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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    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sweet Dreams
    Clearly the coal miner's daughter's cousin by both birthright and ambition, Sweet Dreams upholds the family honor quite well, with Jessica Lange's portrayal of country singer Patsy Cline certainly equal to Sissy Spacek's Oscar-winning recreation of Loretta Lynn.
  2. Chrystal
    Respectable piece of work is reasonably involving if not compelling.
  3. A Brilliant Young Mind
    Matthews’ background as a documentarian is obvious and beneficial. But Matthews also demonstrates expertise as a director of actors, getting creditable performances across the board.
  4. Raging Grace
    Raging Grace strikes a skillful balance of sociopolitical commentary and conventional yet effective spooky stuff, and maintains that equilibrium after Zarcilla flips the script in regard to motivations and assumptions.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Vincent & Theo
    One of Robert Altman’s most cinematically conventional films as well as one of his most deeply personal.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    High Society
    Fortified with a strong Cole Porter score, film is a pleasant romp for cast toppers Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Their impact is almost equally consistent. Although Sinatra has the top pop tune opportunities, the Groaner makes his specialties stand up and out on showmanship and delivery, and Kelly impresses as a femme lead.
  7. The Rose Maker
    Pierre Pinaud’s short but unhurried film benefits immensely from the warmly flinty presence of Catherine Frot (“Marguerite”) in the lead, lending a sense of purpose and personality to a character without much color on the page.
  8. Oliver Twist
    A respectable literary adaptation but lacks dramatic urgency and intriguing undercurrents.
  9. Life 2.0
    A disturbing but nonjudgmental study of online addiction and the lure of manufactured identities.
  10. Scalene
    Carefully crafted and impressively thesped, particularly by Margo Martindale, Zack Parker's ambitious, self-styled thriller channels a wide spectrum of high-concept classics, from "Rashomon" to "Memento." But the resolution of its conflicting truths proves so bizarre and idiotically off-the-wall that it mitigates all that precedes it.
  11. Hostiles
    Though it basically argues that the surest way to overcome racism is to spend some time getting to know “the other,” Cooper’s film offers audiences no such opportunity, depriving its native characters of so much as a single scene in which they are treated as anything more than abstract plot devices in service of the white folks’ enlightenment.
  12. Coherence
    Coherence devolves into a noisy, cluttered portrait of dysfunction, all clenched fists and shouted expletives. The twists may be novel, but the talk, and the upshot, are all too dispiritingly familiar.
  13. Do I Sound Gay?
    Thorpe’s documentary can sometimes seem a bit intimidated by the various cans of worms it pries open, but it’s nonetheless a breezy, funny, often quite clever film more concerned with minor epiphanies than big answers.
  14. A Boy. A Girl. A Dream.
    If Basir and Samantha Tanner’s screenplay ultimately feels like less than a full meal, its intelligence and restraint — particularly in resisting the lure of a heavier-handed message — are nonetheless admirable.
  15. Ride Your Wave
    Sooner or later, Hinako is going to have to learn to face the world on her own, which is where the tension finally arises before this dopey film reaches its sappy conclusion — by showing its heroine, so effortless on water, “learning to ride life’s waves, too.”
  16. Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
    Bully. Coward. Victim. isn’t as authoritative a chronicle as “Where’s My Roy Cohn?,” but in its loosely anecdotal way it may bring us a notch or two closer to who Roy Cohn was.
  17. Sharper
    A deep ensemble cast is game for this ambitiously overwrought material, but no amount of committed acting can overcome the movie’s manipulative artifice.
  18. The First Omen
    Stevenson’s consistently unsettling and gleefully sacrilegious offering packs its share of legitimate shocks en route to one glaringly obvious “surprise.”
  19. Come Sunday
    Marston, working from Marcus Hinchey’s sensitive and remarkably nuanced script, invites measured introspection from both his characters and the audience.
  20. Wild Diamond
    After all the despair, the piling up of glitzy delusion, there’s a feeling of redemption to it connected to what a good movie can do.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Soapdish
    Soapdish aims at a satiric target as big as a Macy’s float and intermittently hits it. Sally Field and Kevin Kline play a feuding pair of romantically involved soap opera stars in this broad but amiable sendup of daytime TV.
  22. Cargo
    Radiating not only paternal devotion but also a blunt matter-of-factness that amplifies as his situation becomes more dire, Freeman’s empathetic turn makes Andy an endearing center of attention, and the film — even for those who’ve seen its source material — a heartfelt entry in the overstuffed genre.
  23. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil
    As much fun as it is to watch Lee beat people up and strut around in shiny pinstripe suits, it’s just as much of a pleasure to watch him think it all through.
