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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  1. Color Out of Space
    Entertaining but uneven, the result is a deliberately over-the-top sci-fi horror exercise that loses some focus as the action grows more psychedelically unhinged — its oscillating tone not necessarily helped by Nicolas Cage growing likewise, in one of his less inspired gonzo-style performances.
  2. District B13
    Fast, dumb fun.
  3. Yellow Rose
    Like Andrew Ahn’s “Driveways” earlier this year, Yellow Rose is ultimately a film about kindness. The world can be cruel, but the film’s characters tend not to be. Group those movies with Sundance prize-winner “Minari,” and audiences have three terrific indies about growing up Asian in America — although this is the only one that sets the experience to music.
  4. Warlords
    Laden with gritty action, but with an emotional undertow that carries the drama even through its weaker moments, picture reps a strong comeback by Hong Kong helmer-producer Peter Chan.
  5. The Peanut Butter Falcon
    An odyssey audiences won’t soon forget.
  6. Standing Up, Falling Down
    Thanks largely to the performers (and Crystal in particular), the end result is diverting enough if unmemorable.
  7. Double Lover
    Sure, it’s kinky, but Ozon is having fun with it, to the extent that the entire film rewards that fetish all moviegoers have in common — voyeurism — offering up a kind of equal-opportunity objectification.
  8. The Cleaners
    The Cleaners has the effect of scanning three dozen grim tweets. There’s not much to latch onto besides an overwhelming sense of helplessness; like the internet itself, it’s crowded with opinions but lacking in intimacy.
  9. Epicentro
    It’s a fascinating moment for cultural stock-taking. Yet despite the filmmaker’s evident fondness for the people and nation, this impressionistic feature feels frustratingly obtuse, unfocused and unstructured.
  10. Berlin Syndrome
    Between more trickily opaque stretches of character development, Shortland nails a handful of straight-up, nerve-shredding tension sequences, teasing a version of the film that might have tilted into full-bore horror.
  11. The Day Shall Come
    The title suggests that the revolution Moses is praying for will someday arrive, but that shouldn’t be nearly as scary to Americans as the fact that his own government is trying to push people like him over the edge. That day is already here.
  12. Summertime
    This fleet-footed, kaleidoscopic showcase is all about finding your voice so that the world can start to appreciate what it doesn’t know about those it hears from far too seldom.
  13. Materialists
    It’s a sharp and serious social romantic drama full of telling observations about the way we live now, and about how connected that is (or not) to the way we’ve always lived. And there’s a dark side to it. It’s “Sex and the City” filtered through a sobering reality check.
  14. Fearless
    Manages to pack a satisfying emotional punch.
  15. I.O.U.S.A.
    Highly informative documentary reps a heady mix of charts, graphs and talking heads... superb packaging and timely subject matter.
  16. A Cantor's Tale
    Delightful documentary A Cantor's Tale casts a fond eye back at the "golden age" of chazzanut (Jewish liturgical music) and its star performers in the Brooklyn of yesteryear.
  17. East Side Sushi
    Writer-director Anthony Lucero’s delectable debut feature has its share of on-the-nose writing and Cinderella-story contrivances, but for the most part folds its cross-cultural insights into a pleasing underdog narrative as deftly as its heroine presses together rice and nori.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Farewell, My Lovely
    Farewell, My Lovely is a lethargic, vaguely campy tribute to Hollywood's private eye mellers of the 1940s and to writer Raymond Chandler, whose Phillip Marlowe character has inspired a number of features. Despite an impressive production and some firstrate performances, this third version fails to generate much suspense or excitement.
  19. War Pony
    If Larry Clark had ever found his way onto the Pine Ridge Reservation, he probably would have come away with a film like “War Pony,” which observes its young Native American characters hustling, skating and stealing drugs from otherwise distracted adults.
  20. If You Were the Last
    Hooray! A romantic comedy that revives the screwball formula where two people talk themselves silly — and we only had to go to the end of the solar system to make it happen.
  21. The Phoenician Scheme
    The dense but undeniably enjoyable saga doubles as a moving father-daughter tale and ultimately seems far more interested in exploring the robber baron spirit of 20th-century capitalism than its consequences.
  22. Louder Than Bombs
    Strangely, Louder Than Bombs manages to be glaringly obvious and admirably subtle in the same breath.
  23. Cedar Rapids
    Though not as uproarious as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," director Miguel Arteta's consistently entertaining white-collar laffer could do for Helms what that film did for Steve Carell.
  24. At the Edge of the World
    A nonfiction pirate movie that tickles one’s inner eco-radical.
  25. Radical
    Radical isn’t so much an irresponsibly magical against-the-odds yarn as a truthful one, in which a well-intentioned outsider can only go so far in protecting underprivileged students from certain grim paths.
  26. Scarred Hearts
    Emanuel’s likeability (more apparent in the film than in Blecher’s novel) unquestionably helps bridge the extended running time, and Solange is a fascinating character, liberated yet still drawn to the scene of her hospitalization. The film also has a sense of humor...but the project never quite comes together.
  27. Paulina
    A fierce performance from Dolores Fonzi, as a heroine whose actions baffle those around her, helps to hold this conversation-starter together, but viewers’ own mileage and perceptions will vary — which is clearly by design.
  28. Tigerland
    Kauffman has crafted an enjoyable armchair adventure that juggles the archival imagery, engaging present-day personalities and glimpses of the magnificent creatures themselves at a leisurely yet absorbing pace.
  29. Sicilian Ghost Story
    The filmmaking doesn’t simply tell a story but makes us feel its impact.
  30. Who Gets to Call It Art?
    Lively, intelligent collage, both richly complex and immediately accessible.
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