Variety's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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  1. Walk Up
    Existing sharply in such a naturalistic register that they scarcely seem scripted at all, all the film’s interactions are still so cleverly designed that despite being blurry with alcohol or attraction or self-analysis, they all highlight the funny, sad truism that no one human can ever really know what it’s like to be another.
  2. Jaws
    Robert Shaw [is] absolutely magnificent as a coarse fisherman finally hired to locate the Great White Shark; and Richard Dreyfuss, in another excellent characterization as a likeable young scientist.
  3. We Are the Best!
    It’s the rare film about adolescence that doesn’t seem exclusively targeted either to teens or to adults. Rarer still, it’s one that takes an interest in the nourishing qualities of female friendship.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Spartacus
    There is solid dramatic substance, purposeful and intriguingly contrasted character portrayals and, let's come right out with it, sheer pictorial poetry that is sweeping and savage, intimate and lusty, tender and bitter sweet.
  5. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
    Rolling Thunder Revue celebrates the let’s-try-it-on, let-it-all-hang-out spirit of the era, and as a time capsule the film is a gift that keeps on giving.
  6. Small Axe: Education
    The brilliance of this particular episode is how it allows us to see ourselves in Kingsley and to consider the many unseen forces at play in our own socialization. For Black audiences, it confirms many of those invisible barriers. For white ones, it may lead them to question whether the myth of their “success” owes in part to keeping others back.
  7. About Endlessness
    If we’ve been here before, the immaculate, somehow tender-hearted execution of About Endlessness ensures this is not a complaint.
  8. Pompei: Below the Clouds
    While among his warmest works, rich in pleasures of place and weather and human motion, it’s no empty travelogue, notwithstanding the sometimes glistening beauty of Rosi’s black-and-white cinematography.
  9. Nomadland
    For those on Zhao’s wavelength, the movie is a marvel of empathy and introspection.
  10. Hope
    Sødahl’s skill at making gesture and its absence count in the most subtle ways is an essential component in our investment with these protagonists, thanks to the superbly understated camerawork of Lars von Trier’s regular DP Manuel Alberto Claro.
  11. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    Park and co-helmer Steve Box stay faithful to the cozy core ingredients that made the clay duo's kudo-reaping shorts and Park's previous pic, "Chicken Run," so well loved. "Curse" delivers a wholesome morsel, happily not too cheesy, that families will nibble on as a treat.
  12. About Elly (2009)
    While not equaling the depth of characterization of Farhadi’s previous films, About Elly takes the complexity of his storytelling to a fascinating level. However, the variable quality of the thesping also prevents the pic from being his best work.
  13. The Diary of a Teenage Girl
    This adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s heavily autobiographical novel is ideally cast and skillfully handled.
  14. Lincoln
    The result looks as much like a Natural History Museum diorama as it sounds: a respectful but waxy re-creation that feels somehow awe-inspiring yet chillingly lifeless to behold, the great exception being Jones' alternately blistering and sage turn as Stevens.
  15. Elena
    A wise and impeccably controlled drama that finds Russian helmer Andrei Zvyagintsev in outstanding form.
  16. All Is Lost
    A virtually wordless film that speaks with grave eloquence and simplicity about the human condition. Nothing here feels fancy or extraneous, least of all Redford’s superb performance.
  17. The Banshees of Inisherin
    The result feels closer than any of his previous films to the barbed, intimate lyricism of McDonagh’s work as a playwright, and more deeply, sorrowfully felt to boot.
  18. Love & Friendship
    [Stillman] takes the inherent sophistication of Austen’s worldview and introduces just the right note of sly, self-deflating mockery.
  19. Hereditary
    Ari Aster directs slowly, meditatively, purging the film of any of the usual horror-video razzmatazz. Instead, he creates scary coherent spaces for the audience to sink into.
  20. Listen to Me Marlon
    The pic is a superbly crafted collage whose soundtrack is as complexly textured as the curation and editing of visual elements.
  21. The Fugitive
    A consummate nail-biter that never lags, it leaves you breathless from the chase yet anxious for the next bit of mayhem or clever plot twist.
  22. Gideon's Army
    Like the film itself, Porter’s handful of devoted, charismatic attorneys do a righteous job of reminding people that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, and that the criminal justice system seems otherwise disposed.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Incredible Journey
    Sheila Burnford’s book of the same title has been given a vivid translation in The Incred ible Journey, a live actioner exquisitely photographed in the Canadian outdoors.
  24. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
    Blending molasses-dark comedy with searing poetic realism to capture contemporary Zambian society at a generational impasse between staunch tradition and social progress, this is palpably new, future-minded filmmaking, at once intrepidly daring and rigorously poised.
  25. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    Picture's dour take on the dehumanizing process of medical treatment is leavened by black humor and dialogue that always rings true.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Odd Man Out
    Carol Reed has made his film with deliberation and care, and has achieved splendid teamwork from every member of the cast. Occasionally too intent on pointing his moral and adorning his tale, he has missed little in its telling.
  27. Maria Full of Grace
    Writer-director Joshua Marston's strikingly confident debut maintains an unblinking focus and sustains an almost unbearable level of tension.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shakespeare in Love
    Exquisitely acted, tightly directed and impressively assembled.
  29. Fateless
    Exquisitely modulated and superbly mounted, the directing debut of skilled cinematographer Lajos Koltai went through an extended, unpredictable production history to emerge as a genuinely new way of looking at the Holocaust that is markedly different in tone from other such stories including "Schindler's List" and "The Pianist."
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