Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. The Girl with a Bracelet
    The Girl With a Bracelet comments intelligently on our culture’s propensity to sex-shame and emotionally instruct young women in particular — points which stand regardless of whether shedunnit or not.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miracle in Milan
    Miracle in Milan, an involved and rambling screenplay, originally written by Cesare Zavattini in 1940 and later published as a novel entitled Toto the Good, contrasts sharply with the simplicity and warm humanity of [the same writer-director team's] Bicycle Thief and gives director Vittorio De Sica less opportunities to guide his thespers to those extremely human, heart-warming performances which are his speciality. Whereas Thief was aimed at the audience heart, Miracle is aimed at the brain.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    La Ronde
    Ophuls has used a dearth of closeups, brilliant decor playing a vital part. Film gains an opulence in the expert lensing of Christian Matras. There is much filming through carved glass, linen, silks and mirrors to create the aura of romance.
  5. Falling for Christmas
    Its subversive spirit, female-forward smarts and sweet sentimentality remix the formulaic and festive, making all things merry and bright.
  6. A Haunting in Venice
    Playful turns from a shrewdly selected supporting cast elevate the case from just another murder mystery to suitably arch gothic horror.
  7. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    Though the movie is too long, I was more gratified than not to sink into its relatively old-fashioned dramatic restraint.
  8. The Other Tom
    The film’s intimate scenes of mother-son discord are remarkable, played with raw, nerve-pushing testiness by two first-time actors.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sisters
    Sisters is a good psychological murder melo- drama, starring Margot Kidder as the schizoid half of Siamese twins, and Jennifer Salt as a news hen driven to terror in her investigation of a bloody murder. Brian De Palma's direction emphasizes exploitation values which do not fully mask script weakness.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big Country
    Although the story – based on Donald Hamilton’s novel, with Jessamyn West and Robert Wyler credited with the screen adaptation – is dwarfed by the scenic outpourings, The Big Country is nonetheless armed with a serviceable, adult western yarn.
  11. Jesus Revolution
    It’s one of the most appealing faith-based big-screen entertainments in a while, polished and persuasive without getting too preachy.
  12. To the End
    To the End keeps its large canvas entertaining and informative. Even so, it preaches enough to the choir that this documentary can hardly serve as an introduction for those belatedly coming to terms with its central issues.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Theater of Blood
    Theatre of Blood is black comedy played for chills and mood and emerges a macabre piece of wild melodramatics.
  14. Infinity Pool
    The Canadian helmer has created the cinematic equivalent of an M.C. Escher drawing, which bends and breaks and folds back on itself in impossible ways. Brain-shattering as it all is, we can hardly tear our eyes away.
  15. Plane
    Plane is fodder, but the picture brazens through its own implausibilities, carried along — and occasionally aloft — by Gerard Butler’s squinty dynamo resolve.
  16. Scream VI
    Scream VI, while it goes on for too long, is a pretty good thriller. It’s a homicidal shell game that‘s clever in all the right ways, staged and shot more forcefully than the previous film, eager to take advantage of its more sprawling but enclosed cosmopolitan setting.
  17. High Heat
    High Heat is a hoot. Though it may sound in synopsis like standard-issue genre fare suitable for quick-serve consumption on digital and streaming platforms, this satisfying mashup of crime thriller and dark comedy plays almost like a wink-and-a-nod sendup of such cookie-cutter time-killers.
  18. Skinamarink
    I found Skinamarink to be terrifying, but it’s a film that asks for (and rewards) patience, and can therefore invite revolt (not to mention abysmal grades from Cinemascore). Yet if you go with it, you may feel that you’ve touched the uncanny
  19. Boston Strangler
    A distant cousin to “Zodiac,” with splashes of “Seven” mixed into its homages, this thriller falls short of its influences yet carves out a small space of its own. It makes a searing indictment of the sloppy, sexism-laced police work that might’ve resolved the case, and pays tribute to the two women who broke the investigation wide open.