  24. The Unknown Girl
    Though what we get is largely exemplary: a simple but urgent objective threaded with needling observations of social imbalance, a camera that gazes with steady intent into story-bearing faces, and an especially riveting example of one in their gifted, toughly tranquil leading lady Adèle Haenel. What’s missing...is any great sense of narrative or emotional surprise.
  25. The Phantom of the Open
    The jokes write themselves, though in The Phantom of the Open, screenwriter Simon Farnaby and director Craig Roberts make them sweeter and spryer than they could have been, while a wide-eyed, bucket-hatted Mark Rylance plays Flitcroft with abundant generosity of spirit.
  26. Bomb City
    Bomb City will keep you in its grasp during every moment leading to its climactic violence. And it won’t let go until the closing credits roll.
  27. The Hallow
    The directorial debut of visual artist Corin Hardy is never less than arresting to the eye, but thin characters and a familiar story hold this Irish chiller back from entering the top tier of recent horror entries.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On Moonlight Bay
    All of the characters are good for some hefty laughs, and Del Ruth’s direction and the writing supply plenty of touches that keep punching the risibilities and jogging nostalgic memory.
  29. 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
    Although the film is punched up by some energetic cutting and hip-hop music, many dialogue scenes, particularly early on, are badly written and awkwardly staged.
  31. Hanna
    An exuberantly crafted chase thriller that pulses with energy from its adrenaline-pumping first minutes to its muted bang of a finish.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lone Wolf McQuade
    Fans of Soldier of Fortune magazine will think they've been ambushed and blown away to heaven by Lone Wolf McQuade. Every conceivable type of portable weapon on the world market is tried out by the macho warriors on both sides of the law in this modern western.
  33. Pacific Rim
    Although assembled with consummate care and obsessive attention to visual detail, Pacific Rim manages only fitful engagement and little in the way of real wonderment, suspense or terror.
  34. The Smashing Machine
    The Smashing Machine isn’t a sports movie that wants to jerk a Pavolvian response of triumph out of us. It’s after something subtler and more moving. By the end of the film, Mark, who had grown so used to winning, has won in the most transformative way.
  35. Swallow
    A bold and unconventional thriller made real by the evolution of lead actress Haley Bennett ... Is it exploitative? Yes, to an extent that’s true. ... But, as in such Alfred Hitchcock classics as “Spellbound” and “Marnie,” with their facile psychoanalytic interpretations of compulsive and/or hysterical behavior, the approach can be quite effective in revealing the gender dynamics of the times.
  36. The Warrior
    Tendency to go for art rather than action, and a leisurely pace that isn't bolstered by much dialogue or food for thought.
  37. We Were Soldiers
    Gibson has the closest thing to a John Wayne part that anyone's played since the Duke himself rode into the sunset, and he plays it damn well.
  38. Red Flag
    There's a reason creepy character actors seldom play lead, and Karpovsky's amusingly off-kilter quality is better suited to the background, while Prediger (as the stranger he desperately wants to ditch, lest his ex-g.f. discover his infidelity) has the makings of an indie star.
  39. The Autopsy of Jane Doe
    While “Autopsy” lives up to its title, providing plenty of grisly medical gore, the forensics induce less squirming than the exacting yet playful way Ovredal keeps making us anticipate more unnatural acts as the Tildens realize something is seriously amiss.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cocoon
    A fountain of youth fable [from a novel by David Saperstein] which imaginatively melds galaxy fantasy with the lives of aging mortals in a Florida retirement home, Cocoon weaves a mesmerizing tale.
  41. Ma Belle, My Beauty
    In this triangulated love story there is more roiling it than just desire. Although the central characters reflect the vast array of LGBTQ folk, the movie isn’t a coming-out tale. . . . These characters are in the midst of their lives, with many of the duties and emotions that come with that.
  42. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    Director David Yates spins the series' most expansive, structurally free-form chapter yet -- lumbering and gripping by turns, and suffused with a profound sense of solitude and loss.
  43. GoldenEye
    Most crucially, Brosnan makes the grade as 007. He handles the action capably and gets the standard quips out in a commendably straightforward way that's wry but not dismissive.
  44. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    True to its subtitle, the film feels like a fresh start. And like this summer’s blockbuster “Superman” reboot over at DC, that could be just what it takes to win back audiences suffering from superhero exhaustion.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Curse of Frankenstein
    Peter Cushing gets every inch of drama from the leading role, making almost believable the ambitious urge and diabolical accomplishment.
  46. June Zero
    Though it occasionally brushes up against intricate ideas about memory and memorialization — who gets to be commemorated, who must not and the genesis of the “never forget” ethos — June Zero itself leaves a quickly fading impression.
