Variety's Scores

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For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
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  1. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
    Since the episodes are uneven in quality (though the best of them seize and hold you), you may feel, at moments, that it’s too much of a just-okay thing. Yet The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, in its gnarly and ambling way, does justify its existence as a movie.
  2. The Man from Mo'Wax
    Weaving together a dizzying array of archival material and previously unseen personal home movies, director Matthew Jones never quite cracks the man behind the music, but he nonetheless offers an appropriately hyperactive snapshot of a colorful era.
  3. A Quiet Place Part II
    It can be hard to believe that both the sequel and the instant-classic 2018 original were produced by Michael Bay, a filmmaker who has pushed the moviegoing experience to ear-splitting extremes, since Krasinski so effectively embraces the opposite strategy: Less is more, suggestion can be scarier than showing everything, and few things are more unnerving than silence.
  4. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead.
    Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is an extended pilot, however, it’s a pleasingly cinematic one: unresolved and ragged with small open wounds, but self-contained in its fevered, filling-to-burst energy.
  5. In Like Flynn
    Efficiently engineered by veteran Aussie director Russell Mulcahy (“Highlander,” “Razorback”) to achieve a hugely satisfying balance of seriocomic action sequences and sometimes boisterous, sometimes sentimental male bonding.
  6. Dragged Across Concrete
    At a whopping 158 minutes, “Concrete’s” sleek, languorous anatomy of a heist represents the filmmaker’s most extreme exercise yet in painstaking genre deceleration, sparked as ever by the tangy movie-movie vernacular of his writing, the crunchy metal-on-asphalt dynamism of his craftsmanship, and the back-from-the-brink reanimation of his stars.
  7. Chef Flynn
    it’s as an ambiguous study of parenting a prodigy that the film lingers on the palate, as McGarry’s mother Meg documents and manages his evolution to an obsessive, gradually oppressive degree.
  8. 306 Hollywood
    306 Hollywood is best when it gets either very scientifically dry, or reaches beyond its liminal cuteness into ambitious visual poetry.
  9. Instant Family
    It redefines family craziness as normal in a way that those who seek it out will gratefully relate to.
  10. Midway
    The film’s drama is B-movie basic. But the destructive colliding metal-on-metal inferno of what war is makes Midway a picture worth seeing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Westerner
    Supplied with a particularly meaty role, of which he takes fullest advantage, Brennan turns in a socko job that does much to hold together a not too impressive script.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Saboteur
    Saboteur is a little too self-consciously Hitchcock. Its succession of incredible climaxes, its mounting tautness and suspense, its mood of terror and impending doom could have been achieved by no one else. That is a great tribute to a brilliant director. But it would be a greater tribute to a finer director if he didn't let the spectator see the wheels go round, didn't let him spot the tricks - and thus shatter the illusion, however momentarily.
  13. The Fall of the American Empire
    Arcand tries a little too hard at the very end to demonstrate his deep-down earnestness. But never mind: The performances across the board are everything they need to be, and the satirical thrusts are well aimed at the right targets.
  14. Fistful of Dirt
    A dark Brothers Grimm-like fairy tale anchored by a terrific child-actor performance.
  15. Gloria Bell
    Although García and Moore were born in the same year (under the same sign!), Lelio is more mature now than he was when he made the original film, and he brings that experience to the project in small but crucial ways.
  16. The Wind
    Horror hounds may find themselves getting a little impatient with “The Wind,” especially when Tammi begins on such an unflinchingly nasty note ... but then elects to keep the gore to a minimum until the grisly climax. The film is much more successful, however, as a feminized reworking of the western mythos.
  17. Greta
    Falls squarely in B movie territory but, by virtue of its two lead performers, winds up being far more enjoyable than it has any right to be.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Trouble with Harry
    This is a blithe little comedy, produced and directed with affection by Alfred Hitchcock, about a bothersome corpse that just can't stay buried.
  19. High Flying Bird
    It’s certainly more interested in ideas than characters, and the film stumbles when it makes half-hearted attempts at romantic intrigue or tragic backstories, but its subversive view of race, money and power in modern sports couldn’t be more timely.
