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. Strictly Ballroom
    Within the confines of this tried-and-true formula, Luhrmann has concocted a feel-good entertainment, which is lively, original (in an old-fashioned sort of way) and charming.
  2. Surfwise
    Somewhat forced happy ending aside, the pic holds together well.
  3. Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    An insightful and incisive portrait of a self-destructive paranoid artist whose importance is partly hidden by his own divisive nature.
  4. The Back of the World
    A gripping, superbly constructed indictment of the way governments contribute to the destruction of their citizens' lives.
  5. Step Into Liquid
    An awe-inspiring survey of global surf culture, with the power to crush the post-"Gidget" decades of Hollywood stereotyping of surfers and surfing.
  6. Mulan
    A rich dramatic tapestry lightly stained by some strained comedy, rigorous political correctness and perhaps more adherence to Disney formula than should have been the case in one of the studio's most adventurous and serious animated features.
  7. Isn't This a Time! A Tribute Concert for Harold Leventhal
    Timely and entertaining concert documentary.
  8. Four Eyed Monsters
    Fascinating if overly self-involved Slamdance entry is among the few U.S. pics that deliberately smudges the line between non-fiction and invention as it tells how Crumley and Buice meet online and develop a relationship.
  9. Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    Looks, sounds and fascinates like an exceptional episode of a true-crime TV series.
  10. Despicable Me
    There's nothing like a little world domination to melt the most dastardly evildoer's heart. Since villains so often steal the show in animation, Despicable Me smartly turns the whole operation over to megalomaniacal rogue Gru.
  11. Master of the Universe
    Less a portrait of an individual than of an unchecked culture where the lure of staggering profits eliminates ethics, Universe subtly exposes the pernicious effects of deregulation and does so in an ingeniously cinematic manner.
  12. Salad Days
    Those not particularly interested in the bands or era portrayed may find Salad Days a bit too much of a good thing. But they’re unlikely to be viewers anyway, and fans will find the documentary’s fast-paced but detail-oriented progress satisfying.
  13. Doomsdays
    This kind of movie would be nothing without a terrific comic pairing, and Fitzpatrick and Rice make near-musicality of their mutual irritation.
  14. Donald Cried
    In virtually every closeup, Donald Cried practically seethes with barely suppressed emotion, though Avedisian cannily couches his characters’ very real, raw feelings amid a ridiculousness born of Donald’s wholesale weirdness.
  15. The Incredible Jessica James
    Writer-director Jim Strouse (“Grace Is Gone,” “The Winning Season”) places Williams at the center of a thoroughly conventional indie narrative — trusting his star’s sensibility to freshen up otherwise stale scenarios. Fortunately, Williams delivers on every count.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Out of Towners
    The Out of Towners is a total delight.
  17. The Year of the Everlasting Storm
    Here we have seven escape routes, each one reconnecting us to a world inevitably transformed by the pandemic — a world where art lives on.
  18. Scales
    With its glittering black-and-white cinematography, immersive sound design, eerie score and creepy reveal, the film taps into something primal and chilling, with the taut first third particularly strong. But the narrative’s momentum and clarity dissipate in the middle and final sections even as the visuals continue to impress. Still, the boldly inventive Scales marks Ameen as a talent to watch.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Angels in the Outfield
    Clarence Brown has carved a tremendously satisfying filmization from a script [based on a story by Richard Conlin] that, from every evidence, could have gone completely haywire if handled clumsily, dealing as it does with fantasy. Religious angle also presented a delicate situation, but Brown has handled it all masterfully.
  20. Eileen
    The formal rigor that made Oldroyd’s “Lady Macbeth” such a striking debut is in evidence here throughout, but this time that directorial precision is applied to a narrative of bold, even garish ambition, which “Eileen” conceals, along with its unhinged heart, beneath a controlled, placid exterior.
  21. The Shrouds
    As The Shrouds goes on, it becomes more earnest and more nutty. I think Cronenberg thinks he’s making movies that audiences will experience as feature-length versions of his own dreams. Here’s the difference: When you’re in a dream, you believe what’s happening.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mogambo
    The lure of the jungle and romance get a sizzling workout in Mogambo and it's a socko package of entertainment, crammed with sexy two-fisted adventure.
  23. Kiss of Death
    A very loose and contemporized remake of one of the more celebrated late '40s films noir, Kiss of Death is a crackling thriller that feels unusually attuned to its lowlife characters.
  24. Great World of Sound
    Blessed with a witty script (by Zobel and co-writer George Smith), a talented ensemble of little-known character actors and a Meredith Willson-like feel for just-plain-folks Americans, this is a low-key but enormously charming picture.
  25. Sweet Virginia
    It’s this strange alchemy — the way that a terse script can leave so much unsaid, combined with such a talented ensemble’s ability to suggest all the details left either in silence or in darkness — that makes “Sweet Virginia” such a haunting character study.
  26. The Double Hour
    Not so much a genre movie as a movie that switches between genres -- and comes out on top.
  27. The Rainmaker
    As carefully constructed, handsomely crafted and flavorsomely acted as a top-of-the-line production from Hollywood's classical studio era, Francis Ford Coppola's screen version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker would seem to represent just about all a filmmaker could do with the best-selling author's patented dramatic formulas without subverting them altogether.
  28. Bobi Wine: The People's President
    That current of feeling and conviction is what powers the doc through some uneven construction.
  29. 12
    Expansively, dramatically, magnificently Russian, Nikita Mikhalkov's loose remake of "12 Angry Men" plays like vintage jazz from a veteran band.
  30. The Invisible Man
    This gratifyingly clever and, at times, powerfully staged thriller is too rooted in our era to be called old-fashioned — its release, in fact, feels almost karmically synched to the week of the Harvey Weinstein verdict. Yet there’s one way that the movie is old-fashioned: It does an admirable job of taking us back to a time when a horror film could actually mean something.
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