Variety's Scores

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For 17,805 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 17805
  2. Mixed: 7,020 out of 17805
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17805
17805 movie reviews
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  1. The Golden Dream
    Though it takes some work to engage with the characters at first, the journey makes a powerful impact.
  2. Sweat
    With her eerily flawless image and pathological narcissism, it would be all too easy to make Sylwia a monstrous figure of fun — yet the more circumstances turn against her, the more nuance and moral curiosity von Horn and Koleśnik find beneath her hyper-contoured surface.
  3. Starlet
    Though named after a party girl's pet Chihuahua, Starlet could just as easily describe the two exceptional first-timers making their debuts in this brittle, beautifully understated San Fernando Valley character study.
  4. Eastern Boys
    Campillo’s original screenplay demands any number of trusting leaps from its audience and characters alike, yet maintains credibility thanks to the studied assurance of its most elaborate setpieces, and the wealth of socioeconomic detail in its portrayal of both Daniel’s aging-yuppie lifestyle and the nervous group dynamic of the immigrants.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Silent Partner
    The Silent Partner is one of the films that run the gamut from intrigue to violence.
  6. My Kid Could Paint That
    The popular human-interest story of a child prodigy becomes an engrossing meditation on truth, media exploitation and the value of art in My Kid Could Paint That.
  7. Two Lovers
    This very New York tale is old-fashioned in good ways that have to do with solid storytelling, craftsmanship and emotional acuity.
  8. 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.
  9. Power Ballad
    What makes Power Ballad a terrific film is how much we believe this story.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wag the Dog
    Glib cynicism isn't a tremendously appealing quality, but in Wag the Dog it at least has the benefit of comic precision and polished handling.
  11. Cosmos
    Zulawski maintains such expert control of the film’s look and tone that there can be no question that each choice has been deliberate, whatever the significance.
  12. Kill
    The movie hardly ever turns its gaze out the windows, but the scenery never gets old, since Bhat has a head for creative close-quarters combat.
  13. Sin City
    For geeks, action freaks and sensation-seeking teenage boys of all ages, the price of admission will provide a one-way ticket to hard-boiled heaven.
  14. Old Dog
    A spare but stealthily powerful tale.
  15. Land and Shade
    While mirthless in the extreme, Cesar Acevedo’s deliberately paced and distant-feeling debut works its way under audiences’ skin, weaving a haunting allegory through painterly compositions.
  16. tick, tick...Boom!
    What’s refreshing about the debuting director’s approach is that it feels relatively egoless. His style is playful and energetic, often intercutting between multiple threads within a given song or scene, but it doesn’t feel as if Miranda is calling attention to himself so much as trying to open up the show.
  17. My Country, My Country
    Gotham-based documaker Laura Poitras ("Flag Wars") comes up with a still-timely, quietly hard-hitting look at the Iraqi situation with My Country, My Country, focusing on the lead-up to and outcome of the Jan. 30, 2005, Iraq election.
  18. She Said
    Following the template of “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight,” She Said is a tense, fraught, and absorbing movie, one that sticks intriguingly close to the nuts and bolts of what reporters do.
  19. Creep
    A slow-burning found-footage suspenser with some mildly clever twists and a knockout payoff.
  20. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    Pic itself is a long haul, at nearly 2½ hours; yet one needn't be a fan of Metallica or heavy metal to be engrossed throughout.
  21. Source Code
    Solid execution and some provocative ideas can't save Source Code from a fatal hubris, as it thinks itself far more clever than it actually is and assumes it's earned emotions at which it's only hinted.
  22. Sweet Dreams
    It takes place on a sugar plantation, but Ena Sendijarević‘s magnificently composed, eerily satirical Sweet Dreams has something more like acid flowing through its veins.
  23. Beast
    Upgrading a sleeping-with-the-enemy premise familiar from countless B-thrillers with a faintly mythic aura and cool psychosexual shading, Beast also sustains a fresh, frank feminine perspective through Jessie Buckley’s remarkable lead performance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Oklahoma!
    The tunes ring out with undiminished delight. The characters pulsate with spirit. The Agnes De Mille choreography makes the play literally leap.
  25. Little Woods
    There’s at least one more key aspect of Little Woods that sets it apart: Whereas DaCosta’s dialogue strains to find poetry amid such scrappy conditions, she intuitively reveals a deeper dimension to both of her heroines by taking an extra beat at the beginning or end of scenes to observe their faces when no one else is watching.
  26. Joe
    A patiently observed, often unsettlingly violent drama that can’t help but feel overly familiar in some of its particulars, rich in rural texture but low on narrative momentum or surprise.
  27. Jay Myself
    After watching Jay Myself, you yourself may begin to see the world in a whole new way, as if you’d woken up to all the images that might have been invisible before, but only because you passed them by.
  28. Utama
    [A] sublime, quietly elegiac feature debut.
  29. Under Fire: Journalists in Combat
    Viewers unconvinced by the "war is a drug" doctrine set forth by Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" will find it amply corroborated by the self-admitted adrenaline junkies here, whose collective war-reporting experience spans an astounding number of overseas conflicts from Sarajevo and Chechnya to El Salvador and Libya.
  30. After Parkland
    After Parkland has its gun politics, and its aching heart, in the right place, but we need more from a movie about this subject. We need to ask how where the contemporary American heart of darkness is coming from.
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