  20. Maria by Callas
    First-time director Tom Volf plainly adores Callas — sometimes to a fault — but his film stands as a necessary corrective to decades of bad press. It’s an unalloyed tribute to her as a musical genius who gave all of herself to the public.
  21. Donnybrook
    For Sutton — whose previous film, “Dark Night,” inspired by 2012’s Aurora megaplex shooting, made an austere statement about gun violence — Donnybrook marks a major step forward in both ambition and style.
  22. Bride of Chucky
    After an eight-year series hiatus, Bride of Chucky emerges with recharged batteries and a mordantly funny edge that's attuned to the dawning millennium. [19 Oct 1998]
    • Variety
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Breathless
    A suitably jazzy, sexy, entertainment.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
    The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is just about everything it's meant to be - a couple of diverting hours in the dark. Rollicking, good-natured, a bit spicy and with just enough heart to avoid seeming totally synthetic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Best Friends
    Best Friends is probably not the light romantic comedy audiences expect from a Burt Reynolds-Goldie Hawn screen pairing but is nevertheless a very engaging film.
  26. All Square
    Away from the baseball diamond, All Square effectively pivots to moments of surprisingly affecting drama.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
    Success of the low budget Chain Saw in 1974 spawned a generation of splatter films which largely have lost the power to shock and entertain. Not so Chain Saw 2. Director Tobe Hooper is back on the Texas turf he knows.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
    Delivers enough violence, black humor and even a final reel in 3-D to hit paydirt with horror-starved audiences.
  29. Tyrel
    Sharply observed but lacking in the probing psychological insights of Silva’s best movies, Tyrel is a chamber piece whose rhythms feel entirely natural (it’s shot in cast member Arze’s house), but which doesn’t resonate greatly after the fadeout.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Body Snatchers
    An exciting thriller that compares favorably with Don Siegel's classic 1956 original.
  31. Big Kill
    A film made by people who respect its genre too much to be condescendingly clever, but embrace it so heartily that they want you to know that, yes, they’ve seen the same movies you have, and enjoy them just as much as you do.
  32. Been So Long
    In the close, doting way the camera caresses its stars, Been So Long certainly shows where it chief strengths lie: Coel and Kene may both capably handle their songs, but the film’s real music is in their faces, singing, silent or otherwise.
  33. The Clovehitch Killer
    This atypical serial-killer thriller distinguishes itself in resisting thrills — let alone any actual violence — till well past its halfway point, instead maximizing the quiet discomfort in a son’s rising suspicion that his outwardly Dagwood-type dad could be a notorious murderer.
  34. The Night Comes for Us
    This cartoonish cavalcade of carnage potently reunites “The Raid” stars Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais as former friends on a corpse-strewn collision course.
  35. Lords of Chaos
    Åkerlund’s music videos established him as a whiz-bang technician, a skill he only unleashes in two terrifying montages. Lords of Chaos proves that he can also get great performances out of a young cast, especially Kilmer’s otherworldly Dead.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
    Well-produced effort is an effective combination of imaginative special effects with the strangeness of author Clive Barker's original conception, on which the characters are based.
  37. A Faithful Man
    If “Two Lovers” was a lively New Wave lark, exploding with color and energy, then A Faithful Man is its sober, cerebral opposite, gray and stylistically restrained, an efficient short story of a film that feels more like an intellectual exercise than an emotional experience.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blue Steel
    A taut, relentless thriller that hums with an electric current of outrage. Director and cowriter Kathryn Bigelow makes the most of her hook - the use of a female star (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a tough action pic - by stressing the character's vulnerability in remarkable early scenes.
  39. Aladdin
    It’s great to see Smith in comedic mode again, and smart of the team to base the Genie’s personality on the star’s brand, rather than imitating what Williams did with the role. Even in cases where Smith is quoting directly from the original, his persona comes through loud and clear as this blue-hued, CG-enhanced master of ceremonies.
