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. A Perfect Day for Caribou
    Set over the course of a single day on the fringes of some dead American anytown, this at once quiet and talkative two-hander covers no especially new ground, but strides known territory with a keen eye for lonesome landscapes, and an ear for the eternal communicative impasse felt by men who know each other all too well and not at all.
  2. 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.
  3. Aisha
    While passive and/or helpless characters rarely make for the most engaging protagonists, the sensitivity with which this story is told coupled with Wright’s performance makes for an experience that’s never less than engaging.
  4. Enter the Clones of Bruce
    David Gregory’s documentary won’t convince most viewers that the resulting flood of opportunistic cheapies are worth more extensive investigation. But they’re certainly cheesy fun in excerpt, and interviews with surviving participants provide an entertaining window into an anything-goes heyday for Hong Kong cinema.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mackenna's Gold
    The plot [from Will Henry's novel McKenna's Gold] is good, the acting adequate. But it's the scenery, the vastness of the west, the use of cameras, and of horses, and the special effects which keep the viewer involved and entertained.
  6. Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story
    Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s documentary “Any Other Way” combines archival materials, interviews and animated reenactments into a compelling investigation of an elusive life, as well as a talent so striking you’ll be amazed it remained forgotten for so long.
  7. Karate Kid: Legends
    It’s a movie that’s unapologetically basic and wholesome and, at 94 minutes, refreshingly stripped down. In its formulaic way, it works as an antidote to the bloat and clutter of your average “high-powered” teenage/kiddie flick.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dead Reckoning
    Humphrey Bogart's typically tense performance raises this average whodunit quite a few notches. Film has good suspense and action, and some smart direction and photography.
  9. 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.
  10. You're Cordially Invited
    Whether they’re playing naughty or nice, Witherspoon and Ferrell are two of the rare stars who can be charming even when trying to sabotage someone else’s most important moment, and You’re Cordially Invited is most fun when they’re on the warpath.
  11. The Damned
    The Damned has a tendency to meander, but in so doing, it strives toward something authentic.
  12. The Blue Angels
    Paul Crowder’s Imax documentary feels both more honest than most in its intentions and more effective in highlighting that organization’s excellence.
  13. The Sales Girl
    It takes its time to get there, but in the end, The Sales Girl is about taking charge of one’s own life, where sex is just one dimension of a well-rounded process of self-discovery.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fandango
    Fandango emerges as a quite promising feature debut by writer-director Kevin Reynolds, with its feet squarely within the overused boys-coming-of-age genre but its heart betraying an appealingly anarchic, iconoclastic bent.
  15. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
    Gudegast, for all his casualness toward plausibility, is an energizing filmmaker. He keeps the mano-a-mano standoffs humming, and he’s got a sixth sense for how to showcase Butler as a glamorously disheveled schlock version of Dirty Harry–meets–Popeye Doyle-meets– “Lethal Weapon”-gone-lone-wolf.
  16. Santosh
    While often more intellectually stimulating than emotionally engaging, Santosh lays bare the dark heart of communal divisions in modern India.
  17. The Balconettes
    The directorial energy being channelled here is closer to that of early Pedro Almodóvar, as Merlant piles up saturated, hot-hued melodrama, garrulous female bonding and cheerful lashings of blood and sex.
  18. I Am: Celine Dion
    Like all things Celine Dion, “I Am” feels intensely personal and sincere, but also managed to within an inch of its life.
  19. 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.
  20. Look Into My Eyes
    Agnostic but empathetic, Wilson’s film suggests communing with the dead may just be a roundabout way of reaching the living.
  21. All Shall Be Well
    The lack of inflection in the film’s infinitely broad-spectrum compassion can sometimes feel less like restraint and more like timidity. Anger is alien to Yeung’s style but it is sometimes justified, and without it, All Shall Be Well is a plea for understanding that should by now, by rights, be a demand.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The War Wagon
    The War Wagon is an entertaining, exciting western drama of revenge, laced with action and humor. Strong scripting, performances and direction are evident, enhanced by terrif exterior production values.
  23. 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.
  24. Sacramento
    Angarano has the showpiece role, but it’s Cera who proves himself, more than ever, to be a major actor.
