Variety's Scores

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For 17,825 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: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
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  1. A Perfect Day
    By the end, thanks to Leon de Aranoa’s steady direction and the actors’ slow-building character work, “A Perfect Day” manages to coalesce into a reasonably tough-minded, compassionate vision of the difficulties and rewards of trying to do the right thing in an intractable situation, though the film has to overcome more than a few flat, indolent stretches to get there.
  2. Cool Runnings
    Director Jon Turteltaub has a fresh, uncluttered approach to the story that allows its natural warmth and humor to dominate. The classic underdog script provides a positive minority perspective without the usual downside, self-conscious righteousness.
  3. Mr. Nice
    Mildly amusing but overly discursive.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    State of Grace
    State of Grace is a handsomely produced, mostly riveting, but ultimately overlong and overindulgent gangster picture.
  5. Guys and Balls
    A by-the-numbers ensemble dramedy that hits every underdog and gay-fish-out-of-water cliche on the nose.
  6. In Paris
    Inside Paris is that rarity, a genuinely honest, unpretentious and delightful, small film, alternately sober and effervescent, steering clear of either heavy-going philosophizing or dreaded whimsy.
  7. Christopher Robin
    The movie basically ingratiates itself with kids by scolding adults for losing track of what’s important, and yet, both in the 1930s and today, a responsible father doesn’t really have the option of quitting his job.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Day of the Dead
    Day of the Dead is an unsatisfying part three in George A. Romero's zombie saga. The acting here is generally unimpressive and in the case of Sarah's romantic partner, Miguel (Antonio DiLeo, Jr.), unintentionally risible.
    • Variety
  9. Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
    The quiet humanity of McCarthy’s filmmaking meshes oddly with the material’s zanier demands, finally reaching an anodyne middle ground.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Total Recall
    The fierce and unrelenting pace, accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek strain of humor in the roughhouse screenplay, keeps the film moving like a juggernaut.
  11. The Concert
    The story regurgitates the usual trappings of underdog tales, milking stereotypes as well as tear ducts.
  12. Wonder Woman 1984
    For nearly two hours of its 151-minute runtime, Wonder Woman 1984 accomplishes what we look to Hollywood tentpoles to do: It whisks us away from our worries, erasing them with pure escapism.
  13. Battle in Heaven
    Both intensely exciting for its cinematic inventions and terribly uninvolving on emotional and dramatic levels.
  14. Body of War
    By documenting the difficult life of their paraplegic subject, helmers Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue succeed in personalizing some of the war's grim statistics, but the purview of their portrait feels too limited for the pic to play widely.
  15. Ophelia
    The best part of Ridley’s performance is her plodding, heavy-footed walk that reminds us this well-groomed lady is still a stubborn child underneath her fancy dress. She has a blank, open face that absorbs the court’s machinations and reflects little back until she decides to act insane.
  16. The American Meme
    The American Meme is a film I very much recommend, since it’s both highly entertaining and an essential snapshot of the voyeuristic parasitic American fishbowl.
  17. The Short History of the Long Road
    There is enough substance here to propel The Short History of the Long Road forward through its minor bends and speed-bumps. Most of all, it is Carpenter’s restrained performance and air of wisdom, permeating the screen with an astutely soulful quality that’s tough to turn away from.
  18. The Heat
    Breaking it down, The Heat has been engineered to deliver the laughs, and the result certainly does, despite coming alarmingly near to botching the procedural elements along the way.
  19. Bad Times at the El Royale
    At two hours and 21 minutes, this 1969-set period thriller is taxingly slow and almost oppressively self-indulgent, constantly backtracking and replaying already-drawn-out scenes from multiple perspectives.
  20. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy.
  21. Red Doors
    A lightly feminist, good-naturedly comic sketch of a Chinese-American family in crisis. But despite pic's earnestness and obvious good intentions, narrative elements, carefully set forth though they may be, fall back on overfamiliar, underdeveloped tropes.
  22. Machete
    Wildly uneven as it doggedly strives (sometimes with obvious strain) to sustain a free-wheeling, anything-goes air of exuberant junkiness.
  23. The Choral
    Art counts for a lot more than patriotism to Guthrie, and the happy surprise of Nicholas Hytner‘s film — despite its twee, veddy English trappings — is that it largely takes his side.
  24. In Her Shoes
    While the director's avid fans may be disappointed, upscalish mainstream auds, particularly women, will eat up this well-acted, emotionally focused adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's popular novel.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Visit
    The top-notch cast never hits a false note.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Under solen
    A celebration of traditional, detailed filmmaking.
  27. The Governess
    Minnie Driver gets a showy workout in The Governess, a beautifully crafted, if ultimately opaque, study of art, sensuality and outsider status in early Victorian England.
  28. Tomorrowland
    The glaring failure of Tomorrowland is that its central premise — children are the future — is almost completely negated by the preachiness of the execution and the clumsiness of the storytelling.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Point Break
    A hare-brained wild ride through big surf and bad vibes, Point Break acts like a huge, nasty wave, picking up viewers for a few major thrills but ultimately grinding them into the sand via overkill and absurdity.
  30. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
    If only the music and lyrics were more memorable, then “Jeannette” might have delivered on its potential. But Dumont has a stiff, fixed-camera style that deprives the story of its transcendence.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Days of Thunder
    This expensive genre film about stock car racing has many of the elements that made the same team's Top Gun a blockbuster, but the producers recruited scripter Robert Towne to make more out of the story than junk food.
  32. Love Is All You Need
    Corny as a vat of polenta, but still rib-sticking enough to satisfy those who like lightly seasoned, easily digestible cinematic starch, Italy-set Love Is All You Need offers a romantic comedy for middle-aged palettes.
  33. L'iceberg
    A brave but doomed attempt to revive the art of pure physical comedy, the willfully eccentric, practically dialogue-free, Iceberg sets itself a high standard with an opening 15 minutes of the most delicious slapstick, but thereafter only a few moments of gentle surrealism and the occasional poetic image justify the ride, with only 10% of the pic's potential laughs evident above the surface.
  34. The Offering
    The Offering does move along at a brisk clip, so it’s at no risk of being boring even as its potential to terrify dissipates. But it ends up illustrating the virtue of “less is more,” particularly when attempting a serious occult horror story
  35. Three Thousand Years of Longing
    These days, audiences are so savvy about the tricks at a filmmaker’s disposal that the movie’s greatest achievement is that it seizes our imagination (or perhaps that’s our attention deficit disorder being so brusquely manhandled) and holds it for the better part of two hours, defying us to anticipate what comes next.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scanners
    Scanners offers at least one literally eye-popping moment and another that can only be called mind-blowing.
  37. Protocols of Zion
    Entertaining and substantial enough to attract at least a portion of the Michael Moore audience.
  38. Dark Night
    With a title easily confused for Christopher Nolan’s 2012 Batman sequel...Tim Sutton’s Dark Night is at once a glib play on words and a sobering rumination on the mindset of a suburban America simultaneously obsessed with and plagued by gun violence.
  39. Jumbo
    Eventually, Jumbo clatters to a stop with a tinny cheer for acceptance, a sugar rush of Belgian new wave music, and the sense that the audience has been taken for a bit of a ride.
  40. Over the Moon
    Sometimes it’s OK for an adventure to be just an adventure, and this one gets in the way of its own assets, while pointing to the potential of future journeys from the Netflix animation team.
  41. At Middleton
    Adam Rodgers’ debut feature is a painless enough diversion, but novel ideas and humor beyond mild chuckles are in scant supply.
  42. The Last Sentence
    This biographical drama, shot in crisp black-and-white, offers a potentially intriguing study in high-minded political/moral obstinacy, but feels too claustrophobic — and, finally, tediously like a one-man window on great events — to fully come to dramatic life.
  43. Anything
    Though the film’s heart is in the right place, writer Timothy McNeil’s directorial debut (an adaptation of his play) hits so many familiar notes that it undercuts its compassionate lead performances, in the process rendering it merely a superficial tale of unlikely amour.
  44. White Wedding
    A highly engaging picture with a post-apartheid edge (certain scenes play like a farcical "Invictus").
  45. Sea Fever
    It’s a conventional buildup-to-process-of-cast-elimination suspenser that’s unfortunately low on actual suspense, let alone thrills or narrative invention.
  46. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    For all its failings, there is one thing about “Long Walk to Freedom” that can’t be denied: Idris Elba gives a towering performance, a Mandela for the ages.
  47. Brothers at War
    Provides some interesting perspectives but also veers dangerously close to vanity project.
  48. Fred Won't Move Out
    Irregularly spiked with some droll sitcom-style humor, this thoughtful but exceedingly modest miniature will be best nursed within the festival circuit.
  49. Orphan
    There’s much horror here, and much beauty, but little meaningful tension between the two.
  50. Saw X
    The torture set pieces in the “Saw” films are lavish gifts of baroque horror presented to the audience. They are, quite simply, the reason we came. Tobin Bell, with his stare of pitiless wisdom, is also a draw, but “Saw X” raises the issue of how much of John Kramer’s hand-wringing is too much. In the eyes of a lot of “Saw” fans, hand-wringing < hands cut off with mechanized garden shears.