  40. The Best of Enemies
    The Best of Enemies while not nearly as good as “Green Book,” is a rock-solid movie: squarely deliberate, a little long and predictable, but honest and thoughtful enough, precise in its period and locale, with very strong performances.
  41. Watergate
    The pace never flags, but some of its entertaining devices work against Ferguson’s insightfulness.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Continental Divide
    For a picture that you can't really believe for a second, Continental Divide still comes off as a reasonably engaging entertainment thanks to some lively performances and a liberal dose of laughs throughout the script.
  43. Thugs of Hindostan
    For all its recycled elements and predictable narrative stratagems, this diverting Diwali-timed extravaganza stands on its own merits as a lightly satisfying popcorn epic — provided, of course, you have a taste for such over-the-top amusement.
  44. Narcissister Organ Player
    The drama of “Narcissister Organ Player” is that Narcissister isn’t layering her demons onto the culture; she’s layering the culture onto herself. That’s why that mask of hers looks more and more like one we’re all capable of hiding behind.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cinderella
    The cartoon, in fact, has far more success in projecting the lower animals than in its central character, Cinderella, who is on the colorless, doll-faced side, as is the Prince Charming.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White Lightning
    Joseph Sargent’s direction is particularly effective in the light and auto-chasing sequences, latter a field day for stunt drivers and occasionally incorporating humorous bits of biz. Reynolds is quite up to all the demands of his smashing role.
  47. The Secret Life of Pets 2
    It’s unusual for a typical Illumination broad comedy to include a heartrending message that makes parents feel less alone in their very real, visceral struggles. It’s just cloaked in a shenanigans-soaked romp about what pets do when humans aren’t looking.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    101 Dalmatians
    While not as indelibly enchanting or inspired as some of the studio’s most unforgettable animated endeavors, this is nonetheless a painstaking creative effort.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Grease 2
    Where this film has a decided edge on its predecessor is in the staging and cutting of the musical sequences. Choreographer and director Patricia Birch has come up with some unusual settings (a bowling alley, a bomb shelter) for some of the scenes, and employs some sharp montage to give most of the songs and dances a fair amount of punch.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hustle
    The film’s drawbacks are simply a lack of some restraint, since otherwise all the elements are present for a sensational, hardhitting human story.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wanderers
    Despite an uneasy blend of nostalgia and violence, The Wanderers is a well-made and impressive film. Philip Kaufman, who also co-scripted with his wife, Rose [from the novel by Richard Price], has accurately captured the urban angst of growing up in the 1960s.
  52. Song of Back and Neck
    Because Lieberstein is an inherently likable actor, we identify with his plight, even if it takes a while to realize that he’s essentially brought this situation upon himself.
  53. Never Look Away
    One of the subtler strengths of Never Look Away is the canny evocation of a war-weary, defeated population who did not experience communism as a revolution but a substitution. The insignia and the catechisms changed, but the underlying attitudes remained grotesquely similar in their callous prioritization of dogma over decency.
  54. Bathtubs Over Broadway
    Anyone who loves musical theater owes it to themselves to see Bathtubs Over Broadway, a delightful deep-dive documentary into one man’s obsession with the obscure world of industrial musicals — corporate-sponsored song-and-dance revues from the golden age of American capitalism.
  55. Dumplin'
    Indeed, from its unpatronizing body-positive messaging to its restrained, tactful faith-based concessions (a given with Parton on board), Dumplin' has been so carefully calculated, it’s a wonder it plays as warmly and sincerely as it does.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dave
    A delightful, buoyant new take on an old theme, deftly mixing political cynicism with elements of Mr Smith Goes to Washington.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Youngblood
    Scenes on the ice look great and Lowe truly looks like the fast and accurate son-of-a-gun hockey player he’s supposed to be.
  58. Shaft
    The movie is product, but by the end you want to see this team again.
  59. Annabelle Comes Home
    Name your fear trigger, and it’s probably there, somewhere, in Annabelle Comes Home. It looks like a horror film, but it’s really the horror equivalent of speed dating.
