Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. The Marriage
    It is a relevant, relatable and rewarding snapshot of how a society grows crookedly around its unresolved secrets, in the same way that a marriage can.
  2. Mr. Fish: Cartooning from the Deep End
    Brisk and ingratiating, with some brief animated sequences adding color, this is an easy watch despite the frequently incendiary nature of its subject’s barbed images.
  3. Clara's Ghost
    Clara’s Ghost is determinedly quirky, but its ideas are seldom all that original or funny, too often degenerating into rote scatological humor. Nonetheless, there’s a formative creative sensibility that seems on the verge of defining itself — something that never quite happens before the film ends, its anecdotal story having drifted nowhere in particular.
  4. The Mercy
    Directed with even-keeled intelligence by James Marsh, and buoyed by a performance of customary reserve and resolve from Colin Firth, The Mercy tells its story...about as well as it can be told. Yet there’s no denying it’s a muted, disconsolate affair, one that by necessity shrinks before viewers’ eyes into something less rousing and noble than what they were initially promised.
  5. The Long Dumb Road
    Instead of slapstick laughs, The Long Dumb Road pays attention to how these two opposites connect.
  6. Infinite Football
    [Ginghină's] endlessly evolving ideas for revolutionizing football are not a blueprint for a real-world solution at all. Instead they represent that intensely relatable and human place inside, where any of us, however small our lives and crushed our ambitions, can be limitless, unhobbled by injury, unfettered by ordinariness, unbounded by physics: infinite.
  7. Bodied
    Pummeling, overlong, and at times a bit too proud of its own provocations, Bodied is nonetheless a feverishly entertaining spectacle, and Kahn’s willingness to put every liberal piety on the Summer Jam screen proves intoxicating.
  8. The Price of Free
    The film’s edge, if not its worthiness, is slightly dulled by an over-slick approach that in the end makes it feel less like reportage than a first-class fundraising video.
  9. Dovlatov
    It’s easy to simply be mesmerized by German’s exceptional talent for stage blocking and camera movements, yet while there’s much here to appreciate, the film lacks the power of “Under Electric Clouds” despite being his most emotionally approachable work to date.
  10. Wildlife
    Dano, it’s immediately clear, is a natural-born filmmaker, with an eye for elegant spare compositions that refrain from being too showy; they rarely get in the way of the story he’s telling. The tale itself is resonant and absorbing, though in a highly deliberate way.
  11. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
    Hosking has a vision, and more often that not, it works.
  12. The Guilty
    Gustav Möller’s short, taut debut feature never leaves the claustrophobic confines of the call center, but builds a vivid aural suspense narrative through the receiver, all while incrementally unboxing the visible protagonist’s own frail mental state.
  13. The Kindergarten Teacher
    Colangelo (whose underrated 2014 first feature “Little Accidents” was about the aftermath of a fatal mining accident) has created a consistently interesting if slow-moving drama that works very well as a showcase for its lead performer.
  14. The Happy Prince
    As a final, permanent showcase for a role Everett was born to play, then, The Happy Prince does the job. For all its passion-project hallmarks, however, it makes a shakier case for him being the filmmaker to bring it to screen.
  15. Private Life
    It’s witty and moving but a touch repetitive, and it goes on for too long. That said, Jenkins has made the most intimate comedy imaginable about the fertility blues. Private Life hits some delicate nerves, and heals a few of them too.
  16. Loving Pablo
    Long, loud and lurid, with a distinct whiff of week-old quesito colombiano, Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s pulpy Pablo Escobar biopic promises an alternative spin on familiar material by taking the perspective of the drug kingpin’s glamorous journalist lover Virginia Vallejo. Yet she turns out to be as stock a presence as anyone else in this blood-spattered chunk of cartoon history.
  17. Monsters and Men
    Mixing “gritty” handheld camerawork with an almost zen-like kind of restraint, Green’s approach is frustratingly thin on the kind of specifics that make for rich drama, leaving audiences to fill in the gaps.
  18. Colette
    Less stuffy literary biopic than ever-relevant female-empowerment saga, Colette ranks as one of the great roles for which Keira Knightley will be remembered.
  19. Assassination Nation
    Levinson’s battling more villains than any script can take on, and by the end, his sharp jabs bleed into a gory finale that settles for cathartic cheers.
  20. The Children Act
    The Children Act is that rarest of things: an adult drama, written and interpreted with a sensitivity to mature human concerns.
  21. Lizzie
    It’s a simple story made to rouse modern hearts, and the performances and cinematography are so good, the film nearly pulls off the trick.
  22. I Think We're Alone Now
    Once I Think We’re Alone Now establishes that Grace and Del represent love versus stability, the film doesn’t have a convincing way to reconcile the two.
  23. Mandy
    Mandy has so many enjoyably whacked-out elements, it comes as an actual surprise that Barry Manilow’s titular 1974 No. 1 hit is not among them.
  24. Museo
    Ruizpalacios spins an irresistibly inventive and unusually intelligent tall tale from this kernel of truth. All the mischief, however, is precisely counterbalanced by a deep affection for his funny, flawed (largely fictional) characters and shot through with a surprisingly biting assessment of the compromised nature of the museum trade.
  25. Searching
    Cutting to the emotional core of what social media says about us, the result is as much a time capsule of our relationship to (and reliance upon) modern technology as it is a cutting-edge digital thriller.
  26. Juliet, Naked
    It’s a winsome screwball love story that grows on you and takes you somewhere charming.
  27. A Prayer Before Dawn
    At once exhausting and astonishing, this no-holds-barred adaptation of British junkie-turned-pugilist Billy Moore’s Thai prison memoir is a big, bleeding feat of extreme cinema, given elevating human dimension by rising star Joe Cole’s ferociously physical lead performance.
  28. Skate Kitchen
    Skate Kitchen has plenty to say about the lengths to which young women must go to clear out a little breathing room in testosterone-heavy spaces, but it is first and foremost an irresistible hangout movie.
  29. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
    The best part of “Miseducation” is the diverse group of adolescents sharing Cameron’s experience.
  30. Night Comes On
    Night Comes On is, true to its title, blanketed in a dim, crepuscular state of waiting. Fishback, her film career unfurling clearly before her from scene to scene, blazes a way out of it.
  31. Nico, 1988
    Dyrholm’s performance is a powerhouse of authenticity. Her moroseness is mesmerizing, but she also gives Nico a tense intelligence, and her singing is uncanny.
  32. Puzzle
    We should be grateful that it exists, if only because it affords a long-overdue leading role to Kelly Macdonald.
  33. Euthanizer
    The script’s more grotesque aspects integrate well enough into a portrait of everyday life among the least-reputable citizens of a grime-flavored community...while the film’s grungy aesthetic likewise keeps the bizarre story feeling at least somewhat grounded.
  34. The Third Murder
    Compelling enough while you’re watching it, frustrating then forgettable once it ends, this is a work that wouldn’t command much attention if it came from any other director. Coming from this one, it mostly intrigues as an unexpected if not terribly rewarding change of pace.
  35. Blindspotting
    In a stroke of combined wisdom and humility, rather than pretending to have the answers, Casal and Diggs are content to pose the questions, relying on their considerable wit and comedic charm to present such tricky topics in refreshingly engaging fashion.
  36. Eighth Grade
    Eighth Grade shines as, like, a totally spot-on, you know, portrait of Millennial angst and stuff. That may be how Kayla (and all her peers) talk...but Burnham shows a sociolinguist’s ear for the cadence and flow of 21st-century girl-speak, and Fisher...delivers his dialogue so naturally, you’d swear she’s making it up as she goes along.
  37. Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind
    Zenovich, the director of “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” offers just what you want from a documentary like this one: She brings us closer to events that have been covered many times, deepening — or overturning — what we think we know about them.
  38. Sorry to Bother You
    Paradoxically, the more ridiculous Riley’s gonzo social critique gets, the more boring it becomes, to the point that its out-of-control second half starts to feel like some kind of bad trip.
  39. Custody
    Legrand’s achievement — his integrity, one might say — is that he’s managed to cut to the marrow of the situation while remaining keenly sensitive to how such things play out in the real world.
  40. Leave No Trace
    There’s a listless, almost meandering nature to the story. The film’s conflict is clear — this is no way to raise a child, and allowed to continue in this fashion, Will risks both his life and Tom’s — and yet there’s no sense of where the script it headed, and no urgency to its resolution.
  41. Dark River
    Dark River isn’t quite as bracing or as unexpected as the director’s previous work.... Still, there’s scarcely room here for improvement at the level of craft or performance; in particular, it’s gratifying to see leading lady Ruth Wilson headlining a big-screen vehicle worthy of her flinty brilliance.
  42. Damsel
    Damsel is a comedy of attitude made with the indulgent touch of an art Western. That’s a refreshingly original thing, though it’s not as blow-you-away cool as the filmmakers seem to think it is.
  43. The Catcher Was a Spy
    There’s a curious lack of credibility and urgency in this big-screen adaptation, the kind of respectable near-miss that can happen when worthy talent apply themselves to a project they’re just not ideally suited for.
  44. A Skin So Soft
    Côté assures them a humanity as well, without trying to analyze their obsession with this extravagant concept of masculinity, nor the need for self-display.
  45. Hereditary
    Ari Aster directs slowly, meditatively, purging the film of any of the usual horror-video razzmatazz. Instead, he creates scary coherent spaces for the audience to sink into.
  46. Hearts Beat Loud
    Clemons has been a luminous presence who could bloom into a great grown-up actress. Hearts Beat Loud proves she’s the real deal. As for the film around her, Haley’s 21-drum solo salute to the passage of time is, like Frank, merely fine. But he admirably keeps his characters’ victories small and their losses familiar, making his movie a ballad everyone can hum to.
  47. Nancy
    Instead of exploring her actions, and the people they affect, Nancy‘s restraint keeps the film closed-off and grim, as muddy gray as the life she’s aching to ditch.
  48. American Animals
    This is unabashedly virtuoso, show-off filmmaking, as cocky as the misguided young men at the film’s center, who, at least for a period, saw their lives as a Hollywood romp in itself.
  49. The Tale
    Both a natural extension of Fox’s career to date and a complete about-face, The Tale marks her first narrative feature, but only because traditional documentary wouldn’t do justice to this messy, meandering investigation into her traumatic first sexual experience, for the incidents it depicts are true, “at least as far I know.”
  50. Mary Shelley
    Impressively shot and suffused with a righteous feminist fire, the film is undercut by a confused and clunky script and a fundamental lack of thematic focus, turning an extraordinary story into didactic and disjointed melodrama.
  51. First Reformed
    In First Reformed, Paul Schrader courts respectability and leaves it in the dust, getting stoned on excess. But make no mistake: He’s still one hell of a filmmaker.
  52. On Chesil Beach
    It’s a lyrical and rapturous film — a repressed passion play, funny, delicate and heartbreaking.
  53. Angels Wear White
    Engaging female dynamics result in strong, convincing performances, especially as their relations eschew platitudes on sisterhood or exploitative images of victimization.
  54. Mrs. Hyde
    Half enjoyable, half frustrating.
  55. Disobedience
    None of these three characters are tidy, but neither is desire, nor faith, nor love, and Lelio resists every opportunity to make them so.
  56. Borg vs. McEnroe
    When the big tennis finale arrives, Metz finds all sorts of ways to make the match interesting, blending urgent music, creative camera vantages and ridiculously hyperbolic announcer commentary to generate the desired tension. But the real reason we’re invested is far simpler than that: Metz and his cast have made us care about both Borg and McEnroe by this point.
  57. Zama
    The frustrating nine-year wait for new material from Martel has done nothing to blunt her exquisite, inventive command of sound and image, nor her knack for subtly violent exposure of social and racial prejudice on the upper rungs of the class ladder.
  58. Lean on Pete
    It’s frustrating to watch, but designed in such a way that the boy’s loneliness will haunt long afterward.
  59. Love After Love
    Bolstered by superb lead turns from Chris O’Dowd and Andie MacDowell, as well as a formal structure that enhances the roiling emotions propelling its characters into a downward spiral, Love After Love is an assured debut feature that announces its writer-director as a formidable new American indie voice
  60. The Last Movie Star
    Despite a few good moments, this well-intentioned seriocomedy mostly wobbles between crude yocks, lame generation-gap humor and sentimental cliche.
  61. The Death of Stalin
    Though sporadically brilliant, this too-often uneven send-up of Russian politics attempts to maintain the rapid-fire, semi-improvisational style of Iannucci’s earlier work...while situating such madness within an elaborately costumed and production-designed period milieu.
  62. Itzhak
    Good music and good company make “Itzhak” a pleasure, though those seeking a methodical career overview should look elsewhere than this genial personality sketch of the world-famous violinist.
  63. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
    Wilkerson doesn’t mean to suggest ambiguity with his title, since no one questions the identity of the culprit, but it is regrettably indicative of his naval-gazing focus on family skeletons, combined with a deeply annoying tendency to sensationalize the obvious.
  64. Mom and Dad
    Though sure to be distasteful for some viewers even to ponder, this giddy exercise transcends mere bad-taste humor to become one of the great jet-black comedies about suburbia.
  65. The Insult
    Toward the end, Doueiri attempts to give his two leads a little more nuance, but Tony’s overwhelming anger steamrolls over occasional conciliatory behavior, which winds up feeling just manipulative.
  66. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
    Over-production-designed as the film is, Bening and Bell manage to hold their own within it.
  67. Hostiles
    Though it basically argues that the surest way to overcome racism is to spend some time getting to know “the other,” Cooper’s film offers audiences no such opportunity, depriving its native characters of so much as a single scene in which they are treated as anything more than abstract plot devices in service of the white folks’ enlightenment.
  68. Foxtrot
    Brilliantly constructed with a visual audacity that serves the subject rather than the other way around, this is award-winning filmmaking on a fearless level.
  69. I, Tonya
    It’s a serious blast, with a plot that zigs and zags (but only because it sticks, within reason, to the facts), and a cast of characters who are so eccentrically scuzzy that maybe no one could have dreamed them up.
