Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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  1. The Past
    An indelible tapestry of carefully engineered revelations and deeper human truths.
  2. Pillion
    Laced with a wry sense of humor, Pillion manages to be both understated and explicit in the way Lighton presents practically everything that happens in Colin and Ray’s unconventional relationship.
  3. Black Bag
    Black Bag is a reminder of just how enjoyable Soderbergh can be when he’s riffing on well-worn genre material.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cinderella
    The cartoon, in fact, has far more success in projecting the lower animals than in its central character, Cinderella, who is on the colorless, doll-faced side, as is the Prince Charming.
  5. One Child Nation
    Simultaneously intimate and far-reaching, the film does far more than scratch the surface, forcing audiences to confront a policy that, amid concerns over population growth in other corners of the globe, begs to be better understood before another country seeks to repeat it.
  6. 24 Hour Party People
    A rough, gritty, often scabrously humorous tribute.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Three Caballeros
    It’s a gay, colorful, resplendent conceit. Neatly conceived, it ties in many Pan-American highlights through the medium of irascible Donald Duck, the wiseguy Joe Carioca (first introduced in Saludos Amigos), and a lovable character in Panchito, the little South American boy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Search
    This simple film was made in the American zone of Germany, principally in and around the rubbled remains of Nuremberg. Only four of its actors are professionals, the others having been recruited on the spot.
  9. Identifying Features
    A film that straddles the line between artful and arty like this one isn’t designed for a wide public. There are moments that are striking, even if the their impact is muddied by a minimalism that at times feel pretentious. “Features” is ultimately worth the sit, but it needn’t have required quite so much effort.
  10. Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
    Even though Chatwin is only seen in a handful of snapshots and one brief video snippet, Herzog brings him to vivid life.
  11. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
    Practically all that’s missing is an appearance by Anderson himself, the way Alfred Hitchcock used to present episodes of his television series. Then again, one could say he’s present in every frame.
  12. Atonement
    Rarely has a book sprung so vividly to life, but also worked so enthrallingly in pure movie terms, as with Atonement, Brit helmer Joe Wright’s smart, dazzlingly upholstered adaptation of Ian McEwan’s celebrated 2001 novel.
  13. The Tree of Life
    Result is pure-grade art cinema destined primarily for the delectation of Malick partisans and adventurous arthouse-goers.
  14. Decision to Leave
    After the world-conquering success of Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” and the small-screen domination of “Squid Game,” your new, sublimely accomplished Korean thriller obsession is here, and it is Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave.
  15. Alexandra
    Though he's sure to deny it, Alexandra is Alexander Sokurov's most directly political work for years. Featuring a performance of monumental depth by opera legend Galina Vishnevskaya, pic presents war for what it is: brutal, crushing, and ugly, and yet Sokurov doesn't lens any battles.
  16. Daughters
    The film is rife with visually lyrical moments that connect viewers with the young ones’ sorrows, fears, insights and hopes.
  17. The Fabelmans
    Spielberg’s a born storyteller, and these are arguably his most precious stories.
  18. Naked
    Leigh’s gallery of haves and have-nots, of emotional anorexics and exploited deadbeats, carries a strong political charge that’s there for the taking. But the pic also plays simply as a black, offbeat comedy with a romantic undertow.
  19. 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.
  20. One in a Million
    This long-game project gives remarkable dimension and particularity to the kind of migrant story often only told in journalistic generalities — showing, year on year, how time heals some wounds, opens others, and creates plenty of its own.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    'Round Midnight
    'Round Midnight is a superbly crafted music world drama in which Gallic director Bertrand Tavernier pays a moving dramatic tribute to the great black musicians who lived and performed in Paris in the late 1950s.
  22. The Host
    On almost every level, there's never quite been a monster movie like The Host. Egregiously subverting its own genre while still delivering shocks at a pure genre level, and marbled with straight-faced character humor that constantly throws the viewer off balance.
  23. All Is Forgiven (2007)
    While its succession of emotionally loaded moments never crystallize into a vivid whole, the strong performances and highly effective use of music should put audiences in a forgiving mood.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Grisbi (re-release)
    Jeanne Moreau turns in a neat bit as a moll and Dary as the inarticulate aging Romeo friend is memorable.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Das Boot
    A descent into the pit of hell with slim odds of ever returning.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
    This often hilarious, irreverent and offbeat comedy is the most coherent young Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar has limned thus far.
