Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. Becoming
    Far more than the memoir, the film presents a manicured version of the way Michelle Obama sees herself — and yet, even such a carefully image-managed impression can be telling, since it diverges so significantly from the way the world perceives her.
  2. The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes
    Impresses as a visually exquisite, rigorously intellectual but dauntingly obscurantist fable about automatons, opera singers and herniated desire that will appeal exclusively to arthouse auds with rarefied tastes.
  3. Elio
    Elio is right at home in the Pixar catalog, but lacks those undeniable signs of intelligent life (wit, surprise and the capacity to expand the medium) that set the studio’s best work apart.
  4. Waiting for Armageddon
    The documentary's open-endedness offers something for everyone.
  5. Bandslam
    High school musicals have their scrappiest number in Bandslam, an awkward, earnest, almost irresistible indie.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Earth Girls Are Easy
    Earth Girls Are Easy is a dizzy, glitzy fish-out-of-water farce about three horny aliens on the make in LA. The two val-gals and their alien ‘dates’ take off for a weekend of LA nightlife, where the visitors’ smooth adaptation to Coast culture is intended by director Julian Temple and his screenwriters to affectionately skewer Tinseltown lifestyles.
  7. Occupation: Dreamland
    Helmers Garrett Scott and Ian Olds offer a sympathetic look at the average Joe doing duty in hell -- as well as a sharp indictment of the Pentagon's cavalier support for the troops.
  8. Mountainhead
    The ambition of Mountainhead is much lower than diagnosing the underlying dysfunction of the privileged few who run the world, settling for putting their dysfunction on caustically hilarious display.
  9. Buzz
    Film traverses Buzz's career with reasonable depth, helped by good-quality trailers from several pics. However, one suspects there are a lot more stories Buzz could tell in a more rigorous format.
  10. Straight Up
    A little of this can go a long way (the film is sometimes a bit airless), but James Sweeney is a filmmaker with the rare ability to toss antically inspired dialogue right off the edge of his brain. Straight Up is the work of a startling talent.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Broadway Melody
    It’s pretty near a classic in how to take a talker and then cut it to keep it moving.
  12. Pepe
    De los Santos Arias sends us on an uncategorizably odd journey down the river of his noodling, needling imagination in a rickety canoe that keeps on capsizing, upended by another sideswiping reference, another jarring change of scene and timeframe or yet another stretch of borderline incomprehensible narration from Pepe himself, a creature who is as surprised as we are that he has suddenly acquired language.
  13. Mission: Impossible III
    For all its far-fetched formulations, this new entry maintains more of a dramatic throughline and has the bonus of a villain played with unsparing meanness by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sommersby
    Sommersby is an unabashedly romantic and morally intricate Civil War-era tale splendidly acted by Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. It’s one of those rare occasions that the Americanization of a foreign property (here Daniel Vigne’s The Return of Martin Guerre) works as well as the original.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mystery Men
    Sharply written, with a lavish look and top-drawer effects adding to the appeal of its large and talented cast, pic achieves a nice balance of fondness and satiric snap, character laughs and goofy action.
  16. Shelter
    A pleasant romantic drama that works best when focused on the romance -- or on the waves, since the principal characters spend a lot of time surfing.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Soylent Green
    The somewhat plausible and proximate horrors in the story of Soylent Green carry the production over its awkward spots to the status of a good futuristic exploitation film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Return of the Living Dead
    Director Dan O’Bannon deserves considerable credit for creating a terrifically funny first half-hour of exposition, something in which he is greatly aided by the goofball performance of James Karen as a medical supply know-it-all.
  19. The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
    Thoughtful, incisive, controversial.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Frankie and Johnny
    Frankie and Johnny is an all-star, high-gloss, feel-good romantic feature sitcom. Amiably written and performed but fearsomely predictable, this middle-of-the-road adaptation of Terrence McNally’s off-Broadway hit [the 1987Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune] invites audiences to indulge in watching beautiful movie stars play lonely little people struggling to find love.
  21. Steve
    A profoundly moving and superbly acted diamond in the rough, Steve is better than anything the streamer has pushed for best picture to date.
  22. Robot Stories
    Greg Pak understands the short form well, mercifully avoiding blatant O'Henry twists while pulling off neat reversals of expertly set-up genre expectations.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Delicatessen
    Beautifully textured, cleverly scripted and eerily shot (often with a wideangle lens making characters look even weirder), Delicatessan is a zany little film that's a startling and clever debut for co-helmers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro.
  24. What's in a Name?
    The directors have brought onboard the entire original cast. This makes their job much easier, as countless performances have perfected the timing and tone of each single line.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Reivers
    The Reivers is a nice bawdy film, sort of Walt Disney with an adult rating.