  20. The Price We Pay
    We’ve been down this road before and we’ll go there again, but The Price We Pay has enough gas in the tank to make the detour worthwhile.
  21. Beautiful Beings
    If in terms of narrative there’s not much new here, there is a freshness and an inhabited vibrancy that makes this painful coming of age story feel exactly its own.
  22. Blaze
    Blaze marks the feature directing debut of a distinctive new voice, and though there’s a certain woodenness to the narrative, the visuals — glitter dreams of a 10-foot fuchsia dragon — radiate with originality.
  23. Ambush
    If it’s not a film that rivals the quality or seriousness of Vietnam War movie standard-bearers like “The Deer Hunter” or “Full Metal Jacket,” Ambush ultimately delivers more credible adventure than the cartoonish bombast of their knockoff competitors (then or since) — and more than a handful of genuine thrills.
  24. Back to Black
    At its best, Back to Black, the forthright and compelling movie that’s been made of Winehouse’s life, takes that light/dark balance and digs into the drama of it, making it sing.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cléo from 5 to 7
    Sometimes invention falters, as in the scene with the songwriters. But Varda then easily picks up the threads and keeps alive interest in the girl and her plight.
  26. New Gods: Yang Jian
    “Yang Jian” offers vivid and exciting animation matched with traditional Chinese mythic storytelling to deliver an entertaining film.
  27. L'Immensità
    Everything in L’Immensità is beautiful even when everything wasn’t: Crialese’s odd, affecting memory piece layers the world as it was, is and could be in the same gilded frame.
  28. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
    Animated combo of laughs and life lessons charts its heroine's adventures in such an accessible and cheery way, it's easy to imagine her leaping into a Stateside remake.
  29. Run Rabbit Run
    What it lacks in thematic newness, Run Rabbit Run makes up for in the sophistication of its moment-to-moment scarifying and its performances from Sarah Snook and outstanding newcomer Lily LaTorre.
  30. Full River Red
    With a twist-packed plot to match its labyrinthine location, Zhang’s fast-paced film motors along nicely as an engaging “Knives Out”-style whodunnit before stumbling a little in the protracted final act.
  31. Kompromat
    Focusing on the moment-to-moment thrills proves more satisfying than wondering what actually sparked this intrigue.
  32. Shortcomings
    For all the film’s chatty insights into modern dating mores and its casually pointed discussions of racial identity, the formula to which Shortcomings mostly adheres is a familiar one, as though someone has given one of the Apatow-esque man-child comedies of the aughts an Asian makeover.
  33. Cocaine Bear
    Cocaine Bear is less formulaic than a slasher film and more stylishly made. It’s a true oddball, one that mixes yocks and mock desperation and disembodied limbs. So when it’s over you can say, “Well, we definitely saw that.”
  34. The Persian Version
    The Persian Version is a bit madcap and self-indulgent, not unlike its protagonist, before it settles into a groove that foregrounds Shirin.
  35. Scrapper
    Regan’s debut rehashes a host of familiar elements from assorted kitchen-sink dramas and dysfunctional parent-child stories, painting them colorfully enough that audiences won’t mind the odd bit of rust.
  36. Radical
    Radical isn’t so much an irresponsibly magical against-the-odds yarn as a truthful one, in which a well-intentioned outsider can only go so far in protecting underprivileged students from certain grim paths.
  37. Rye Lane
    Short, sweet and sparky, Raine Allen-Miller's immensely likable debut doesn't reinvent the wheel, but instant chemistry between stars Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson keeps it spinning.
  38. The Deepest Breath
    As a pure adrenaline-rush experience, however, The Deepest Breath is hard to argue with, coming closer than might seem possible to conveying the exhilaration and/or terror of descending further than the length of a football field into infinite aqua.
  39. In My Mother's Skin
    “In My Mother’s Skin” finds a rare sweet spot between story-book nightmare and historical allegory.