  60. Late Night
    The film wants to be a puckish media satire and an earnest workplace dramedy about “growing,” and the fusion doesn’t always gel.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pumping Iron
    The most fascinating aspect of this film is the dedicated training that turns average-built young men (frequently they refer to themselves as weaklings in their early youth) into superbly-created physical edifices.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Personal Best
    Personal Best offers audiences a lot to like in solid characterizations, plus some shock that is a Robert Towne trademark. What they probably won't share, however, is his tedious fascination with physical perfection.
  63. 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.
  64. Radioactive
    As startling as it is to see the beloved scientist hated in her time, that we’re able to see this headstrong legend as a sexual being at all is a credit to how much Pike gradually humanizes her as a woman, while never pleading for our pity.
  65. The Iron Orchard
    The narrative itself, however, is not without its bumpy stretches. The Iron Orchard is satisfyingly involving and entertaining as a whole — call it “Giant Lite” and you won’t be far off the mark — and the performances are sufficiently compelling to ease a viewer through some abrupt and elliptical transitions.
  66. Don't Come Back from the Moon
    The movie captivates and fascinates as a free-form dream constantly poised on a knife edge between roiling nightmare and reassuring resolution. The surprising yet satisfyingly ambiguous ending allows for either option.
  67. Bitter Melon
    The complex tonal, textural and thematic mix here doesn’t always work, but it’s always interesting and often invigorating.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tightrope
    Action is well-handled, as Tuggle demonstrates ample storytelling talent and draws a multitude of nuances from his cast.
  69. Pledge
    This third feature for director Daniel Robbins is no delicate flower of cinematic art, but a lean and mean shocker that tells its tale of collegiate hazing run amuck with brute efficiency.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Junior
    What separates this straightforward chuckler from the pack is its shrewd reliance on character rather than plot, and that human dimension proves surprisingly poignant.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Last Unicorn
    The Last Unicorn represents a rare example of an animated kids' pic in which the script and vocal performances outshine the visuals.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Car Wash
    Car Wash uses gritty humor to polish clean the souls of a lot of likeable street people.
  73. St. Bernard Syndicate
    A wily left turn into narrative filmmaking for celebrated docmaker Mads Brügger (“The Red Chapel”), St. Bernard Syndicate deftly extends the dry satirical streak of his non-fiction work into a more heightened vein of farce; rarefied cult status awaits.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Doom Generation
    A nihilistic comedy about a trio of alienated youngsters, pic is bold not only in its art design, but also in its narrative and tone, a mixture of satire and horror with heavy dosage of steamy sex and macabre violence.
  75. Little
    Consistently funny if all-around a bit too familiar.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jeremiah Johnson
    The film has its own force and beauty and the only carp might lie in its not always clear exegesis of the humanistic spirit and freedom most of its characters are striving for.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heaven Help Us
    Very funny in spots and wonderfully evocative of Brooklyn, circa 1965, pic suffers somewhat by dividing its attention between outrageous pranks and realistic sketches of the Catholic school experience.
  78. Fyre
    Fyre, in the end, understands that the McFarlands of the world, changing the culture online but also wreaking havoc in the very real world, are bound to affect us all.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Eagle Has Landed
    Most performances [in this adaptation of the Jack Higgins’ novel] are first rate with Sutherland exuding great credibility as the Irishman, and Caine thoroughly convincing as the Nazi commander. Pleasence gives a standout lifelike interpretation of Himmler.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bobby Deerfield
    Bobby Deerfield is a brilliantly unusual love story, told in a European fashion which makes the Sydney Pollack film at first irritating, then intriguing, finally most rewarding and emotionally satisfying.
  81. Who Will Write Our History
    A vital and sobering documentary directed by Roberta Grossman, always knew that they were drafting the record of an existence whose memory — were it not for them — would be wiped away.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Willy/Milly
    The rather silly title Willy / Milly caps this charming and substantial kidpic about sex roles.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Outland
    While there are several mile-wide plot holes and one key under-developed main character, the film emerges as a tight, intriguing old-fashioned drama that gives audiences a hero worth rooting for.
