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. A Bigger Splash
    For Guadagnino, it’s not the characters’ fates that matter so much as their dynamics, which Kajganich and the director manipulate with the sort of take-no-prisoners attitude typically reserved for theater, pushing the entire ensemble to their full potential.
  2. My Sunshine
    Some films prioritize a strident political cause, others set out to terrify or thrill. This touching and simple story from Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Okuyama, premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, is a gentler affair, with modest ambitions that it realizes effectively.
  3. Tabloid
    Errol Morris' Tabloid is bonkers in all the best possible ways -- a welcome return to perverse portraiture after a lengthy sojourn in the realm of more serious-minded subjects.
  4. The Kid Detective
    Both entertainingly old-fashioned and defiantly fresh.
  5. Very Semi-Serious
    A delightful if never particularly deep survey of an American comic institution.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    The usual Marx madhouse and plenty of laughs sprouting from a plot structure resembling one of those California bungalows which spring up over night.
  7. What Maisie Knew
    Anchored by five strong performances, including a piercing turn by Onata Aprile in the 6-year-old title role, this beautifully observed drama essentially strikes the same sad note for 98 minutes, though with enough sensitivity and emotional variation to make the experience cumulatively heartrending rather than merely aggravating.
  8. Children of the Sea
    This wide-eyed loner may be “just” an anime character, but she’s as relatable as any live-action teenager you might meet on screen this year, thanks to the splendid attention to detail and seemingly boundless imagination that characterizes Children of the Sea, director Ayumu Watanabe’s stunning adaptation of the prize-winning manga by Daisuke Igarashi.
  9. The Women's Balcony
    Offering solid, middle-brow entertainment that borrows from Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” the film shows the relationships and tensions between different groups within Orthodox Judaism in Jerusalem, and provides a cautionary (and universally understandable) tale about religious fundamentalism.
  10. Augustine
    Anchored by two intense, intertwined perfs by veteran Vincent Lindon and relative newcomer Soko, a musician who also composed the pic’s growling, atmospheric score, this period drama offers a coolly febrile study of madness, Victorian sexual politics and power.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Key Largo
    A tense film thriller has been developed from Maxwell Anderson's play, Key Largo. Emphasis is on tension in the telling, and effective use of melodramatic mood has been used to point up the suspense.
  12. Janis: Little Girl Blue
    Berg’s film is no stylistic innovator itself, but it’s the satisfying feature-length overview that Joplin’s brief, fiercely brilliant career has long merited.
  13. Frankenweenie
    This beautifully designed canine-resurrection saga feels, somewhat fittingly, stitched together from stray narrative parts, but nonetheless evinces a level of discipline and artistic coherence missing from the director's recent live-action efforts.
  14. Divine Intervention
    Always imaginative, often arresting, but sometimes just too clever by half.
  15. Black Hawk Down
    Goes down like stiff medicine, leaving one feeling exhausted relief when it's finally over.
  16. The Wise Kids
    An unusual example of what can be termed a "gay Christian" film, Cone's feature is among the best of a recent spate of dramas observing American Christian life.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For a Few Dollars More
    A hard-hitting western with upper-case values out of the busy Italo stable, this is a topnotch action entry.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Radio Days
    Although lacking the bite and depth of his best work, Radio Days is one of Woody Allen's most purely entertaining pictures. It's a visual monolog of bits and pieces from the glory days of radio and the people who were tuned in.
  19. Beans
    Beans is a thoughtful, stirring reflection by someone who survived it all, quietly demanding acknowledgement not just of her land, but of her life.
  20. Strawberry Mansion
    Even as their film stretches its flights of fancy past breaking point, there are pleasures to be taken from the blithe, handmade execution of its vision, throwing everything in the pot from creaky animal puppetry to 8-bit effects.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Woman of the Year
    Picture runs 112 minutes and frequently seems every moment of that. Tracy and Hepburn go a long way toward pulling the chestnut out of the fire.
  22. Alam
    This intelligent, sensitive treatment of the rarely seen, everyday lives of young Palestinian citizens of Israel marks tyro feature writer-director Firas Khoury as a talent to watch.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
    The film is a good-enough example of its low-key type, with artwork rather better than usual (less obvious backcloths, etc.), a minimum of artless dialog, good lensing by Arthur Grant and a solid all round cast.
  24. Romería
    Simón’s sweetly sorrowful ode to lost family imagines what might have been, while acknowledging that not all memories can be passed down between generations — some die deliciously with us.
  25. 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.
  26. Rize
    Eye-popping lensing and an appreciation of social complexities combine for an entirely satisfying experience.
  27. Bottoms
    Bottoms is unlike any high-school comedy you’ve ever seen. It’s a satire of victimization, a satire of violence, and a satire of itself. It walks a tightrope between sensitivity and insanity (with a knowing bit of inanity), and it’s full of moments that are defiantly what we once used to call incorrect.
  28. Wild
    While Wild will surely be praised in the coming months for having a strong, well-written, flesh-and-blood female at its center, it’s to the film’s credit that it wears this badge of honor with a lightness that in no way undermines its sincerity.
  29. The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile
    There are remarkably few serious hiccups along the way in achieving the career reclamation Carlile envisions for Tucker at the start. But any heightened sense of drama isn’t really necessary when it comes to the pleasures of spending time with two such strong musical personalities in what amounts to a documentary two-hander, fully justifying tagging the younger artist’s name onto the film’s title as an awkward but fitting addendum.
  30. Beastie Boys Story
    Beastie Boys Story is less seamless, but more personal, than a classic documentary. Horovitz and Diamond are infectious company, and the film does a meticulous job of presenting the evolution of Adam Yauch, who was always on the edge of technology (it was his idea to tape-loop “When the Levee Breaks”), as well as postmodern pranksterism.
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