Variety's Scores

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For 17,825 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 2.3 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: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
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    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dumbo
    There’s a pleasant little story, plenty of pathos mixed with the large doses of humor, a number of appealing new animal characters, lots of good music, and the usual Disney skillfulness in technique.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Victory Through Air Power
    Disney and his battalion of artists, animators and backgrounders have not permitted the seriousness of the theme to completely dwarf their humor. There are the usual imaginative complement of Disneyisms in his cartoonics, and an excellent musical score to point it up.
  3. Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle
    Salmerón’s film, crammed as full of tchotchkes and knick-knacks and bibelots as one of his mother’s closets, refutes that, presenting an endearingly haphazard portrait of an extraordinary woman and the family she made — one that has discovered its own, completely unique way to be happy.
  4. Number 37
    Far more substantial than a run-of-the-mill Hitchcock homage, Number 37 is richly satisfying on its own terms as a singularly crafty and strikingly well-crafted thriller that signals the arrival of a promising filmmaking talent.
  5. The Grief of Others
    More experimental in form and wobbly in execution than its predecessor, this searching adaptation of Leah Hager Cohen’s 2011 novel nonetheless evokes a family’s fragile inner life in ineffably moving fashion, capturing how distant and isolated parents and children can feel from one another even when living under the same roof
  6. Searching for Ingmar Bergman
    It’s an investigation in the form of a highly personalized meditation.
  7. The Panama Papers
    The Panama Papers captures and celebrates a different concentration of power: that of the journalists who’ve begun to band together by thinking globally, following the money as it travels — and does its best to hide — around the world.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pirates of Penzance
    With the exception of Angela Lansbury, entertaining as the pirates’ nursemaid and aide-de-combat, all principal cast members have repeated their Broadway performances here, and in exemplary fashion.
  9. Of Fathers and Sons
    The result is as despairing as any portrait of close-knit family and dedicated parenthood can be, adeptly blending sensationalism with domestic intimacy, and sincerely eye-opening in its portrayal of inherited Islamist fervor.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alice in Wonderland
    Walt Disney has gone a long way towards tightening the leisurely, haphazard adventure of Alice in the wonderland of her imagination. He has dropped some characters and sequences in the interest of a better picture, but the deletions are not missed.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    The new film should further secure Disney’s dominance in animation, and connoisseurs of the genre, old and young, will have plenty to savor.
  12. Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes
    In the piercing and perceptive documentary Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, it’s fascinating, in an outrageous and distressing way, to witness the moment when Ailes transformed the nation’s political landscape virtually overnight.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Radio Days
    Although lacking the bite and depth of his best work, Radio Days is one of Woody Allen's most purely entertaining pictures. It's a visual monolog of bits and pieces from the glory days of radio and the people who were tuned in.
  14. Bob Roberts
    Both a stimulating social satire and, for thinking people, a depressing commentary on the devolution of the American political system.
  15. The Good Liar
    The pleasure of The Good Liar, and it’s a major one, is the chance to watch Mirren and McKellen act together in a cat-and-mouse duet that turns into an elegant waltz of affection and deception.
  16. The Mustang
    It’s a touching and original piece of bare-bones sentimental humanism, and Schoenaerts is terrific in it.
  17. Where's My Roy Cohn?
    A biographical portrait that doubles as an origin story for today’s amoral political landscape, its marriage of incisiveness and timeliness should make it an indie hit this fall.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Looking for Mr. Goodbar
    In Looking for Mr Goodbar, writer-director Richard Brooks manifests his ability to catch accurately both the tone and subtlety of characters in the most repellant environments - in this case the desperate search for personal identity in the dreary and self-defeating world of compulsive sex and dope. Diane Keaton's performance as the good/bad girl is excellent.
  19. This One's for the Ladies
    The whole affair is vastly entertaining — and far from indecent or intimidating.
  20. Aniara
    This tale of a spaceship stuck wandering the cosmos after being forced off course is both impressive in its scope and intimate in its portrait of human nature under long-term duress.
  21. The Charmer
    Alami and Ingeborg Topsøe’s finely whittled screenplay plays its revelations patiently, putting a lot of early trust in their leading man’s powers of silent implication and the serene foreboding of Sophia Olsson’s charcoal-streaked cinematography.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pink Floyd: The Wall
    An eye-popping dramatization of an audio storyline. Being a visual translation of a so-called 'concept' album, pic works extremely well in carrying over the somber tone of the LP.
  23. The American Meme
    The American Meme is a film I very much recommend, since it’s both highly entertaining and an essential snapshot of the voyeuristic parasitic American fishbowl.
  24. Socrates
    Malheiros’ terrific turn makes this protagonist credibly tough by necessity, and mature beyond his years. Ordakji is also excellent as the not-much-older new friend whose reluctance to be more helpful is, like other backstory elements here, only partly explained later on. Despite the film’s raw realist air, these two actors aren’t amateur discoveries, but rather theater studies graduates making their screen debuts — at no doubt the beginning of long careers.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    F.I.S.T.
    In its superb telling of how a humble but idealistic young man escalates to the corrupt heights of unbridled power, F.I.S.T. is to the labor movement in the United States what All the King's Men was to an era in American politics.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kagemusha
    Kurosawa, at 70, shows himself young indeed in the impressive handling of this historical drama laced with shrewd insights into the almost Shakespearean intrigues of power.
  27. The Venerable W.
    “Evil” is one of those tricky words usually best avoided, since its quasi-mythological sense of moral absolutism tends to downplay the human agency involved. Yet as Barbet Schroeder well knows, there are times when no other term properly conveys the insidious nature of intolerance and carnage robed in the trappings of power.
  28. Communion
    While Communion holds tight to its own private mysteries, it scores a perfect 10 in drawing out viewer empathy, leaving us hoping anxiously that things will turn out all right for its protagonists.
  29. West of Sunshine
    Arriving at a moment when parenting and child development are being closely analyzed and discussed, West of Sunshine is a timely and intelligent essay on the eternal theme of how fathers can both inspire and alienate their sons.
  30. Brian Banks
    So, where do Shadyac and Atchison expect audiences to direct their frustration at such a miscarriage of justice? Well, that’s what makes “Brian Banks” special: It is not an angry film, but one that preaches forgiveness in the face of such adversity.
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