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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  1. Ahed's Knee
    Quite possibly brilliant, and very definitely all but unbearable, Ahed’s Knee is filmmaking as hostage-taking. If such language seems charged, this is Nadav Lapid: All language is charged.
  2. Let It Be Morning
    This is a farce of stasis, not frenzied activity. By holding his characters literally captive — as the village is held, absurdly but violently, under siege — Kolirin forges an actual microcosm through which to examine the social and political status of Israel’s Arab community.
  3. Lingui, The Sacred Bonds
    Lingui may return its maker to a familiar milieu, but it’s an exciting departure in other respects. This is Haroun’s first film focused expressly on women: Perhaps it’s a coincidence that it’s less stentorian in its melodrama than some of his previous work, though given the shift, it feels apt that the film listens as much as it speaks. Its surprises extend to its choices of emphasis and protagonist.
  4. Belle
    In a sense, movies aren’t so different from the virtual worlds a platform like U offers, and this one promises a special kind of escapism while going out of its way to keep it real.
  5. The River Wild
    A tense, sharply made thriller about a family held hostage during a river rafting vacation.
  6. Asia
    From Daniella Nowitz’s muted, intimately lit lensing to the plaintive, judiciously used piano strains of Karni Postel’s score, every formal element of Asia serves to illustrate and enrich the tricky, evolving relationship at its center — brushing, rather than milking, the viewer’s tear ducts along the way.
  7. Untitled Dave Chappelle Documentary
    In the end, this is the movie — not “The Closer” — that deserves the widest possible audience.
  8. Brighton 4th
    The tender screenplay by Boris Frumin captures characters living in the new world in much the same fashion as they did in the old. It also offers a touching showcase for Levan Tediashvili, a non-professional actor and real-life wrestler.
  9. tick, tick...Boom!
    What’s refreshing about the debuting director’s approach is that it feels relatively egoless. His style is playful and energetic, often intercutting between multiple threads within a given song or scene, but it doesn’t feel as if Miranda is calling attention to himself so much as trying to open up the show.
  10. At the Ready
    An unsettling, often tender and thoroughly well-timed film.
  11. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
    It’s a small, impressionistic, oddly heartfelt movie about beauty, stardom, adoration, exploitation, and loss. Oh, is it ever about loss.
  12. Pig
    As a descent into the apparently high-stakes world of truffle-pig-poaching, Pig is unexpectedly touching; as a showcase for Cage’s brilliance, it’s a revelation.
  13. Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road
    Even if you think you know it all, “Long Promised Road” is an affectionate and satisfying movie, sentimental at times but often stirringly insightful, a collection of pinpoint testimonials to Wilson’s artistry by such authoritative fans as Springsteen and Elton John, and a movie that lets the enchanting qualities of Wilson’s music cascade over you.
  14. Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
    Docu glosses over important issues of Wilson’s life and career, but the observations it does make are so illuminating that they almost compensate for the omissions, resulting in a brilliant docu.
  15. The Harder They Fall
    As much fun as Majors, Elba, Beetz and King are to watch in roles that allow for plenty of scenery chewing (and oh what scenery!), it’s Stanfield who steals the show here as the part-Indian, part-Black Cherokee Bill.
  16. Eternity and a Day
    Eternity and a Day finds Angelopoulos refining his themes and style. Just as other great filmmakers have in the past explored similar themes time and again, so Angelopoulos has evolved and come up with one of his most lucid and emotional journeys thus far.
  17. The Eel
    While the symbolism of the eel itself is a bit obvious, Imamura has created a rich tapestry of characters and situations, all of it vividly brought to life with pristine visuals and a generous emotional warmth.
  18. The Best Intentions
    An epic story of mismatched love shaped in the most intimate terms, the Ingmar Bergman-scripted The Best Intentions packs a sustained emotional wallop that lightens its three-hour span.
  19. Underground
    Emir Kusturica's epic black comedy about Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1992 is a three-hour steamroller circus that leaves the viewer dazed and exhausted, but mightily impressed.
  20. The Story of Film: A New Generation
    There’s room for infinite points of view behind the camera, as well as among those who do the watching. Offering the tools for unpacking potentially challenging movies, Cousins teaches people how to be better spectators — not by telling them the right way to watch, but by encouraging them to engage more deeply with what they see.
  21. Encanto
    Encanto is a lively, lovely, lushly enveloping digitally animated musical fairy tale.
  22. Last Man Standing: Suge Knight and the Murders of Biggie & Tupac
    In Last Man Standing, Broomfield comes close to answering the questions — of guilt and recrimination — that have hung over these murders for too long.
  23. Everything Went Fine
    This elegantly written, persuasively performed drama finds the ever-unpredictable Ozon in his plainest, most pragmatic gear as a filmmaker.
  24. Compartment No. 6
    The humdrum and heartswelling Compartment No. 6 evokes a powerful nostalgia for a type of loneliness we don’t really have any more, and for the type of love that was its cure.
  25. Turning Red
    Irresistibly cute and thoroughly unashamed of its own silliness, Turning Red may be second-tier Pixar, but the emotions run every bit as deep as in the studio’s best.
  26. The Divide
    The characters can be so grating, watching The Divide feels like sticking your head in the garbage disposal. But as unwieldy as the multi-tentacled narrative can be — just think of the logistics required to stage it! — the experience adds up to something unshakeable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Plaza Suite
    Each of the femme stars is given much screen time and the result not only is excellent spotlighting of their own talents, but also an adroit restraint on Matthau’s presence.
  28. Unclenching the Fists
    A frenzied vocal tone and wild, untethered physicality connects all the performances, with every character seemingly eager to burst out of their own body, and by extension, the life in which it’s stranded.
  29. My Name Is Pauli Murray
    Although she died in 1985 at the age of 74, the human rights activist, lawyer, poet, professor and first Black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest owns this journey.
  30. Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
    Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon is a lark, a contradiction — a lurid, violent, caught-in-the-gutter movie that’s also a nimble and knowing tall tale for adults.
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