Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. Morris from America
    This coming-of-age dramedy explores how the challenges of being young, black and misunderstood can be compounded in a foreign environment, but goes about it in a grounded, character-driven way that never smacks of manipulation or special pleading.
  2. Operation Avalanche
    Operation Avalanche demonstrates that there’s still plenty of room left within the found-footage format to craft fresh, high-concept projects, regardless of the fact that no one’s falling for their alleged authenticity any longer.
  3. Southside with You
    Richard Tanne’s writing-directing debut deepens into a pointed, flowing conversation about the many challenges (and varieties) of African-American identity, the need for both idealism and compromise, and the importance of making peace with past disappointments in order to effect meaningful change in the future.
  4. Under the Shadow
    Slyly merging a familiar but effective genre exercise with a grim allegory of female oppression, Babak Anvari’s resourceful writing-directing debut grounds its premise in something at once vaguely political and ineluctably sinister.
  5. Lovesong
    Lovesong makes a virtue of restraint as it traces a complex emotional history in two parts, and innumerable (and sometimes quite literal) shades of gray.
  6. 4th Man Out
    [A] thoroughly ingratiating, touchingly heartfelt comedy.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One False Move
    Working for the most part in straightforward style, director Carl Franklin achieves considerable suspense by pitting the frailties of each party against the other.
  8. Bopha!
    Bopha! is a heartfelt and anguished cry. Though moored in historic/geographic specificity, it is an easily understood and universal tale.
  9. John Wick: Chapter 2
    There’s a quality to the violence here that elevates it above the literal (and reprehensible) nihilism of movies like last year’s “Hardcore Henry,” and instead achieves something more akin to dance.
  10. Fastball
    A film that captures the underlying essence of baseball at the beginning of the 21st century: both humbly wistful and progressively cutting-edge.
  11. The Handmaiden
    It’s sybaritic, cruel and luridly mesmerizing.
  12. Fatima
    This poignant slice-of-life proves as modest in length (78 minutes) as it is generous in rueful insight and emotional complexity.
  13. 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.
  14. Patriots Day
    It’s genuinely exciting megaplex entertainment, informed by extensive research, featuring bona fide movie stars, and staged with equal degrees of professionalism and respect.
  15. Everything Is Copy
    Anything but a morose tale of a bright light snuffed out far too soon, Bernstein’s documentary is an inspiring heartstring-tugger.
  16. Don't Think Twice
    Portraying a cutthroat business in which little is “fair,” Don’t Think Twice acknowledges the bloodshed, but applies the razor with enough empathetic delicacy to earn its cautiously upbeat fade.
  17. The Birth of Saké
    A richly immersive documentary that plays like an elegy for a time-honored but slowly vanishing way of life.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Batman Returns
    Burton has once again managed to pursue his quirky personal concerns in the context of broadly commercial entertainment, although the idiosyncracies of the villains clearly interest him far more than the programmable heroics of the title character and the related mandatory action sequences.
  19. As I Open My Eyes
    Sharply yet subtly capturing the atmosphere of fear fostered by the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, this skillfully made drama is especially attuned to the myriad forms of surveillance, from the prurient to the political.
  20. Last Cab to Darwin
    It’s not so much the destination but the physical and emotional journey embarked on in this thoughtful, culturally authentic road trip.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Only Angels Have Wings
    In Only Angels Have Wings, Howard Hawks had a story to tell and he has done it inspiringly well.
  22. Time to Choose
    Time to Choose may come off, at moments, like the “Koyaanisqatsi” of environmental devastation, but it is also a dreadfully beautiful achievement. It shows us what the building blocks of climate change look like.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Richard III
    Spirited acting, machine-gun pacing and ominous Art Deco settings combine to rousing effect in this Richard III, a sure-fire crowd-pleaser among recent Shakespeare movies.
  24. How He Fell in Love
    Mature and moving in its navigation of convoluted, conflicting desires, it’s an indie as assured in its silences as it is in its speeches.
  25. Jia Zhangke, A guy from Fenyang
    An intelligent, restrained but warmly intimate cinematic conversation with the Sixth Generation Chinese trailblazer.
  26. Tikkun
    Austere but fascinating.
  27. The Innocents
    Hope and horror are commingled to quietly moving effect in Agnus Dei, a restrained but cumulatively powerful French-Polish drama about the various crises of faith that emerge when a house of God is ravaged by war.
  28. Under the Gun
    It’s not necessarily artful, but it’s also never less than compelling. If anything, Soechtig has only refined her skills at packaging a slick, audience-friendly documentary with a subject that feels even more urgent.
  29. Almost Holy
    Hoover’s style seems equally fit for a bleak documentary, suspenseful thriller, black comedy, dystopian sci-fi nightmare and grisly horror film.
  30. Kaili Blues
    Led by performances imbued with barely concealed sorrow, regret and longing to come to terms with that which has been lost, Kaili Blues affords a view of people, and a nation, caught in between a haunting yesterday and — as implied by the film’s conclusion — a hopeful tomorrow.
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