  47. Black '47
    Daly’s characterful, slow-burn tale is a well-crafted experiment in grafting genre onto disregarded history.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Asylum
    It's a trim little chiller, with a moderate quota of blood and mayhem, polished performances and smooth direction.
  49. Don't Leave Home
    The result is a diverting-to-a-point curio whose nice atmospherics and good performances ultimately don’t add up to quite enough to satisfy the constructs of horror, allegory, satire — or anything else.
  50. The Aggressives
    Documaker Daniel Peddle also works as a casting director, and so it is small wonder his crisp, concise, intimate portrait of six very different, self-styled "aggressives" -- women who stress their masculine sides -- should reveal in each a curious integrity and beauty.
  51. Leo
    However immature Sandler’s sense of humor may have been in the past, he seems to have a pretty good handle on what makes kids tick. The movie can be making potty jokes one minute and delivering practical advice the next, wrapping with the sensible suggestion to “find your Leo.”
  52. Aristide and the Endless Revolution
    A vital if less than objective slice of film journalism on the U.S.'s troubled history in the Third World.
  53. The Lovers and the Despot
    While a more thorough archival survey of Choi and Shin’s work together (pre- and post-abduction) would have allowed for a deeper perspective, this real-life romantic thriller/escape saga still boasts enough fascinating details and angles to qualify as essential stranger-than-fiction viewing.
  54. Ondine
    A decidedly specialized affair that will appeal only to certain tastes, but there's plenty to appreciate if you let it seep in.
  55. Plus One
    [A] winning film ... Genre fans won’t want to miss it.
  56. Down in the Valley
    Result is imperfect and overlong, but hugely ambitious and often breathtaking.
  57. Monsieur N.
    An intricate, fetchingly lensed tale of historical speculation framed as a plausible thriller.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Year of Living Dangerously
    Here is an astonishing feat of acting by New Yorker Linda Hunt, cast by Weir because he could not locate a short male actor to fit the bill. A bizarre, yet touching, romantic triangle develops between Gibson, Hunt, and Sigourney Weaver as a British Embassy official.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mississippi Burning
    Though its credibility is undermined by a fanciful ending, Mississippi Burning captures much of the truth in its telling of the impact of a 1964 FBI probe into the murders of three civil rights workers.
  60. In a Better World
    However didactic the film's final scenes, there's no denying the sheer dramatic intensity Bier achieves.
  61. 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.
  62. Touch Me Not
    Pintilie is the opposite of a misanthrope — she’s genuinely invested in opening the mind to the body’s sensations. Keeping it all balanced is where she gets bogged down.
  63. Please Baby Please
    Kramer sketches out a feverish queer manifesto on gender that feels both novel and familiar.
  64. Point and Shoot
    Curry’s interest is in obsession, not Libya, yet surely a corrective is needed, and dressing up a nation’s collapse as if it were an American triumph smacks of the same willful delusion as George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished.”
  65. Photograph
    For all the complex class politics and bottled-up desires at play in its narrative, Batra’s film is perhaps a shade too timid for its own good; it touches the heart, but hovers just short of the soul.
  66. Last Breath
    Last Breath delivers every incident with so much specificity that it’s like a cinematic piece of journalism. Yet it leaves you with a minor tingle of the uncanny.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silkwood
    A very fine biographical drama.
  68. James' Journey to Jerusalem
    There's a fable-like quality to this first feature by documaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz that packs just as much punch as a more "serious," didactic movie while entertaining the viewer at the same time.
  69. Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands
    Students of the astonishing body of films won’t find much that enhances their understanding, yet Thomsen’s footage offers more than mere scraps from a great career, and deserves inclusion in the corpus.
  70. Close to Home
    Mixes humor, tragedy, tenderness and political acumen into a well-observed coming-of-age format.
  71. 100 Nights of Hero
    It’s a gorgeous-looking film, but a drag.
  72. Outrage
    An exploding bathroom stall of a movie, Outrage makes an excellent ipso facto case for itself: If closeted gay politicians vote against equal rights for gays to protect their own secrets, outing them is for the common good.
  73. The Pillow Book
    It is at first daunting but ultimately awesomely impressive and beautiful.
  74. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
    Spurlock brings his usual good-humored approach to the subject, nicely balancing absurdity with genuine human interest.
  75. The Rover
    Michod’s sophomore feature isn’t exactly something we’ve never seen before, but it has a desolate beauty all its own, and a career-redefining performance by Robert Pattinson that reveals untold depths of sensitivity and feeling in the erstwhile “Twilight” star.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Absence of Malice
    Absence of Malice is the flipside of All The President's Men, a splendidly disturbing look at the power of sloppy reporting to inflict harm on the innocent.