  40. Murder Mystery 2
    Sandler and Aniston mesh; they made you believe in Nick and Audrey’s cantankerous marriage, and in the love percolating just beneath the fighting. If what Nora Ephron devised was a clever Xerox of the rom-com, “Murder Mystery 2” is a Xerox of the Xerox, powered by a whodunit plot that’s a cheesy light parody of itself played just straight enough to work.
  41. The Boogeyman
    Savage’s confidence behind the camera sustains the film’s intensity even when the connective tissue between plot and theme, logic and tone is tenuous at best. But even working alongside sturdy collaborators like Messina and young Blair, it’s Thatcher who sells the improbable reality of an old-as-time spirit preying upon the frightened and grieving.
  42. The Amazing Maurice
    Courtesy of source material by offbeat fantasy maestro Terry Pratchett, it’s genuinely eccentric enough — with its sly talking cat, intrepid band of gold-hearted rats and chronic aversion to keeping the fourth wall intact — to come off as charming rather than smarmy.
  43. Tetris
    Tapping into late-1980s nostalgia — including the launch of the handheld Game Boy console — the movie doubles as a nifty history lesson, reminding audiences of just how tense things were between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world.
  44. A Lot of Nothing
    Even if the onyx-dark humor and sardonic formal control go MIA eventually, “A Lot of Nothing” is really quite something.
  45. Gladiator II
    The movie is a solid piece of neoclassical popcorn — a serviceable epic of brutal warfare, Colosseum duels featuring lavish decapitations and beasts both animal and human, along with the middlebrow “decadence” of palace intrigue.
  46. The Integrity of Joseph Chambers
    The absurdity would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrifying. Your mileage may vary.
  47. Biosphere
    Ultimately the performers are winning enough, and the ideas in the ambiguous story intriguing enough, to achieve an end result of successful middleweight charm and substance.
  48. Joy Ride
    The movie may not be “Bridesmaids”-level brilliant, but it’s got more than a couple hall-of-fame-worthy comedy set-pieces.
  49. A Radiant Girl
    Newcomer Marder’s performance is a thoroughly engaging one. She manages to demonstrate both screen presence and likability, despite a role which requires her to represent youthful optimism to an almost symbolic degree.
  50. 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.
  51. The Adults
    The Adults is most moving in its understanding of the trivial quips, asides and slight, splintered anecdotes that are sometimes all that remains between adult relatives who once shared richer connective tissue.
  52. About My Father
    Maniscalco hasn’t quite proven he can carry a movie that’s not inspired by or “about” him, but this first effort is charming and earnest enough to encourage viewers to meet him where he’s currently at in his career.
  53. Leave the World Behind
    Per Howard Hawks’ too-easy rubric, “A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes,” this one’s a keeper. The best scene may be the last.
  54. The Killer
    In The Killer, David Fincher is hooked on his own obsession with technique, his mystique of filmmaking-as-virtuoso-procedure. It’s not that he’s anything less than great at it, but he may think there’s more shading, more revelation in how he has staged The Killer than there actually is.
  55. Damsel
    What matters most is whether we believe Brown in the role, and the “Stranger Things” star has no trouble embodying the kind of quick-thinking independent mind it takes to survive such an adventure.
  56. Extraction 2
    The filmmakers’ renewed vigor is our reward as, similar to its unfussy title, this sequel deals in clean-lined action and suspense, removing much of the excessive weight that bogged down the original.
  57. A Tourist's Guide to Love
    Funny, poignant and simultaneously progressive and regressive, it may not add up to five-star escapism, but it’s a jovial jaunt worth taking.
  58. Golda
    Golda is a good drama about Israel. But it will take a great drama about Israel to dig into the nation’s long-simmering moral ambiguities.
  59. Kiss the Future
    In a sense, Kiss the Future is the story of a long-distance romance, between a superstar rock quartet reaching its peak and a once-grand metropolis that’s bottoming out.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Sterile Cuckoo
    It is Minnelli’s one-woman show. The 21-year-old Burton is not so much her costar as her straight man.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Walk Alone
    I Walk Alone is tight, hard-boiled melodrama.