  26. Instinct
    For anyone who’s forgotten the extent of van Houten’s skill set, actress-turned-filmmaker Halina Reijn’s impressive, icily disciplined debut feature Instinct provides a fearsome reminder.
  27. Suspended Time
    Alternating a thinly fictionalised portrait of the artist isolating at his family’s country home with fully autobiographical narration by the director himself, this mildly amusing but vastly indulgent bagatelle feels a tardy entry in the first wave of lockdown cinema — too late to feel fresh, but still too soon to have accumulated much meaningful perspective on an experience we all remember too well.
  28. Deadpool 2
    In almost every respect, this sequel is an improvement on its 2016 predecessor: Sharper, grosser, more narratively coherent and funnier overall, with a few welcome new additions. It’s a film willing to throw everything — jokes, references, heads, blood, guts and even a little bit of vomit — against the wall, rarely concerned about how much of it sticks.
  29. The Way Back
    I’d love to see Affleck star in a film about an addict with nothing to explain his addiction but his own flawed, desperate, hungry soul. That’s a movie that could speak to us — the way that Ben Affleck’s real story already does — far more than this modestly well-made Sunday-school lesson.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Chosen
    Director Kagan and writer Gordon do wonders with the poignant material. Despite the obvious ethnic slant this is a picture which communicates universally.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Land Before Time
    For the most part, pic is about as engaging as what's found on Saturday morning TV.
    • Variety
  32. American Star
    The director’s most rewarding decision: simply trusting McShane to summon the mood.
  33. Puzzle
    We should be grateful that it exists, if only because it affords a long-overdue leading role to Kelly Macdonald.
  34. I Care a Lot
    A sleekly unnerving thriller.
  35. The Infiltrator
    Bryan Cranston gives the most authentic and lived-in performance as an agent pretending to be a criminal that I have ever seen.
  36. Pitch Perfect
    As spirited and irresistible as the college a cappella craze it celebrates, Pitch Perfect is a cheeky delight.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sea of Love
    Sea of Love is a suspenseful film noir boasting a superlative performance by Al Pacino as a burned-out Gotham cop. Handsome production benefits from a witty screenplay limning the bittersweet tale of a 20-year veteran NYC cop assigned to a case tracking down the serial killer of men who've made dates through the personal columns.
    • Variety
  38. Gay Chorus Deep South
    Rather than simply preaching to you-know-whom, director David Charles Rodrigues ... succeeds in humanizing the individuals on both sides.
  39. Pink Skies Ahead
    The catchy title’s a clever way of saying “It gets better,” and in the end, that feels as true for Winona as it does for the high-potential writer-director who created her.
  40. Till Death
    Even as the twists and turns get ever more preposterous . . . Dale’s direction and Fox’s commitment go a long way toward making Till Death a glossy, entertaining lark. Just maybe not one with anything of substance to say about marriage as its cheeky title suggests.
  41. The Blue Angels
    Paul Crowder’s Imax documentary feels both more honest than most in its intentions and more effective in highlighting that organization’s excellence.
  42. Mary Poppins Returns
    It’s a rapturous piece of nostalgia — a film that devotes itself, in every madly obsessive frame, to making you feel happy in the guileless way a movie still could back in 1964.
  43. The Idol
    The movie largely benefits from Abu-Assad’s natural talent for building suspense and rhythm; if the story’s elisions and fabrications occasionally feel too tidy, it more than earns its emotional impact on the strength of its excellent young cast.
  44. Dog Man
    It jams too many villains, themes and gags into a brief run time. Many of its bigger ideas focused on therapeutic conflict resolution fail to coalesce, leading to an overall tonal imbalance.
  45. Hard Goodbyes: My Father
    An involving family drama about a young boy's dreams and personal loss, Hard Goodbyes: My Father brings a light touch -- and a full measure of unaffected charm -- to potentially downbeat material.
  46. The Fairy
    In The Fairy, Abel, Gordon and Romy have all of Le Havre as their playground. And now that the they've established the ideal format for their brand of comicbook-style humor, one can't help but wish they show the good sense to keep it at this level going forward.
  47. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
    Despite the nostalgic glow that prettily coddles the film, there is a delectably unsubtle passing-the-baton theme that runs through the richly populated affair.
  48. Félix And Meira
    Though set in present-day Montreal, this tender romance unfolds like an episode from another century, paying the sort of careful attention to social boundaries you’d expect to find in a classic forbidden-love novel.
  49. 6 Balloons
    You can’t help feeling that something terrible will happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.
  50. Starve Acre
    Daniel Kokotajlo‘s impressive second feature unfolds in a vein of British folk horror that has been popular of late — with films from Ben Wheatley’s “A Field in England” to Mark Jenkins’s “Enys Men” all tapping into that retro “Wicker Man” eeriness — but rarely with such rattling sensory specificity or formal refinement.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Madame Bovary
    As a character study, Madame Bovary is interesting to watch, but hard to feel. It is a curiously unemotional account of some rather basic emotions. However, the surface treatment of Vincente Minnelli's direction is slick and attractively presented.
  52. Vivo
    Vivo is strategically contrived to hit audiences’ pleasure spots, blending a grown-up-friendly story of a Latin-music couple whose careers took them in separate directions with all the hyper-caffeinated comedy action the kiddos expect from the medium. Plus, the songs build on one another, hooking in your head and snowballing as the movie develops.
  53. No Impact Man: The Documentary
    Goes down far easier than, say, an all-natural, fiber-enriched peanut butter sandwich without a glass of soy milk. It's that rare doc (these days) that could go theatrical, largely because it's a film about a couple, more than a movement.
  54. Last Passenger
    A sturdy runaway-train thriller that flaunts its influences but chugs up a decent amount of suspense.
  55. 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.
  56. The Toxic Avenger
    This is an inside joke of a film, but it’s also one that wants you to be in on it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
    Weighed down by a midsection even flabbier than the long-in-the-tooth cast, director Nicholas Meyer still delivers enough of what Trek auds hunger for to justify the trek to the local multiplex.
    • Variety
  58. In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis
    “In Viaggio” captures the Pope, and by extension the whole Church, in an uncomfortable limbo state between defensiveness and progressiveness, though it keeps its own critique tacit and un-narrated, hinging on what the viewer brings to its hand-picked footage.
  59. Voices in Wartime
    A history of verse is laid alongside that of warfare, and the ways in which they are braided together proves fascinating.
  60. Hope Springs
    Hope Springs is an altogether pleasant surprise: a mainstream dramedy that frankly and intelligently addresses the challenges facing a couple after 31 years of marriage.
  61. Radical Wolfe
    It’s a highly entertaining movie that manages to pack in more or less every important thing you’d want to know about Tom Wolfe.
  62. Catfish
    Though editor Zac Stuart-Pontier assembles the sprawling personal journey into swift and suspenseful shape, it helps immensely that Nev is such a charming screen presence.
  63. I Am Legend
    Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, I Am Legend stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel.
  64. E-Dreams
    Plays out in quite a different offscreen context than did last year's similarly themed sleeper "Startup.com."
  65. The Legend of Leigh Bowery
    An engrossingly detailed if perhaps inevitably enigmatic portrait of the elusive, outrageous provocateur.
  66. Tying the Knot
    A lively, cogent documentary, Tying the Knot fortuitously examines same-sex marriage at precisely the moment the issue is making headlines all over.
  67. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
    Moppet appeal of the present feature rests in three can't-miss concepts -- cool gadgets, the desire to see grownups disappear and space travel. Pic delivers on all three points and doesn't have to do a whole lot more.
  68. Coffee and Cigarettes
    Holding the film together are simple but strong B&W visuals of offbeat types sitting around a table smoking and drinking java while they talk.
  69. They Call Us Monsters
    They Call Us Monsters, alas, is so taken with its access to kids facing such legal circumstances that it forgets to form a compelling argument about them.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Missouri Breaks
    The trouble with The Missouri Breaks is that one is seriously drawn to it on its upfront elements, but leaves with a depressing sense of waste. As a film achievement it’s corned beef and ham hash.
  71. Les Misérables
    The third American bigscreen rendition of Victor Hugo's classic novel, Bille August's Les Miserables is without a doubt the most emotionally powerful and handsomely mounted production of the story yet.
  72. The Future of Food
    Genetically-modified (or GM) fruits and vegetables are a topic of raging debate in scientific and ecological circles, so it's a shame writer-director Deborah Koons Garcia opts to show only one side of the argument.
  73. The Wild Blue Yonder
    Should stand with the likes of "Fata Morgana" and "Lessons of Darkness" as one of helmer's best efforts at smudging the lines between docu and fiction.
  74. Miss Stevens
    A tougher, wiser film might still have extended the characters a measure of compassion, but it might also have left the audience with a deeper curiosity about where life’s challenges could take them next.
  75. Basquiat
    As writer and director, Schnabel should be commended for avoiding Hollywood's biopic cliches about artists, as Basquiat's meteoric rise to fame and tragic death at the age of 27 would have fit perfectly the timeworn formula.
  76. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
    Overall, Maddin’s first effort with seasoned performers is extremely promising, and he continues to grow as a visual craftsman. But he’s in need of better material to develop the unique film voice his past films promised.
