Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Concussion
    Effective enough as a cautionary tale about willful ignorance and as a showcase for Will Smith...the film is let down by its confused and cliche-riddled screenplay, which struggles mightily to take a complex story and finesse it to fit story beats it was never meant to hit.
  2. Frame by Frame
    A piercing, poignant and — as befits its subject — beautifully composed exploration of the challenges and responsibilities faced by photojournalists in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban free press.
  3. Palio
    The film boasts characters as rich, and a narrative as entertaining, as might be found in the most crowd-pleasing of scripted sports sagas.
  4. Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict
    Guggenheim is such a fascinating figure that few will snipe at a character analysis that rarely gets below the surface.
  5. By the Sea
    By the Sea always offers something to tickle the eye and ear, even as it leaves the heart and mind coolly unstirred.
  6. Theeb
    Like all well-done adventure tales, especially those with an intimate human focus and an expansive, epic vision, “Theeb” works on multiple levels.
  7. Sembene!
    Utilitarian in construction but personally invested, it’s a duly humble career overview that doesn’t risk much individual interpretation of such rich, essential films as “Black Girl,” “Xala” and “Moolaade” — though it should leave viewers eager to make (or regain) their acquaintance.
  8. Sand Dollars
    Chaplin’s performance is characterized by a lack of vanity and an almost magical combination of empathy and pathos.
  9. In the Basement
    Grabby and grubby in equal measure, this meticulously composed trawl through the contents of several middle-class Austrians’ cellars (a space, according to Seidl, that his countrymen traditionally give over to their most personal hobbies) yields more than a few startling discoveries.
  10. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
    One could argue that “Mockingjay” didn’t really merit being split in two (and surely a single three-hour movie could be made of it), but we benefit from the fact that the film has been given room to breathe, which allows for subtle character moments...and the gradual building of suspense during the actual siege in the Capitol.
  11. Magallanes
    Adapting Alonso Cueto’s novel “La pasajera,” del Solar turns the screws on the audience expertly, but the thriller elements never distract from the moral crisis of a man — and a country — whose decades-old mistakes cling to him like a tattoo.
  12. Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (1971)
    Its mind-bending storytelling and themes of play and paranoia make it perhaps the quintessential Gallic movie of its era.
  13. Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
    This earnest, slight romance doesn’t generate enough sparks to overcome the anxiety of its obvious influence. But as a simple valentine to Hong Kong’s expat nightlife, the film makes for charming, breezy viewing, and the director shows promise going forward.
  14. Of Men and War
    The film’s rigorous approach will appeal to documentary purists while challenging more general audiences who might care to know more about Pathway, Gusman and his philosophy.
  15. The Peanuts Movie
    For those who know the strip well, The Peanuts Movie should feel like the first day of a new school year, reunited with a classroom full of familiar faces.
  16. Freaks of Nature
    Aiming to give teens everything they ostensibly like, and yet coming up with little more than a steaming pile of mash-up nonsense, Freaks of Nature proves a lifeless combination of alien invasion saga, zombie thriller, vampire romance and high-school drama.
  17. Hard Labor
    Hard Labor teeters uncertainly between horror and social commentary. It feels as if the helmers tried to imagine what Bunuel would have done if he had made a horror film.
  18. The Price We Pay
    This well-crafted documentary from director Harold Crooks (“Surviving Progress”) offers a concise, engrossing and occasionally infuriating overview of the ways multinationals avoid taxes by stashing profits in offshore havens.
  19. Fathers and Daughters
    In its shape and sheen, Fathers and Daughters seems dated even before Michael Bolton surfaces to cough up a gelatinous closing-credits ballad.
  20. The 33
    In broad strokes, the events that unfold are undeniably riveting.... The trouble is, The 33 only knows broad strokes. Lacking any specific angle on the ordeal, the filmmakers give the once-over-lightly treatment to every aspect of it, which ensures that none of them will be properly served.
  21. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse
    A witless undead retread served up as a vulgar revenge-of-the-dorks comedy.
  22. Asthma
    Ritter’s performance is the liveliest thing in a callow, shallow cautionary tale, which wears its influences on its artfully frayed sleeve and no closer than that to its heart.
  23. Christmas, Again
    The pic’s charm comes from its moments of unforced naturalism: little observations about the way people behave, paired with details and anecdotes that Poekel himself lived during his years operating McGrolick Trees, the same stand where the film was shot.
  24. The Royal Road
    While this free-ranging agenda might easily have seemed overly random or pretentious, Olson’s confessional tenor lends it all a stream-of-consciousness intimacy.
  25. How to Change the World
    Jerry Rothwell’s film focuses engagingly on the human dynamics, particularly the role of late leader Bob Hunter.
  26. The Daughter
    Deeply involving and emotionally searing, The Daughter reps a confident and profoundly moving bigscreen debut for established theater director Simon Stone.
  27. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
    There may well be new and novel ways to spark audience shivers from not-so-bright homeowners inexplicably using their cameraphones to check out bumps in the night, but this series clearly has neither the patience nor the inclination to look for them anymore.
  28. A Wonderful Cloud
    Though highly improvisational and slapdash a la mumblecore, Kotlyarenko’s pic proves more anarchic and satirically energetic, showcasing individual actors almost like performance artists.
  29. India's Daughter
    Leslee Udwin’s hour-long activist documentary India’s Daughter makes for grim, infuriating and sadly necessary viewing, its despair tinged with the faintest hope that the protestors’ call for gender equality may yet be reignited.
  30. Tokyo Tribe
    The latest from the culty maker of “Suicide Club,” “Love Exposure” and last year’s TIFF Midnight Madness audience-award winner, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” is so insistently over-the-top from the start that the results are just fairly amusing when they ought to be exhilarating.
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