Variety's Scores

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For 17,807 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: 9,148 out of 17807
  2. Mixed: 7,022 out of 17807
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17807
17807 movie reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love and Other Catastrophes
    Boosted by a terrific ensemble of five engaging young thesps, pic is forthright, frank and freewheeling in its approach to sex, love and cinema.
  2. Shirkers
    Shirkers isn’t about Cardona, but about Tan reclaiming the film and the story that he had taken away from her. Her energized, rough-hewn documentary style doesn’t seem that far removed from her lost debut, but she and her friends have enough perspective to look back at that period in their lives with touching fondness and good humor.
  3. The Guilty
    Gustav Möller’s short, taut debut feature never leaves the claustrophobic confines of the call center, but builds a vivid aural suspense narrative through the receiver, all while incrementally unboxing the visible protagonist’s own frail mental state.
  4. Mandy
    Mandy has so many enjoyably whacked-out elements, it comes as an actual surprise that Barry Manilow’s titular 1974 No. 1 hit is not among them.
  5. Burden
    Hedlund’s humble, hard-to-love performance makes the aptly named Burden work as both a portrait of one weak-minded man, and as a study of the ideas people carry without questioning why.
  6. Seeing Allred
    As the cases against Cosby, Trump, O’Reilly, Weinstein, etc. reveal, the courts don’t appear to be equipped to correct a gender-biased system, whereas Allred has pioneered a new way of fighting injustice.
  7. Mohawk
    [Geoghegan] allows his film’s message about intolerance and oppression to emanate naturally from the action, thereby letting the proceedings gradually transform into a revisionist fantasy of defiance, expulsion and vengeance.
  8. Blaze
    Blaze, which leaps around in time, telling Blaze Foley’s story by zeroing in on a handful of disparate moments, is beautifully made. It’s an organic slice of life — raw and untidy, deceptively aimless but always exploratory.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    King Kong
    Highly imaginative and super-goofy yarn.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
    Albert is one of the ugliest characters ever brought to the screen. Ignorant, over-bearing and violent, it’s a gloriously rich performance by Gambon.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Running on Empty
    A complex, turbulent tale told with admirable simplicity. Film successfully operates on several levels – as study of the primacy of the family unit, an anguished teen romance, a coming-of-age story and a look at what happened to some political radicals a generation later.
  12. Outside In
    Outside In feels eventful, even somewhat suspenseful, as we worry that being around so many screwups of one sort or another might endanger Chris’ still-fragile freedom.
  13. Angels Wear White
    Engaging female dynamics result in strong, convincing performances, especially as their relations eschew platitudes on sisterhood or exploitative images of victimization.
  14. Where Is Kyra?
    The emotional range of Pfeiffer’s riveting performance isn’t a broad one, though this frequently nonverbal film is entirely reliant on her cutting powers of expression as she progresses from harrowed to exhausted and back, at risk of disappearing into herself entirely.
  15. Sadie
    Equal parts coming-of-age story and slow-burn thriller, writer-director Megan Griffiths’ quietly absorbing and methodically disquieting drama is a genuine rarity: a sympathetic portrait of a budding sociopath.
  16. Roxanne Roxanne
    It’s a vivid and unusually honest drama about the pain and bravado that were the fuel of hip-hop.
  17. Daughter of Mine
    Even when it trips up in its later stages, Daughter of Mine is a noble rarity, passionately involved in the exploration of oppositional ideas of motherhood not just as an abstract concept, but as a real and vivid, painfully sacrificial thing.
  18. The Prayer
    Agnostically observant in its approach to spiritual matters, but more devout in its quiet celebration of human compassion, this film’s most complicated lines of inquiry largely play out on the young, unformed face of its protagonist Thomas — impressively played by breakthrough star Anthony Bajon.
  19. Dark River
    Dark River isn’t quite as bracing or as unexpected as the director’s previous work.... Still, there’s scarcely room here for improvement at the level of craft or performance; in particular, it’s gratifying to see leading lady Ruth Wilson headlining a big-screen vehicle worthy of her flinty brilliance.
  20. Six Degrees of Separation
    Six Degrees is magical when addressing the preposterous. Like any good storyteller, Paul is deft at knitting eyes with wool. Smith proves himself an extremely charismatic presence, convincing in his sincerity and cunning in conveying his ability as a human sponge.
  21. Liyana
    It’s a simple but stirring tale, lent character by the boys’ endearingly eager telling and atmospheric texture by Coker’s inspired visual interpretation.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stakeout
    StakeOut is a slick, sure-footed entertainment, one part buddy comedy and one part police actioner stitched together with a dash of romance.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bad Boys
    Bad Boys is a troubling and often riveting drama about juvenile delinquency. Director Rick Rosenthal does a topnotch job of bringing to life the seedy, hopeless environment of a jail for juvenile offenders and has gotten some terribly convincing performances from his young cast, notably topliner Sean Penn.
  24. The Endless
    Moorhead and Benson may not be movie-star charismatic in the lead roles, but the bond between them is palpable, delivering just the dynamic the movie needs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Night Shift
    Though the plotline hardly sounds like a family film, this is probably the most sanitized treatment of pimps and prostitution audiences will ever see. None of this much matters, because director Ron Howard and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, all TV veterans, are only bent on giving the audience a good time.
    • Variety
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Last Starfighter
    With The Last Starfighter, director Nick Castle and writer Jonathan Betuel have done something so simple it's almost awe-inspiring: they've taken a very human story and accented it with sci-fi special effects, rather than the other way around.
  27. Down in the Delta
    Poet Maya Angelou's debut feature directing effort is a solid and affecting piece of work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mask
    Based on a true story, Mask is alive with the rhythms and textures of a unique life. Both in the background and foreground, Mask draws a vivid picture of life among a particular type of lower middle class Southern California whites. Much of the credit for keeping the film from tripping over must go to the cast, especially Stoltz, who, with only his eyes visible behind an elaborate makeup job, brings a lively, life-affirming personality to his role without a trace of self-pity.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Darlings
    In his feature debut, director Ronald F. Maxwell isn’t perfect. But he gets several fine scenes from his performers, especially when O’Neal deals with her love interest, when NcNichol deals with her love interest, and best of all, when O’Neal and McNichol finally level with each other.
  30. Whitney
    Macdonald’s multi-faceted portrait of Houston allows us to touch the intertwined forces that did her in.
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