  84. Strange Days
    A technical tour de force for director Kathryn Bigelow and her team, pic is less accomplished in putting over its characters, emotions and dubious sociopolitical agenda.
  85. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
    The good news for “Ghostbusters” fans is that “Afterlife” does nothing to tarnish what has come before.
  86. Patrick
    Though the narrative tends to be a touch too simplistic for most grown-ups, and lacks enough riotous dog action for the little ones, there’s enough bite to make things worthwhile for those who just want to enjoy a sweet, wholesome dog movie.
  87. Velvet Buzzsaw
    In her capacity as a film critic — and the sort of populist who was allergic to snobs like Morf — Pauline Kael famously quipped, “Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.” Gilroy doesn’t even aspire to making great art, but he’s getting better at delivering the latter.
  88. Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase
    But here’s the cool thing: The film’s consistently clever script, from empowerment-minded “The Handmaid’s Tale” writers Nina Fiore and John Herrera, isn’t nearly as interested in the mystery as it is in Nancy Drew herself, or in the circle of characters and relationships that surround her. And that’s the smart way to approach such a case, since the movie was clearly intended to be more than a one-off.
  89. Midsommar
    It’s an admirably strange, thematically muddled curiosity from a talented filmmaker who allows his ambitions to outpace his execution.
  90. The Hole in the Ground
    [Cronin's] trim, jumpy debut feature rewrites no genre rules, but abounds in bristly calling-card atmospherics. ... Only in the film’s muddy-in-all-senses finale — which leaves a few too many dots unjoined, even by forgiving genre standards — does its grip on proceedings slip a notch.
  91. Someone Great
    This fun, feminist-friendly feature, about a woman devastated by the disintegration of her long-term romance and the two best friends who rally around her for one final night of frivolity, taps into that collective yearning for more. It gifts us with the next big “Girls Night In” event, for which Netflix has cornered the market.
  92. Wine Country
    The friends we see on-screen are equally close in real life, and the outing depicted in Wine Country was inspired by similar trips they’ve made together. That explains the second-nature chemistry that makes them so much fun to watch, even when the shenanigans...leave one longing for the outrageousness of an all-female studio comedy like “Bridesmaids” or “Girls Trip.”
  93. The Witches
    Anne Hathaway’s performance provides the film with a sick-joke center of gravity, and Zemeckis, sticking to Dahl’s elemental storyline, stages it all with a prankish flair that leaves you buzzed.
  94. Animals
    It’s the performances that punch through the illusion, as Grainger and Shawkat’s dynamic turns on a dime from raucous, debauched complicity to savage mutual confrontation — the kind of close, cold truth-telling that, where best friends are involved, results more often than not in hurtful lies being told.
  95. Clemency
    If Woodard is hoping for her overdue second Oscar nomination after 1983’s “Cross Creek,” she’s got a decent shot with this excruciating character arc. Yet, the actress is even better in the scenes where Bernadine simply gets drunk, even if she still can’t talk about anything but work.
  96. Give Me Liberty
    Give Me Liberty catches us off guard with its sense of humor, which amplifies the sheer absurdity of certain situations while respecting the fundamental humanity of its characters — further reflected in the choice of casting actors with disabilities.
  97. Hala
    Writer-director Baig has made a coming-of-age charmer that’s adamantly ordinary. Her script has the melody of John Hughes and early Amy Heckerling played with a few minor chords.
  98. Wounds
    Anvari has set out to make a mood piece that succeeds in scaring the audience senseless.
  99. Run
    Between this and “Searching” (with its Asian American leads), Chaganty is actively expanding audiences’ ideas of what movie heroes can be. In the end, the character’s disability feels like an extension of the approach taken in his debut. Once again, perceived limitations become opportunities for more creative solutions, and differences disappear unless audiences decide to obsess over them.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
    A film with Jane Fonda as a hard-as-nails babe. It becomes, in a recreated old ballroom, a sordid spectacle of hard times, a kind of existentialist allegory of life.
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