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. (T)error
    A vital expose of American law enforcement carried out with almost reckless zeal.
  2. All This Panic
    All This Panic is more remarkable for the way it looks than the actual, somewhat banal, girl-talk content.
  3. From Afar
    Looking, not touching, is the act of choice for a sexually wary gay man in From Afar, and his hands-off approach is shared by the expert storytelling in Venezuelan helmer Lorenzo Vigas’ pristinely poised but deeply felt debut feature.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Matewan
    Matewan is a heartfelt, straight-ahead tale of labor organizing in the coal mines of West Virginia in 1920 that runs its course like a train coming down the track.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Roxanne
    Aussie director Fred Schepisi, who has elsewhere handled much rougher material, does a professional job of creating a breezy atmosphere, but in the end it’s hopelessly sappy stuff.
  6. Tangerines
    With nearly five-decade screen veteran Ulfsak setting the wry, soulful tenor, Tangerines balances humor and seriousness in deft fashion, its delicacy abetted by all thesps and design contributions.
  7. The Surrogate
    That writer-director Jeremy Hersh’s debut feature is a screen original surprises, not because it’s “stagy” (though he has written plays), but because its engagingly argumentative virtues aren’t typical for movies anymore, if they ever were.
  8. Beba
    An insightful, engaging and all-around affirmational auto-portrait from an Afro-Latina New Yorker with an ear for poetry and an eye for the ineffable, Beba never questions its own right to exist.
  9. 1945
    The gripping period drama offers a fresh, intelligent cinematic approach to a difficult topic.
  10. On the Rocks
    On the Rocks turns into a boozy humanistic hang-out caper movie, one that’s light-spirited and compelling, mordantly alive to the ins and outs of marriage, and a winning showcase for Murray’s aging-like-fine-whisky brand of world-weary deviltry.
  11. Red Road
    Sensual, dark in every sense, but a touch derivative, Red Road reps an impressive feature debut for Brit writer-helmer Andrea Arnold, an Oscar-winner for her knockout short "Wasp."
  12. Malcolm X
    The picture comes up short in several departments, notably in pacing and in giving a strong sense of why this man became such a legend.
  13. Karmalink
    This striking feature debut by U.S. filmmaker Jake Wachtel takes viewers on a fascinating and frequently wondrous expedition to a place where science and metaphysics intersect.
  14. Facing Nolan
    Its lack of manufactured drama is one of the most engaging things about it, especially if you are a baseball fan who has ever marveled at the miracle that was, and is, Nolan Ryan.
  15. Scrap
    The well-acted, confidently crafted indie Scrap probes messy family dynamics with low-key but taut acuity, avoiding the usual poles of dysfunctional-clan comedy or high drama driven by yelling matches and shocking revelations.
  16. Final Destination: Bloodlines
    Clever, unpredictable and fun, Final Destination Bloodlines offers the series a transfusion of creativity that virtually guarantees that it will live to kill again.
  17. Palm Trees and Power Lines
    Palm Trees and Power Lines finds a truth, one it wrenches out of an experience.
  18. 4 Days in France
    Unapologetically rambling but never dull at over 140 minutes, this story of two gay lovers both separated and united by mobile distractions of the flesh loiters coolly where the sensibilities of Jacques Rivette and Alain Guiraudie intersect — which is to take nothing away from the droll peculiarity of Reybaud’s own voice.
  19. Into the Wild
    Sean Penn delivers a compelling, ambitious work that will satisfy most admirers of the book.
  20. Dossier 137
    Intelligent, drily seething and duly enraging in turn, “Case 137” keeps its mind strictly on the job.
  21. Miss Juneteenth
    Miss Juneteenth richly captures the slow pace of ebbing small-town Texas life, even if you might wish there were a bit more narrative momentum to pick up the slack in writer-director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ first feature.
  22. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    Although its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, Catherine Bainbridge’s Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World earns respect as much for its achievement as its ambition.
  23. Unicorn Wars
    The visually striking, not-at-all-kid-friendly result is all kinds of wrong: Picture pastel-colored anime bears impaled on the horns of sleek black horses, backlit by raging hot-pink infernos. “The Care Bears” this ain’t, though the comparison can hardly be accidental with this ultra-graphic, Saturday morning cartoon-subverting satire for which irreverent Bronies may well be the ideal audience.
  24. The Party
    Slight and self-contained, it won’t go down in cinema history as anything but, perhaps, the most purely fun film ever made by peculiar British experimentalist Sally Potter.
  25. A Scanner Darkly
    Deeply intriguing but almost too-faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick's nightmarish 1977 novel.
  26. Cropsey
    Cropsey has all the trappings of a true-crime TV special, but with an undercurrent of cultural exposition that is intelligent, profound and unsettling.
  27. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice
    As a documentary, “Olympic Pride” is a little on the staid side. The film’s writer-producer-director, Deborah Riley Draper, works in a variation on the Ken Burns style.... Yet she does an absorbing job of capturing a historical moment that was even more fraught than it’s generally imagined to be.
  28. The House of the Devil
    Call it the best '80s babysitter-in-peril movie never made. The House of the Devil delivers about as much as one could reasonably hope from the not-quite-alone-in-the-house category, with the bonus of authentically re-creating the low-budget look and feel of that era's classic horror entries.
  29. The Dinner Game
    Abetted by an excellent cast, vet writer Weber weaves a simple premise into comedy gold.
  30. The Iron Claw
    A perfect movie for this moment.
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