  70. Give Me Future
    Somewhere buried beneath Peters’ new-day-rising clichés and superficial celebration of electronica stars, there’s an intriguing documentary about Cuba’s transformation struggling to break free.
  71. My Friend Dahmer
    As you watch the movie, its central idea — that Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t just born, he was made; that he started off as an actual human being — has a shocking validity that never undercuts the extremity of his crimes.
  72. Brawl in Cell Block 99
    It’s the rare movie that truly evokes the grindhouse ’70s, because it means everything it’s doing. It’s exploitation made with vicious sincerity.
  73. Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous
    The main problem with “Hong Kong Trilogy” is that it over-promises and under-delivers.
  74. England Is Mine
    England Is Mine is fussy and prudish — about erotic longing, and about the rock ‘n’ roll that gives form to it.
  75. The Small Town (Kasaba)
    A remarkable first feature from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, The Town is a strikingly original, vibrantly sensitive look at an extended family living in a remote Turkish village.
  76. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
    A partly smart, mostly dumb addition to the teen horror sweepstakes -- smart in how it neatly catches the petty, hurtful, sexy and druggy aspects of high school life, dumb in how it makes absolutely no sense once its resolution is known.
  77. Rhino Season
    Burdened with a complex flashback structure and an unemotional core, this multi-decade saga of an imprisoned Iranian poet and his family has surprisingly little resonance.
  78. The Wild Hunt
    Those wearing black finger-polish are bound to appreciate it, but first-time feature director Alexandre Franchi deserves mainstream cred for his own cheeky role-play.
  79. 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.
  80. Down Terrace
    Cleverly channeling gangster tropes through a British kitchen-sink soap opera, TV scribe-helmer Ben Wheatley has concocted a nifty black comedy, with a little help from his friends, in Down Terrace.
  81. Jackass 3-D
    A joyous, liberated approach to comedy, a genuine sense of the grotesque and pacing so relentless that even the less-than-uproarious bits don't overstay their welcome.
  82. Carlos
    Bravura narrative filmmaking on a hugely ambitious scale, Carlos is a spectacular achievement.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Samson and Delilah
    An engrossing and touching snapshot of an Australia too often left on the cutting-room floor.
  84. The Four-Faced Liar
    It's more likely to serve as a calling card than a breakthrough for any of the parties involved.
  85. Secretariat
    Conventional but rousingly effective picture.
  86. I Spit on Your Grave
    Its straight-ahead rape, humiliation and ingenious revenge competently executed but not aestheticized, the essential grunginess never overly slicked up.
  87. It's Kind of a Funny Story
    The filmmakers fully retain their offbeat sensibility and attentiveness to character while providing perhaps the sharpest showcase yet for Zach Galifianakis' outsized talents.
  88. Life as We Know It
    It's a predictable date-night diversion.
  89. Nowhere Boy
    A respectable but surprisingly conventional feature-debut effort from Brit artist-turned-helmer Sam Taylor-Wood.
  90. My Soul to Take
    This dumb, derivative teen slasher movie would be uninspiring coming from any writer-director, let alone one with several genre classics under his belt.
  91. It's a Wonderful Afterlife
    It's a Wonderful Afterlife is a movie to make Frank Capra roll over in his grave from indigestion.
  92. Inside Job
    Charles Ferguson's sophomore film Inside Job is the definitive screen investigation of the global economic crisis, providing hard evidence of flagrant amorality -- and of a new nonfiction master at work.
  93. Letters to Father Jaakob
    The director's magisterial control over the proceedings makes something fresh and heartrending out of predictable material, particularly for older, thoughtful audiences.
  94. Marwencol
    Hogancamp is a complex character, and Marwencol introduces the man in layers, creating an incomplete yet sympathetic portrait specialty audiences and hipsters can agree on.
  95. As Good as Dead
    A muddled script, spatially confounding direction and four thesps seemingly acting in four different movies are only a few of the problems with the misbegotten political thriller As Good as Dead.
  96. Case 39
    This ludicrous outing from helmer Christian Alvart ("Pandorum") and scribe Ray Wright ("The Crazies") takes its psycho-satanic babble much too seriously, and should elicit more laughs than frights.
  97. Chain Letter
    Yields few surprises, compensating with de rigueur false scares, unmemorable deaths and the kind of improbably exaggerated gore.
  98. The Social Network
    Continues Fincher's fascinating transition from genre filmmaker extraordinaire to indelible chronicler of our times.
  99. Let Me In
    "Cloverfield" director Matt Reeves hasn't ruined the elegant Swedish vampire story by remaking it. If anything, he's made some improvements, including the addition of a tense action-horror sequence in the middle of the film.
  100. Freakonomics
    This frisky adaptation of the Steven Levitt-Stephen Dubner bestseller on human behavior by the numbers adds up to a revelatory trip into complex, innovative ideas and altered perspectives on how people think.
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