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. Happy as Lazzaro
    The film, for all its interest in fables, trades less in morals than in equivocal, irony-laced human observation. Rohrwacher deftly skirts sentimentality even as she risks big, expansive poetic gestures.
  2. Caught by the Tides
    Jia’s risky experiment is so uncannily successful that it is possible to come away from “Tides” with the whimsical impression that this was the film he was building toward all this time, as though all those lauded previous movies were simply him amassing the raw material for this one.
  3. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
    Errol Morris delivers a compelling, thoughtful and entirely involving documentary in The Fog of War.
  4. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
    If “All Dirt Roads” perhaps does not connect quite as powerfully as it could on a narrative level, it marks the arrival of an arresting new talent in Raven Jackson, at the very least as the creator of the kind of cinema you do not watch as much as touch and smell and taste.
  5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
    Animism, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, sex with a catfish -- there's all that and more in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's wonderfully nutty Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.
  6. Brokeback Mountain
    This ostensible gay Western is marked by a heightened degree of sensitivity and tact, as well as an outstanding performance from Heath Ledger.
  7. Rose
    At once armored, guarded and intensely vulnerable, Hüller’s performance is the human factor here — a volatile, unpredictable element, but one nonetheless attuned to the film’s meticulous shaping and mise-en-scène.
  8. The Kid with a Bike
    The breakout here is 13-year-old Doret, the Dardennes' latest stunningly naturalistic, non-professional acting discovery.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mutiny on the Bounty
    Mutiny takes its time, and plenty of it, without being guilty of a single dull moment.
  10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    In the end, while the movie’s wit is its most satisfying selling point, “Spider-Verse” proves too clever for its own good. But in this universe, where audiences are suffering from the very real phenomenon of superhero overload, ambition and originality are to be encouraged, especially it broadens the mythology to include women, people of color, and yes, even that hammiest of scene-stealers, Peter Porker.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Wicker Man
    Anthony Shaffer penned the screenplay which, for sheer imagination and near-terror, has seldom been equalled.
  12. The Tragedy of Macbeth
    It shows you, through the ironic empathy summoned by Washington’s performance, just how fast the human race can slip off the tracks. And it brings that drama into ravishing deep focus.
  13. Particle Fever
    For all their concentration on the human factor, the filmmakers by no means shortchange the aesthetic dimensions of LHC.
  14. Tarnation
    Getting so close to real-life mental illness, via footage that spans many years, renders Tarnation a uniquely potent experience.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Microcosmos
    A feature documentary about a day in the life of the bug universe, Microcosmos is a surprisingly entertaining, visually stunning treat.
  16. Flow
    The trouble with Flow is that it already looks dated — commendable to be sure, yet rudimentary at the same time. It’s as if Zilbalodis decided to dump an ocean’s worth of water in the Uncanny Valley. Still, animal-loving viewers will bond almost instantly with the cat and its motley companions.
  17. Murderball
    A blast and a half -- as entertaining as mainstream American docus get.
  18. Life Itself
    James cuts — as in all of his best work — straight to the human heart of the matter, celebrating both the writer and the man, the one inseparable from the other, largely in Ebert’s own words.
  19. The Shape of Water
    Perhaps the greatest of The Shape of Water’s many surprises is how extravagantly romantic it is, driven throughout by an all-conquering belief in soulmates as lifelines.
  20. Rewind
    Watching the movie is like staring at a blurred image of the past that gradually, over 86 minutes, comes into terrifying focus.
  21. Leila's Brothers
    The helmer constructs scenes with a bustling documentary energy, studiously avoiding melodramic tropes, even when they might serve to make the narrative more engaging, less unwieldy or simply easier to digest overall.
  22. Caché (Hidden)
    A tightly plotted and paced thriller whose not-so-hidden agenda is to expose the bad conscience of the world's haves toward its have-nots, "Hidden" is one of Austrian helmer Michael Haneke's most watchable and pungent works.
  23. Bisbee '17
    It’s an investigation into memory, intolerance, corporate-labor conflicts and race relations that’s as audacious as it is timely — and further confirms that director Robert Greene is one of America’s finest new voices in nonfiction.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adam's Rib
    Adam's Rib is a bright comedy success, belting over a succession of sophisticated laughs. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin have fashioned their amusing screenplay around the age-old battle of the sexes.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirty Harry
    Strip away the philosophical garbage and all that's left is a well-made but shallow running-and-jumping meller. Don Siegel produces handsomely and directs routinely.
  26. All About My Mother
    An emotionally satisfying and brilliantly played take on the ups and (mostly) downs of a group of less-than-typical female friends.
  27. Moneyball
    While a hopelessly awkward-looking Hill provides fish-out-of-water laughs, Pitt gives a genuinely soul-searching performance.
  28. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters
    Brief Encounters reps a must-see for art lovers.
  29. Resurrection
    For those who miss the way the movies used to act on us, it is a reminder of the uniquely paradoxical pleasures of immersion and surrender: a dazzlingly cineliterate lesson in the lost art of letting go.
  30. Rushmore
    Wickedly funny.
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