  27. Restrepo
    But despite its remarkably intimate footage of war and loss, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's documentary suffers from the same problem as the ongoing U.S. drama in Afghanistan: a lack of narrative coherence.
  28. Starless Dreams
    With the conceptual rigor and emotional directness associated with the best of Iranian cinema, Oskouei simply listens to the stories of those who have never been listened to before. Their shattering testimony, elegantly harmonized in a chorus of stolen childhood, has universal appeal.
  29. Sunless Shadows
    It quietly but pointedly interrogates the notion of victimhood, while tacitly letting a damning essay on Iranian gender politics and hierarchies emerge through the words of his subjects.
  30. Beyond Utopia
    What we’ve forgotten about, for too long, is the North Korean people. For years, their misery has existed under a blackout. Beyond Utopia looks behind the wall and shines a light.
  31. Vermiglio
    The remarkable, raw-boned and ravishing Vermiglio takes place in the past but operates like a future family secret playing out in the present tense.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Iron Giant
    Despite its p.c., humanistic overtones, the film manages to integrate the humor and action of a kid’s adventure tale and the message of a political allegory without beingheavy-handed.
  33. Beanpole
    Beanpole is incredibly bleak, but crafted with such care that it’s also deeply compelling. Events so disturbing that you long to look away are presented in images so striking that you cannot.
  34. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
    Neville’s fantastic archival footage reveals the man through his work — or at least, it reveals his philosophies, if not the childhood memories that gave Rogers the ability to understand a four-year-old’s brain, almost as if he still carried his in his cardigan pocket.
  35. Passing Strange
    This first-rate multicamera transcript of a terrific show should delight musical fans (and many who think they aren't) as a niche broadcast item.
  36. Meek's Cutoff
    Working on a richer and more intricate canvas than she's previously attempted, Kelly Reichardt has pulled off a rare thing with Meek's Cutoff -- a low-budget period Western with a bracing feminist spin.
  37. The Long Day Closes
    Strength of Davies’ vision is the crux, and it holds the line to the final, confident fadeout.
  38. Fruitvale Station
    Even if every word of Coogler’s account of the last day in Grant’s life held up under close scrutiny, the film would still ring false in its relentlessly positive portrayal of its subject.
  39. I'm Still Here
    Salles’ deeply invested filmmaking is remarkable in its grace and naturalism.
  40. A Useful Ghost
    A Useful Ghost is an entertaining and moving – if also somewhat sprawling – fable of love and loss that isn’t quite like anything you’ve seen before.
  41. Rachel Getting Married
    Brimming with energy, elan and the unpredictability of his "Something Wild," Jonathan Demme's triumphant Rachel Getting Married may just lay the wedding film to rest, being such a hard act to follow.
  42. The Last Days
    A hard-hitting, well-organized documentary grounded in the stories of five Hungarian Jews who lived through the Holocaust.
  43. Watchers of the Sky
    An impressive and artful cinematic thesis of palpable substance.
  44. Paragraph 175
    The definitive screen chronicle to date of homosexual persecution under the Third Reich.
  45. Long Night's Journey Into Day
    Demonstrates the impossibility of separating the private from the public dimensions of politics, and the pain involved in trying to account for behavior that cannot withstand rational examination.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Rain
    Richard Chamberlain is highly effective as a young lawyer caught up in a case of an aborigine murdered by some others in town.
  47. The Circle
    Both fascinates and horrifies with its bold assertions about what it means to be a woman under a cruel, institutionalized patriarchy.
  48. Since Otar Left
    The film is traditionally and effectively made; it also is superbly acted.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Atlantic City
    Film is blessed with a spare, intriguing script by Yank John Guare, which always skirts impending cliches and predictability by finding unusual facets in his characters and their actions.
  50. The Eternal Memory
    This insistent parallel between individual and national consciousness never culminates in quite the rhetorical kicker Alberdi seems to be seeking, but there’s power in it just the same: a reminder of how our best efforts to keep and curate memories — for ourselves and others — can be thwarted by time.