  62. The Night of the 12th
    The Night of the 12th is a mostly compelling sit, though what lends the film its singular texture is that it keeps tricking us into thinking it’s a more conventional thriller than it is.
  63. Mafia Mamma
    A fun fish-out-of-water farce with “Godfather” DNA and a clever female-empowerment kick, Mafia Mamma makes inspired use of Collette, who’s never better than when playing women we oughtn’t to have underestimated.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Caddy
    Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis dig a lot of divots among the fairways of The Caddy. It's an amusing romp [from a story by Danny Arnold] that, while not always parring previous M & L successes, comes close enough.
  65. The Year Between
    The result is a useful mix of the pseudo-random and finely honed that refuses to hand-wring over Clem’s travails, yet simultaneously makes an upbeat case for her emerging from them intact — even if she’ll never exactly be Miss Congeniality.
  66. The Innocent
    This film is a slightly slipperier customer than a topline summary would suggest, with tonal shifts that shouldn’t work, but somehow do.
  67. A Disturbance in the Force
    To be sure, the fans will appreciate it a lot more than casual viewers. But it’s also an irresistible hoot for anyone with fond memories of star-studded 1970s musical/variety TV specials.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Assassination Bureau
    Fused with the capable talents of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden picture emerges as a somewhat unusual and clever comedy after an over-leisurely opening.
  69. The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die
    Where “Seven Kings Must Die” is most interesting, however, is in its approach to religion, sexuality and culture. While it’s tempting to see our current era as unprecedented in its social blending of diverse faiths and identities, early medieval England gives contemporary Western society a run for its money in this respect.
  70. Wild Life
    Sidestepping thornier questions of optics and ownership, Wild Life ultimately takes the side of nature over politics, and most viewers will follow suit.
  71. William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill
    The documentary captures how Shatner, as he began to make a career out of performing his public legend, merged his very identity with that of the hambone thespian inside him.
  72. Late Night with the Devil
    Though not quite a slam-dunk — its sum impact is more pleasingly ingenious than indelible — Late Night With the Devil definitely reps a personal best for the Cairnses.
  73. Self Reliance
    Johnson delivers a silly and frequently surprising why-we-need-people parable that leans on laughs in lieu of peril.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Smile
    Smile is a hilarious but ultimately shallow putdown of teenage beauty contests.
  75. What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?
    Searchingly directed by John Scheinfeld (“The U.S. vs. John Lennon”), What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? is a tasty and urgent piece of rock history, but in a strange way the film never comes close to answering its own question.
  76. Money Shot: The Pornhub Story
    “Money Shot,” with a no-fuss journalistic evenhandedness, makes the case that the reaction against the site, though most of it came from an unassailable moral place, may have been out of balance — that it wound up hurting sex workers without actually doing anything tangible to help the victims of trafficking.
  77. Furies
    Despite a routine plot and some abrasive tonal shifts, this tale of a motherly mentor turning three damaged young women into deadly assassins is packed with exciting action and boasts fine performances from four killers bound by blood, bullets and all manner of deadly weapons.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Land of the Pharaohs
    When the viewing senses begin to dull from the tremendous load of spectacle, the script and Hawks’ direction wisely switch to sex and intrigue.
  79. Clock
    Jacknow’s genuinely disturbing imagery crawls under our skin, lingering long after the tense, bleak finale.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Strawberry Blonde
    Cagney and de Havilland provide topnotch performances that do much to keep up interest in the proceedings. Rita Hayworth is an eyeful as the title character, while Jack Carson is excellent as the politically ambitious antagonist of the dentist.
  81. Plan 75
    Plan 75 might have been a risible exercise in emotional manipulation if not for the sensitive tone with which Hiyakawa approaches all of her characters.
