Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Get Me Roger Stone
    When you watch Get Me Roger Stone, the lively, fun, sickening, and essential new documentary, you realize that Atwater and Rove may have excelled at what they did, but there was — and is — only one king.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cul-de-sac
    As a study in kinky insanity, Cul-de-Sac creates a tingling atmosphere. This sags riskily at times when the director unturns the screws and does not keep control of his frequently introduced comedy.
  3. The Wolf of Wall Street
    A big, unruly bacchanal of a movie that huffs and puffs and nearly blows its own house down, but holds together by sheer virtue of its furious filmmaking energy and a Leonardo DiCaprio star turn so electric it could wake the dead.
  4. Zombi Child
    The film can feel worked-over and schematic, as if Bonello was too preoccupied with serving the thesis to trust his peerless intuition.
  5. Terror's Advocate
    Sure to inspire debate in France and Germany and of obvious interest to anyone who follows the roots of modern international terrorism, doc probes gray areas in the colorful life of its controversial, limelight-courting subject.
  6. Nothing Lasts Forever
    Kohn has created the rare documentary that transforms the way we understand the world, questioning so many of our core beliefs, including the very notion of what is “real.” Through it all, diamonds won’t lose one iota of their sparkle, but you’ll never look at them the same way again.
  7. I don't feel at home in this world anymore.
    It’s the perfect role for Lynskey, who’s wise enough to underplay her character, which allows audiences to pour their own fears and frustrations into everything Ruth represents. And what emerges is a stalwart actress’s best work yet, delivered by an exciting new director to watch.
  8. Sweet Land
    Intelligently written, brilliantly cast and thesped story of a German mail order bride in a Norwegian-American community in Minnesota just after WWI never hits a wrong note.
  9. One Cut, One Life
    Unlike more generally philosophical, life-affirming autobiographical docus about dying, “One Cut, One Life” rehashes old problems and tries to resolve multiple unresolved issues already exposed in previous films, proving as exasperating as it is weirdly compelling.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    House of Usher
    In patronizingly romanticizing Poe's venerable prose, scenarist Richard Matheson has managed to preserve enough of the original's haunting flavor and spirit. The elaborations change the personalities of the three central characters, but not recklessly so.
  11. The Two Popes
    While its subject may be religious, The Two Popes doesn’t want to convert the viewer. Rather, as an extraordinary piece of writing — and an even more impressive showcase for its actors — it eloquently communicates the importance of giving people something to believe in.
  12. Mala Mala
    Beginning as a colorful documentary about the Puerto Rican transgender community, candidly showcasing nine very different subjects, Mala Mala slowly morphs into a celebration of solidarity and collective activism without ever losing sight of its likable protagonists.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Landlord
    Beau Bridges heads the uniformly excellent cast as a bored rich youth who buys a black ghetto apartment building and learns something about life.
  14. Notturno
    It is problematic that many of the film’s most powerful segments are its most prurient, and even more, that they are juxtaposed with the poetic and the prosaic.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Misery
    Casting of Caan is effective, as his snide remarks and grumpy attittude are backed up by a physical dimension that makes believable his inevitable fighting back. Bates had a field day with her role, creating a quirky, memorable object of hate.
    • Variety
  16. In Between Days
    Revealing without being especially compelling, In Between Days offers a bleak, rigorously naturalistic portrait of an Asian-American teenager's physical and emotional dislocation.
  17. Win Win
    A disappointing domestic comedy in which all but the audience get what they want.
  18. Clean
    Dramatically pallid and unconvincing. Despite being written for her, the director's "Irma Vep" muse Maggie Cheung seems oddly miscast here and is ill-served by an emotionally underpowered screenplay that rarely gets beneath the surface of the character's problems.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Cry in the Dark
    One of the oddest and most illogical murder cases of modern times is recounted in intimate, incredible detail in the classy, disturbing drama A Cry in the Dark [from John Bryson's Book Evil Angels].
  20. David Lynch: The Art Life
    Nominally focused on the celebrated filmmaker’s lesser-known dabblings in fine art, The Art Life emerges as a more expansive study of Lynch’s creative impulses and preoccupations, as he relates first-hand the formative experiences that spurred and shaped a most unusual imagination.
  21. Clouds of May
    Though it moves more slowly than the tortoise prominently featured in one sequence, Clouds of May is the kind of film that creeps up on the patient viewer.
  22. Stamped from the Beginning
    It lulls the audience into thinking it’s only providing historical context. Yet by the end, it reveals the myths, the distortions and the made-up fallacies that have been presented as truth for centuries. And that is the most radical thing it could have done.
  23. Heaven Knows What
    Holmes may not have the polished technique of a formally trained actress, but she has an innate capacity for drama, and whether or not she can go on to play roles further removed from her own experience, she’s electrifying in this one.
  24. The Son of Joseph
    No one behaves quite like a human being in Eugene Green’s Le Fils de Joseph, yet a soulful sense of humanity emerges from their heightened declamations anyway.
  25. Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie
    Fans of the Grammy-winning musician will revel in the proximity to their idol, though second pic from talented helmer Thomas Riedelsheimer plays a tad long to those unfamiliar with his, or her, work.
  26. Jing Ke ci Qin Wang
    A string of striking set pieces hung on a dramatically shaky clothesline.
  27. The Cider House Rules
    A touching, old-fashioned charmer that ultimately satisfies.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tumbleweeds
    Has what it takes to becomes the year's first heartfelt sleeper.
  29. Girl on the Bridge
    The gleefully assured tale of a professional knife-thrower who finds a quirky new target... hits the bull's-eye.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Metropolitan
    Metropolitan succeeds on several levels, offering rich, sparkling dialog, distinct characters and an intriguing peek into a seldom seen milieu.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »