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. God's Country
    Julian Higgins’ first feature can be taken as a drama with thriller elements or a low-key thriller with atypical dramatic nuance, working either way as a quietly effective balance between genre, social issue and character study elements.
  2. Hatching
    Amid the mischievous mayhem that ensues, Bergholm and Rautsi deserve credit for not abandoning Tinja’s mother.
  3. Something in the Dirt
    The bargain Benson and Moorhead make with audiences goes something like this: If we buy in, then we can participate in what often feels more like an elevated form of play than some attempt to compete with slick, studio product.
  4. The Janes
    In sticking to the facts, it remains plenty rousing.
  5. Navalny
    The film flashes back to the poisoning, and it could be the most sickening and calamitous suspense-thriller episode you ever saw.
  6. Nothing Compares
    [An] incisive and poignant documentary ... Sinéad O’Connor was a fire that went out too fast. "Nothing Compares" makes you see it’s still burning.
  7. The Princess
    A perfectly timed, compulsively watchable once-over-lightly documentary. ... After all [the recent] dramatic treatments, it’s galvanizing to see the real story laid out exactly as it happened — or, more precisely, as it happened and as it was presented to the public, those being, quite often, two very different things.
  8. Both Sides of the Blade
    Denis’ latest sees her applying her usual rigorous form and psychological curiosity to material that tends to inspire more generic directorial treatment, teasing out a rich, nuanced exploration of female desire from the fault lines of an ostensibly simple narrative.
  9. Incredible But True
    Incredible but True is a fun little trinket that unmistakably comes from Dupieux’s far-out perspective, but if you find yourself chiming more than usual with its quixotic quandaries, who’s to say whether that’s because Dupieux has mellowed, or because the past couple of years have driven us all so nuts that now we’re meeting him halfway.
  10. You Are Not My Mother
    Steeped in local folklore, it lets mythic and mind-based terrors exist side by side, allowing the viewer to interpret and believe what they will. This leeway comes at no cost, however, to its effective atmospherics, which sink into the bones like an unexpected twilight chill.
  11. Before, Now & Then
    Before, Now & Then moves with its own dreamy cadence, with narrative developments washing over the film like waves. Closing your eyes once it’s over, you might even experience the sensation of having been in the water all afternoon as those gentle waves lapped over you — and longing to return to them.
  12. The Novelist's Film
    Ultimately, The Novelist’s Film defends the idea of drift and hiatus, of time spent idling to hear your own thoughts, in their own sweet time.
  13. Taste
    Lê Bảo’s rich film reaches further back too, beyond the politics of globalization and migration, beyond even culture, into a pre-ethnographic past, to see us as trapped animals, paradoxically dehumanized by the sunless concrete ugliness of human civilization.
  14. Small, Slow But Steady
    Director Shô Miyake’s measured, unsentimental adaptation of a memoir by Keiko Ogasawara — who turned professional despite the difficulties of lifelong deafness — turns out to be somewhat aptly described by its own title, though none of those adjectives quite conveys its rare and delicate grace.
  15. Hustle
    Hustle doesn’t rewrite any rules, but the film’s wholesome seduction is that you believe what you’re seeing — in part because of the presence of players from the aging legend Dr. J to Trae Young to Kyle Lowry and several dozen more. But also because Sandler plays Stanley with an inner sadness, a blend of weariness and resilience, and a stubborn faith in the game that leaves you moved, stoked, and utterly convinced.
  16. Three Months
    Writer-director Jared Frieder’s feature debut feels like the LGBT equivalent of “Juno”: snappy and refreshingly nonjudgmental in dealing with the consequences of a risky one-night stand.
  17. Servants
    Servants is briskly shaped at just under 80 minutes, yet its alien-historical world-building is effective enough that you emerge from it feeling both out of time and out of breath: Any longer, and all humanity would bleed out of this earthly-but-ethereal conspiracy drama entirely.
  18. The World of Jacques Demy
    The World of Jacques Demy is a major addition to films about filmmakers, and achieves its purpose in making the viewer immediately want to see the key films again.
  19. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
    Turns out, this movie isn’t so much about space as it is about time travel, or more specifically, taking Linklater and his followers back more than half a century.
  20. Fear
    In the end, Fear offers the most beguiling kind of plea for tolerance, via antic suggestion that any other behavior is strictly for dolts whose mob mentality makes them look very stupid indeed. It’s a lesson that goes down easily with this much deadpan charm and skill on tap.
  21. Fly Away Home
    An animal, kid and family picture of the first order, "Fly Away Home" marks an impressive return to form for Carroll Ballard, his best work since "The Black Stallion" 17 years ago.
  22. Linoleum
    Consider this review primarily as an encouragement: Stick around. Your patience will be amply rewarded.
  23. Fire Island
    Yang may be the MVP in this ensemble, though the cast is terrific across the board.
  24. How to Survive a Pandemic
    Smart, humane and gripping even as it rakes over events all too fresh in our memories, How to Survive a Pandemic ends with plenty yet to be discussed and explored: It provides a road map to survival, but doesn’t suggest we’ve all made it just yet.
  25. Sheryl
    "Sheryl" tells these anecdotes, and others, in a swift and captivating fashion, with the director, Amy Scott, in engaging command.
  26. Josep
    The strong subject matter as well as the eponymous subject’s storied life makes one wish for a longer running time than 72 minutes.
  27. Bodies Bodies Bodies
    Bodies Bodies Bodies, with its restless camera movement and improv-style acting and general overdramatic rambunctiousness, is like “And Then There Were None” staged by John Cassavetes for the age of Instagram.
  28. Soft & Quiet
    Soft & Quiet is deeply unpleasant to watch, but that’s the point.
  29. Under the Influence
    Under the Influence is a very absorbing, very disquieting, very meaningful-for-our-time documentary.
  30. Olga
    Even before Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion, Olga was an incredibly strong film, but now, the Kino Lorber release should be considered essential viewing for art-house audiences.
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