Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The Hollars
    Krasinki’s film remains resolutely resistant to surprise in style or story terms.
  2. The Fundamentals of Caring
    Solid performances and some genuinely sharp humor elevate writer-director Rob Burnett’s second feature.
  3. The Free World
    [A] well-meaning, well-acted but otherwise clumsily executed parable about second chances.
  4. Jane Got a Gun
    A solidly made and conventionally satisfying Western.
  5. The Fits
    Even at its conclusion, Holmer’s film refuses to provide easy answers regarding its meaning, instead using poised formal techniques to impart that which is not spoken — and, in the process, portends impressive things to come from its confident, capable director.
  6. Equity
    While the severity of the film’s environment convinces, the specifics of Amy Fox’s screenplay — tangled up in tech IPOs, post-Snowden security paranoia and venal investment banking practice — are less consistently persuasive.
  7. Ip Man 3
    Less offensively nationalistic than the second installment but falling short of the glowing humanity, genial Cantonese humor and visual flair of the first, the pic is somewhat tarnished by its pedestrian plot and limp characterization.
  8. Fifty Shades of Black
    At a minimum, a parody should be funnier than the film it’s sending up, but Fifty Shades of Black, a quick-and-dirty riff on last year’s S&M romance “Fifty Shades of Grey,” falls a laugh or two short of even that low standard.
  9. Eddie the Eagle
    The pic gets quite a lot of mileage out of several note-perfect musical choices...and Fletcher includes just enough odd angles and quirky compositions to suggest a slightly stranger, loopier vision for this film lurking somewhere beneath.
  10. Jim: The James Foley Story
    Oakes’ film may not share its subject’s hard-headed journalistic drive, but as an articulation of grief — directed by a childhood friend, with significant participation from the Foley family — it’s undeniably moving.
  11. Mekong Hotel (2012)
    The pic plays like a bonus track to the Thai auteur’s Palme d’Or winner, “Uncle Boomee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” its esoteric symbiosis of Thai folk culture, spiritualism and current sociopolitical conditions simplified, but no less mystifying.
  12. Dad's Army
    Amiable to a fault, with gags both broad and gentle, Oliver Parker’s pic prompts sporadic chuckles rather than guffaws.
  13. Indignation
    This may be Schamus’ directorial debut, but he’s no amateur, and his experience — both in cinema and in life — comes through onscreen.
  14. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
    For the most part, pic’s sheer good-naturedness pulls off a not particularly inspired crusty-old-coot-thawed-by-young-scamp concept, maintaining an agreeable tonal balance despite occasional wobbles between spoof, sentimentality and silliness.
  15. Goat
    To pretend that the pledges (who voluntarily submit to such harassment) are somehow the victims in an institution of exclusion, objectification and underage substance abuse goes far beyond disingenuous, and the resulting film falls far short of actually surprising those who already know a thing or two about fraternities.
  16. Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    Greenaway has wrought an outrageously unconventional and deliriously profane biopic that could take decades to be duly appreciated.
  17. Dark Night
    With a title easily confused for Christopher Nolan’s 2012 Batman sequel...Tim Sutton’s Dark Night is at once a glib play on words and a sobering rumination on the mindset of a suburban America simultaneously obsessed with and plagued by gun violence.
  18. Complete Unknown
    Luxuriously conversational in structure, it would make an outstanding stage play, and the two stars play it with chamber-piece rigor.
  19. Nina Forever
    Eccentric as this premise is, the Blaines’ screenplay trails behind their confident direction in terms of ringing interesting variations on a limited, somewhat repetitious theme.
  20. Captain Fantastic
    Ross doesn’t run from the resulting sentimentality the way so many other directors do; nor does he undercut it with irony or sarcasm as has become the regrettable tendency in independent cinema.
  21. Christine
    Far from the austere death march it might threaten to be on paper, this is a thrumming, heartsore, sometimes viciously funny character study, sensitive both to the singularities of Chubbuck’s psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by any woman in a 1970s newsroom.
  22. Certain Women
    As with Reichardt’s more streamlined miniatures, regional detail accounts for much of the film’s lingering resonance, as her characters are molded by (and, in some cases, rail against) the landscape they inhabit.
  23. The Birth of a Nation
    A biographical drama steeped equally in grace and horror, it builds to a brutal finale that will stir deep emotion and inevitable unease. But the film is perhaps even more accomplished as a theological provocation, one that grapples fearlessly with the intense spiritual convictions that drove Turner to do what he had previously considered unthinkable.
  24. Manchester by the Sea
    The persistence of grief and the hope of redemption are themes as timeless as dramaturgy itself, but rarely do they summon forth the kind of extraordinary swirl of love, anger, tenderness and brittle humor that is Manchester by the Sea.
  25. JeruZalem
    The movie’s occasional stabs at political commentary never quite pay off. Nor can the writer-directors, brothers Yoav and Doron Paz, fully sustain the film’s novelty into the second half, when the script reverts to timeless, tired monster-movie tropes.
  26. Dirty Grandpa
    This contemptible fiasco is not only comfortable courting laughs through ugly mockery of minorities, but also doesn’t even have the courage of its own crass-as-I-wannabe convictions.
  27. Forsaken
    Refreshingly and unabashedly sincere in its embrace of Western conventions and archetypes, this pleasingly retrograde sagebrush saga should play exceptionally well with currently under-served genre fans.
  28. Belgica
    Big-picture cliches aside, this truth-blurring but thoroughly convincing portrait makes its case via the details.
  29. Synchronicity
    Synchronicity is best approached as a sort of Rubik’s cube, a series of shiny, sliding, interlocking surfaces that require dexterity to move and figure out, but contain nothing beneath of pressing value.
  30. Naz & Maalik
    The intense focus on the two lead characters emerges as both a strength and a weakness. There’s a lot of walking and talking, and what begins as rather charming ultimately turns tedious, even with a fleet 80-minute running time before closing credits factor in.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »