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. Furious 7
    Furious 7 provides both a satisfying chapter in the movies’ preeminent gearhead soap opera and a tactful, touching memorial to Walker.
  2. Court
    Managing to be both extremely rational and extremely humane, the film works so well thanks to an intelligent, superbly understated script and a feel for naturalism that extends beyond mere performance.
  3. Treading Water
    Emitting the unpleasant stench of over-affectation, Treading Water slaps together its particular peculiarities with such randomness, it’s as if the film were conceived from blindly throwing disparate elements at the wall.
  4. The Wrecking Crew
    This nostalgia-drenched rockumentary remains a hugely entertaining treasure trove of witness-at-creation anecdotes and enduringly potent ’60s pop hits.
  5. Suite Française
    Clumsy storytelling decisions, however, can’t entirely get in the way of a good story, and it’s when Suite francaise focuses on the simplest human dynamics of its yarn that it forges a sincere emotional connection.
  6. The Divergent Series: Insurgent
    Considering that Insurgent is meant to represent the series’ great civil war, it all comes across feeling like a tempest in a teapot: a glorified rehash of what came before, garnished with the promise of what lies in store.
  7. 3 Hearts
    The entire scenario, contrived to within an inch of its life, takes Poelvoorde’s appeal for granted. Marc’s anxiety becomes our own once he realizes what he’s done, though Jacquot makes it much more compelling to watch his characters fall in love than it is to see them writhe and twist amid its complications.
  8. Run All Night
    Even when he’s dealing with this boilerplate material, Collet-Serra brings an understated intensity and a subtle emotional pull to every scene, aided immeasurably by actors who invest their roles, big and small, with just the right degree of conviction.
  9. Straight Outta Tompkins
    Benson displays more energy and assurance behind the camera than he does in front of it; even still, his tonal command of his own narrative is wobbly at best, employing cynical humor and climactic eruptions of violence to jazz up what is ultimately an overly earnest and predictable cautionary tale.
  10. Home Sweet Hell
    Heigl’s performance as a coolly murderous model housewife is the only real reason to even consider watching Home Sweet Hell, an otherwise flailing and risible tale of adultery, extortion and suburban malaise that suggests a poor woman’s “Gone Girl” — one stripped of all tension, style and subtext, and instead rendered with a level of over-the-top gore that would give even David Fincher pause.
  11. Danny Collins
    Beneath the sitcom cutesiness and boldfaced sentimentality, the film manages to keep just enough reality coursing through to stay grounded.
  12. Home
    Unimaginative and downright predictable by grownup standards, but bursting with elements sure to appeal to younger auds.
  13. Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
    The richness of the tale told here makes this competently packaged feature a keeper nonetheless.
  14. The Gunman
    Penn’s veiny, sweat-glazed biceps are the most objectively impressive feature of this rote, humorless thriller, a distinctly unconvincing attempt to refashion the star — who also co-wrote and produced — as a middle-aged action hero in the Liam Neeson mold.
  15. Road Hard
    This feature directing debut for Adam Carolla and frequent writing/producing collaborator Kevin Hench is an amiable, nicely assembled semi-autobiographical fiction that will please the former’s fans.
  16. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    About as appealing as day-old beer littered with cigarette butts, the abysmal caper drama Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is one of those international co-productions produced for all the right tax-credit reasons and none of the right artistic ones.
  17. Chappie
    Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is one of the major casualties of Chappie, a robot-themed action movie that winds up feeling as clunky and confused as the childlike droid with which it shares its name.
  18. Unfinished Business
    A comedy with its heart in the right place and everything else bizarrely out of joint.
  19. An Honest Liar
    An Honest Liar is a highly entertaining portrait of James “the Amazing” Randi.
  20. The Lesson
    The naturalistic style of the storytelling is stealthily enthralling, as is the lead performance by Margita Gosheva as a provincial Bulgarian schoolteacher who is slowly, inexorably driven to the edge by crushing debt.
  21. Ana Maria in Novela Land
    Ganem has sufficient verve and appeal to sustain interest in both of her characters, and the sporadic tweaking of telenovelas and the fans who love them is often quite clever.
  22. The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
    There are moments when audiences will wonder if laughing about gangland whackings isn’t in bad taste, yet it becomes increasingly clear that the helmer-scripter is using humor to cut Mafia bosses down to size, thereby turning an accusatory glare at an Italy that granted these people power.
  23. The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest
    It’s a bizarre story not entirely clear in the telling — partly because we can’t be entirely sure when the subject is telling the truth — but absorbing nonetheless.
  24. Out of the Dark
    The lead actors are solid as usual, but you can feel them all knocking their heads against the low ceiling of material that’s afraid to take any risks — playing it so safe that the film ends up lacking anything in the way of real personality, scares or plot surprises.
