Variety's Scores

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For 17,765 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: 9,125 out of 17765
  2. Mixed: 7,004 out of 17765
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17765
17765 movie reviews
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  1. Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
    The film is sufficiently intelligent and entertaining to engage most grown-ups and, no kidding, fascinate history buffs.
  2. An Ordinary Man
    An incredibly precise actor who understands exactly how to play to the camera, conveying volumes via even the slightest microexpressions, Kingsley navigates the tricky mix of humor, horror, and deep-seated regret that make this man, if not exactly ordinary, then relatable, at least.
  3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
    Undemanding yet never quite effortless, agreeable yet never quite engrossing, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society has fewer stumbling points than its loopy title, but that title sticks for longer than the rest of it.
  4. Three Identical Strangers
    A gripping, stranger-than-fiction account of a real-world medical conspiracy, the film begins as a human-interest story and builds to an impressive work of investigative journalism into how and why they were placed with the families who raised them.
  5. Pick of the Litter
    “Pick” is brisk and pleasant, but not terribly involving or memorable.
  6. Beyond the Clouds
    It’s a commendable departure, even if you can sense the helmer struggling to get the lay of the land at certain intersections in this heartfelt tale of an impoverished brother and sister seeking roundabout justice when she’s imprisoned for attempted murder.
  7. Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to be Free
    While trying to save her from being considered as merely an inspiration to the great men around her, the script inadvertently reinforces this impression.
  8. Kodachrome
    Thanks to some likable performances from Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olsen and Ed Harris, it’s an entirely watchable if entirely by-the-numbers throwback to the sweet-and-sour Sundance-style indie films of yore. But there’s a blurry boundary between “vintage” and simply “passé,” and Kodachrome is too often caught on the wrong side of that line.
  9. I Feel Pretty
    What sets I Feel Pretty apart is the inspired premise that Renee’s transformation takes place entirely in her head, while those around her are left befuddled by her sudden change of attitude — a concept that begs the question of why our society encourages women to second-guess their self-image in the first place.
  10. Super Troopers 2
    Super Troopers 2 is an aggressively lame and slobby comedy full of cardboard characters and in-your-face naughty jokes that feel about as dangerous as old vaudeville routines.
  11. Alex Strangelove
    It’s hard to dislike Alex Strangelove; one just wishes the film didn’t lean in quite so insistently to be petted.
  12. This Is Our Land
    The film is so calculated in its plotting that it loses some of its chill.
  13. This Is Home: A Refugee Story
    This Is Home gestures toward a more detailed, heterogeneous understanding of these war victims as human beings, characterizing its four chosen families in detailed, individual terms, and listening attentively to their varied expressions of ambition and concern for their new future.
  14. Baja
    Blandly competent in assembly, Baja has only pedestrian comic ideas, and even those aren’t executed well.
  15. The Wife
    The Wife is Close’s film from start to finish, and several of the supporting performances fail to rise to her level, with Pryce and Slater the only ones who manage to impress in her orbit.
  16. Bye Bye Germany
    There’s a storybook complacency to Garbarski’s filmmaking (indeed the literal translation of the German title is “Once Upon a Time in Germany”) that gives us the impression that all this is snow-globe history, put away behind glass on a shelf somewhere.
  17. Mercury
    The movie is a mess, yet once the thriller plot kicks in, you do start to absorb it as a “silent” film, tuning into the visual atmosphere of stalker fear and rusty chemical entropy.
  18. The Judge
    Greater attention to how and when information is revealed would make “The Judge” a far more valuable film.
  19. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
    If only the music and lyrics were more memorable, then “Jeannette” might have delivered on its potential. But Dumont has a stiff, fixed-camera style that deprives the story of its transcendence.
  20. Come Sunday
    Marston, working from Marcus Hinchey’s sensitive and remarkably nuanced script, invites measured introspection from both his characters and the audience.
  21. Aardvark
    The film can never quite decide what it wants to be — wounded-inner-child drama, quirky comedy, quasi-thriller, all the above — and its good ideas never quite gel, or lead toward sufficient narrative revelation.
  22. Krystal
    Though Macy is an odd fit to direct (coming at the talky script like it was a madcap piece of theater), the wonky tone is all screenwriter Will Aldis’ invention.
  23. The Broken Tower
    Though clearly besotted with Crane’s poetry, the writer-director-star never achieves full immersion in the man’s life or work; the sense is of people playing a very cerebral game of dress-up.
  24. Rampage
    Peyton delivers a unified-looking whole, in which the visual effects integrate well with stage and location work.
  25. Blumhouse's Truth or Dare
    The movie isn’t scary, it isn’t gripping, it isn’t fun, and it isn’t fueled by any sort of clever compulsion. It’s just a strangely arduous exercise that feels increasingly frantic and arbitrary as it goes along.
  26. Blaze
    Blaze, which leaps around in time, telling Blaze Foley’s story by zeroing in on a handful of disparate moments, is beautifully made. It’s an organic slice of life — raw and untidy, deceptively aimless but always exploratory.
  27. 6 Balloons
    You can’t help feeling that something terrible will happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.
  28. What We Started
    Though it offers a decent enough primer on dance music history, it’s so eager to play all the hits that it never quite settles into any particular groove.
  29. Back to Burgundy
    Though not a documentary, this gorgeous French family saga benefits enormously from Klapisch’s natural curiosity, informed by research (he participated in a harvest in order to observe its nuances) and elevated by his insistence that they film over the course of a full year, so as to capture the impact of the seasons on both viticulture and its human stewards.
  30. Pyewacket
    It’s the rare horror film that’s actually more effective in psychological terms than in suspense ones.
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