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. Tiny Furniture
    What it doesn't have, to its credit, is a neat conclusion. In the end, the film appears to suggest that Aura likely will feel free to keep searching for herself, repeating mistakes and making new ones, because she has all the time in the world.
  2. Bringing Out the Dead
    Achieves a poetic, quasi-religious tone.
  3. Air Guitar Nation
    With equal measures of showmanship, patriotism and irony, hundreds vie at NYC's Pussycat Lounge for the East Coast Division of the first-ever nationwide air guitar championship for the right to eventually represent the U.S. at the world championship.
  4. The Closet
    A clever premise that's good for many laughs.
  5. Mostly Martha
    A charming relationships comedy about food, gourmet cooking and emotionally chilling out. Anchored by a career-best performance from German thesp Martina Gedeck.
  6. Walk the Line
    Walk the Line is a strongly acted, musically vibrant, conventionally satisfying biopic of country/rock/blues legend Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter.
  7. Six Degrees of Separation
    Six Degrees is magical when addressing the preposterous. Like any good storyteller, Paul is deft at knitting eyes with wool. Smith proves himself an extremely charismatic presence, convincing in his sincerity and cunning in conveying his ability as a human sponge.
  8. When Marnie Was There
    Yonebayashi’s open-hearted tale, more than any other Ghibli offering, could conceivably have worked just as well in live-action, and yet the tender story gains so much from the studio’s delicate, hand-crafted approach.
  9. Control
    Crowd-pleasing, darkly comic joyride.
  10. Terri
    Jacobs' slow-building portrait of a late bloomer makes this poetic picture an outsider even among outsider movies.
  11. Dormant Beauty
    "Beauty" has numerous scenes of enormous power, though removing one unnecessary plot strand would allow deeper probing elsewhere.
  12. The Storms of Jeremy Thomas
    The Storms of Jeremy Thomas persuasively makes the case for closer scrutiny of a producer’s career, though it leaves viewers with some homework to do.
  13. Obit
    If, overall, Obit is merely pleasant in a predictable, innocuous way, it’s nonetheless well-crafted and moderately educational.
  14. Daylight
    Some movie buffs will be amused to note slight but perceptible plot similarities between Daylight and, of all things, "The Tall T," Budd Boetticher's classic 1957 Western. To their credit, the filmmakers more or less acknowledge the influence in the closing credits.
  15. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
    It’s possible that the film’s passing pleasures are so rich that we don’t even notice how deep Okada has driven her storytelling dagger until she pulls it out in the end, and the tears come, adding, to the bitterness and sweetness of this moving and strange little fable, a hefty dose of salt.
  16. Mother and Son
    Inspired by the life and roots of her children’s father, Serraille’s original screenplay embeds tacit, national-scale socioeconomic commentary in its intimate domestic story, though smartly avoids making blunt symbols of its sharp, specific characters.
  17. Mary and Max
    Has its share of deadpan amusements, but its combo of mordant whimsy and tearjerker moments winds up curdling in an unappetizing fashion.
  18. Nas: Time Is Illmatic
    This brisk, stylish and extremely heartfelt portrait of Nas’ rise from the housing projects of Queensbridge to the heights of hip-hop royalty ably stands on its own, marked by an admirable focus on the man and his music rather than hype and hagiography.
  19. Match Point
    Well-observed and superbly cast picture is the filmmaker's best in quite a long time.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
    A film with Jane Fonda as a hard-as-nails babe. It becomes, in a recreated old ballroom, a sordid spectacle of hard times, a kind of existentialist allegory of life.
  21. Still Alice
    Julianne Moore guides us through the tragic arc of how it must feel to disappear before one’s own eyes, accomplishing one of her most powerful performances by underplaying the scenario.
  22. Late Night with the Devil
    Though not quite a slam-dunk — its sum impact is more pleasingly ingenious than indelible — Late Night With the Devil definitely reps a personal best for the Cairnses.
  23. Sound of Noise
    A delightful comic cocktail of modern city symphony, police procedural and love story.
  24. A Space Program
    It’s a singularly off-kilter vision of repurposed invention, though even at 72 minutes, the film struggles to keep itself afloat, its central conceit too slender to maintain its sense of mirth or wonder.
  25. Ethel & Ernest
    Mainwood’s fidelity to Briggs’ illustrative aesthetic is welcome, as it maintains a homey, appropriately somewhat retro air redolent of pencil sketches and pastels. Hewing to the book’s sparse text is a little less ideal.
  26. Everyone Is Lying to You for Money
    A lively, knife-sharp, impeccably researched and reported documentary that answers every conceivable question you’ve ever had about crypto, and does so in a way that’s brisk and funny and illuminating rather than intimidating.
  27. Truly Madly Deeply
    This sharply scripted study of a bereaved woman who literally wishes her partner back from the grave is an impressive directorial bow by British playwright Anthony Minghella. Despite surface similarities with Ghost pic has a different feel and theme.
  28. The Talent Given Us
    Brutally truthful, funny and touching in nearly equal measure.
  29. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
    My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea feels like a first draft, the one that needed to be written before the second draft added flesh and blood.
  30. Manifesto
    Audiences needn’t be intimidated: Manifesto may not adhere to any conventional narrative structure, but it’s compulsively watchable all the same
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