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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  1. Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical
    The film, on balance, is cheery, sherbet-colored stuff, bursting with goodwill for all good people. What you remember from it, however, is each scene in which elder malevolence deliciously spoils the party.
  2. Stevie
    A forceful, affecting experience.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Song for Martin
    A moving love story with two exquisite central performances.
  4. Road to Perdition
    Sam Mendes' much-anticipated second effort after his Oscar-winning "American Beauty" finds him working in a very different key while displaying an even more pronounced attentiveness to tone, genre variations and artistic niceties.
  5. Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
    Rick McKay's exceptional new documentary Broadway: The Golden Age presents a veritable avalanche of interviews with some of the biggest names in the history of the American theater, preserving for posterity their wise words and disarming anecdotes.
  6. The Dish & the Spoon
    Gerwig, charmingly unflappable in "Greenberg," lets it all hang out here, unafraid to sacrifice likability to over-the-top hysteria as someone who cannot control herself, despite a lingering sense of her own absurdity. Alexander proves a worthily understated foil, his self-deprecatory whimsy recalling that of a young Johnny Depp.
  7. Hagazussa
    This is a frequently ravishing film, as attuned to the mysticism of landscapes as prime Herzog, while capable of jolting us with the occasional brutal image.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bishop's Wife
    Henry Koster's sympathetic direction deftly gets over the warm humor supplied by the script, taken from Robert Nathan's novel of the same title.
  9. Timestalker
    Timestalker may get a lot of mileage out of unrequited affection, but it still gives audiences plenty to love.
  10. Ammonite
    Ultimately more symbolic than satisfying, the project leaves one grateful that two stars of this caliber would take on such a story, while wishing their efforts had left us with a more resonant artifact.
  11. Climates
    Immaculately shot and composed as always, and moving at Ceylan's usual measured pace, this one is slightly enlivened by more likable perfs and a trim 98-minute running time.
  12. Skate Kitchen
    Skate Kitchen has plenty to say about the lengths to which young women must go to clear out a little breathing room in testosterone-heavy spaces, but it is first and foremost an irresistible hangout movie.
  13. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
    I defy you to see It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley and not fall in love with Jeff Buckley’s voice. By the time the film is over, you want to find a way to go back and rescue him to let him live the life he should have.
  14. The Devil's Candy
    Accomplished visually and busy sonically, it nonetheless falls short with a story of rock ‘n’ roll demonic possession that scarcely begins to exploit the ideas embedded in its serviceable premise.
  15. Gone Baby Gone
    Moral ambiguity is the real star of Ben Affleck's helming debut, Gone Baby Gone, an involving Boston-set tale of mixed motives, selflessness and perfidy in the wake of a 4-year-old girl's disappearance.
  16. Iron Crows
    Virtually an experimental film -- the humanity is rich, but pure image and sensation are what makes it tick.
  17. The Last Stop in Yuma County
    It’s a lean, tight, and stylishly clever B-movie about a bank robbery gone wrong.
  18. The Insult
    Toward the end, Doueiri attempts to give his two leads a little more nuance, but Tony’s overwhelming anger steamrolls over occasional conciliatory behavior, which winds up feeling just manipulative.
  19. Fremont
    In its final moments, the potency of Fremont sneaks up on you. You go in reluctant and even skeptical, and come out wondering how and why you’re moved to tears.
  20. Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune
    Briskly constructed and rich in Ochs' music and period notables, Kenneth Bowser's film will be a must for the artist's fans, but its fresh take on an overexamined decade should also appeal to Kennedy-era completists.
  21. Where Is Kyra?
    The emotional range of Pfeiffer’s riveting performance isn’t a broad one, though this frequently nonverbal film is entirely reliant on her cutting powers of expression as she progresses from harrowed to exhausted and back, at risk of disappearing into herself entirely.
  22. Zodiac Killer Project
    Speaking to viewers who are cognizant of what films can and cannot be made, Zodiac Killer Project is a biting statement on how many artists have been funneled into a creative dead-end by a trend-chasing market.
  23. Magic Mike
    Ladies are gonna love Magic Mike, a lively male-stripper meller inspired by Channing Tatum's late-teen, pre-screen stint as an exotic dancer.
  24. Straight Outta Compton
    If “Compton” is undeniably of the moment, it’s also timeless in its depiction of how artists and writers transform the world around them into angry, profane, vibrant and singular personal expression.
  25. Tale of Tales
    Taken together, the parables serve primarily to entertain — an effect that has as much to do with Garrone’s command of the cinematic language as it does the content itself.
  26. Juror #2
    As always, Eastwood respects our intelligence. And yet, Juror No. 2 registers as something of an anomaly in his oeuvre: It ranks among his quietest films, forgoing spectacle in favor of self-reflection.
  27. Captain Fantastic
    Ross doesn’t run from the resulting sentimentality the way so many other directors do; nor does he undercut it with irony or sarcasm as has become the regrettable tendency in independent cinema.
  28. Shithouse
    This is a modest film, well-acted but rather clumsily assembled, that almost certainly would have benefited from an in-person SXSW, where it’s possible to bask in the shared laughter of an enthusiastic first screening.
  29. White Palms
    An uncommonly resonant sports drama in which a talented yet troubled gymnast comes to terms with a turbulent past.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Scarecrow
    Scarecrow is a periodically interesting but ultimately unsatisfying character study of two modern drifters.
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