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. Unstoppable
    It has plenty of familiar tropes, but in its no-frills way it touches a nerve of authenticity. The true story it tells is nothing short of extraordinary, and that may be why the filmmakers didn’t feel the need to overhype it.
  2. Uglies
    While the YA genre can be very capable of unearthing outsized desires and rebellions in all of us, the problem here is the source material itself. Or rather, the timing of its screen adaptation.
  3. The Piano Lesson
    While most of the cast is the same that appeared on Broadway, the movie is undeniably Deadwyler’s show.
  4. The Life of Chuck
    Any romantic notions the film might have are swiftly undone when it starts to explain the disappointing method behind its sleight of hand — until this explanation becomes the magic trick itself.
  5. Transformers One
    Transformers One approaches the well-known characters with a degree of nuance and complexity (as well as violent finality, in a few cases) that marks the most sophisticated onscreen portrait of them to date.
  6. Speak No Evil
    McAvoy’s big grin full of knives quickly dissolves any semblance of social credibility. But the film matches Paddy’s boorishness and commits to being a comedy about a bad marriage crumbling under the fist of a freak-of-nature vacation host.
  7. Bring Them Down
    It’s grimly funny, and hilariously sad.
  8. Familiar Touch
    Friedland’s film, as sharp as it is soft, conveys both the terror of losing the life you recognize, and the intermittent, fragmented joy of finding it again.
  9. Eden
    While there’s no denying that Howard has made the ultimate movie that’s not in his wheelhouse, what’s most different about it isn’t the eccentric subject matter. It’s that Howard got so immersed in the subject, so possessed by it, so lost in it that he forgot to do what he can usually do in his sleep: tell a relatable story.
  10. The Wild Robot
    There’s never been an animated movie that reflects the world in quite this way.
  11. Nightbitch
    Sinking her teeth into Mother the way Mother herself might a bloody steak, Adams courageously embodies Mother’s exasperation, finding the comedy in every setback.
  12. Red Rooms
    In contrast to most movies about serial killers, this one offers nary a glimpse of violence, let alone any wallowing in sadism. Yet somehow that makes it all the more icky — at times the squirm factor is such that you may think no shower could wash a viewer’s taint-by-association away.
  13. Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2
    Doubling down on the first chapter’s intermittent triumphs but also on its grievous structural issues, it is an exercise in contradictions: incident-packed yet oddly sedate; replete with characters new and returning, yet largely lacking in compelling characterization; and, running to over three hours, simply too long a film to be so jarringly abrupt.
  14. Hard Truths
    Leigh’s films can feel shaggy and unstructured on first viewing, and Hard Truths is no different. But there’s profound poetry in every scene.
  15. We Live in Time
    It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories, and the sequence hardly matters.
  16. Baby Invasion
    Though little more than a gimmick, the baby angle gives Korine a hook for an experiment that’s only intermittently engaging for much of its running time.
  17. April
    April is loath to explain itself, inviting us instead to watch, listen and feel our way through it — a work marked, like the benevolent but unreachable woman at its center, by immense empathy and isolated, inconsolable despair.
  18. Winner
    It’s not a typical whistleblower movie, like “The Insider” or “Official Secrets” (both excellent), but more of a prickly character portrait, imbued with humor and a headstrong sense of defiance (courtesy of co-writer Kerry Howley, channeling Winner’s voice).
  19. Nutcrackers
    What the movie needs isn’t a shaggy Christmas pageant, but the kind of catharsis one might expect when four of its characters lost their mom and the fifth ought to be mourning his sister.
  20. Apocalypse in the Tropics
    The film backs away from the overtly personal narration of its predecessor, in pursuit of a bigger picture.
  21. And Their Children After Them
    Where the the writing is wan, the filmmaking compensates with emphatic braggadocio. Augustin Barbaroux’s cinematography is all humidly saturated tones and rolling, kinetic movement.
