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. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
    A simple premise can serve as a portal to profound social critique, for those willing to take the plunge.
  2. The Song of Sparrows
    Beautifully crafted, often sentimental, sometimes humorous.
  3. Linda Linda Linda
    This aimless, lifeless time-killer about four teenage girls prepping for their rock-band gig in a school talent show proves entirely the wrong choice.
  4. State of Fear
    So strong are the perceived parallels between the Peruvian situation described in State of Fear and the sociopolitical dynamics of the current U.S. war on terror that filmmakers have trouble, in post-screening Q&As, returning the discussion to the historical subject at hand.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Naked City
    Throughout, despite its omniscient, stark melodrama, there has been no sight lost of an element of humor. Barry Fitzgerald, as the film’s focal point, in playing the police lieutenant of the homicide squad, strides through the role with tongue in cheek, with Don Taylor as his young detective aide.
  6. The Crime Is Mine
    It’s a film less about any frenetic onscreen shenanigans as it is about its own mood board of sartorial and cinematic reference points — Jean Renoir, Billy Wilder, some vintage Chanel — and as such it slips down as fizzily and forgettably as a bottle of off-brand sparkling wine.
  7. La faute à Fidel!
    Wonderfully engaging look at 1970-71 from a child's p.o.v.
  8. Thor: Ragnarok
    While it’s not saying much, Thor: Ragnarok is easily the best of the three Thor movies — or maybe I just think so because its screenwriters and I finally seem to agree on one thing: The Thor movies are preposterous.
  9. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
    "Going to Mars” responds creatively to the call of its ingenious subject thanks to the directors’ soulful grasp of her work, and Terra Long and Lawrence Jackman’s skillful editing.
  10. Narco Cultura
    Narco Cultura is as overwhelming as it is absorbing.
  11. Teacher's Pet
    A doggone hilarious cartoon extravaganza...virtually bursts at the seams with a supersized abundance of witty wordplay, silly songs and inspired sight gags.
  12. Bird
    The film is Arnold trying to have the integrity of her severity and eat it too. Bird is a feel-bad movie that turns into a feel-good movie. What it never feels like is a totally authentic movie.
  13. Beats
    Beats proceeds to give a dying scene its euphoric due, in a dazzling digression from stage-based form.
  14. The Restless
    It’s not one of those filmmaking-as-therapy grudge sessions, but a wrenchingly fair-minded look at complicated family dynamics.
  15. La Sapienza
    The unresolvable tension between logic and feeling animates Eugene Green’s La Sapienza, an exquisite rumination on life, love and art that tickles the heart and mind in equal measure.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Haunting
    The artful cinematic strokes of director Robert Wise and staff are not quite enough to override the major shortcomings of Nelson Gidding’s screenplay from the Shirley Jackson novel (The Haunting of Hill House).
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Splendor in the Grass
    Elia Kazan's production of William Inge's original screenplay covers a forbidding chunk of ground with great care, compassion and cinematic flair. Yet there is something awkward about the picture's mechanical rhythm. There are missing links and blind alleys within the story. Too much time is spent focusing on characters of minor significance.
  18. Wild Indian
    Wild Indian doesn’t quite add up, but it heralds an important new voice — not just because of his Native American heritage (although that plays a central role in this project’s concerns), but even more on account of the complexity he’s willing to acknowledge in his characters.
  19. Lemon Tree
    The rare ability to make intelligent, entertaining cinema from hot-button current issues is beautifully illustrated by Lemon Tree.
  20. Queen & Slim
    When a movie taps a nerve with the public, it doesn’t need to be a masterpiece to become a phenomenon, which might explain why Matsoukas puts greater attention on the look, feel and musical signature of the project than she does the plot, which feels thin and familiar.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha
    This version of Georges Bizet's frequently reinterpreted "Carmen" is spoken and sung in the click-punctuated African lingo of Xhosa and adapted to fit yarn's shift south, with a semi-cinema verite style cleverly disguising the artifice of the work's legit origins.
  22. Breach
    Just as somber as "The Good Shepherd," the most recent domestic spy drama, but more tightly focused, Breach absorbingly zeroes in on how the FBI nailed the most damaging turncoat in American history.
  23. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    Sixty years after World War II, descendants of a prominent Nazi responsible for implementing Hitler's policies in Slovakia reignite debate over their heritage in emotional docu 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him.
  24. Among the Believers
    The filmmakers quietly expose conflicts and contradictions without the intrusion of voiceover, and with only occasional intertitles furnishing factual information.
  25. Japanese Story
    Develops into a powerfully emotional experience thanks to a career-best performance by Toni Collette.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cape Fear
    A smart and stylish remake of the 1962 suspenser.
  27. 28 Days Later...
    Shows a rather arrogant disdain for its audience in between occasional flashes of flair.
  28. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
    Bigger, Longer & Uncut will make it harder still to dismiss, or kill, this cultural mini-phenom — not least because the feature is a more clever diversion than anyone had any right to expect.
  29. Arna's Children
    Must-see docu penetrates a Jenin refugee camp to follow several Palestinian children from laughing little kids in a theater group to grim actors on a grislier world stage.
  30. Novitiate
    A piercing, immersive, and superbly played convent drama in which the suppression of speech is witnessed at both an individual and institutional level.
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