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. An Honest Liar
    An Honest Liar is a highly entertaining portrait of James “the Amazing” Randi.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
    Though billed as a documentary, this 59-minute doodle barely rises above homemovie status.
  8. 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.
  9. Futuro Beach
    Its visual and sonic verve more than compensate for some overworked symbolism.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. The Lazarus Effect
    “Lazarus” shamelessly steals from superior genre efforts and lacks any distinguishing traits beyond a wildly overqualified cast.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. Welcome to Me
    A strange and often startlingly inspired media/mental-illness comedy.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. Cinderella
    Though this Cinderella could never replace Disney’s animated classic, it’s no ugly stepsister either, but a deserving companion.
  30. 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.
  31. 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.
  32. 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.
  33. 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.
  34. 45 Years
    Above all, 45 Years is a drama of quiet restraint.
  35. 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.
  36. 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.
  37. Queen of Earth
    An unnerving, acidly funny work that fosters an acute air of dread without ever fully announcing itself as a horror movie.
  38. Jafar Panahi's Taxi
    A film of quiet but profound outrage, laughing on the surface, but howling in anger just beneath.
  39. Fresh Dressed
    The breezily likable pic benefits from an underexposed topic and solid execution.
  40. 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.
  41. Life
    [An] engaging, elegiac portrait of a legend in the making.
  42. 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.
  43. 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.
  44. 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.
  45. 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.
  46. 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.
  47. 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.
  48. 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.
  49. Ballet 422
    The documentary moves with the same fluidity that characterizes Peck’s choreography.
  50. 3 Nights in the Desert
    The characters, situations and dialogue too seldom escape cliche in Gabriel Cowan’s watchable but unmemorable feature.
  51. 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.
  52. 1971
    The film offers surprisingly cogent, lived-in evocations of a period too often glossed over in impersonal, by-the-book montages.
  53. 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.
  54. Dreamcatcher
    Conventionally constructed but remarkable for the honest, intimate rapport it achieves with highly vulnerable human subjects.
  55. 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.
  56. 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.
  57. 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.
  58. 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.
  59. Digging for Fire
    A lovely slice of everything and nothing.
  60. The Loft
    The five leads earn kudos for their ability to come across as something approaching credible.
  61. 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).
  62. Knock Knock
    [A] glossy and reasonably fun update of Peter Traynor’s 1977 exploitation movie “Death Game.”
  63. 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.
  64. People Places Things
    For a film with one eye on messy, real emotions, People, Places, Things undercuts itself with goofy humor.
  65. 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.
  66. 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.
  67. 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.
  68. 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.
  69. 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.
  70. 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.
  71. 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.
  72. 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.
  73. Take Me to the River
    The superlatively acted indie promises more than it delivers, but chillingly evokes sufficient primal dread.
  74. 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.
  75. 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.
  76. 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.
  77. 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.
  78. 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.
  79. A Walk in the Woods
    It’s pleasant enough cinematic comfort food, but even so, you may be hungry again soon afterward.
  80. 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.
  81. 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.
  82. 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.
  83. Above and Beyond
    Above and Beyond reps an uneasy combo of two very different kinds of documentary, one of them personalizing the past and the other “objectifying” political advocacy.
  84. Hard to Be a God
    In essence it’s an historical artifact created in a time capsule: impressive in its way, yet its retardataire mannerisms require more distance before judgment can be passed on whether it’s a major work engaged in earlier forms, or an intriguing footnote trapped in a spent modality.
  85. Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast
    A colorful and cheery fantasy that duplicates its series predecessors’ cutesy humor and feel-good message making.
  86. The Devil's Violinist
    The film is proof of both Garrett’s titanic skill at putting bow to string, and his decidedly less accomplished gifts as an actor.
  87. Mississippi Grind
    For all the impressive authenticity of the various settings, it’s Gerry and Curtis’ continually evolving push-pull dynamic that deservedly takes centerstage here, in a picture driven far less by narrative incident than by its gently pulsing comic undercurrents and vivid contemplation of character.
  88. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
    Blending wit and modesty, Mann fits the bill, coming across as an overgrown kid with a good heart, but virtually no practice in relating to others — which is perhaps the thing that makes his experience so profoundly relatable.
  89. I Am Michael
    It cuts to the heart of the self-doubt, fear and prejudice associated with modern homosexuality.
  90. Dope
    The fun momentum of Dope’s breakneck plotting and snappy dialogue easily overcome any momentary attack of earnestness.
  91. The D Train
    Funny and sad isn’t the easiest combination to pull off, and while both descriptors fit The D Train well enough, this dark comedy might just as well be described as edgy and soft, audacious and coy, a largely enjoyable letdown.
  92. Project Almanac
    Evaluated on the concept’s own terms, the script clearly could have used another do-over or two before Israelite and his cast took the plunge.
  93. Suburban Gothic
    While the results may be perilously slight, Suburban Gothic’s particular brand of low-key sarcasm and absurdity will tickle those looking for laughs more dry than slapstick (or splatstick) in nature.
  94. The Voices
    In tapping Satrapi to interpret this project, the producers have done about as well as one could expect with such material. Still, a bit more consistency in style would have gone a long way.
  95. James White
    Familiar in its general trajectory, but unusually raw and ragged in its emotional architecture, Mond’s fraught portrait of a mother and son in crisis sports a pair of knockout performances by Cynthia Nixon and “Girls” alumnus Christopher Abbott.
  96. The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
    The atmosphere inside Studio Ghibli may suggest a zen-like idyll, but animation is a painstaking — and sometimes painful — process, and though shaggy and somewhat ordinary in places, Sunada’s tour of the “Kingdom” makes us appreciate the magic all the more.
  97. Shaun the Sheep Movie
    Though realized on a more modest scale than other Aardman features, the film is still an absolute delight in terms of set and character design, with sophisticated blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detailing to counterbalance the franchise’s cruder visual trademarks.
  98. The Witch
    Writer-director Robert Eggers’ impressive debut feature walks a tricky line between disquieting ambiguity and full-bore supernatural horror, but leaves no doubt about the dangerously oppressive hold that Christianity exerted on some dark corners of the Puritan psyche.
  99. The End of the Tour
    The two leads’ clashing styles might work if the film were entirely about two superficially similar people’s inability to truly find common ground. But as we’re finally intended to judge their meeting a profound connective one on at least some levels, the chemistry simply feels off.
  100. The Diary of a Teenage Girl
    This adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s heavily autobiographical novel is ideally cast and skillfully handled.
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