finds a fresh angle on a universal piece of wisdom. Every mother's son believes he's the star of his own life; Americano captures that humbling moment where one realizes perhaps he has only been a bit player in his parents' story, not the star, as initially believed.
  17. It's a Disaster
    Audiences may not care about this gang when the party starts, but once the dust settles, you’ve gotta admit, they made for pretty good company.
  18. Stella Days
    Although Martin Sheen often goes full cherub in his depiction of the film's central Catholic priest, the pictue is also a frank assessment of a cleric's crisis of faith and the church's rather ruthless efforts to maintain medieval control in the face of modernization.
  19. Searching for Sugar Man
    A winning musical detective story about a failed, forgotten early '70s rocker.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Funny Face
    With a different book and new, added tunes, this is a lightly diverting, modish, Parisian-localed tintuner.
  21. The Do-Deca-Pentathlon
    A delightfully scrappy backburner passion project from Jay and Mark Duplass.
  22. United in Anger: A History of ACT UP
    If the AIDS crisis has crested, it's due in large part to the radical advocacy group so intelligently portrayed in United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, a documentary that could have been a lot angrier but aims to educate rather than agitate.
  23. Starbuck
    A potent comedy of genetic chaos, Starbuck is pointedly contemporary and occasionally cloying, but guaranteed to draw attention for its premise and central character.
  24. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
    For all its obvious smarts and mildly provocative ideas, Mockingjay doesn’t seem to trust its audience quite as much as it clearly trusts its heroine.
  25. The Well Digger's Daughter
    The humanist spirit of Gallic novelist-director Marcel Pagnol is alive and well in the old-fashionedly sincere The Well-Digger's Daughter, a competent remake of Pagnol's eponymous 1940 melodrama about a working-class girl impregnated by a young pilot who's sent off to war.
  26. Guardians of the Galaxy
    Director James Gunn’s presumptive franchise-starter is overlong, overstuffed and sometimes too eager to please, but the cheeky comic tone keeps things buoyant — as does Chris Pratt’s winning performance as the most blissfully spaced-out space crusader this side of Buckaroo Banzai.
  27. The World's End
    A fraction less gut-bustingly goofy than its predecessors.
  28. Killer Joe
    The family that slays together pays together in Killer Joe, a nasty little Texas noir that transfers Tracy Letts' 1993 play from page to screen with generally gripping results before devolving into an over-the-top splatterfest.
  29. Lincoln
    The result looks as much like a Natural History Museum diorama as it sounds: a respectful but waxy re-creation that feels somehow awe-inspiring yet chillingly lifeless to behold, the great exception being Jones' alternately blistering and sage turn as Stevens.
  30. Chicken with Plums
    The same winning balance of seriousness and humor that made "Persepolis" such a hit works equally well in Chicken With Plums.
  31. Rites of Spring
    Helmer-writer Padraig Reynolds creates a dizzying pastiche of genre conventions, and he has a terrific actress in Anessa Ramsey, who's that rare thing in horror, a thoroughly convincing victim.
  32. Sushi: The Global Catch
    Sushi: The Global Catch offers an intriguing mix of history, process and state-of-the-fish reports, advocating a reversal of the world's assault on bluefin tuna fisheries and a short course on the alternatives.
  33. Nobody Walks
    Reminiscent of 2010 Sundance breakout "The Kids Are All Right," Ry Russo-Young's Nobody Walks captures the fallout of an open-minded Los Angeles family shaken up by the arrival of a sexy outsider, only this time, it's the outsider whose perspective takes precedence.
  34. We Women Warriors
    Nicole Karsin's beautifully crafted documentary We Women Warriors highlights the activism of three strong, extraordinarily likable women from three different regions and indigenous cultures of Colombia.
  35. Death by China
    One need not fully subscribe to Peter Navarro's demonization to appreciate his lucid wake-up call to the imminent dangers of the huge U.S.-China trade imbalance and its disastrous impact on the American economy.
  36. About Time
    Curtis ends up making a virtue out of the narrative’s episodic quality, a tendency that’s been criticized in his previous work; the film, like life, is just one damn thing after another, and that’s really the rather lovely point.
  37. 2 Guns
    Kormakur shows he knows his way around an action movie better than most, keeping the pace quick, the banter lively and the old-school, mostly CGI-free thrills delivering right on schedule.
  38. 2016: Obama's America
    While it's highly unlikely that anyone predisposed to championing Obama would be won over by the sound and fury here, there's no gainsaying the value of "2016" as a sort of Cliffs Notes precis of the conservative case against the re-election of our current U.S. president.
  39. The Other Dream Team
    Smartly engineered to engage sports fans and non-fans, the picture's account of Lithuania's 1992 Olympics bronze medal-winning team, presented as a symbol of post-Cold War freedom.
  40. The Revenant
    An often hilarious living-dead comedy that just had to happen, given the current hunger for zombies, vampires and other things that refuse to keel over.
  41. Holy Motors
    Audaciously giving itself license to do whatever it wants, Leos Carax's narratively unhinged, beautifully shot and frequently hilarious Holy Motors coheres -- arguably, anyway -- into a vivid jaunt through the auteur's cinematic obsessions.
  42. Vamps
    Heckerling always manages to get her finger firmly on the pulse of the contemporary moment, and while her club-hopping heroines may be undead, they serve as adorable metaphors for what the filmmaker sees as a zombified moment in cultural history.
  43. Chasing Ice
    Following the exhaustive efforts of photographer-scientist James Balog to capture irrefutable evidence of the world's glaciers in retreat, first-time helmer Jeff Orlowski's documentary supplies a heroic human-interest angle on global warming that's ultimately less remarkable than the grandeur of its arctic imagery.
  44. Rust and Bone
    A tender yet heavily de-romanticized love story between a boxer with broken hands and an orca trainer with missing legs, Rust and Bone serves as an impressive if somewhat overblown exercise in contrasts.
  45. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    There's something perversely fascinating about helmer John Hyams' freewheeling yet deliberately paced mashup of noirish mystery, splatter-movie intensity, first-person-shooter vidgame and "Apocalypse Now"-style surrealism.
  46. A Late Quartet
    Centered around four outstanding performances, Yaron Zilberman's fiction-feature debut feels like the work of a filmmaker who knows and appreciates the art form under scrutiny, laying a credible foundation for a story that lays bare the often melodramatic passions of the artistic soul.
  47. Minions
    Stronger on concept than story, Brian Lynch’s Minions script emphasizes scale over quantity.
  48. The Ambassador
    Brugger ensures it's a fairly entertaining excursion, especially when he starts to enjoy getting into character as the nefarious white man in Africa.
  49. Head Games
    Parents could be making their kids wear helmets to the library by the conclusion of helmer Steve James' science-and-sports docu Head Games, which scores solid hits on everyone from the NFL down to peewee hockey as it links contact sports, concussions and those calling for widespread reformation of the nation's athletic philosophies and priorities.
  50. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
    Crisp, efficient and appreciably modest in scale...this conspicuous attempt to breathe new life into a long-dormant action franchise gets at least a few things right, chiefly the shrewd casting of Chris Pine.
  51. The To Do List
    This rare femme-centric addition to the loss-of-virginity canon (dominated by the likes of “Porky’s,” “Risky Business” and “American Pie”) hits its fair share of outrageously funny highs amid lots of so-so filler, but stays buoyant and likable throughout thanks to the winning presence of “Parks and Recreation” star Aubrey Plaza in the lead.
  52. Keep the Lights On
    Delicately tracing the troubled nine-year bond between two men living in New York, Ira Sachs mines his own memories to sensitive, melancholy if somewhat muted effect in Keep the Lights On.
  53. Stand Up Guys
    Veering between buddy movie and action-thriller, Stand Up Guys is a mildly raunchy, modestly entertaining geriatric comedy.
  54. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    If none of the Hobbit films resonate with "Rings'" mythic grandeur, it’s hard not to marvel at Jackson’s facility with these characters and this world, which he seems to know as well as John Ford knew his Monument Valley, and to which he here bids an elegiac adieu.
  55. Francine
    A glum but tenderly observed micro-portrait of a woman struggling to re-enter society after being released from prison.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vertigo
    Unfortunately, even that mastery is not enough to overcome one major fault, for the plain fact is that the film’s first half is too slow and too long.
  57. You're Next
    You’re Next is fairly light on psychological and narrative complexity, but it’s still a good cut above the slasher norm, with a firm grasp on visceral action and the wisdom to place tongue slightly in cheek when things go further over the top.
  58. Hellbound?
    By narrowing its range of voices to Christian leaders, thinkers and writers, Kevin Miller's sober, stimulating documentary on the hot topic of eternal damnation necessarily limits its audience, but achieves a level of rhetorical eloquence that would theoretically appeal to open-minded viewers of any religious stripe.
  59. The Comedy
    For a catalog of aggressively stupid, socially deviant male behavior, Rick Alverson's cheekily titled The Comedy is not without a certain subversive intelligence.
  60. The House I Live In
    A ballsy mix of interviews and editorializing that's daring enough to question a costly crackdown that has long had the public's support.
  61. Fat Kid Rules the World
    Affecting performances and effective storytelling are the hallmarks of Fat Kid Rules the World.
  62. Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare
    Lacking the outrage and wit of Michael Moore's "Sicko," which dealt with the different matter of health insurance, this documentary is stronger on finding viable solutions.
  63. Jab Tak Hai Jaan
    Even by the freewheeling, mood-swinging standards of Bollywood, the pronounced disparity between the pre- and post-intermission halves of Jab tak hai jaan is more than a tad jarring. Indeed, viewers may feel they've been treated to an oddly matched double bill -- a delightfully vivacious romantic dramedy, followed by an Old Hollywood sort of psychological melodrama.
  64. Gayby
    Although it traffics freely in stereotypes and sitcom-style one-liners, Gayby is never less than likable.
  65. Madrid, 1987
    A perceptive, ultra-wordy stab at catching the zeitgeist at a time of change in Spain, David Trueba's two-hander nonetheless feels like a working-out of social and personal themes that hasn't quite achieved the full leap from page to film.
  66. Prisoners
    A spellbinding, sensationally effective thriller with a complex moral center.
  67. We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists
    A cumulative feeling of urgency and you-are-there world-beating are key to the picture's seductive appeal, though lack of informed dissenting opinions reps an unfortunate editorial choice.
  68. Bad 25
    A blockbuster melange of Motown, metal, hip-hop, world and gospel influences, bound by trailblazing production, "Bad" has stood in its predecessor's shadow too long, and Spike Lee convincingly makes the case for reassessment with this exhaustive and entertaining if less-than-penetrating documentary on its creation.
  69. Funeral Kings
    A raggedy but refreshing yarn about the near-terminal condition known as male adolescence.
  70. The Zen of Bennett
    While the result is sure to appeal to the star's fans, they may find this less-than-definitive portrait distractingly arty at times, while viewers attracted by such up-to-the-moment talents as Lady Gaga will wonder why the picture doesn't bother providing a little more explanatory background about that old guy she's singing with.
  71. Bears
    Surely some of the film’s various incidents have been creatively stitched together from stray bits and pieces of footage, but its central conflict is an entirely organic one, and rarely is any offscreen string pulling distractingly evident.
  72. Closed Circuit
    [A] slick, smarter-than-usual conspiracy yarn.
  73. Citadel
    Writer-director Ciaran Foy skillfully taps into primal fears and urban paranoia to keep his audience consistently unsettled in Citadel, an intensely suspenseful horror-thriller.
  74. Christmas in Compton
    With a first-rate cast led by Keith David and Sheryl Lee Ralph, generously funny dialogue and a supporting cast capable of crisp comic timing, writer-director David Raynr's feature is warm and likable enough to jumpstart the holiday movie season.
  75. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
    A powerful, necessary contribution to a chilling body of reportage that, one senses by film's end, has just begun to take stock of the human costs of a monstrous conspiracy.
  76. 16 Acres
    An uncommonly engrossing and articulate documentary.
  77. Who Bombed Judi Bari?
    The film, produced by Cherney, makes a clear and cogent case (later upheld by a court verdict) that police and FBI falsified evidence in order to discredit Bari's cause.
  78. Turning
    The 13 women, all born or made New Yorkers -- all born or made women -- of various ages, shapes, sizes and backgrounds, lose none of their mystique by being captured "behind the scenes," traipsing through airports or meticulously applying weird makeup. Rather, they reveal themselves as more conscious, integral parts of a spectacle that unfolds to hypnotic effect.
  79. The King (2012)
    Revelatory for the disabled and entertaining for the rest of us.
  80. Saving America's Horses: A Nation Betrayed
    Clearer, more thoughtful editing would have greatly enhanced the effectiveness of this sometimes-revelatory documentary.
  81. Parked
    This engaging character study functions best as a two-hander: The male leads build a wholly believable, offbeat co-dependency, while their interactions with others tend toward the more generic.
  82. Beware of Mr. Baker
    When a documentary begins with its subject using his crutch to deliver a vicious blow to the director's nose, it's reasonably safe to expect less-than-smooth sailing ahead.
  83. Elza (Le bonheur d'Elza)
    Suffused with buoyant, sunlit sensuality, like its free-flying heroine, Elza confounds logic while seducing the senses.
  84. The Rabbi's Cat
    This feature-length 3D adaptation of Sfar's comicbook series shares many of the same virtues and problems of his solo, live-action helming debut, the biopic "Gainsbourg," in that it is often colorful, witty and inspired, but also too episodic, and lacks a strong ending.
  85. Let Fury Have the Hour
    A curiously warm-and-fuzzy hindsight interpretation of artistic aggression, delivered by the artists themselves.
  86. Consuming Spirits
    This labor of love from do-it-all animator Chris Sullivan has the same rough-edged, cantankerous charms as the characters that populate it. Narrative alone is too uneven to captivate fully for the picture's two-hour-plus duration, though there's so much to see that "Spirits" should nonetheless prove a draw for adult audiences.
  87. Barbara
    A story of love and subterfuge in 1980 East Germany that never quite accelerates into an outright thriller, Barbara reps another assured collaboration between director Christian Petzold and his main muse, actress Nina Hoss.
  88. My Brooklyn
    Filled with colorful, articulate neighborhood champions, this absorbing picture eschews militant outrage for a quietly devastating look at social commodification.
  89. My Best Enemy
    Entertaining, though conventionally told war story.
  90. Uprising (2013)
    Amid the flood of documentaries about the Arab Spring in general and the Egyptian Revolution in particular, Uprising takes a clear, cohesive approach to the spontaneous events at its center.
  91. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
    A modestly less quotable but generously funny new adventure for scotch-and-mahogany-loving 1970s newsman Ron Burgundy.
  92. Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation
    A most enjoyable flashback. Laura Archibald's documentary about Ground Zero for the 1960s folk explosion -- and its enormous influence on the shape of rock music to come -- isn't assembled in a particularly distinctive manner, but the materials and voices culled offer more than enough reward in themselves.
  93. 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.
  94. A Place at the Table
    A useful, engaging and enraging movie that will enlist supporters for its cause.
  95. Hercules
    It’s a grandly staged, solidly entertaining, old-fashioned adventure movie that does something no other Hercules movie has quite done before: it cuts the mythical son of Zeus down to human size (or as human as you can get while still being played by Dwayne Johnson).
  96. The Brass Teapot
    Despite the inherent perversity of the concept, Mosley succeeds in maintaining a certain sweetness throughout. Even more impressively, she makes her low-budget enterprise look as slick as most midrange studio comedies, demonstrating herself a director with both imagination and technical ingenuity.
  97. The Pirogue
    Toure crafts a handsome work that makes up in skill and honesty what it lacks in originality.
  98. Lee Daniels' The Butler
    There’s no denying, though, that Daniels knows how to push an audience’s buttons, and as crudely obvious as The Butler can be...it’s also genuinely rousing. By the end, it’s hard not to feel moved, if also more than a bit manhandled.
  99. Lore
    Lore offers a fresh, intimate and mostly successful perspective on Germany's traumatic transition from conqueror nation to occupied state.
  100. Trance
    A trippy variation on the dream-within-a-dream movie, Boyle’s return-to-form crimer constantly challenges what audiences think they know, but neglects to establish why they should care.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »