Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. The Legend of Ochi
    “Ochi” oozes wonder shot after shot, in part from the eye-popping environments produced through a combination of Evan Prosofsky’s lambent cinematography and the use of matte paintings.
  2. Porcelain War
    Porcelain War thrives on contrast, much of it poignant.
  3. Between Borders
    Between Borders runs on didactic writing that renders the Petrosyans’ plight into a derivative period drama.
  4. Brave the Dark
    Brave the Dark is a low-key inspirational indie that sensitively elicits empathy and sympathy without ever pushing too hard or simplifying complexities.
  5. 2000 Meters to Andriivka
    Like its predecessor, this is an angry, viscerally illustrative film — but it’s a weary one too, occasionally narrating its first-hand view of military combat with the jaundiced sense of futility that comes with living through long-term conflict.
  6. 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.
  7. Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)
    Questlove confronts the life and legacy of Sly Stone, investigates it, holds it up to the light, tears it apart, and puts it back together like the bravura mixmaster he is.
  8. The Perfect Neighbor
    The tragedy here doesn’t stop with a white woman shooting her Black neighbor, but the underlying belief that she felt she could and still get away it.
  9. Twinless
    Sweeney recognizes that some of his laughs could be in poor taste, but isn’t shy about casting himself as a weirdo, when such discomfort can point the way to deeper truths.
  10. Omaha
    A humble marvel, Omaha introduces a filmmaker with a privileged sensibility to translate these opposing forces into a tapestry of scenes imbued with loving compassion for the characters experiencing them.
  11. Jimpa
    The acting feels genuine across the board, with Lithgow (who wrestles an impossible-to-geolocate accent) emerging as the most fearless in an all-around daring ensemble.
  12. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
    Delivering a feverish, raw-nerve performance sure to go down as one of the year’s greats, Byrne has never had a role even remotely this intense to prepare us for the emotional acrobatics her writer-director has in store.
  13. Modi - Three Days on the Wing of Madness
    Broad in tone and narrow in scope, the film is in thrall to the idea of creating art outside mainstream financial and aesthetic models, though its structure and outlook are not unfamiliar.
  14. Sister Midnight
    The story soon gets away from Kandhari, leading to a film that enraptures and delights in its first hour but gets so locked in to a singular approach by its second that it’s practically consumed by its own style, rendering it unable to keep pace with the bold ideas at play.
  15. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
    The entire project — including a handful of fun fourth-wall-shattering asides — is crafted with love and a genuine respect for the franchise.
  16. Midas Man
    Midas Man is never less than watchable, and it does capture something about Brian Epstein that’s honest and affecting.
  17. Color Book
    What this spare drama truly offers is a new category. Call it “deep fidelity,” in which the filmmaker captures without flash or pretense the material, emotional and even spiritual lives of his protagonists. Charles Burnett’s classic “Killer of Sheep,” or far more recently Garrett Bradley’s documentary “Time,” come to mind as analogues.
  18. Flight Risk
    A crude, unimaginative, suspenseless adventure whose tension mostly derives from deciding which of its three main characters will prove the most unlikable by the time it ends.
  19. Inheritance
    How the film conceives of Maya is somewhat limited by her being a naive pawn in a bigger picture, but Dynevor easily demonstrates the screen presence to sustain this whole enterprise.
  20. Back in Action
    The two actors are appealing; they’ve got marriage-as-domestic-fight-club chemistry. And when Glenn Close shows up as Emily’s British mother, a former superspy herself, the film calms down for a bit ­— and perks up.
  21. Companion
    Directing his first feature, Hancock brings an impressive degree of control to a project that’s entirely execution dependent. If the timing and tone weren’t just right, the satirical edge would sour, and the entire project might seem silly or in extremely bad taste.
  22. Night Call
    Blanchart proves himself adept at giving all his ensemble various shading, shifting the audience’s allegiances and making his film much more than the usual brutal actioner.
  23. Millers in Marriage
    The film dips into the melodramatic as it inches closer to the end and choices have to be made, but if its players are revealed to be starring in a movie, they are also shown to be movie stars, making relatively mundane miseries well worth watching.
  24. Else
    A tad too heady but quite visually arresting, Emin’s dream-turn-nightmare body horror film is as much a lockdown pandemic fable as it is a philosophical treatise on individuality.
  25. Love
    Love’s commentary on modern relations may be more complex and chewy than just “live and let live,” but the film’s calm embrace of whatever works for the individual is refreshingly humane, rhetorically exciting and more than a little hot.
  26. The Critic
    The film is a heady brew of period thriller, compelling melodrama and jet-black comedy, and the second most remarkable thing about it is how seamlessly these diverse elements gel.
  27. Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare
    You might hesitate to call a film this fixated on child terror, adult perversity and sadistic violence “good,” exactly. But there’s no question director Scott Jeffrey casts a skillfully disturbed spell over a tale that emerges a cross between “It” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
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