Variety's Scores

For 17,777 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:
17777 movie reviews
  1. A solid, and solidly engaging film that nevertheless feels like an extended promo for the Branson brand.
  2. The Original Gangsta Lizard gets a largely satisfying reboot in Shin Godzilla, a surprisingly clever monster mash best described as the “Batman Begins” of Zilla Thrillers.
  3. In both tone and approach, this animated treasure couldn’t be more different from the lavish high-tech toons competing in the American marketplace.
  4. Even a prickly pro like Sutherland can’t do anything to elevate a hokey self-help lecture disguised as family entertainment.
  5. As a big-screen thriller, The Girl on a Train is just so-so, but taken as 112 minutes of upscale psychodramatic confessional bad-behavior porn, it generates a voyeuristic zing that’s sure to carry audiences along.
  6. Long, relatively low-key but always engaging, I Am Not Madame Bovary wears its expansive scale lightly.
  7. The doc is stylistically uninspiring, with a tedious threatening sound design, but the powerful subject matter largely overcomes such missteps.
  8. More than just another documentary, it’s a crucial and stirring document — of racism and injustice, of politics and the big-picture design of America — that, I believe, will be watched and referenced for years to come.
  9. The band still sounds phenomenal onstage, and the concert scenes are expertly shot, with plenty of roaming on-the-ground footage to take in the audience ambiance.
  10. The filmmakers quietly expose conflicts and contradictions without the intrusion of voiceover, and with only occasional intertitles furnishing factual information.
  11. Even dedicated Phantasm fanatics may be hard-pressed to discern anything resembling a unifying narrative thread. But the latter group — the film’s target audience — likely will be willing to eschew coherence for the opportunity to savor this chaotic reprise of familiar characters and concepts in the cinematic equivalent of a greatest hits album.
  12. The greasepaint-by-numbers terror is often so laughably rote, not to mention so poorly written and acted, that some viewers will find considerable entertainment value here — albeit very little of the intentional kind.
  13. It’s this improv-ready ensemble’s wit and Galifianakis’ own gift for physical humor that account for most of the laugh-out-loud moments, heightened by silly flourishes so eccentric...they could only be found in a Jared Hess movie.
  14. “Sky Ladder” may not fully penetrate the mystery of Cai’s artistic identity, but it ends with the poignant suggestion that the most significant accomplishments often stem from the simplest, most personal impulse.
  15. Televisually presented and arduously overlong at 127 minutes, 150 Milligrams can’t always separate the compelling personal stakes of its narrative from its surfeit of informational minutiae.
  16. While “Autopsy” lives up to its title, providing plenty of grisly medical gore, the forensics induce less squirming than the exacting yet playful way Ovredal keeps making us anticipate more unnatural acts as the Tildens realize something is seriously amiss.
  17. Goldman’s frequently amusing script is the secret ingredient that makes “Miss Peregrine” such an appropriate fit for Burton’s peculiar sensibility, allowing the director to revisit and expand motifs and themes from his earlier work.
  18. It takes an uncommon talent to keep the mundane from seeming inert, and through Solnicki’s lens, the absence of outer conflict doesn’t mute the turmoil within.
  19. Generation Startup is too blurry about the grass-roots wheeling and dealing it shows.
  20. Canadian writer-director Stephen Dunn’s first feature treads no new ground in basic outline. But the risk-taking confidence with which he weaves in sardonic magical-realist elements, not to mention his unpredictable yet assured approaches to style and tone, make this a most auspicious debut.
  21. Brosnan is very effective at playing Regan as a wary technophobe who has become too comfortable with his power and success.
  22. Zandvliet’s script and direction avoid milking an innately loaded situation for excess melodrama or pathos, sticking to a discreet economy of approach that accumulates considerable power.
  23. Pesce’s spare script doesn’t seek to obscure, but its quiet, matter-of-fact handling of drastic dramatic events will catch some off-guard.
  24. It’s hard to say what the title of Trespass Against Us actually means, but then it’s hard to know what anything in this movie thinks it’s about. Even Ed Wood would have said, “Needs work.”
  25. [A] powerful, well-crafted documentary.
  26. An illuminating and amusingly entertaining look at the thriving subculture of competitive poultry breeders.
  27. Rats is that rare breed of nature doc, one designed not to foster greater empathy for a misunderstood species, but rather to exploit our preexisting fears of the filthy critters in question.
  28. Colossal takes diminishing advantage of an amusing premise, one that seems made for satirical treatment yet is executed with an increasingly awkward semi-seriousness the characters aren’t depthed (or likable) enough to ballast.
  29. In Storks, the jokes fall flat, but the pace is relentless, and those two things seem somehow intertwined, as if the filmmakers had convinced themselves that comedy that whips by fast enough won’t go thud.
  30. A gripping and incisive documentary.

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