  82. Story Ave
    [An] affecting debut feature.
  83. The Lost Weekend: A Love Story
    “The Lost Weekend” is a compelling movie and a valuable puzzle piece, but it’s only pretending to be the whole puzzle.
  84. Assassin Club
    What Assassin Club lacks in fully developed characters, it more than makes up for in kinetic thrills. Golding proves that he can carry both the romantic and physical aspects of such a project, while looking delectable, and that’s probably as much as the audience for this film expects.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quo Vadis
    Quo Vadis is a super-spectacle in all its meaning. That there are shortcomings [in this fourth version of the tale] even Metro must have recognized and ignored in consideration of the project’s scope.
  86. Stan Lee
    Stan Lee is a fan-service documentary released by Disney+ (it drops on June 16), yet it’s very well-made, and watching it you’re confronted with a revelation: that the comic books that Lee began to create in 1961 didn’t just mark a seismic break with the comic books of the past.
  87. Gran Turismo
    There’s an innocence to this one, and a surprise authenticity. It’s like a “Fast and Furious” movie made without cynicism, and it gets to you.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Cast, although secondary to the story, works well.
  89. Cherry
    Confronting that larger crisis directly is not the goal here. Though “Cherry” dips a toe in those troubled topical waters, it does so only gingerly, preferring instead to spin an uncomplicated, timeless tale about a woman coming into her own.
  90. The Edge
    Although thin character motivation and some far-fetched plotting strain credulity in the late going, for the most part The Edge is a tense, visceral battle-of-wits thriller played out against a spectacular wilderness background.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ponniyin Selvan: Part I
    Ponniyin Selvan: Part One boasts great battles on land and sea. The spy-vs.-spy nature of the story suggests a 12th-century Bourne movie, interspersed with song and dance.
  92. Four Quartets
    Fiennes, in his beautifully grave way, slows the poem down for us, speaking the words with rapt deliberation, so that we live in their moment.
  93. Confessions of a Good Samaritan
    Despite being a tad too long and a trifle repetitive, the documentary essay “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” from American helmer Penny Lane is a thought-provoking personal investigation into a subject rarely examined: the nature of altruism.
  94. Frybread Face and Me
    It’s 1990 and a summer that initially smacks of exile and punishment becomes one of discovery — self-discovery to be sure, but also cultural and familial.
  95. I Used to Be Funny
    That convoluted storytelling tack at times threatens to muffle “Funny’s” potent narrative agenda. Yet in the end, this ambitious, imperfect drama does pull off a complex thematic mix.
  96. Northern Comfort
    While Spall looks like he is having fun launching some clandestine military tactics, the comely Rumpf, known for her fierce work in French and German films such as “Raw,” “Tiger Girl” and “Soul of a Beast” is rather underserved here. But on the bright side, the part at least proves that she speaks fluent English and that the camera loves her no matter what she has on.
  97. Outlaw Johnny Black
    The new film nonetheless provides more than a few good laughs, even when it seems to be taking horse opera clichés a tad too respectfully, and showcases a fine cast of actors dedicated to both the silliness and the seriousness of the enterprise.
  98. The Three Musketeers - Part I: D'Artagnan
    Dumas was a master of the serial form, and this version of “The Three Musketeers” manages to preserve that thrill-to-thrill sensation. The experience leaves you wanting more, though it’s probably better suited to binge-watching in its entirety.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sunday in New York
    Norman Krasna's screenplay, from his Broadway legiter, doesn't really get rolling until it has virtually marked time for almost an hour, but once it gets up this head of steam the entire complexion of the picture seems to change.
  100. Banel & Adama
    Sy’s film is a curious little fable, not quite fully formed in its final stages, and occasionally so sedate and opaque, under Bachar Mar-Khalifé’s melodic, piano-forward score, that it feels like it is drowsing. But it’s a striking debut nonetheless, especially as it revolves, with graceful poetry around the inner experiences of such a curious, unknowable woman.
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