  51. Kompromat
    Focusing on the moment-to-moment thrills proves more satisfying than wondering what actually sparked this intrigue.
  52. The Other Half
    What might have seemed pro forma on paper...overcomes its occasionally studied stylistic tics to become a troubled, anguished love story that neither exaggerates nor soft-pedals the demons on display.
  53. RED
    Only a curmudgeon could entirely resist the laid-back charms of Red, an amusing, light-footed caper about a team of aging CIA veterans rudely forced out of retirement.
  54. Citadel
    Writer-director Ciaran Foy skillfully taps into primal fears and urban paranoia to keep his audience consistently unsettled in Citadel, an intensely suspenseful horror-thriller.
  55. Goosebumps
    The ADD overload combined with an understandably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one’s ever in real danger, and the monsters are never too scary) results in a disposable product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to resonate with no one.
  56. An Officer and a Spy
    An Officer and a Spy has a this-happened-and-then-this-happened quality. And that’s why the movie, beneath the two-dimensional jauntiness of its acting and the period vividness of its sets and costumes, feels more dutiful than riveting.
  57. 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.
  58. Rules Don't Apply
    Beatty tries hard to re-create the look and feel of late-’50s Hollywood as it existed both on-screen and off, aided by DP Caleb Deschanel and terrific costume and set contributions. And yet, it actually comes off too conservative for its own time, with stiff performances from Collins and Ehrenreich.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Interview with the Assassin
    Satisfying picture that like a pot of water on the stove keeps heating up until it explodes.
  60. Otomo
    Not a cheerful watch: It's a shocking portrayal of rampant racism.
  61. Spartan
    A work that continually seems on the verge of genuine excitement but sabotages itself at every turn...results will intrigue only those interested in the nooks and crannies of Mamet's career.
  62. The Debut
    A pleasant and polished first feature for director Gene Cajayon.
  63. Gangster No. 1
    Often nastily violent, and defiantly foul-mouthed in a realistic but dramatically unnecessary way, this portrait of a ruthless young hood in '60s London has several fine qualities but dilutes them with disorganized direction.
  64. Happy Accidents
    A lighthearted yarn designed to stand out by virtue of its intricate structure and trippy time-travel element. But the fanciful material wears thin pretty quickly, the air leaking out of the balloon long before party's over.
  65. Cellular
    Because plot is the sum total here, the alarming holes, inconsistencies and impossibilities in Chris Morgan's script corrode this drama of distress.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Never Been Kissed
    A likable romantic comedy with an engaging premise and strong cast.
  67. Brassed Off
    This well-played, often very sparky dramedy about the shenanigans in a northern brass band composed of miners threatened with pit closure gets a bad attack of social realism in the latter stages that rocks the crowded craft.
  68. Conventioneers
    Filmmakers' own left-leaning sympathies are occasionally felt around the margins, but Conventioneers achievement lies in its honoring the sincerity and passion on both sides.
  69. Behind the Burly Q
    The women's outspoken commentaries prove consistently colorful and their long-ago stripteases -- feathers flying, tassels spinning -- still pack a sensual, sassy, what-the-hell punch.
  70. Max Manus
    This engaging second feature from "Bandidas" duo Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning combines artistic ambition and commercial appeal with a well-paced action-adventure approach.
  71. Happy, Happy
    Picture ultimately pulls off a fairly ambitious narrative agenda with a wrap both credible and crowdpleasing.
  72. RA. One
    Much of the film is marked by a sense of dead air, owing to the fact that there's not a lot of story, but nevertheless, per Bollywood conventions, a lot of time to fill.
  73. The Other F Word
    The Other F Word is a raucous, eye-opening, sad and unexpectedly wise look at veteran punk rockers as they adapt to the challenges of fatherhood.
  74. Mateo
    It’s easy to see what drew filmmaker Aaron I. Naar to his eponymous subject in Mateo, but it’s almost impossible to share his enthusiasm or even feel much sympathy for a figure who, for a good chunk of this sluggish yet disconcerting documentary, comes across as a genuinely creepy person.
  75. The Violators
    This study of adolescent desire and alienation across class lines takes its time nurturing a tensely ambiguous relationship between its two young female leads — alertly played by newcomers Lauren McQueen and Brogan Ellis — only to squander a measure of that intrigue on a blunt third-act twist.
  76. Sacred
    It is entirely well intentioned. But the fair-mindedness of Lennon’s approach also contributes to a sense, ironically enough, of godlike detachment from the slivers of life and faith the film comprises.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Blues Brothers
    If Universal had made it 35 years earlier, The Blues Brothers might have been called Abbott & Costello in Soul Town. Level of inspiration is about the same now as then, the humor as basic, the enjoyment as fleeting. But at $30 million, this is a whole new ball-game.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Andromeda Strain
    The Andromeda Strain is a high-budget science-fact melodrama, marked by superb production, an excellent score, and intriguing story premise and an exciting conclusion. But Nelson Gidding's adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel is too literal and talky.
    • Variety
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Make Mine Music
    Make Mine music is a 75-minute Walt Disney treat. You can call it a big short which, technically, is just what it is - 10 items pieced together in one 'musical fantasy' as it is billed - but it entertains all the way.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cat Ballou
    Middlingly successful, sparked by an amusing way-out approach and some sparkling performances.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Escape to Witch Mountain
    Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann are happy choices as the orphans.
  82. Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story
    What begins as seemingly another lurid Netflix true-crime excavation emerges as a considerably more affecting testament to the damage wrought by generation upon generation of sexual abuse.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Coffy
    Jack Hill, who wrote and directs with an action-atuned hand, inserts plenty of realism in footage in which Pam Grier in title role ably acquits herself.
  84. Caveat
    Mc Carthy serves up a generically foreboding premise and pulls off several efficiently traditional jump scares in this variation on a haunted-house formula, but it’s the shape-shifting mind games of his own narrative that most unnerve the viewer, as seemingly fixed plot points of who is under threat — and when, and why, and so on — keep darting out of sight.
  85. Justice
    Justice re-equips the anti-Kavanaugh side by pulling a more streamlined narrative from the blizzard of detail that threatened observers at the time with snow-blindness.
  86. Between Two Worlds
    The movie provides some nice, memorable bonding moments between Marianne and her subjects, including Cédric (nonactor Dominique Pupin), a decent if slightly pathetic middle-aged man also looking for work. But its portrayal of cleaning women ultimately feels flat, and it’s not clear whether watching Binoche scrub a few toilets is meant to dignify/humanize those stuck doing such chores, or to underscore the lengths to which she’ll go as an actor.
  87. Analyze This
    The gradual dilution of fresh humor is further undercut by a queasy sense that the picture, in the end, is quietly endorsing all the psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo that it has been poking fun at all along.
  88. Mrs. Hyde
    Half enjoyable, half frustrating.
  89. They Came Together
    A lively comic jamboree that’s sometimes smarter than it is funny and hits about as often as it misses, but is, on balance, a good deal of fun.
  90. Bad Tales
    Drowning in style but shallow in substance.
  91. The Music Never Stopped
    The novel premise and otherwise nuanced performances are enough to hold attention.
  92. Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to be Free
    While trying to save her from being considered as merely an inspiration to the great men around her, the script inadvertently reinforces this impression.
  93. To the Stars
    To the Stars needn’t have taken itself so seriously, but the fact that it ultimately does is exactly what turns it from a potentially charming, bittersweet fable to a pretentiously overblown yet undercooked Amerindie soap opera.
  94. Moving On
    Tomlin’s terrific in this mode. The script is as bland as the “cardboard” they serve in her rest-home cafeteria, but she manages to inject it with vinegar and attitude, while embracing the realities of aging.
  95. Isn't It Romantic
    While there’s virtually no risk that “Isn’t It Romantic” will make you to love your favorite rom-coms any less, Strauss-Schulson hasn’t figured out how to have his cake and eat it, too — to look down on the very confection he’s so busy peddling.
  96. Red Dragon
    Audiences will be excused for any feelings of d&#233;j&#224; vu the new film might inspire. That won't prevent them from watching it in rapt, anxious silence, however, as the gruesome crimes, twisted psychology and deterministic dread that lie at the heart of Harris' work are laid out with care and skill.
  97. The Beaver
    The troubled actor delivers a performance very few could pull off as a depressed father who begins communicating through a hand puppet, but Foster doesn't know how to manage it or navigate the script's seismic tonal shifts, and ends up producing a film that's deeply strange, yet incapable of leaving an impression.
  98. Time and Tide
    An almost plotless effort that features charismatic stars and plentiful scenes of finely choreographed mayhem.
  99. Calendar Girls
    Though the film is never dull, and playing by the cast is spirited, it's actually a surprisingly gentle movie, with no big "Full Monty"-like finale to send auds buzzing into the street.
  100. Gray's Anatomy
    Removing a live audience from the equation, Soderbergh becomes a bold participant in the storytelling. The backdrop keeps changing, from a brick wall to drapes, windows and assorted landscapes. The lighting is in constant flux, often punctuating the text on cue.
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