  77. The Rivals of Amziah King
    The director, Andrew Patterson, has a vision — of life, and of how to tell a story — that he enacts with so much confidence and verve that even when what he’s doing doesn’t totally work, you may find yourself going with it, because this is what independent filmmaking is about: unfurling a story on the high wire.
  78. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants
    “Search for SquarePants,” while it has amusing moments, is mostly SpongeBob treading water.
  79. Prince
    A slender, morally simplified fable that makes up for its tonal and narrative imprecisions with considerable visual energy, musical pizzazz, and a panoply of colorful characters.
  80. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
    Director Gareth Edwards has finally made the first “Star Wars” movie for grown-ups.
  81. Summer of 85
    The movie has dug a hole for itself with the disingenuous framing device, and the last act feels like a cheat, revealing Alex’s “crime” to be anything but. While the midsection of the film proves to be the most charming — a kind of extended montage in which the young men tentatively test the limits of their relationship — it’s the final stretch that situates Summer of 85 squarely within Ozon’s oeuvre.
  82. Widow Clicquot
    Widow Clicquot certainly makes a virtue of its milieu and rolling landscape, richly shot throughout in dusky earth tones, and more substantively, of the rather romantic lore surrounding the widow in question.
  83. A United Kingdom
    These two are meant to be together, as the film’s clever title suggests, though all the truly interesting things they accomplished happen only after that reunion.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tremors
    An affectionate send-up of schlocky 1950s monster pics, but with better special effects, Tremors has a few clever twists but ultimately can’t decide what it wants to be – flat-out funny, which it’s not, or a scarefest.
  85. Kalki 2898 AD
    The aggressively spectacular (and, again, CGI-intensified) action set-pieces are generously plentiful and undeniably thrilling, and the lead players are charismatic enough, or over-the-top villainous enough, to seize and maintain interest.
  86. Last Night in Soho
    Wright’s particular affections for B-movies, British Invasion pop and a fast-fading pocket of urban London may be written all over the film, but they aren’t compellingly written into it, ultimately swamping the thin supernatural sleuth story at its heart.
  87. The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch
    An affectionate, energetic documentary, it targets the existing fans of Busch's Broadway and off-Broadway exploits, but is likely to win a lot of converts, too -- largely through Busch's endearing personality.
  88. Buried
    In purely cinematic terms, Buried, set in late 2006, is an ingenious exercise in sustained tension that would make Alfred Hitchcock turn over in his grave.
  89. White Girl
    As much as White Girl has to offer in raw immediacy, it lacks the distance to offer much in the way of meaningful commentary, distinguishing itself (for the worse) from such earth-shaking social critics as Bret Easton Ellis and Harmony Korine.
  90. Married Life
    The tone, casting and material form a less-than-perfect match in Married Life, a period domestic drama that never quite decides if it wants to be a credible marital study, a noirish meller or a sly comedy.
  91. The Love We Make
    The former Beatle, a longtime Maysles friend, could have found no better documentarian.
  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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carmen Jones
    Preminger directs with a deft touch, blending the comedy and tragedy easily and building his scenes to some suspenseful heights. He gets fine performances from the cast toppers, notably Dorothy Dandridge, a sultry Carmen whose performance maintains the right hedonistic note throughout.
  94. Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything
    Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything is a documentary a lot like its subject. It’s sharp and inquiring in a playful way. It asks friendly questions but knows just when to toss in a tough one. It sizes up important people with clear-eyed worldly perception, but it’s also enthralled by the seductions of fame and money and power.
  95. Camille Claudel 1915
    A measured, moving account of a brief period in the later life of the troubled sculptress, could hardly be the work of anyone else, with its sparseness of technique and persistent spiritual curiosity.
  96. The Royal Road
    While this free-ranging agenda might easily have seemed overly random or pretentious, Olson’s confessional tenor lends it all a stream-of-consciousness intimacy.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Informer
    The Informer is forcefully and intelligently written, directed and acted.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Godspell
    Original production’s appealing aspects have remained intact – a strong Stephen Schwartz score and an infectious joie de vivre conveyed by an energetic, no-name cast. So also, unfortunately, have its flaws – a relentlessly simplistic approach to the New Testament interpreted in overbearing children’s theatre-style mugging.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Harvey Girls
    A curious blend of Technicolor wild-westernism, frontier town skullduggery and a troupe of Harvey restaurant waitresses who deport themselves in a manner that's a cross between a sorority and a Follies troupe.
  100. Grace Is Gone
    Although clearly coming from an antiwar perspective, the story's emotional effectiveness and family grounding give the film a real shot at connecting with general audiences across the political spectrum.
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