  25. Ladybird Ladybird
    Though the movie sounds irredeemably depressing on paper, there’s a real warmth to the central relationship that lifts “Ladybird” above similar-sounding exercises in Brit self-loathing.
  26. Inheritance
    How the film conceives of Maya is somewhat limited by her being a naive pawn in a bigger picture, but Dynevor easily demonstrates the screen presence to sustain this whole enterprise.
  27. Smile 2
    The film climaxes with a body-horror maximalism coupled with a minimum of logic. Until then, though, it wrings honest jolts out of the unnerving hothouse of unreality that is pop stardom.
  28. 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.
  29. Unicorns
    The movie doesn’t deal in labels — it’s not important to the filmmakers whether Luke identifies as gay, straight or bisexual — but instead presents this relationship as one that expands the provincial notion of romance someone like Luke might have had.
  30. 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One of Our Aircraft Is Missing
    Script, production, direction and photography are splendid.
  32. 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Know Where I'm Going!
    I Know Where I'm Going! has all the values of a documentary as a foundation for the tale of a girl who is sure she knows where she is going until she gets sidetracked - and likes it.
  34. Meanwhile on Earth
    This sophomore directorial effort proves Clapin’s adept hand for soulful, existentialist tales with an offbeat touch, regardless of the medium he’s creating in.
  35. Coup!
    This is quick, nippy entertainment that raises plenty of sociopolitical talking points without digging too deep into any of them.
  36. The Beautiful Summer
    In the end, this is a tender tale befitting its summer trappings. It is wistful and witty, sultry and soothing.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dillinger
    Pace is sometimes reduced during events sandwiched in between actual gunfire sequences of Dillinger’s career, but there can be no criticism of Milius’ ability to keep such action sequences at top-heat.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sullivan's Travels
    Sullivan’s Travels is a curious but effective mixture of grim tragedy, slapstick of the Key- stone brand and smart, trigger-fast comedy.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When Worlds Collide
    Top honors for this inter-planetary fantasy rest with the cameramen and special effects technicians rather than with performances of the non-name cast.
  40. 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.
  41. 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.
  42. Freakier Friday
    The bottom line is that none of these characters, after the swap, seem different enough from themselves to allow the comedy to detonate. That said, the double swap lends “Freakier Friday” a juggling-balls-in-the-air quality that gives off a pleasant hum. It’s fun to ride the film’s complications.
  43. 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Road to Rio
    McLeod's direction blends the music and comedy into fast action and sock chuckles that will please followers of the series.
  45. 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.
  46. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
    Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is wired-up synthetic fun. It’s a trivial kiddie flick that moves at the speed of your mind playing video games.
  47. Bring Them Down
    It’s grimly funny, and hilariously sad.
  48. The Cut
    While there’s a more streamlined and thus more effective version of “The Cut” in there somewhere, what remains on screen is plenty harrowing as it is, and allows Bloom to finally cement himself as a truly great performer — not for the lengths he’s willing to go, but for the spellbinding end result.
  49. 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.
  50. September 5
    In this case, revisiting it half a century later, knowing what happened doesn’t preclude us from wanting to get a better understanding of the specifics. But this movie’s insights are limited to the newsroom.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thin Man Goes Home
    Based on the characterizations originally created by Dashiell Hammett, the story emerges as a neatly-fashioned whodunit. Richard Thorpe paces the plot nicely, overcoming, before too long, the hurdles of a rather slow opening.
  52. Cloud
    An offbeat internet-age drama that devolves into a vengeance actioner so deconstructed it’s almost existentially abstract: Beckett giving it both barrels.
  53. The Assessment
    Even when The Assessment goes beyond its smaller scale, it has a lot on its mind throughout and Fortuné ably balances the cerebral with the emotional.
  54. The Deb
    Screenplay credit goes to Hannah Reilly, who wrote the stage musical from which “The Deb” was adapted with Meg Washington. While their lyrics are clever and contemporary, this project is every bit Wilson’s jam. Her sensibility is grounded in sincerity but relies on bawdy, off-color jokes to deflect from empowerment messaging that might otherwise seem square. And it works.
  55. Ick
    This full-frontal assault on the senses is bound to get on some viewers’ nerves, but Kahn has always strived to touch them in one way or another.
  56. Apocalypse in the Tropics
    The film backs away from the overtly personal narration of its predecessor, in pursuit of a bigger picture.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    After the Thin Man
    It has the same stars, William Powell and Myrna Loy; the same style of breezy direction by W.S. Van Dyke; almost as many sparkling lines of dialog and amusing situations; but it hasn't, and probably couldn't have, the same freshness and originality of its predecessor.
  58. Better Man
    [Gracey's] angle is frustratingly familiar, though the execution is downright astonishing — we’re talking Wachowski-level ingenuity as Gracey fashions sophisticated montages where you can’t even spot the cuts.
  59. Superboys of Malegaon
    Although the film, which is based on real events, often tries to cover too much ground, it continually circles back to the idea that people must see themselves reflected in art, not just out of want, but out of deep desire stemming from need, in order to live with dignity.
  60. My Favourite Cake
    What it lacks in edge, the film certainly makes up for in the quality of its performances and watching Farhadpour and Mehrabi mutually glow off each other is a pleasure that it feels almost cruel to have so abruptly denied.
  61. Sinners
    Sinners works more than it doesn’t, even if it doesn’t always gel, but it’s a commanding demonstration of how lavishly spirited and “serious” a popcorn movie can be.
  62. Young Werther
    The biggest single factor in making “Young Werther” an antic, pleasing gambit overall is English actor Booth. He channels a bit of the early Val Kilmer from “Top Secret!” and “Real Genius” in conjuring a hero who’s so nimble and amusing in his peacocking, we forgive him being his own biggest admirer.
  63. Serpent's Path
    Kiyoshi Kurosawa, not unlike Hitchcock, is the kind of tireless genre craftsman who seems to approach every feature as a test of his own proficiency: Serpent’s Path, a brisk, harsh and, yes, clinically professional update of his own 1998 thriller of the same title, passes said test without a moment’s strain.
  64. Flow
    The trouble with Flow is that it already looks dated — commendable to be sure, yet rudimentary at the same time. It’s as if Zilbalodis decided to dump an ocean’s worth of water in the Uncanny Valley. Still, animal-loving viewers will bond almost instantly with the cat and its motley companions.
  65. Monster Summer
    It’s a fun movie that lands on the right side of “innocuous,” being pleasantly formulaic rather than simply bland.
  66. Music by John Williams
    It is not a documentary so much as a fan-friendly tribute, designed to celebrate Williams’ legacy without getting too personal or technical in the process.
  67. The Visitor
    So, is it all just high-concept pornography? Well, yes and no. The majority of the runtime consists of sex scenes, but they are punctuated with slogans which flash onscreen during and after the action, almost like demonstration placards at a march in support of sexual and political liberation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
    The film is a good-enough example of its low-key type, with artwork rather better than usual (less obvious backcloths, etc.), a minimum of artless dialog, good lensing by Arthur Grant and a solid all round cast.
  69. The Teacher
    What the characters can or cannot do in response, and the catharsis they’re prevented from attaining, are both key parts of their story, and of life in the West Bank at large — a reality Nabulsi conveys in stark, realistic hues, despite her first-feature growing pains.
  70. Martha
    It’s a movie that captures how Martha Stewart’s penetration into American culture seems, in hindsight, as inevitable as it was unlikely.
  71. Ash
    The movie’s razor-sharp visuals leave scratch marks on the back of your eyeballs, liable to burst back into your consciousness in subsequent dreams.
  72. Lake George
    This is a story with numerous stinging ironies, albeit one told in a refreshingly nuanced, non-hyperbolic fashion that pays off very nicely indeed.
  73. Triumph
    Original and outlandish if only fitfully funny, the film rests considerably on the deadpan comic stylings of Oscar-nominated star (and producer) Maria Bakalova.
  74. How to Train Your Dragon
    At first, DeBlois’ involvement felt like a way of protecting “Dragon” from some other director coming along and destroying it. But by the end, his vision serves to bring the whole fantastical story one step closer to reality.
  75. Sabbath Queen
    This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism. It’s a painful divide, but one that Sabbath Queen helps keep at least partly in the realm of civil argument.
  76. The Bad Guys 2
    If you let yourself get on that wavelength of frisky innocence, The Bad Guys 2 exerts a wholesome and slightly mischievous appeal.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crossing Delancey
    In an unexpectedly enjoyable way, Crossing Delancey addresses one of the great societal issues of our day - the dilemma of how the 30-ish, attractive, successful, intelligent and unmarried female finds a mate she can be happy with.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Marked Woman
    Marked Woman has no romance to sell. This is a hard-hitting yarn of five girls working for a vice king.
  79. Homestead
    The lead characters are well-cast across the board, with Chase and McDonough especially effective as complex, unpredictable characters whose sporadic conflicts go a long way toward developing a rooting interest in both men.
  80. The Gorge
    It’s an audacious feat to combine multiple genres into one compelling feature, but The Gorge does just that.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    They Drive by Night
    Fast moving and actionful melodrama of long-haul trucking biz, They Drive clicks with plenty of entertainment content.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kid Galahad
    The treatment is sophisticated and production deluxe. Also more than the usual amount of romance for a slugfest
  83. Wish You Were Here
    Director Julia Stiles constructs something fresh. The actor-turned-filmmaker, who co-adapts with Carlino, instills the source material with a clear-eyed sense of emotional authenticity, from its fantastical romanticism to the characters’ delicately-faceted relationship dynamics.
  84. Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare
    You might hesitate to call a film this fixated on child terror, adult perversity and sadistic violence “good,” exactly. But there’s no question director Scott Jeffrey casts a skillfully disturbed spell over a tale that emerges a cross between “It” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
    [Siodmak] delivers a good job of fantastic writing to weave the necessary thriller ingredients into the piece, and finally brings the two legendary characters together for a battle climax.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Key Largo
    A tense film thriller has been developed from Maxwell Anderson's play, Key Largo. Emphasis is on tension in the telling, and effective use of melodramatic mood has been used to point up the suspense.
  87. Riefenstahl
    It’s a portrait that’s really a meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, the question of her guilt. And one of the things it does is to remind you of what a singularly provocative and insidious and mysterious figure she was.
  88. Brave the Dark
    Brave the Dark is a low-key inspirational indie that sensitively elicits empathy and sympathy without ever pushing too hard or simplifying complexities.
  89. Millers in Marriage
    The film dips into the melodramatic as it inches closer to the end and choices have to be made, but if its players are revealed to be starring in a movie, they are also shown to be movie stars, making relatively mundane miseries well worth watching.
  90. Valiant One
    An unpretentious B-movie made with A-grade effort, “Valiant One” packs decent action and mostly sturdy drama into the tale of U.S. soldiers whose mission near the DMZ goes haywire and leaves them stranded in North Korea.
  91. Else
    A tad too heady but quite visually arresting, Emin’s dream-turn-nightmare body horror film is as much a lockdown pandemic fable as it is a philosophical treatise on individuality.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man Returns
    Story and script are workmanlike efforts, with Joe May’s direction holding a steady and suspenseful pace with few dull moments.
  93. The Accountant 2
    The Accountant 2 is an agreeably loopy hyperviolent good time.
  94. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    The musical finds rare shards of light — and an unlikely connection — in the most despairing of places.
  95. Plainclothes
    Plainclothes builds to an intense and ultimately cathartic climax, but there’s something retrograde about the shame Lucas feels. Emmi wants us to experience his protagonist’s sense of suffocation, when looking back from the present, we just want to shout: “It gets better!”
  96. The Wedding Banquet
    The Wedding Banquet slides down easily even if it doesn't leave much aftertaste.
  97. Jimpa
    The acting feels genuine across the board, with Lithgow (who wrestles an impossible-to-geolocate accent) emerging as the most fearless in an all-around daring ensemble.
  98. Brides
    Clearly inspired by cases like that of Shamima Begum, the London teen who traveled in secret to Syria to become an ISIS bride, Nadia Fall‘s debut feature seems on the surface like a hot-button provocation, but it’s surprisingly humane and good-humored in its attempt to understand the individual lives behind a sensational headline issue.
  99. Prime Minister
    As a portrait of struggles in the seat of power, the film presses all the right emotional buttons.
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