  22. The Front Room
    With the exception of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” Oscar nominee Kathryn Hunter’s fiercely committed performance, much of this well-designed but boring film yields a shrug.
  23. Rebel Ridge
    Ultimately muscular and effective if predictable, Saulnier’s latest reaffirms his bona fides as a deliverer of sturdy, tightly-controlled thrills.
  24. I'm Still Here
    Salles’ deeply invested filmmaking is remarkable in its grace and naturalism.
  25. Pavements
    It’s impossible not to be won over by the director’s efforts, which come to include at least four separate modes of production.
  26. Joker: Folie à Deux
    Joker: Folie à Deux may be ambitious and superficially outrageous, but in a basic way it’s an overly cautious sequel.
  27. ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!
    A hilarious behind-the-scenes account of that ill-advised investment, MTV Documentary Films’ unconventional — and unexpectedly inspiring — makeover doc follows along as the pair sink millions into rescuing the crumbling landmark out of bankruptcy.
  28. Queer
    The last third of “Queer” may prove to be a challenge for audiences — much more so than the film’s explicit eroticism. Yet Luca Guadagino is telling a version of the same compelling story that he told in “Call Me by Your Name”: that of a queer love that, instead of delivering the salvation it promises, withers under the gaze of the real world.
  29. Nickel Boys
    For the first hour or so, Nickel Boys feels like the most exciting narrative debut since “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Then Ross tries something bold that doesn’t quite work, and the experiment collapses upon itself.
  30. The Room Next Door
    The Room Next Door, as driven by the scalding humanity of Swinton’s performance, lifts you up and delivers a catharsis. The movie is all about death, yet in the unblinking honesty with which it confronts that subject, it’s powerfully on the side of life.
  31. Wolfs
    In Wolfs, Clooney and Pitt revel in the crack timing, in the I-truly-do-not-like-you obscene banter, that makes even the most casual insult take wing.
  32. Saturday Night
    Now, just one year shy of the pop phenom’s 50th anniversary, director Jason Reitman gives back, turning an oral history of the very first episode into a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage.
  33. The Brutalist
    It’s clear that Corbet made this movie because he wants it to mean something big. Whether it does may be in the eye of the beholder. Mostly, The Brutalist lets you feel that you’re seeing a man’s life pass before your eyes. That may be meaning enough.
  34. The End
    There may never be another film like The End, and that alone makes it special, though surely all involved would prefer for it to be seen. As it is, the film feels like an obtuse missive, hidden in plain sight, just waiting for intrepid seekers to unearth it.
  35. Cloud
    An offbeat internet-age drama that devolves into a vengeance actioner so deconstructed it’s almost existentially abstract: Beckett giving it both barrels.
  36. The Friend
    A by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser with a bit more on its mind than your typical canine-centric tearjerker.
  37. The Order
    What The Order accomplishes that’s most haunting, and perceptive, is that it shows us how white supremacy in America can be two things at once, two sides of the same coin: the legal and “presentable” side, and the underlying violent side.
  38. Conclave
    Conclave is one of those rare films that respects the audience’s attention, even as it sneaks a few tricks behind their backs.
  39. The Wasp
    The actors try to maintain the focus on the characters, but the screenplay fails them as it becomes more convoluted and trite, as if it’s merely trying to distract until the final twisty reveal.
  40. Eight Postcards from Utopia
    Eight Postcards From Utopia lingers in the mind as a sharp sociopolitical tangram that could be assembled any number of ways to differing academic and emotional effect: a vision of rebuilding or destruction, hope or nihilistic collapse, depending on what you’re willing to buy.
  41. Reagan
    This is hagiography, not history. If you accept it as such, you may find yourself mildly engrossed from scene to scene, regardless of your political persuasion, without ever viewing “Reagan” as anything more substantial than a small-budget docudrama series on cable TV.
  42. The Becomers
    A sort of shaggy dog story whose appeal wanes as one gradually realizes it’s unlikely to go anywhere in particular, The Becomers is equally mild as sci-fi, spoof and sociopolitical satire. It’s off-kilter enough to catch one’s attention, but in the end too underdeveloped to strongly reward it.
  43. City of Dreams
    Ramchandani’s baffling screenplay contains the most obvious, stock archetypes of people recurrent in Hollywood’s uninteresting depictions of Latino communities. Yet, its dialogue, which ranges from the laughably stereotypical to the downright absurd in the context of a sweatshop, stands out as the most unforgivable affront.
  44. Babygirl
    Babygirl takes a few turns we don’t expect, but that’s because the movie’s ambition isn’t just to feed the thriller engine. It’s to capture something genuine about women’s erotic experience in the age of control.
  45. AfrAId
    When crises start occurring at the halfway mark, they pile on too quickly to underwhelming effect, sacrificing credibility for excitement that never really materializes.
  46. Kill the Jockey
    Awash with kooky gags and bolstered by the strange, soulful presence of leading man Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, it’s fun but flighty, liable to throw some viewers from the saddle.
  47. Maria
    Maria bears many of the hallmarks of Larraín’s lavish empathy and filmmaking skill. Yet the movie, in contrast, is driven by a dramatic fatalism that does it little favor.
  48. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    The movie is just a lightweight riff on “Beetlejuice” — a piece of fan service, really. It doesn’t give you the full monster-kitsch jolt that the original film had. Yet there’s good fan service and bad, and as stilted and gimcracky as it can sometimes be, I had a pretty good time at Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
  49. The Sparrow
    [An] elegantly vicious domestic horror movie, which forensically unpicks the compacted resentments, betrayals and traumas underpinning a single weekend family gathering, with a touch as icy as the lighting is consistently, relentlessly warm.
  50. Rob Peace
    A sense of tangible intellect looms just beneath its surface — not only Rob’s supposed genius, but the movie’s own identity as political cinema. But it never quite unearths this, even though “Rob Peace” establishes Ejiofor as a director with a knack for dramatic storytelling, in a way his previous film could not.
  51. Transamazonia
    There’s an opacity to this ambitious, conscientious film’s characterization on all fronts that hinders our emotional involvement, even as it holds our interest.
  52. Into the Wonderwoods
    The sum of all these components results in a film that’s delightful to look at, though not as compelling narratively.
  53. The Other Laurens
    The vibes shift from one scene to the next, sometimes markedly so, and when The Other Laurens lets its mood and aesthetics carry the way it can be the right kind of offbeat. The more serious it gets, however, the less effective it becomes.
  54. Decoded
    Crowded with shallow characters (particularly Jinzhen’s loved ones: his wife and adoptive family) there to forcefully inject emotion, overlong and technically pristine while devoid of cinematic personality, “Decoded” is pleasant to look at but difficult to feel much toward.
  55. Vulcanizadora
    By the time its end credits roll, Vulcanizadora proves surprisingly moving in its depiction of mid-life crises and of two men who feel so betrayed by the world (and by their own actions) that they see no escape from their malaise. To turn that feeling into coherent drama is hard enough.
  56. The Crow
    This reinvention’s contrastingly elegant yet dislocated revenge-slash-love story is no slam dunk. But neither is it an unwatchable dud.
  57. Incoming
    As a standalone, Incoming hits its marks, but its cast amounts to a collection of tics, while its appetite for raunch seems unfulfilled.
  58. Moon
    While the multiple ellipses may annoy the more narratively-driven viewer, others will thrill to the mood Ayub creates and the way she plays with audience expectations.
  59. Blink Twice
    [Kravitz] composes the movie out of vibrant close-ups, using each shot (a cocktail, a glance, a social-media cutaway) to tell a story, drawing us into the center of an encounter, so that we’re staring at it and experiencing it at the same time. Her technique is riveting; this is the work of a born filmmaker.
  60. Mountains
    [Mountains] carries an undeniable veracity and compassion. Its narrative proves less insightful, however: too wary to crack into its protagonist’s troubled psyche, softening the film’s worthwhile political anxieties into sympathetic messaging that seems ho-hum and predetermined.
  61. Skincare
    While it’s expected that creative liberties will be taken, especially given its roots as a tabloid-style news story, it’s surprising that the filmmakers chose to leave out details that would have enhanced their portrayal.
  62. The Good Half
    The Good Half reclaims attention every now and then with its occasional humor and grace notes around its side characters. . . But what we eventually get with The Good Half doesn’t even feel half good.
  63. The Union
    The trouble with The Union is that neither the film nor its characters have much in the way of personality, to the point it’s not even clear how they feel about one another.
  64. Jackpot!
    Fitting neatly between “The Heat” and 2016’s “Ghostbusters” reboot, Jackpot! finds the dapper director squarely in his comfort zone, falling back on some of the tricks that worked so well in “Bridesmaids,” minus the underlying relatability of that film’s brilliant screenplay.
  65. Youth (Hard Times)
    At nearly four hours in length, it surpasses even its gargantuan predecessor “Youth (Spring),” but it also uses that film as a platform for deeper exploration.
  66. Alien: Romulus
    This is closer to a grandly efficient greatest-hits thrill ride, packaged like a video game. Yet on that level it’s a confidently spooky, ingeniously shot, at times nerve-jangling piece of entertainment.
  67. Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds
    A truly spectacular psychedelic excursion in the vein of head-trip classics “The Fantastic Planet” and “The Yellow Submarine.”
  68. The Beautiful Summer
    In the end, this is a tender tale befitting its summer trappings. It is wistful and witty, sultry and soothing.
  69. The Last Front
    This English-language production may not be among the most memorable period war films in recent years, but its straightforward, sometimes brutal progress and assured craftsmanship will more than satisfy audiences looking for something other than simple combat spectacle.
  70. The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
    Still, there are moments of minor magic here. Deep friendship is among the most enchanting inventions after all. And Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean show how to honor it.
  71. Borderlands
    Marketed to look like a cross between “Suicide Squad” and a Zack Snyder movie, director Eli Roth’s tamer-than-expected take on “Borderlands” doesn’t have half the attitude or style its cyberpunk ad campaign might suggest.
  72. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
    Taylor’s voice is singular in its expressiveness — she is insolent, mournful, sexy, outraged, dripping with debauched delight, and always casually candid. Her words invest even the most familiar events with a revealing intimacy.
  73. It Ends with Us
    When I say it’s a soap opera, I mean that as praise. Based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel (the script is by Christy Hall) and directed by Justin Baldoni (who is one of the film’s costars), it’s an avid and emotional movie that pulls you right along. If you go in not knowing what it’s about, and are therefore all the more surprised by where it goes, it may be even more effective.
  74. Sebastian
    Despite the film’s confident naturalism, it seems less intimate as it goes on, with Max somehow growing more distant and generic as he becomes more comfortable in his own skin.
  75. The Duel
    The movie looks sharp enough, but lands like a rapier with a cork on it.
  76. Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
    It’s not as inspired as grown-ups might want, but innocuous enough for the kids.
  77. I’ll Be Your Mirror
    You come to Blood for its aura of spiritual sustenance, only to leave it feeling curiously alienated and undernourished.
  78. Coup!
    This is quick, nippy entertainment that raises plenty of sociopolitical talking points without digging too deep into any of them.
  79. Trap
    Asking an audience to go with something this fundamentally farfetched borders on an insult. More to the point: It’s not fun.
  80. The Instigators
    From a filmmaking perspective, it’s no easy feat taking what looks like so much chaos and organizing it into a character-driven comedy, but that’s just what Affleck and co-writer (and “City on a Hill” series creator) Chuck MacLean have accomplished, giving Liman the blueprint to alternate between unpredictable set-pieces and more relaxed examples of male bonding.
