Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,758 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: 9,121 out of 17758
  2. Mixed: 7,002 out of 17758
  3. Negative: 1,635 out of 17758
17758 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Blue Sun Palace
    More akin to European art films than to American indies, “Palace” prioritizes mood over plot. Tsang allows her experienced actors plenty of breathing space to convey the melancholy of their existence in situations where dreams are more likely to be deferred than to come true, but are necessary nevertheless.
  2. Friendship
    Robinson’s brand of middle-class psycho surrealism works perfectly in bite-size sketch-comedy doses. Stretched out to feature length, a character like Craig simply stops making sense.
  3. Dead Mail
    Set in the 1980s Midwest with a mix of the drab and the eccentric, Dead Mail is an effective, twisty thriller with a singular edge of off-kilter black comedy.
  4. Summer of 69
    It’s a big step backward from the likes of “Anora” in terms of respecting sex workers, but at least it scores as many laughs.
  5. Ghost Trail
    Millet’s expertly tooled movie is far from the first to derive its moral stakes from the desire to find some measure of redress for the victims and survivors of political violence, but it is among the best to also crossbreed this familiar archetype with the urgency and topicality of the Syrian refugee crisis.
  6. Sneaks
    Though the story wears down its tread, strong performances elevate the material. Mackie, Fishburne, Lawrence, Bailey and David all pour a ton of heart into their vocal dynamics, allowing nuanced vulnerability and a bubbly buoyancy to shine through, keeping us tethered to the emotional pull of the picture.
  7. Sacramento
    Angarano has the showpiece role, but it’s Cera who proves himself, more than ever, to be a major actor.
  8. The Teacher
    What the characters can or cannot do in response, and the catharsis they’re prevented from attaining, are both key parts of their story, and of life in the West Bank at large — a reality Nabulsi conveys in stark, realistic hues, despite her first-feature growing pains.
  9. Gunslingers
    Goosed by a couple gratuitous interludes of gory amateur surgery, the movie is eventful, with a high body count. But there’s never the baseline authenticity of atmosphere or character depth that might make so much action meaningful, or even particularly exciting.
  10. The King of Kings
    The King of Kings is a serviceable if uninspired take on a story told countless times in just as varied formats.
  11. Eric Larue
    A school-shooting drama needn’t be any one specific thing, but to ask an audience to sit through one is, implicitly, to promise some wrenching insight in return. Eric LaRue is just a lot of indie showboating signifying nothing.
  12. Sinners
    Sinners works more than it doesn’t, even if it doesn’t always gel, but it’s a commanding demonstration of how lavishly spirited and “serious” a popcorn movie can be.
  13. G20
    Action does not come naturally to the “Under the Same Moon” director, though the script poses an even bigger problem in G20, a movie whose short title manages to reflect both its high concept and shockingly low intelligence level.
  14. The Amateur
    It can seem churlish to complain that an undercover thriller is mission: implausible, but much of what happens in The Amateur seems…arbitrary.
  15. I Love You Forever
    In observing how Mackenzie absorbs feelings of shame for any time she’s disappointed him, they consider all those who hold onto romantic notions too long, finding a fresh take on a toxic relationship.
  16. Art for Everybody
    Much like Penny Lane’s endlessly amusing “Listening to Kenny G,” Yousef’s illuminating doc appeals to all sides, from Kinkade’s haters to his most ardent defenders, revealing dimensions altogether absent from his enormously popular oeuvre.
  17. Hell of a Summer
    The movie’s hella derivative, but still quite entertaining, with an appealing cast and memorable characters.
  18. A Minecraft Movie
    A Minecraft Movie never stops goofing on itself, and that’s appealing.
  19. The Falling Sky
    One of the most necessary and scorching pieces of nonfiction storytelling in recent memory, “The Falling Sky” offers no comfort and points fingers with a ferocious righteousness as we stare into the abyss of the inescapable environmental catastrophe so-called “developed nations” have wrought.
  20. Warfare
    It scrapes every last bit of romantic glamour off the image of combat, and I guess you could say that’s an achievement. But it’s an achievement, in this case, that seems to be saluting itself.
  21. On Swift Horses
    There’s a current of tragedy running beneath all of the couples here, as the characters create obstacles to their own happiness. It can feel a bit diagrammatic, as if the novelist were setting up impossible loves and then watching them fail. But there’s hope too, and however contrived the last scene may feel, there’s poetry in watching someone betting their future on yet another horse.
  22. The Woman in the Yard
    The Woman in the Yard never musters the imagination to horrify or even jolt you. It’s a tale of one-note inner demons.
  23. A Working Man
    Jason Statham is good at his job, which explains why he keeps booking the same kinds of movies — well, that and the fact that people keep watching them.
  24. The Luckiest Man in America
    With such a wealth of talent at its disposal, The Luckiest Man in America is strangely never as satisfying as it should be.
  25. When Fall Is Coming
    Nobody is exactly who they appear to be in “When Fall is Coming,” but Ozon’s nimble, perceptive little film takes that as a given: When winter and mortality are beckoning, the past only counts for so much.
  26. Tyler Perry's Duplicity
    It’s a strange-looking, odd-feeling film that gestures toward mystery and larger conspiracy, but it seldom pulls on these threads. Instead, it ends up an anodyne political drama that says little of note.
  27. Locked
    Locked is not without limited charms, but it ultimately fails to bridge the gap between putting audiences in the car with Eddie, and actually wanting to make them go for the ride.
  28. Snow White
    As it turns out, this is one of the better live-action adaptations of a Disney animated feature.
  29. The Alto Knights
    If there was any doubt as to De Niro’s greatness, it’s laid to rest in these face-to-face confrontations. No star could’ve held his own quite so effectively against De Niro.
  30. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
    Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is nothing if not an homage to the lasting impact that junk culture can have on impressionable minds.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »