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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Commitments
    Director Alan Parker's story of a band of young Dubliners playing American '60s soul is fresh, well-executed and original.
  2. Emergency
    Emergency, in its racially aware way, turns into something that feels not unlike an ’80s comedy. It has winning flashes of wit, of observation, of telling satire. But it’s fundamentally about the situation.
  3. Flowers of Shanghai
    Gorgeously mounted, but butt-numbingly slow.
  4. Train to Busan
    Train to Busan pulses with relentless locomotive momentum. As an allegory of class rebellion and moral polarization, it proves just as biting as Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi dystopia “Snowpiercer,” while delivering even more unpretentious fun.
  5. Me and Orson Welles
    There are moments, especially when Welles is alternating between acting as Brutus and directing everyone else, that it’s possible to forget you’re watching an actor and really believe you’re beholding Orson Welles at work.
  6. For the Bible Tells Me So
    Filmmaker Daniel Karslake lobs a grenade into the culture wars with his heartfelt, provocative and unabashedly polemical For the Bible Tells Me So.
  7. Rocket Science
    This unusually voluble comedy is as eloquent about love, self-realization and adolescent angst as its protagonist is endearingly tongue-tied.
  8. Mija
    Castro’s debut feature deals with heartache and vulnerability but also shimmers with joy and genuine insight.
  9. American Sniper
    Just as “The Hurt Locker” found revelatory depths in Jeremy Renner, so American Sniper hinges on Cooper’s restrained yet deeply expressive lead performance, allowing many of the drama’s unspoken implications to be read plainly in the actor’s increasingly war-ravaged face.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Working Girl
    This is not a laugh-out-loud film, though there is a lighthearted tone that runs consistently throughout, Griffith's innocent, breathy voice being a major factor.
  11. The Raft
    The surprisingly short leap from radical academic study to lurid exploitation is navigated with wit, sensitivity and rueful social awareness in Swedish director Marcus Lindeen’s gripping debut feature The Raft.
  12. The Pirates! Band of Misfits
    Although this family-friendly tale of feckless adventurers pursuing a prize is consistently funnier than "Arthur," in language, humor and attitude it's as endearingly British as Yorkshire pudding, soccer hooliganism and wonky teeth.
  13. The Price of Sugar
    A solid and affecting piece of work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mad Max
    The film belongs to the director, cameraman and stunt artists: it’s not an actor’s piece, though the leads are all effective.
  15. China Blue
    Bleakly Dickensian as all this sounds, much of China Blue is charming, because its subjects are.
  16. Uncle Howard
    This is no starry-eyed, heart-on-sleeve flashback but a low-key, respectful one, no less appealing for its relative reserve.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Gods Must Be Crazy
    Film’s main virtues are its striking, widescreen visuals of unusual locations, and the sheer educational value of its narration.
  18. Sheep Without a Shepherd
    A story like this can’t help seeming far-fetched at times but the emotional stakes are so high and the plot so pacy and intricately woven that most viewers will gladly suspend disbelief and enjoy a ride packed with hair-raising close calls and narrow escapes.
  19. Bill Nye: Science Guy
    Bill Nye: Science Guy is an efficiently thought-provoking study of what it means to be a rational and analytical advocate for science in an age when deniers of evolution and climate-change often seem to have higher profiles, deeper pockets and louder voices. But it’s even more interesting as the story of a beloved celebrity who wants to reinvent himself, to be taken more seriously.
  20. Funny Pages
    What is doesn’t have, oddly, is any sort of bone-deep reality factor. Almost nothing that happens in Funny Pages is particularly believable.
  21. Obscene
    The case for publisher Barney Rosset's place as a hero in post-war America's battle for freedom of expression is persuasively argued in Obscene.
  22. Indie Game: The Movie
    The picture scores big points by drawing a sharp distinction between corporate vidgame programmers and indies.
  23. Anaïs in Love
    Some might wonder what Anaïs in Love really has to say for itself; the film, perhaps, objects to the idea of young women like its cheerfully confused heroine having to explain themselves at all. Either way, this zephyr-blown dandelion of a movie isn’t going to break a sweat to get its message across.
  24. All Things Must Pass
    It is much to the credit of Hanks and his collaborators that All Things Must Pass makes this particular iteration of the oft-told tale come across as freshly compelling, even poignant.
  25. The Clan
    Argentine powerhouse Pablo Trapero (“Carancho,” “White Elephant”) takes a case so upsetting many refused to believe it was possible and retells it in ghastly detail from the p.o.v. of the perpetrators in The Clan, a muscular, Hollywood-style account of the Puccio fiasco.
  26. Our Lady of the Assassins
    Schroeder's first non-American film in 16 years feels like a rejuvenation; his adaptation of Fernando Vallejo's 1994 novel has a naturalistic freedom and ease that is both refreshing and direct in the way it tells a deeply disturbing story.
  27. Beyond the Mat
    A gently and genuinely observed film whose subject is a garish, artificial display of mayhem.
  28. The Corporation
    A surprisingly cogent, entertaining, even rabble-rousing indictment of perhaps the most influential institutional model for our era.
  29. Space Cowboys
    Good escapist entertainment, and the effect is ingratiating.
  30. Titanic Town
    Walters brings real heart to the role.
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