  81. Close to You
    Page’s performance isn’t moving merely for whatever parallels it might hold to his life: Rather, it’s a reminder of what a deft and perceptive actor he can be, capable of both naked emotional candor and acidic wit — both assets to a script that sometimes errs on the side of caution.
  82. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
    Its martial arts spectacle is scattered across a sprawling refugees-and-triads saga that, while adequately laying foundation for the aforementioned fisticuffs, is seldom coherent or engaging on its own.
  83. Harold and the Purple Crayon
    The film ends with an overly spelled-out plea for the value of “imagination,” but about the only thing the filmmakers are drawing with their purple crayon is algorithms.
  84. 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.
  85. Faye
    As “Faye” presents it, Dunaway was too volcanic and troubled a personality not to pour herself into her roles. That’s part of what made her great. Yet the film also wants to cue us to the gossipy and reductive way that this kind of thinking has too often been applied to her.
  86. The Fabulous Four
    Despite the caliber of its cast, “The Fabulous Four” never shakes the feeling that its on-screen talent is being severely misused.
  87. Deadpool & Wolverine
    This singular mutant satire works best as an irreverent homage to what’s come before, as opposed to the prototype for future superhero movies.
  88. Memoir of a Snail
    Elements that might feel frivolous on first mention invariably pay off later, as Elliot brings things around in thoughtful and emotional ways, to the point you forget you’re watching people made of Plasticine.
  89. Find Me Falling
    Kliris negotiates tonal shifts effortlessly: The jokes never undercut the drama as both dovetail neatly into each other.
  90. Great Absence
    Even though Great Absence, is a little overlong and its framing device, an avant-garde theater piece, feels unnecessary, in another way its multiple strands and many endings are extraordinarily, poetically appropriate.
  91. My Spy: The Eternal City
    The film is light enough without being funny enough, most of it staged, by director Peter Segal (“Tommy Boy,” “The Naked Gun 33 1/3”), in a kind of generic action overdrive.
  92. Touch
    This gentle, unfussy romance contains a heart-clutching finale that’s as classically restrained as it is emotionally resounding.
  93. Lumina
    There’s ambition exceeding your grasp, and then there’s Lumina.
  94. Sisi & I
    There’s a elastic, enjoyable restlessness to all this behind-closed-court-doors bustle and bitchery, recalling less the sparse, close-up character interrogation of “Corsage” than the snippy gamesmanship of “The Favourite,” buoyed by the itchy friction between Hüller’s anxious, aspirational energy and Wolff’s cool, complacent hauteur.
  95. Dandelion
    The evocative visuals here sing in unison with the characters’ yearning to fulfill the promise of their lifelong dreams. They are chasing a glimmer of light before twilight.
  96. The Convert
    There’s just enough of an interesting theme and strong production value (it’s impossible not to succumb to the breathtakingly imposing landscapes) to earn The Convert some grace.
  97. Hounds
    As its central crisis deepens and darkens, Lazraq’s script keeps teasing a gear-shift into mordant farce to which it never quite commits, leaving both the characters and the drama a bit stymied. Still, this is a notably punchy debut, both visceral and confidently cavalier in its depiction of everyday underworld brutality, with a sharp, streetlit sense of place.
  98. Twisters
    Staring up at the tornadoes in Twisters, I felt like I’d already seen something exactly like them — and that when it comes to footage of actual tornadoes, I’d already seen something more incredible. Twisters, fun as parts of it are, is a movie where reality ultimately takes a lot of the wind out of its gales.
  99. Fly Me to the Moon
    Fly Me to the Moon only needs to sell one thing: that beneath Kelly and Cole’s fast-paced dialogue and combative flirtation, there exists a mutual attraction compelling enough to keep us guessing. We already know how the lunar mission turns out, but never tire of gazing upon stars such as these.
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