  77. Marie Antoinette
    It is far from unpleasant to watch an attractive cast led by Kirsten Dunst parading around Versailles accoutered in Milena Canonero's luxuriant costumes to the accompaniment of catchy pop tunes. But the writer-director's follow-up to her breakthrough second feature, "Lost in Translation," is no more nourishing than a bonbon.
  78. Dr T and the Women
    Gere breaks through with what may or may not be his best performance.
  79. About Adam
    Unlike "Four Weddings," which ultimately was moralistic and conservative in its message --—About Adam is a frolic free of any judgments, and marked by Stembridge's sparkling wit.
  80. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    Arresting at first but gradually trails off under the weight of its hyper-derivativeness and anxiety to please.
  81. Napoleon Dynamite
    An absurdist piece about a rural community of clueless cretins who careen through life like poorly played pinballs, Napoleon Dynamite represents the definition of the comedy of condescension and ridicule.
  82. From the Other Side
    While it's clear where the filmmaker's sympathies lie, the view presented is relatively balanced.
  83. Cold Weather
    Picture represents considerable progress for Katz, a founding member of the mumblecore movement.
  84. True Mothers
    Adapting Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel of the same name helps impose more of a narrative framework than is typically found in Kawase’s oeuvre, although the film’s mix of genres — from marital drama to teen romance to social commentary — don’t gel.
  85. Suffragette
    Carey Mulligan gives an affecting, skillfully modulated performance that lends a certain coherence to this assemblage of real-life incidents, composite characters, noble sentiments, stirring speeches and impeccable production values — all marshaled in service of a picture whose politics prove rather more commendable than its artistry.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guilty by Suspicion
    First writing-directing effort by vet producer Irwin Winkler squarely lays out the professional, ethical and moral dilemmas engendered by the insidious political pressures brought to bear on filmmakers in the early 1950s. Robert De Niro is excellent as a top director brought down by reactionary paranoia. But the drama comes to life only fitfully.
  87. Les Nôtres
    Les Nôtres” remains — right up to its tight, repressed ending — a deeply disquieting, superbly performed evocation of a very banal sort of evil.
  88. Coup de Chance
    It’s not a comedy, but as you watch it you can almost see Woody Allen standing off to the side, chuckling at the human folly he’s showing you.
  89. Interview
    Afforded a comparatively rare chance to stretch out in a complex lead role, Buscemi is excellent.
  90. Cavite
    For a guerrilla-style, no-budget Yank indie to even tackle issues of jihad terror and naive Western thinking is noteworthy in itself, but Gamazon and Dela Llana inflame the issues with a gutsy, athletic filmmaking package that shows what can be done with a minimum of tools.
  91. Ever Since the World Ended
    Continually tickles the mind while leaving a heavy lump in the chest, establishing and sustaining a unique low-key tone of mystery and dread.
  92. Sunflower
    With a commanding performance by Sun Haiying as the unbending, ornery father, and a glammed-down Joan Chen remarkable as the boy's devoted mom, pic serves up solid dramatic values instead of being yet another panorama of social and political changes in China during the late 20th century.
  93. Zarafa
    While the gorgeous widescreen landscapes have a pencil-and-aquarelle quality, the characters themselves are literally rougher-edged, a clever reminder of the hand-drawn, sketchlike quality of traditional animation.
  94. Assassination
    A sensationally entertaining mash-up of historical drama, “Dirty Dozen” style shoot-‘em-up, spaghetti Western-flavored flamboyance, and extended action setpieces that suggest a dream-team collaboration of Sergio Leone, John Woo and Steven Spielberg.
  95. Folk Hero & Funny Guy
    It’s mostly interested in the off-kilter but natural chemistry of its leads, who despite their differences come across as comrades who genuinely care about each other, and whose bond is solidified by their shared hangups.
  96. This Is Home: A Refugee Story
    This Is Home gestures toward a more detailed, heterogeneous understanding of these war victims as human beings, characterizing its four chosen families in detailed, individual terms, and listening attentively to their varied expressions of ambition and concern for their new future.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trancers
    Only Hunt in the femme role breaks through a script that rarely rings new.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Where the Day Takes You
    Attempting a hard-hitting pic on the grimy realities of Hollywood Boulevard street life, and blessed with a cast bursting with up-and-comer names and a technically adept cameraman, Where the Day Takes You inevitably winds up giving the runaway's life the kind of romantic-tragic scope that appeals to troubled teens.
  99. Digger
    In this witty, windblown modern fable, man, nature and machine get to take turns being the enemy and the savior.
  100. Adagio
    While the craft team here feel at the top of their game, delivering scene after scene of perfectly composed glossy, grimy, sweaty tableaux, the script could have used a bit more time to sharpen up. Still, there are some zingy, zesty sequences here that really pop.
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