Variety's Scores

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For 17,771 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 2.5 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: 9,130 out of 17771
  2. Mixed: 7,005 out of 17771
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17771
17771 movie reviews
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  1. Crooked House
    With such an enticing cast, it’s tougher than one might think trying to divine which of these eccentrics might be responsible for the crime, and “Crooked House” keeps you guessing, right up to its shocking conclusion.
  2. The Rape of Recy Taylor
    Timing alone makes The Rape of Recy Taylor something close to essential viewing. But Buirski’s approach is oddly diffuse, lacking the clarity of rage that has informed so many recent touchpoints in social-issue documentary.
  3. I Killed My Mother
    There’s much to praise, especially the oh-so-real dialogue, but true psychological penetration is lacking and Dolan’s hunger to prove his talent results in a superfluity of styles. Still, multigenerational auds worldwide will likely find kinship with the many funny/painful situations, and pic is a genuine crowdpleaser.
  4. Cinderella the Cat
    The film plays on a number of clever riffs on the Cinderella tale, all in the darkest of veins, from the sadism of Mia’s step-siblings to Salvatore’s drug empire built on shoes made from soluble cocaine.
  5. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    Although The Last Jedi meets a relatively high standard for franchise filmmaking, Johnson’s effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors’ visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic.
  6. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    It’s like watching the lamest Indiana Jones sequel ever imagined, minus Indiana Jones.
  7. Just Getting Started
    Some bad movies trigger swells of anger and outrage, while others prompt industrial-grade snark and scorn. And then there are leaden clunkers like Just Getting Started that provoke an ineffable sense of sadness as one considers how much time, money and talent has been squandered on something so thoroughly useless.
  8. Quest
    [A] living, breathing, stunning documentary.
  9. Ferdinand
    In what’s been an underwhelming year for big-studio animation, it’s the best of the bunch: sincere, likable, surprisingly funny, and overall true to its source material.
  10. Along for the Ride
    What’s ultimately moving about Along for the Ride is that it communicates how Dennis Hopper, by sticking true to his reckless muse, was an artist who changed things, and maybe changed everything.
  11. Bullet Head
    The result is a film that somehow manages to be fairly watchable, yet nonetheless really needed intervention from the conceptual stage onward.
  12. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
    Though the story was written almost two decades ago, it’s a microcosm for the kind of wall-building mentality that has taken hold of the mainstream today, and the Malloy brothers achieve a kind of tragic poetry that sticks with those who make it a point to seek this one out.
  13. Phantom Thread
    Phantom Thread sweeps you up and carries you along, much more, to my mind, than “The Master” did. Yet it’s a thesis movie: the story of a bullying narcissist who lacks the ability to have a relationship, and the outrageous way he’s schooled into becoming a human being. It’s the story of a control freak made by a control freak.
  14. The Post
    The Pentagon Papers marked an iconic moment in American history: the press claiming its own freedom to call out the excesses of power. The Post celebrates what that means, tapping into an enlightened nostalgia for the glory days of newspapers, but the film also takes you back to a time when the outcome was precarious, and the freedoms we thought we took for granted hung in the balance. Just as they do today.
  15. Birdboy: The Forgotten Children
    Though at first glance this ironically-sweet-and-very-sour mix might seem unappetizing, even repellent, it soon becomes fascinating in its oddball complexity.
  16. Psychopaths
    Devoid of characters or a story about which one might care, Psychopaths proves to be a fright-free pastiche without purpose — save, that is, for unimaginatively paying homage to a string of superior genre predecessors.
  17. Inoperable
    Inoperable is insufferable.
  18. The Dancer
    More problematic, even if we accept the film as pure fiction, is its pedestrian construction and ill-conceived script, unlikely to spark interest in one of the most innovative and influential performers of the last century and a quarter.
  19. A Bad Idea Gone Wrong
    First-time filmmaker Jason Headley, directing from his own screenplay, keeps his concoction moving briskly and humorously, with a light sprinkling of acceptably sweet sentimentality here and there.
  20. 24 Hours to Live
    Smrz brings considerable gusto if not much conceptual originality to the pileup of dire crises, keeping the pace brisk and seriocomic tone variable.
  21. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
    Too much of “Bombshell” skims over Lamarr’s more troubling and troubled aspects to paint her in somewhat stock terms as the victim of keep-her-on-that-pedestal misogyny.
  22. Remember Me
    Writer-director-star Steve Goldbloom’s debut feature is an uneven trifle overly dependent on the familiar, uninspired comedy of immature man-boys behaving badly. But it has an ace up its sleeve in the person of historied veteran Rita Moreno, whose unpredictable performance in an underwritten role gooses things to an amiable degree.
  23. Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars
    As absorbing as much of this material is, the lengthy feature does not feel definitive: It commits the typical music-doc sin of devoting nearly all its time to a celebrated first professional decade, then hastily skimming past all events since.
  24. Bad Match
    The movie is “Fatal Attraction” for the age of the revolving-door hook-up, and in its fevered low-budget way it’s just clever enough to do what it sets out to do. It gives toxic masculinity its just desserts.
  25. Song of Granite
    Pat Collins’ echoing, elegiac evocation of the spirit of Irish sean nós singer Joe Heaney is most interested in his haunted vocal gift, letting the troubled life that weathered it show through only in glimmers between the gorgeous songs.
  26. The Star
    As kid-friendly Christmas movies go, this one actually goes out of its way to remind what the holiday represents, which should please parents looking for something a little more sophisticated (but just barely) than the VeggieTales cartoons.
  27. Justice League
    The movie is no cheat. It’s a tasty franchise delivery system that kicks a certain series back into gear.
  28. Amanda & Jack Go Glamping
    A thin, sparkless romantic comedy that takes satirical aim at a host of current hipster-culture targets, before concluding that merely identifying them is droll enough.
  29. Small Town Crime
    Written and directed by sibling filmmakers Ian and Eshom Nelms with equal measures of respect and skepticism for pulp conventions, the movie comes across as neither pastiche nor parody, but rather as a seriously down-and-dirty crime story with a savage sense of humor.
  30. Wonder
    It’s a very tasteful heart-tugger — a drama of disarmingly level-headed empathy that glides along with wit, assurance, and grace, and has something touching and resonant to say about the current climate of American bullying.
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