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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sands of Iwo Jima
    It's loaded with the commercial ingredients of blazing action, scope and spectacle, but it falls short of greatness because of its sentimental core and its superficial commentary on the war.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    An Officer and a Gentleman
    An Officer and a Gentleman deserves a 21-gun salute, maybe 42. Rarely does a film come along with so many finely-drawn characters to care about.
  3. It's Not Yet Dark
    Not a film for cynics, It’s Not Yet Dark at times risks overplaying its heart-on-sleeve emotions, as Fitzmaurice also hazards in his writing. But both subject and execution here summon the skill, as well as sincerity, required to overcome skepticism.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's Always Fair Weather
    As well as spoofing television, It's Always Fair Weather also takes on advertising agencies and TV commercials, and what emerges is a delightful musical satire.
  5. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
    Crams a wealth of material into 90 minutes without losing clarity or momentum.
  6. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    The largely elliptical script feels a few drafts shy of focus, with the thriller elements undermining the juicier questions of why one joins a cult and how life can go back to normal later.
  7. José
    Cheng delivers a mood that is unquestionably human and, at times, unexpectedly hallowed (as when Jose stares down the worn face in a Mayan ruin). José brings to light the promise of a director as compassionate as he is observant.
  8. The Settlers
    The real achievement here is in going beyond the buzzwords of newscasts and talking points to convey a sense of what’s happening on the ground — and to give it a sense of urgency.
  9. La Belle Époque
    In the end, the story’s custom reenactment gimmick may not even have been necessary, so well-written and executed is the personal journey that underlies it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Flying Leathernecks
    Actual color footage of battle action in the Pacific has been smartly blended with studio shots to strike a note of realism.
  11. Dina
    The connection they share isn’t the kind that would pass for conventionally romantic, and yet, theirs is a compelling love story all the same — one the filmmakers follow with open minds, focusing on the lead-up to and days immediately following their wedding.
  12. The Retrieval
    Equal parts suspenseful road movie, persuasively detailed period drama and emotionally resonant coming-of-age story, The Retrieval is an outstanding example of regional indie filmmaking accomplished with limited resources and an abundance of skill.
  13. The Trip to Italy
    Now and then, Winterbottom nudges the movie in the direction of narrative... But even when it’s just ambling about, The Trip to Italy casts a warm, enveloping spell.
  14. Sauvage / Wild
    There are fleeting moments of wit, bliss and even tenderness amid the gritty severity, as Vidal-Naquet perceptively portrays not just the lonely, drug-fueled rigors of the hustler lifestyle, but the simultaneously competitive and supportive fraternal community that sustains it.
  15. Pacifiction
    Pacifiction is a film in many ways about floating, through life and water and power, inviting the viewer to idly drift right along with it.
  16. My Dead Friend Zoe
    Hausmann-Stokes’ message is simple, and his movie is a perfect place to start: Take an interest in our veterans.
  17. The Flower of My Secret
    Far from abandoning his trademark humor, however, the writer-director skillfully enlists it in the service of an emotional story, charting the heroine's journey from loss and torment to rediscovered strength and hope. Propelled by stellar performances and a script that resonates with intelligence, subtlety and surprises, this is by far Almodovar's best film in years.
  18. Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
    Matt Wolf directs “Recorder” with a lot of lively skill. He presents the eccentricity of Marion Stokes’ personality with supreme sympathetic understanding, or maybe you could say a bit more romanticism than it deserves.
  19. Lovely & Amazing
    Engaging, intermittently insightful but too glib to wring full value out of its subject matter.
  20. Knafayim Shvurot
    This poignant film about an Israeli family rendered dysfunctional by the sudden death of the husband and father is a strongly emotional experience despite its tendency toward cryptic dramatics.
  21. MC5*: A True Testimonial
    Draws on extensive archival materials to etch an absorbing portrait of a singular counterculture mini-phenom that will be manna to music fans.
  22. Joy Ride
    Hot-wired, white-knuckle thriller.
  23. Lambert & Stamp
    As much as the movie rocks, Lambert & Stamp drops the needle to reveal the deep pain barely hidden in the grooves.
  24. Stan & Ollie
    The film’s confidence falters only when it transposes the hapless slapstick of the duo’s screen act to their everyday reality. If a couple of labored gags around hauling luggage don’t fully land, that rather proves how much more art went into Laurel and Hardy’s craft than they ever chose to let on.
  25. Undine
    There’s a stylistic and narrative elegance to Petzold’s approach, with its clean lensing and repeated use of a single piece of music (the rolling piano Adagio from Bach’s Concerto in D Minor, BWV 974), that suggests restraint, where a queer filmmaker might have propelled things into camp territory. In a way, it’s a shame that Undine stops short, since the material feels thin, and the statement as murky as the lake to which the camera ultimately returns.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Risky Business
    Risky Business is like a promising first novel, with all the pros and cons that come with that territory.
  27. Charlie's Country
    Charlie is the vessel through which de Heer navigates these turbulent waters, and the script was developed during sessions when the actor would throw out ideas and the director would structure the results. It is to both men’s credit that amid the suffering, there’s a ray of hope for Charlie in the end.
  28. Under the Tree
    It has the escalating, claustrophobic structure of the darkest farce, but humor doesn’t pile up in Under the Tree so much as it bleeds out.
  29. Attack the Block
    Brit comedian-TV presenter Joe Cornish emerges fully formed as an exciting new writer-helmer with his enormously appealing debut feature, Attack the Block.
  30. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
    Taylor’s voice is singular in its expressiveness — she is insolent, mournful, sexy, outraged, dripping with debauched delight, and always casually candid. Her words invest even the most familiar events with a revealing intimacy.
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