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. Thunderstruck
    A by-the-playbook, family-friendly basketball comedy that never strays outside the paint, Thunderstruck likely won’t score much coin during its limited theatrical runs. Still, this lightly amusing confection — a Warner Premiere presentation that all too obviously resembles a typical made-for-homevid product — could rebound during playoffs in smallscreen platforms.
  2. Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk
    Corbett Redford’s film channels and sustains the energy of restless youth while communicating the distinctive qualities of a community that carried collectivist 1960s ideals into a new generation, even as it rejected any vestige of their hippie parents’ music.
  3. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    Although its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, Catherine Bainbridge’s Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World earns respect as much for its achievement as its ambition.
  4. A Family Man
    Sparing no maudlin contrivance in a quest to jerk tears that remain stubbornly dry, this hokum is slickly executed by producer Mark Williams in his feature directorial debut. But the result never rises above polished plastic, formulaic, and pedestrian.
  5. Logan Lucky
    Logan Lucky is Soderbergh in mid-season form, and there should be a solid summer niche for a movie that’s this much ripsnorting fun.
  6. Detroit
    Bigelow, working from a script by her regular collaborator Mark Boal (it’s their first film since “Zero Dark Thirty”), has created a turbulent, live-wire panorama of race in America that feels like it’s all unfolding in the moment, and that’s its power. We’re not watching tidy, well-meaning lessons — we’re watching people driven, by an impossible situation, to act out who they really are.
  7. The Midwife
    What do you call a movie about a midlife non-crisis? How about tame, competent, mildly touching, and a little dull — except for Catherine Deneuve's fearless turn as a boozing, ailing wreck.
  8. Killing Ground
    Tasmania-born Damien Power’s impressive first feature, Killing Ground, transcends the cliches even as the film uses plenty of familiar tropes, laying down a solid hour of effective buildup to a duly hair-raising, prolonged climax.
  9. The Girl Without Hands
    Each shimmering frame is composed of multiple layers of diverse drawing and painting techniques and washes of color combined with 2D computer animation.
  10. Amnesia
    There are a lot of compelling ideas afloat in “Amnesia” that never fully congeal, but the undeniable sincerity and personal commitment of Schroeder’s vision help to carry the film over its rough patches.
  11. The 4th
    This pileup of frustrations is variably funny, often just mildly so, but rooting value is slight since floppy-haired Jamie is such a passive figure, one defined by little more than his constant cell-phone rambling and general brospeak.
  12. The Gracefield Incident
    There are some unintentional laughs to be had from this hectic, silly, defiantly un-scary mashup of stock “cabin in the woods” and alien-invasion formulae. But that dubious plus won’t be enough to soften the scorn of horror fans who plunk down hard cash for this feeble, somewhat amateurish if enthusiastic retread.
  13. Our Beloved Month of August
    A tantalizing mix of documentary, fiction and everything in between (including music video), Miguel Gomes’ 150-minute love song to rural Portugal, Our Beloved Month of August, scores viscerally as well as intellectually.
  14. Dunkirk
    This is what audiences want from a Nolan movie, of course, as a master of the fantastic leaves his mark on historical events for the first time.
  15. 68 Kill
    Haaga and crew aren’t aiming for realism (let alone plausibility) in their raw-luck tall tale, but they straddle cartoonishness and cruelty evenly enough that what some will find hilarious may strike others as just gratuitously mean-spirited.
  16. Escapes
    A unique, breezy pastiche that’s as nostalgic as a TV Land binge-watch, and as intimate as having one’s ear pleasurably bent by a garrulous “man of the world” at a dinner party.
  17. Lemon
    Lemon is a comedy of miserablism that keeps poking you in the ribs — and, quite often, fails to hit the rib it’s aiming for. Yet it’s a watchable curio, because beneath it all the director, the Panamanian-born Janicza Bravo, has a more conventional sensibility than she lets on.
  18. Blind
    The result is a watchable, albeit unsatisfying, vehicle for two stars who’ve now made a pair of movies together in which their skills constitute the main attraction, yet who aren’t particularly well-served by either film.
  19. Misfortune
    Misfortune is what it is, a small-budget neo-noir so generic that one half-expects to see a bar code rather than closing credits at the end.
  20. Wish Upon
    By any normal standards, teen horror flick Wish Upon is a pretty bad movie. But its badness is of such a distinct and kooky character that it can’t help but exert an inadvertent charm.
  21. Girls Trip
    The movie’s equal-opportunity irreverence makes for a welcome addition to the bachelor-party genre, so often aimed at the frat-boy crowds.
  22. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
    “Valerian” manages to be both cutting-edge and delightfully old-school — the kind of wild, endlessly creative thrill ride that only the director of “Lucy” and “The Fifth Element” could deliver, constructed as an episodic series of missions, scrapes and near-misses featuring a mind-blowing array of environments and stunning computer-generated alien characters.
  23. Hickok
    Less censorious aficionados likely will be willing to look past the rough edges and enjoy the simple pleasures provided by a respectfully sincere retelling of a familiar legend.
  24. The Reagan Show
    The Reagan Show, unfortunately, isn’t the movie that it pretends to be. It’s a glib and scattered exposé.
  25. Menashe
    Though the fate of his journey isn’t terribly well communicated, it’s a privilege to have observed Menashe’s world from the inside.
  26. The Rehearsal
    The Rehearsal is engrossing, but it’s not a major vision.
  27. Our Time Will Come
    By highlighting the value of artists and intellectuals, and the importance of protecting them, [Hui] imbues the authentic historical episode with timely universal relevance.
  28. Dawson City: Frozen Time
    The remarkable thing is that the movie acquires the quality of a time machine. You don’t just watch “Dawson City.” You step into it to and draw back a magical curtain on the past, entering a world of buried memory that’s the precursor to our own.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mr. Majestyk
    Mr Majestyk makes a first-reel pretense of dealing with the thorny subject of migrant Chicano farm laborers, but social relevance is soon clobbered by the usual Charles Bronson heroics, here mechanically navigated by director Richard Fleischer.
  30. Chaplin
    Telling the entire story of Chaplin's 88 years was probably a hopeless goal, but the biopic does offer the saving grace of a truly remarkable central performance by Robert Downey Jr. and some lovely moments along the way.
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