  51. The Handmaiden
    It’s sybaritic, cruel and luridly mesmerizing.
  52. Served Like a Girl
    Brassily shot, and assembled with no shortage of energy and humor, Served Like a Girl provides a close, emotionally vivid look at the often ignored female experience of the military.
  53. EO
    EO is a damning polemic on our relationship to other intelligent species — as free labor, food and companions — as seen through the dewy, wide eyes of a donkey whom we come to adore.
  54. Slumdog Millionaire
    Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Juliet of the Spirits
    Fellini has put together an imperial-sized fantasy of a physical opulence to make the old Vincente Minnelli Metro musicals look like army training films.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Is King
    Black Is King excels as a celebration of Blackness in its many forms: Black women, Black men, Black children, Black motherhood, Black fatherhood, Black pasts, Black presents, and Black futures.
  57. The Work
    When the participants convulse and cry, the film’s empathetic connection is so direct and so strong, audiences may be driven to weep as well.
  58. A Christmas Tale
    Largely thanks to the snappy editing, short scenes and a strong cast led by a matronly Deveuve and Amalric's enjoyable perf as the black sheep of the family, A Christmas Tale never devolves into a tedious two-and-a-half hours of self-examination. But it also never goes very far, either.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Valentino's Ghost
    The burning topic of Muslim (mis)representation in U.S. media is not well served by Michael Singh’s amateurish and ill-defined docu Valentino’s Ghost.
  60. The Plains
    Skilfully creating an engaging and likable protagonist without fully showing his face until the three-hour running time has all but elapsed, David Easteal’s first feature is a thematically rich and quietly compelling portrait of a man at the crossroads.
  61. Paranoid Park
    Through immaculate use of picture, sound and time, the director adds another panel to his series of pictures about disaffected, disconnected youth.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Giant
    It is also, for the most part, an excellent film which registers strongly on all levels, whether it's in its breathtaking panoramic shots of the dusty Texas plains; the personal, dramatic impact of the story itself, or the resounding message it has to impart.
  63. Out of Sight
    Reveals Soderbergh in peak form, as he endows Leonard’s postmodern yarn with a meticulously detailed mise en scene that helps each member of his terrific ensemble soar.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Brazil
    Chillingly hilarious.
  65. In the Shadow of the Moon
    The excitement, majesty and extraordinary human accomplishment of the American lunar program of the '60s and early '70s is rousingly captured in In the Shadow of the Moon.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get on the Bus
    A vital regeneration of a filmmaker's talent as well as a bracing and often very funny dramatization of urgent sociopolitical themes, Get on the Bus represents Spike Lee's most satisfying work since Do the Right Thing.
  67. 76 Days
    That it’s so artfully and elegantly observed, and packs such a candid wallop of feeling, atop its frontline urgency is testament to the grace and sensitivity of its directorial team, not just their timely savvy.
  68. Shin Ultraman
    Tongue-in-cheek but never campy, Shin Ultraman is an object lesson in how to reboot a superhero franchise for modern times.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Last Waltz
    An outstanding rock documentary.
  70. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    This adaptation, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig (“The Edge of Seventeen”), seems uneasy putting funny, flawed and all-too-realistic Margaret on screen exactly as she is.
  71. The Truffle Hunters
    It’s a complex picture that Dweck and Kershaw navigate with respect, curiosity and a sense of awe, managing to excavate the essence of a tight-knit, lovably atypical commune out of it.
  72. Children of Men
    Picture more than delivers on the action front -- not in bang-for-your-buck spectacle but in the kind of gritty, doculike sequences that haul viewers out of their seats and alongside the main protags.
  73. Judas and the Black Messiah
    The powerful film puts the current moment into fresh historical context and suggests that ambivalence can be its own form of betrayal.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Broadcast News
    Enormously entertaining, Broadcast News is an inside look at the personal and professional lives of three TV journlists.
  75. Revanche
    In what's essentially a six-hander, the casting is aces. All actors turn in fine, naturalistic perfs, but it would be remiss not to remark on 83-year-old Thanheiser's profoundly moving turn as the grandfather.
  76. The Man Without a Past
    Enormously satisfying, superbly crafted.
  77. Husbands and Wives
    This is definitely his edgiest, rawest work in a good while. Acting is of a very high caliber across the board, but Judy Davis, in a very meaty part compared to her previous walk-on for Allen in “Alice,” is incandescent, revealing a whole new side to her personality that has never surfaced onscreen before.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    King & Country
    The story of Private Hamp, a deserter from the battle front in World War I, has already been told on radio, television and the stage, but undeterred by this exposure, director Joseph Losey has attacked the subject with confidence and vigor, and the result is a highly sensitive and emotional drama, enlivened by sterling performances and a sincere screenplay.
  79. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    DiCaprio and Pitt fill out their roles with such rawhide movie-star conviction that we’re happy to settle back and watch Tarantino unfurl this tale in any direction he wants.
  80. After the Storm
    Such is the finesse of Kore-eda’s script that it builds to neither the vehement confrontation nor the comforting reconciliation that melodrama decrees. Instead, it imparts those rare, liberating moments when characters revert to their most honest selves and pluck up the courage to express their deepest, albeit unattainable wishes.
  81. Moonrise Kingdom
    Moonrise Kingdom represents a sort of non-magical Neverland -- that momentous instant when the world can seem so small and a naive crush can feel all-consuming.
  82. The President's Cake
    While The President’s Cake mostly plays like a genial fairy tale, with superbly balanced humor and drama, Hadi's still unsparing about the ills of patriarchal society.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Through a Glass Darkly
    Not a pleasant film, it is a great one.
  84. Calle 54
    Looks and sounds wonderful, and while more information about these giants of African-Latin music might have been welcome, the music's the thing.
  85. Horse Money
    Working about as far as possible from the commercial mainstream of the movie business, Costa has again made a singular docu-fiction hybrid that defies classification as readily as it reimagines the possibilities of cinema for the post-spectacle, post-theatrical era.
  86. Up the Yangtze
    A gloriously cinematic documentay of epic, poetic sadness.
  87. Farewell My Concubine
    A seductively lensed but emotionally uninvolving drama about two male Peking Opera stars and the ex-prostie who comes between them, Chen Kaige's fourth feature, Farewell to My Concubine, reps a stylistic U-turn compared with his earlier abstract parables like Life on a String and Yellow Earth.
  88. 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Hopes
    Leigh builds a slight story intended to be a microcosm of today’s London.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Limelight
    Departing from most forms of Hollywood stereotype, the film has a flavor all its own in the sincere quality of the story anent the onetime great vaudemime and his rescue of a femme ballet student from a suicide attempt and subsequently from great mental depression.
  91. McQueen
    Itself crafted with great artistry and ingenuity, McQueen works both as a spectacular visual album of his work and an achingly moving account of the incomplete life behind it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Black Stallion
    The Black Stallion is a perfect gem.
  93. Earth Mama
    Leaf recognizes that whatever happens to Gia, the problem remains. Her portrait is intended to illuminate, and Nomore makes for a wonderful collaborator in this.
  94. Booksmart
    Not since “Superbad” has a high school comedy so perfectly nailed how exhilarating it feels to act out at that age ... In this year’s class of first-time feature directors, Wilde handily earns the title of Most Likely to Succeed.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wise Blood
    John Huston, with uncluttered direction and expert handling of actors, has fashioned a disturbing tale of the fringe side of overzealous religious preachers in the deep South.
  96. Writing with Fire
    Thomas and Ghosh have found their angle, and it’s a powerful one.
  97. Small Axe: Red, White and Blue
    Yet Red, White and Blue mostly lacks the gritty period flavor of the other Small Axe films. It’s a little glossed over. The (minor) daring of the movie is its downbeat narrative. It’s structured like the air seeping out of a tire, so that it presents us with a character of idealistic strength, commitment, and personal heroism only to plop him into a set of circumstances that won’t allow him to be a hero.
  98. Ascension
    It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of her project, and it’s Kingdon’s work as editor that makes Ascension such a remarkable achievement. She organizes all these disparate scenes into a logical upward progression, and even though we seldom know where we are or who exactly we’re observing, these foreign situations are relatable, engaging and often unforgettable.
  99. Lantana
    A wonderfully acted, acutely observed psychological drama.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Friends of Eddie Coyle
    A very fine film about real people on the fringes of both crime and law enforcement.
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