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. Friends with Money
    Stealing the show is Jane, whose rage-fueled rants and scarcely concealed mutterings are loaded with sarcastic bon mots that are delivered to the hilt by McDormand.
  2. Enola Holmes
    The movie has contemporary issues of gender equality on the mind — and an endearingly radical protagonist in Enola.
  3. My Friend Dahmer
    As you watch the movie, its central idea — that Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t just born, he was made; that he started off as an actual human being — has a shocking validity that never undercuts the extremity of his crimes.
  4. Casting About
    Film's warm disposition and deliberate lack of razzmatazz will hook discerning, mature viewers.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hair
    The spirit and elan that captivated the Vietnam protest era are long gone, and what Forman tries to make up with splash and verve fails to evoke potent nostalgia.
  6. Mad Detective
    A neat idea that doesn't quite hit the bull's-eye.
  7. Bethlehem
    The film comprises an impressive directorial debut for Adler who demonstrates a confident grasp of pace, place and thesp handling.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jesús
    Jesús investigates the darkest side of adolescence, raising a number of moral questions without providing easy answers. The top-notch cast is the icing on the cake, with Goic stoically embodying Chile’s hopes and failures while young Durán mesmerizes with his stunning androgyny.
  9. Come True
    With sterling command of its malevolently dreamy tone, it casts a disquieting spell.
  10. Omen
    At a fleet 91 minutes, Omen could stand a little more character-building. But the larger atmospheric payoff lingers; the film first gets under the skin, then sits in the skeleton like a trapped, restive spirit.
  11. A Quiet Place: Day One
    “Day One” ought to have been the mind-blowing origin story, and instead it’s a Hallmark movie, where everyone seems to have nine lives — not just that darn cat.
  12. Crime 101
    Crime 101 is an underworld drama that’s clever and compelling in unusual ways.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Cousin Vinny
    Tomei, sashaying through the proceedings as kind of a sexy hood ornament, creates a buoyant chemistry with her combative boyfriend.
  14. X2: X-Men United
    About twice as good as the original...bigger and more ambitious in every respect, from its action and visceral qualities to its themes.
  15. Red Obsession
    The film’s rather simplistic cultural juxtapositions, pitting artistic appreciators against status-seeking philistines, work best when narrowly focused on the subject of wine.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Carny
    Edgy tale [from a story by Phoebe and Robert Kaylor and Robbie Robertson] of three born outsiders living on a tightrope vividly recalls, both in style and content, the doom-laden films noir of the late 1940s.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It Came from Outer Space
    Direction by Jack Arnold whips up an air of suspense and there is considerable atmosphere of reality created, which stands up well enough if the logic of it all is not examined too closely.
  18. Delirious
    An all-or-nothing perf from old DiCillo hand Steve Buscemi and a script that leaves no ironical stone unturned make this laugh-out-loud fare.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stripes
    Stripes is a cheerful, mildly outrageous and mostly amiable comedy pitting a new generation of enlistees against the oversold lure of a military hungry for bodies and not too choosy about what it gets. There’s little in the way of art or comic subtlety here, but the film really seems to work.
  20. Paranormal Activity
    Paranormal succeeds in staying unnervingly "real."
  21. Theater of War
    What emerges from Walter's docu is not a sense of failure, but a recognition that the play's the thing, enriched by every flawed performance, perfection almost irrelevant to its cry of anguish.
  22. We the Parents
    While no doubt a more evenhanded documentary remains to be made on this issue, the Takatas’ effort is polished and convincing on its own terms.
  23. No Time to Die
    No Time to Die is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neo-classical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A River Runs Through It
    A skilled, careful adaptation of a much-admired story, A River Runs Through It is a convincing trip back in time to a virtually vanished American West, as well as a nicely observed family study.
  25. Dear Diary
    Offering intimate self-exposure, Moretti solders his bond with fortysomethings who have lived through years of political disenchantment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swimming to Cambodia
    Spalding Gray's free-associating recollection of his experiences in Thailand during the making of The Killing Fields had an exhilarating immediacy which is mostly absent in this compressed filmed performance of Swimming to Cambodia.
  27. Honeydripper
    The result is one of Sayles' best films. The music, a mix of blues, seminal rock and newcomer Gary Clark Jr.'s performance, will be an obvious draw, as will the performances by some leading African-American actors.
  28. Ne Zha 2
    What’s remarkable is that even if one fails at grasping in full the plot and its many conflicts, Ne Zha 2 has the power to flood the senses and convince anyone who watches it that they have just witnessed an animated production that holds absolutely nothing back.
  29. The Double
    Undeniably impressive as a visual-psychological construct, The Double is ultimately a rigid, one-joke movie that feels hard pressed to sustain any sort of momentum over the course of its 92-minute running time.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Semi-Tough
    Semi-Tough begins as a bawdy and lively romantic comedy about slap happy pro football players, then slows down to a too-inside putdown of contemporary self-help programs.
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