  25. My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
    Though billed as a documentary, this 59-minute doodle barely rises above homemovie status.
  26. The Hunting Ground
    This sort of doc is a legal minefield, but it never seems to sacrifice urgency or cogency, although like Dick’s previous films, it may irk those who prefer a wonkier, less button-pushing approach.
  27. Futuro Beach
    Its visual and sonic verve more than compensate for some overworked symbolism.
  28. Everly
    This slickly assembled exploitation-movie wankfest gets some mileage out of its star’s fully committed performance, though not enough to offset the grim, monotonous tenor of the proceedings — or the glib, fetishistic recycling of Asian thriller tropes.
  29. Eastern Boys
    Campillo’s original screenplay demands any number of trusting leaps from its audience and characters alike, yet maintains credibility thanks to the studied assurance of its most elaborate setpieces, and the wealth of socioeconomic detail in its portrayal of both Daniel’s aging-yuppie lifestyle and the nervous group dynamic of the immigrants.
  30. The Lazarus Effect
    “Lazarus” shamelessly steals from superior genre efforts and lacks any distinguishing traits beyond a wildly overqualified cast.
  31. Accidental Love
    The disparate tones never gel, and the movie has an airless, stop-and-go feel, as if a studio-audience laugh track were intended but never inserted.
  32. Tracers
    While Lautner is to be admired for his physical commitment to the role, the below-the-line team lighting, shooting and choreographing his moves deserves equal credit. The film wouldn’t have worked without such a versatile team, which otherwise operates without a trace.
  33. Young Bodies Heal Quickly
    One part inspiration to two parts exasperation, Andrew T. Betzer’s debut feature, Young Bodies Heal Quickly, is an initially arresting road trip for some off-the-wall characters that takes its sweet time going nowhere in particular.
  34. Wild Canaries
    Levine’s script does a clever job of keeping numerous balls in the air over the taut 99-minute running time, and the writer is especially good at using the information he feeds us in unexpectedly resourceful, double-edged ways.
  35. Focus
    While not quite the “art” it’s billed to be, if the perfect con is about diverting one’s focus, then this one keeps you distracted till the end.
  36. Bluebird
    Edmands maintains too measured a pace as he cycles through the various lives affected, to the extent that one begins to wonder when things will start kick in.
  37. Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal
    The decision to binge on CGI action setpieces overwhelms the romantic spark of the central characters, played by impossibly beautiful leads Lee Bingbing and Aloys Chen Kun, while the film’s themes of class division, human desire and hypocrisy find darker, more riveting expression only toward the end.
  38. Welcome to Me
    A strange and often startlingly inspired media/mental-illness comedy.
  39. Catch Me Daddy
    Although the film is never less than gripping, the story beats of the chase rely on a number of coincidental encounters, while the abundance of main characters and their unpredictable natures can make them seem a bit light on psychological investigation.
  40. The DUFF
    Canny and funny in equal measure, it’s a film that embraces technology — just like it does its protagonist — on its own perfectly imperfect terms.
  41. Victoria
    Audiences may come down from the high a little sooner than the film does, with the characters’ increasingly ill-considered actions testing our faith and engagements to the breaking point, but the sheer centripetal force of the film’s vigorous technique never loses its hold.
  42. Aferim!
    While its tone is occasionally overly strident, Aferim! is an exceptional, deeply intelligent gaze into a key historical period, done with wit as well as anger.
  43. Hot Tub Time Machine 2
    Boorish and crass, homophobic and misogynistic, the very definition of sloppy seconds — par for the course where the present generation of male-driven, R-rated, “Hangover”-aping franchise comedies are concerned. That it somehow manages to send you out of the theater feeling tickled rather than sullied may be a mystery as impenetrable as the cosmos.
  44. Old Fashioned
    The line between priggishness and creepiness is repeatedly smudged by multihyphenate Rik Swartzwelder in Old Fashioned, a faith-based drama that looks as lovely as an expensive greeting card, but moves as slowly as a somnolent turtle.
  45. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    It’s not so common to find an ensemble of this caliber so enthusiastic to work together, and that chemistry comes across.
  46. Slow West
    John Maclean’s impeccably crafted writing-directing debut at times has a distinctly Coen-esque flavor in its mix of sly intelligence, bleak humor and unsettling violence, exuding fierce confidence even when these qualities don’t always cohere in the smoothest or most emotionally impactful fashion.
  47. Cinderella
    Though this Cinderella could never replace Disney’s animated classic, it’s no ugly stepsister either, but a deserving companion.
  48. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
    Armed with “Mad Max”-like design elements and a good sense of humor, this energetically executed bloodbath marks a promising feature bow for Australian brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner.
  49. Humpback Whales
    Veteran filmmaker Greg MacGillivray (“Everest”) seizes the opportunity with striking imagery, which goes a long way toward compensating for his frequently over-earnest messaging.
  50. Every Thing Will Be Fine
    While Wenders has argued intelligently in interviews for the merits of realizing character-driven drama in three dimensions, this isn’t the most helpful case-maker — not least because Norwegian writer Bjorn Olaf Johannessen’s screenplay has barely been rendered in two.
  51. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
    The beautifully modulated script, ripe with moments of liberating humor, builds to a crescendo of indignation, allowing Elkabetz several cathartic outbursts, but they’re no more riveting than the actress’ silences.
  52. 45 Years
    Above all, 45 Years is a drama of quiet restraint.
  53. Fifty Shades of Grey
    Glossy, well cast, and a consistent hoot until it becomes a serious drag, this neo-“9½ Weeks” is above all a slick exercise in carefully brand-managed titillation — edgier than most grown-up studio fare, but otherwise a fairly mild provocation in this porn-saturated day and age.
  54. Diary of a Chambermaid
    The film milks some brisk comedy from its upstairs-downstairs peekaboo, but is too breezy to convince in its depiction of obsessive erotic fixation — making for a “Diary” that oddly feels less exposing as it goes along.
  55. Queen of Earth
    An unnerving, acidly funny work that fosters an acute air of dread without ever fully announcing itself as a horror movie.
  56. Jafar Panahi's Taxi
    A film of quiet but profound outrage, laughing on the surface, but howling in anger just beneath.
  57. Fresh Dressed
    The breezily likable pic benefits from an underexposed topic and solid execution.
  58. Woman in Gold
    This is manufactured sentiment, less interested in provoking thought than in manipulating emotion, constructed of human obstacles overcome, stirring speeches delivered and heart-rending flashbacks unveiled, all suspended like so much Spam in the jelly of its own score.
  59. Life
    [An] engaging, elegiac portrait of a legend in the making.
  60. The Summer of Sangaile
    At its best, The Summer of Sangaile captures the special intensity of those relationships in which everything seems to fade away save for the other person.
  61. The Other Man: F.W. de Klerk and the End of Apartheid
    It’s an opportunity only half seized: Haphazard both as biography and historical survey, the film asks more salient questions than it can answer in a rushed 76 minutes.
  62. Seymour: An Introduction
    This first documentary directed by Ethan Hawke happily sidesteps any vanity-project pitfalls, granting full expression to Bernstein’s wise and witty commentary on a craft that he’s spent decades honing — as well as the proper application of that craft when the demands of art are often outweighed by the pressures of commerce.
  63. Knight of Cups
    Those who have had their fill of the director’s impressionistic musings will find his seventh feature as empty as the lifestyle it puts on display; for the rest of us, there’s no denying this star-studded, never-a-dull-moment cinematic oddity represents another flawed but fascinating reframing of man’s place in the modern world.
  64. Queen of the Desert
    Herzog’s script loses its way in the desert at one point, dutifully chronicling a life whose principal conflicts are a bit too abstract to dramatize. In the end, it’s not clear what’s driving Bell, nor what’s holding her back.
  65. 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.
  66. 5 to 7
    Courageously sentimental in an age of irony, Victor Levin’s refreshingly articulate 5 to 7 delivers romance of the sort thought lost since the days of Audrey Hepburn, for those who appreciate such finery.
  67. Ballet 422
    The documentary moves with the same fluidity that characterizes Peck’s choreography.
  68. 3 Nights in the Desert
    The characters, situations and dialogue too seldom escape cliche in Gabriel Cowan’s watchable but unmemorable feature.
  69. McFarland USA
    A rare studio entertainment featuring a largely Latino ensemble, yet necessarily fronted by a big-name draw like Costner, McFarland, USA feels at once mildly progressive and unavoidably retrograde.
  70. 1971
    The film offers surprisingly cogent, lived-in evocations of a period too often glossed over in impersonal, by-the-book montages.
  71. Entertainment
    Take it or leave it, Alverson’s fourth feature is singular stuff, and it reconfirms the director as one of the truly bold voices in the all-too-homogenous U.S. indie film scene.
  72. Dreamcatcher
    Conventionally constructed but remarkable for the honest, intimate rapport it achieves with highly vulnerable human subjects.
  73. Jupiter Ascending
    While the Wachowskis have always put their greatest emphasis on aesthetics, they allow the visual impulse to get the best of them here, investing so much attention in creating unique fashions, technology, architecture and design that they’ve blinded themselves to the huge logical gaps in their own story.
  74. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
    For Scientologists, going clear refers to a coveted status awarded to those who have completed a certain level of auditing. But for the men and women on screen here, it means something else: reclaiming their own voices and demanding to be heard.
  75. Don Verdean
    The expected satire of religious gullibility and charlatanism proves toothless; worse, a cast of very funny people is given very little funny to do.
  76. Best of Enemies
    Both fascinating as a glimpse at the not so distant past, and provocative as an account of what arguably was an early step in the decline of political discourse on television.
  77. Digging for Fire
    A lovely slice of everything and nothing.
  78. The Loft
    The five leads earn kudos for their ability to come across as something approaching credible.
  79. I Smile Back
    What propels the film forcefully along is Silverman, who pulls us down so deeply inside Laney’s sickness that everything else seems to fade away (much as it does in the character’s own life).
  80. Knock Knock
    [A] glossy and reasonably fun update of Peter Traynor’s 1977 exploitation movie “Death Game.”
  81. Last Days in the Desert
    Deliberately paced, sparely imagined and suffused with mystery, writer-director Rodrigo Garcia’s seventh feature is nonetheless quite lucid and accessible in its themes of empathy, compassion and sacrifice, and grounded by a Christ/Satan dual performance by Ewan McGregor that plays vastly better onscreen than it sounds on paper.
  82. People Places Things
    For a film with one eye on messy, real emotions, People, Places, Things undercuts itself with goofy humor.
  83. The Stanford Prison Experiment
    The problem is not that this film is upsetting (it should be), but that it ultimately seems more interested, and skilled, at dispensing regular shocks than fresh insights.
  84. Sleeping with Other People
    Headland demonstrated little interest in playing it safe with her previous film... But here she reins in that impulse almost too much, and Sleeping With Other People winds up both looking (with its adequate but unremarkable tech package) and often feeling like a run-of-the-mill studio comedy.
  85. Results
    Once he’s worked through the basic set-up, Bujalski puts the plot on the back burner and lets his characters collide and ricochet off one another with a laconic comic grace.
  86. The Overnight
    The Overnight invites the audience to keep guessing exactly who is seducing whom, and exactly where the temptations will lead, right up to its final few beats. Barely hitting 70 minutes before the credit crawl, this comedy successfully achieves a climax of its own that is equal parts exciting and frustrating.
  87. Nasty Baby
    Silva assembles a loosely scripted, raucously nonconformist laffer that looks like it’s going one way, only to arrive somewhere else entirely — a change of heart that’s not at all to the advantage of a film.
  88. Mistress America
    If nothing else, Mistress America confirms Gerwig as one of the great, fearless screen comediennes of her generation — a tall, loose-limbed whirligig who careers through scenes with the beatific ditziness of a Carole Lombard or Judy Holliday.
  89. Brooklyn
    A robust romantic drama, rich in history and full of emotion, Brooklyn fills a niche in which the studios once specialized, using a well-read and respected novel as the grounds for a tenderly observed tearjerker.
  90. Stockholm, Pennsylvania
    From its opening scene, the film feels desaturated and airless, as if the intrusion of energy or color might upset the characters’ delicate task of healing.
  91. Take Me to the River
    The superlatively acted indie promises more than it delivers, but chillingly evokes sufficient primal dread.
  92. Tangerine
    Writer-director Sean Baker’s sun-scorched, street-level snapshot is a work of rueful, matter-of-fact insight and unapologetically wild humor that draws a motley collection of funny, sad and desperate individuals into its protagonists’ orbit.
  93. Ten Thousand Saints
    Part teen romance, part awkward love triangle, part generational-clash portrait, and almost all powered by nostalgia, this warmly conceived dramedy will likely resonate strongest with audiences who have a direct connection to the story’s place and time.
  94. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    At times there’s a genuine sense of daring to the film’s freewheeling anarchy, its refusal to stick to a central theme or impart any sort of lesson.
  95. True Story
    While never as gripping as a good piece of fiction, Goold’s treatment actually manages to improve on the book, even if that meant fabricating a few things along the way.
  96. Unexpected
    Swanberg and co-writer Megan Mercier have crafted an incredibly generous film that wears its heart on its sleeve but never feels sappy or even sentimental.
  97. A Walk in the Woods
    It’s pleasant enough cinematic comfort food, but even so, you may be hungry again soon afterward.
  98. Z for Zachariah
    Z for Zachariah is a handsome-looking film (shot in widescreen, on remote New Zealand locations, by veteran David Gordon Green d.p. Tim Orr) and it doesn’t lack for provocative ideas, though it never digs quite deep enough into any of them.
  99. What Happened, Miss Simone?
    Garbus embraces Simone in all her multitudes and contradictions — or at least as many of them as can be comfortably squeezed into a 100-minute running time.
  100. The Wolfpack
    So weirdly fascinating is the tale of the Angulo clan that one wishes The Wolfpack were that much sharper, more searching and coherently organized. Still, there is much to enjoy in director Crystal Moselle’s debut documentary feature.
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