Variety's Scores

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For 17,828 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: 9,160 out of 17828
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17828
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17828
17828 movie reviews
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  1. The Challenge
    Loathe to mar his exquisite package with the least hint of vulgar commentary, Ancarani arrives at something that is at once luxuriously alluring and a little too like an advertisement for luxury products — dazzling, aloof, uncritical and fatuous.
  2. Good Posture
    [A] roughly drafted feature debut that manages to be just affable enough.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bloody Mama
    The best performance in the film, and one of the most outstanding screen portrayals in many moons, is that of Pat Hingle, playing a wealthy businessman kidnapped for high ransom.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Arabesque
    Arabesque packs the names of Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren and a foreign intrigue theme, but doesn't always progress on a true entertainment course. Fault lies in a shadowy plotline and confusing characters, particularly in the miscasting of Peck in a cute role.
  5. Citizen Penn
    Some of this is stirring stuff, and all of it is worth learning about, but as a documentary Citizen Penn is more diligent than riveting.
  6. Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali
    The movie does a compelling job laying out how vulnerable this relationship was, given their faith, given Ali’s ascendency in the nation and the Nation.
  7. Ginger & Rosa
    Potter seems at a loss to communicate the ideas behind her agonizingly elliptical picture, leaving auds to marvel at the gorgeous cinematography and scarlet-red hair of its heroine, earnestly played by Elle Fanning in a project undeserving of her talents.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Raising Arizona
    As leisurely and disconnected as "Blood Simple" was taut and economical. While film is filled with many splendid touches and plenty of yocks, it often doesn't hold together as a coherent story.
  9. Live Flesh
    Most of all, the satisfyingly cinematic screen adaptation puts motion and energy into a story that was mostly internalized from Victor's perspective in Rendell's book.
  10. Patriots Day
    It’s genuinely exciting megaplex entertainment, informed by extensive research, featuring bona fide movie stars, and staged with equal degrees of professionalism and respect.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slacker
    Linklater springs these seemingly random encounters together with a fluid, on-the-move style. Basic problem, given the absence of storyline, is that interest quickly rises and falls by virtue of who happens to be on screen.
    • Variety
  12. Echo In the Canyon
    Echo in the Canyon offers a richly evocative and star-studded overview of the 1960s Laurel Canyon music scene.
  13. Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
    Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon is a lark, a contradiction — a lurid, violent, caught-in-the-gutter movie that’s also a nimble and knowing tall tale for adults.
  14. The Sentence
    It’s a dramatic portrait of institutionalized injustice, though the film is too narrowly focused to plead its case with maximum effectiveness.
  15. 25th Hour
    Lapses into melodramatic self-importance and gratuitous stylistic flourishes that take the audience out of the action -- are outweighed by the steadily amplified emotional power of this ultimately moving drama.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hidden
    The Hidden is a well-constructed thriller, directed with swift assurance by Jack Sholder, brought down by an utterly conventional sci-fi ending.
  17. The Fault in Our Stars
    Director Josh Boone is hardly the most distinctive cinematic stylist, but he’s smart enough to let his scenes linger for a few beats longer than most mainstream directors would, and seems to trust his actors to carry their own dramatic weight.
  18. Welcome to Me
    A strange and often startlingly inspired media/mental-illness comedy.
  19. The Last Family
    The film is a remarkable, frequently unsettling exercise in staged voyeurism, recreating the interdependent lives of the three members of the troubled Beksiński family.
  20. Pressure
    The film belongs to the ever-reliable Scott, who commendably doesn’t take the easily sympathetic route with the anxious, uptight Stagg, playing him with a suitably dour chill to match his grim forecast — but also a stern, stoic integrity that you’d trust with your life.
  21. 21 Jump Street
    By casting Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as fish-out-of-water buffoons, the irreverent result feels fresher than most '80s-show reboots, effectively flipping the address Johnny Depp made famous.
  22. Greener Grass
    Presented as if filtered through a sunny Instagram setting, Greener Grass won’t exactly make you envious of the over-idealized lifestyle it skewers, and yet it’s such a delightful place to inhabit, you won’t want to leave when the credits roll.
  23. Redbelt
    An absorbing and colorful, if not particularly convincing, excursion into a demi-monde of fighters, scammers, promoters and self-styled modern samurai, Redbelt gives the impression of Mamet coyly toying with the idea of making a populist little-man-against-the-system sports melodrama without actually attempting to create a film for the masses.
  24. Vodka Lemon
    A little gem that takes a potentially grim subject and mines it for maximum humor and insight.
  25. Kinyarwanda
    Doubly disappointing considering that it marks the first feature by Rwandan filmmakers to address the country's 1994 Hutu-on-Tutsi genocide, Kinyarwanda awkwardly and fitfully patches together a half-dozen story strands meant to provide a panoramic view of war and reconciliation.
  26. A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    The insights the movie has aren’t exceptional; this stranger-than-fiction series of events is enough.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hard Times
    The production has a very handsome mid-1930s New Orleans period flavour but the cast can’t lick the script.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cocoanuts
    That's all it has --comedy-- but that's enough. [29 May 1929, p.14]
    • Variety
  29. Held for Ransom
    Partly, the balance between gritty, true-life fidelity and pacy, exciting storytelling is achieved because in Rye, to whom Eric Kress’ warm, compassionate camera clings so doggedly, we have such a sympathetic, human protagonist.
  30. Selah and The Spades
    Writer-director Tayarisha Poe’s cold and stylish debut, commands attention. More specifically, Simone’s Selah seizes it.
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