Variety's Scores

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For 17,794 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 2.4 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: 9,142 out of 17794
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17794
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17794
17794 movie reviews
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  1. Human Flow
    Lost among the bulletins and traveling shots is any sense of the individuals whose distinctiveness is eliminated under the crushing word “refugee.”
  2. Lady Bird
    The real surprise is just how honest and personal this film proves to be — again, par for the course with Gerwig, and yet, fairly rare among first-time directors, who haven’t had nearly so much practice simply being real.
  3. Man in Red Bandana
    Crowther’s courage and sacrifice deserves lionization, and comes shining through in Man with Red Bandana, but there’s no shaking the feeling that he also merits a more elegant cinematic celebration.
  4. Gun Shy
    Gun Shy is the sort of leaden misfire in which actors labor mightily to transform themselves into cartoon caricatures in a desperate (and largely unsuccessful) attempt to make viewers think, despite all evidence to the contrary, they are watching a comedy.
  5. Free in Deed
    Superb, skin-prickling performances by the three principals contribute invaluably to the pic’s stern believability, with Findley utterly wrenching as a dedicated mother pushed to frank irrationality by others’ neglicence.
  6. Motherland
    There’s an ease of intimacy to Diaz’s observations that suggests her crew was embedded for some time in the ward. The camerawork is crisp and bright, the editorial assembly likewise effortlessly engaging, capturing a sense of lives revealed in the everyday workings of the hospital.
  7. Walking Out
    Its unabashedly folky, less-is-more approach proves quietly moving.
  8. The Limehouse Golem
    It’s hard not to wonder how much better the cluttered results might have played as a miniseries.
  9. Rebel in the Rye
    Danny Strong’s film is diverting, mildly informative and — to borrow Caulfield’s adjective of choice — somewhat phony, heavy as it is on tortured-writer clichés and contrived art-imitates-life parallels.
  10. Rememory
    The final effect is akin to that of a Hallmark card inscribed by Christopher Nolan, and it’s that earnest self-importance of tone that finally makes this light sci-fi effort a bit of a trudge, despite Dinklage’s committed and empathetic performance.
  11. Spettacolo
    Though at its core the film is about a dying way of life, the location and photography here are so beguiling that they semi-perversely encourage just the kind of foreign tourism that factors into that slow death.
  12. It
    As spine-tingling as a number of individual scenes are, the film struggles to find a proper rhythm. Scene-to-scene transitions are static and disjointed, settling into a cycle of “…and then this happened” without deepening the overall dread or steadily uncovering pieces of a central mystery. Curiously, It grows less intense as it goes.
  13. Home Again
    Once Nancy Meyers went out on her own, she became a wittier and more nimble filmmaker. So maybe Hallie Meyers-Shyer will follow in her footsteps and improve. Right now, she’s got nowhere to go but up.
  14. mother!
    Its dread has no resonance; it’s a hermetically sealed creep-out that turns into a fake-trippy experience. By all means, go to mother! and enjoy its roller-coaster-of-weird exhibitionism. But be afraid, very afraid, only if you’re hoping to see a movie that’s as honestly disquieting as it is showy.
  15. Suburbicon
    It’s a movie that reels the audience in and keeps it hooked: with smart little kicks of surprise.
  16. Darkest Hour
    Wright is both a virtuoso filmmaker and a natural showman, interpreting the screenplay as no other director could have possibly imagined it.
  17. Battle of the Sexes
    The outcome is widely known, but the backstory proves boisterously entertaining — and incredibly well-suited to the current climate, as King was both fighting for her gender and exploring her sexuality in 1973, when the widely publicized face-off happened.
  18. Jungle
    Taut and rattling in setup, before losing its bearings in more ways than one as no end of jungle fever seizes Daniel Radcliffe’s agonized protagonist.
  19. Wolf Warrior 2
    More apolitical moviegoers are likely to simply enjoy the runaway train of action set pieces that Wu propels with his flimsy but serviceable plot, and dismiss all the jingoist chest-thumping as roughly akin to John Rambo’s stated desire to refight the Vietnam War — and, dammit, win this time! — in “Rambo: First Blood Part II.”
  20. Strong Island
    It’s a moving film, but it leaves a hole in one’s outrage.
  21. Tulip Fever
    Not only is there nothing presently in the zeitgeist to which to peg such a story (except perhaps the Dane DeHaan-Cara Delevingne reunion nobody asked for, shot before “Valerian” and shelved for nearly a year), but the entire package has a curiously old-fashioned feel — and not just because it takes place 380 years ago.
  22. Goon: Last of the Enforcers
    Bloopers under the closing credits reveal how much improvisation was involved here — and how that’s a poor substitute for a good script, no matter how talented the cast.
  23. Kill Me Please
    Anita Rocha da Silveira’s arresting debut feature captures the queasy mix of desire and fear among kids who are sexually inexperienced, yet can think of little else. Pop kitsch, social satire, dreamy narrative unreliability and retro giallo-thriller vibes further flavor a movie at once bold and cryptic.
  24. Dolores
    Dolores crams a great deal of information, themes, and diverse archival materials into a sharp, cogent whole.
  25. Dealt
    The final scenes of Dealt are all the more affecting for illustrating Turner’s newfound willingness to accept things he once deemed unacceptable without significantly compromising his personal code of honor.
  26. A Very Sordid Wedding
    A few of the gags land, most of them don’t, but the overall rhythm is stilted and rudderless, flattened further by d.p. Paul Suderman’s point-and-shoot camerawork.
  27. The Shape of Water
    Perhaps the greatest of The Shape of Water’s many surprises is how extravagantly romantic it is, driven throughout by an all-conquering belief in soulmates as lifelines.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jesús
    Jesús investigates the darkest side of adolescence, raising a number of moral questions without providing easy answers. The top-notch cast is the icing on the cake, with Goic stoically embodying Chile’s hopes and failures while young Durán mesmerizes with his stunning androgyny.
  29. Downsizing
    Downsizing is an ingenious comedy of scale, a touching tale of a man whose problems grow bigger as he gets smaller, and an earnest environmental parable.
  30. The Teacher
    Although dealing with weighty matters, Jarchovsky’s script (which is based on a real-life incident he experienced during primary school) is leavened with welcome humor and irony.... As usual, Hrebejk’s direction is smooth and the ensemble performances top-notch.
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