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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lady in White
    This probably is as good a nightmare as any impressionable boy could have and still be suspenseful enough to get most adults’ hearts going.
  2. Brimstone & Glory
    Mixing sheer spectacle with modest but pleasing human-interest threads, Viktor Jakovleski’s first directorial feature is a poetical, entrancing documentary.
  3. Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation
    It’s a pleasure to spend an hour and a half in the resurrected company of these two intellects, but the experience feels like the lazy alternative to reading biographies about either man, while the iMovie-style editing strategy of slow-fading between layers of old photographs makes them feel like ghosts of a long-forgotten past.
  4. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
    The result, though intermittently stirring and often luminously shot, represents something of a chore for all but the most ardent Jia completists — and even some of them may be left adrift by the literary scope of a film that does surprisingly little to contextualize its subjects for viewers unfamiliar with their work.
  5. Belén
    Belén might never regain the vivid rage and terror of its opening minutes, but Fonzi’s film ends up carrying viewers on its own wave of pride and upright conviction, ultimately delivering the hope its promises
  6. All About Nina
    Nina’s confessional set takes the already-raw portrait to a whole other level. All About Nina is very funny, but with that scene, it breaks our hearts, forcing us to reevaluate Nina’s recklessness while reiterating the lesson of the last year: that we never know what someone has been through until that person chooses to share it, and that going public takes courage, as there’s no going back.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Murder!
    Well photographed and mounted, it contains all the gadgets of the pet Alfred Hitchcock technique, from quick cutting to skillful dialog blending. The dialog is very well written. Long episodes have clever satirical values as attacks on the conventional and lower-class English.
  8. A Town Called Panic
    A sparkly little gem.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Under the Volcano
    Although this voyage into self-destruction won’t be to the taste of many, there will be few unmoved by Finney’s towering performance as the tragic Britisher, his values irretrievably broken down, drowning himself in alcohol and practically inviting his own death.
  10. About Baghdad
    The writer discovers a people physically and psychologically worn down by decades of dictatorship, sanctions, war and occupation.
  11. The Old Guard
    It’s like an immortal-mercenary hangout movie. Chunks of the picture are logy and formulaic (it dawdles on for two hours), but the director, Gina Prince-Bythewood (making a major lane change after “Love & Basketball” and “The Secret Life of Bees”), stages the fight scenes with ripe executionary finesse, and she teases out a certain soulful quality in her cast.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cimarron
    An elegant example of super film making and a big money picture. This is a spectacular western away from all others. It holds action, sentiment, sympathy, thrills and comedy - and 100% clean. Radio Pictures has a corker in Cimarron.
  13. Golden Voices
    [A] neatly observed, rueful Israeli dramedy.
  14. !Women Art Revolution
    Anyone seeking a dialectic, of course, can look elsewhere, but Hershman Leeson's film is a valuable resource on a movement whose issues remain relevant.
  15. Contagion
    Without fully rounded characters, it's hard to care who lives or dies in what amounts to an extended procedural on how disease prevention organizations might respond to such a scenario.
  16. Fido
    Brightly packaged and steadily amusing.
  17. Black Coal, Thin Ice
    A bleak but powerful, carefully controlled detective thriller in which — as with all the best noirs — there are no real heroes or villains, only various states of compromise.
  18. The School of Flesh
    A skillful blend of fire and ice that subtly conveys the emotional extremes fraught in the relationship.
  19. Adanggaman
    Dramatically naive at times, but still represents a refreshingly ambitious, imaginative film in a period of creative underachievement for African cinema.
  20. En la ciudad sin límites
    The pluses outweigh the minuses: Pic is thought-provoking, visuals are spot-on, and the heavy-duty cast pulls the film round even in its wobblier moments.
  21. Pieces of April
    A Thanksgiving family reunion comedy that sparkles with acerbic wit, original characters and genuine heart.
  22. Blood Stripe
    While its storytelling wavers, there’s nothing unsteady about the movie’s overall packaging craftsmanship.
  23. The Ugly Stepsister
    Contrasting how her female characters feel with the expectations men put on them, Blichfeldt makes clear that impossible beauty standards are the unfairest of them all, whether in the real world or this twisted fictional kingdom.
  24. Bad Santa
    First-rate talent and a uniquely dyspeptic mood separate this effort from more routine, populist stabs at tasteless yukkage.
  25. Waking Sleeping Beauty
    The documentary has but one revelatory insight -- that "The Lion King" can be read as an allegory of the territorial peeing match between big cats Michael Eisner, Roy Disney and, least flatteringly, Katzenberg.
  26. It Might Get Loud
    Musically and visually sumptuous.
  27. The Nile Hilton Incident
    Like the finest noir, what springs forth from Saleh’s film is the dreary belief that the bad sleep well while the rest are left to suffer in the streets.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Places in the Heart
    Flawlessly crafted, Benton creates a full tapestry of life in Waxahachie, Texas circa 1935, but filmgoers may find his understated naturalistic approach lacking in dramatic punch.
  29. Jethica
    If the mix of dead-serious themes and playful, why-the-hell-not approach gives off a youthful, almost film-studenty energy, the actual craft is well above amateur-level. Ohs wears well the hats of director, editor and co-writer (alongside the entire cast of four who also get script credit), but especially as cinematographer, he does a sterling job of maximizing a doubtless threadbare budget.
  30. Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna
    Mason, a close friend of Hutchins, constructs a propulsive and compelling narrative by skillfully interlacing interviews with people involved in the tragedy — including the OSHA investigator who uncovered a pattern of risky behavior on the “Rust” set — with news footage, police interrogations, and video recorded on cellphones and police minicams.
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