Variety's Scores

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For 17,777 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: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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  1. The Report
    Burns, by trusting the audience, has created a darkly authentic political thriller that does exactly what a movie like this one should do. It leaves you chastened and inspired.
  2. The Souvenir
    Achingly well-observed in its study of a young artist inspired, derailed and finally strengthened by a toxic relationship, it is at once the coming-of-age story of many women and a specific creative manifesto for one of modern British cinema’s most singular writer-directors.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    My Fair Lady
    It has riches of story, humor, acting and production values far beyond the average big picture. It is Hollywood at its best.
  4. For Sama
    Simple in concept and shattering in execution, blending hard-headed reportage with unguarded personal testimony, it’s you-are-there cinema of the most literal order.
  5. Saint Frances
    Turns out there are a lot of things that have gone unsaid in movies until now, and Saint Frances goes there in a way that’s not only enlightening, but entertaining as well. This exceptionally frank, refreshingly nonjudgmental indie was written by and stars Kelly O’Sullivan, a “girl next door” type whose no-nonsense approach to issues facing both her gender and her generation leaves ample room for laughter — à la Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck.”
  6. The Burial Of Kojo
    Though the film deals in tragedy, its sheer cinematic exuberance is immensely hopeful. As too, is the story of how one of the most exciting directorial debuts in recent memory was picked up by Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing and planted in a few theaters before blossoming on Netflix.
  7. Carmine Street Guitars
    Carmine Street Guitars is a one-of-a-kind documentary that exudes a gentle, homespun magic.
  8. The Third Wife
    This is the rare debut that derives its freshness not from inexperience but from a balance between compassion and restraint that most filmmakers take decades to achieve.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An American in Paris
    One of the most imaginative musical confections turned out by Hollywood in years...Kelly is the picture’s top star and rates every inch of his billing. His diversified dancing is great as ever and his thesping is standout. But he reveals new talents in this one with his choreography.
  10. Soul
    It all blends together beautifully, a marriage of Pixar’s square, safe, feel-good sensibility with what could be described as the “real world” — and one that, much as “Inside Out” anthropomorphized the mind, will leave audiences young and old imagining their own souls as glowing idiosyncratic cartoon characters.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    A harrowing, gruesome, morbid tale of war, so compelling in its realism, bigness and repulsiveness that Universal’s Western Front becomes at once a money picture.
  12. Uncut Gems
    Uncut Gems feels like being locked inside the pinwheeling brain of a lunatic for more than two hours — and guess what: It’s a gas!
  13. Better Days
    In Derek Kwok Cheung Tsang’s gripping, superbly performed melodrama — a deeply moving if occasionally overwrought exposé of bullying in the acutely competitive academic pressure cooker of a Chinese high school — it’s hard to imagine she can be nostalgic for her own school days.
  14. Marriage Story
    At once funny, scalding, and stirring, built around two bravura performances of incredible sharpness and humanity, it’s the work of a major film artist, one who shows that he can capture life in all its emotional detail and complexity — and, in the process, make a piercing statement about how our society now works.
  15. True History of the Kelly Gang
    Lithe and volatile and recklessly stylized to the hilt, True History of the Kelly Gang has moves like Jagger, but a head still teeming with language and history.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Killer
    This extremely violent and superbly made actioner demonstrates the tight grasp that director John Woo has on the crime meller genre, and his ability to twist the form into surprisingly satisfying shapes. The picture creeps up on an audience. Melodramatic from the start, it finally goes over the top to deliver a solid emotional punch.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Package
    Smartly written, sharply played and directed at a cracking pace that never sacrifices clarity for speed, The Package is an enormously satisfying political thriller.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Jazz Singer
    Undoubtedly the best thing Vitaphone has ever put on the screen.
  19. I Lost My Body
    I’d hazard to say it’s one of the most original and creative animated features I’ve ever seen: macabre, of course — how could it be otherwise, given the premise? — but remarkably captivating and unexpectedly poetic in the process.
  20. First Cow
    Reichardt specializes in pared-down narratives, sometimes stripping away so much that boredom sets in. First Cow may be lean, but it offers ample room to ruminate in the comparison between its two time periods.
  21. Waves
    Propelled by color, energy, electronic music and a quartet of career-making performances, here is that rare sort of cinematic achievement that innovates at every turn, while teaching audiences how to make intuitive sense of the way it pushes the medium.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Don't Look Now
    Superior stuff...The performances are right on the button; Donald Sutherland is (unusually) at his most subdued, top effectiveness as the materialist who ironically becomes the victim of his refusal to believe in the intangible; Julie Christie does her best work in ages as his wife; while a superbly-chosen cast of British and Italian supporting players etch a number of indelibly vivid portraits.
  23. Cunningham
    Kovgan’s ode to choreography master Merce Cunningham is sensational in every sense of the word. Renewing one’s appreciation of the many wonders of the human body and the space in which it fills and drifts, Cunningham celebrates all the things our joints and flexed muscles are capable of, as seen through the mind and poetic dances of an iconic creator.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rashomon
    Unveiled at the Venice film fest [in August 1951], this caused a flurry in critical circles for its brilliance of conception, technique, acting and its theme of passion.
  25. Rocks
    The film wants to prove that hope isn’t fools gold. And when it does, Rocks glows.
  26. The French Dispatch
    In the past, the director has been accused of making overly contrived dollhouse movies, and while he repeats many of his favorite tricks — toying with aspect ratios, centering characters in symmetric compositions, revealing a large building in intricate cross-section — this time it feels as if there’s a full world teeming beyond the carefully controlled edges of the frame.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    James and the Giant Peach
    All in all, James and the Giant Peach is an extraordinary achievement.
  28. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
    At once dreamlike and ruthlessly naturalistic, steadily composed yet shot through with roiling currents of anxiety, Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a quietly devastating gem.
  29. The Vast of Night
    Patterson trusts that chemistry will compensate for a gentle thriller that chooses to impress with ingenuity and charm instead of special effects.
  30. State Funeral
    Both as film and as history, State Funeral stands as a canonical work.
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