Variety's Scores

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For 17,807 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: 9,148 out of 17807
  2. Mixed: 7,022 out of 17807
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17807
17807 movie reviews
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  1. Stonewall
    Stonewall is no disaster, and to all those waiting to tear it apart, perhaps the best that can be said is that Emmerich’s film is neither as bad nor as insensitive as predicted, though it’s politics certainly are problematic.
  2. Pan
    At no point in the entire film is any character allowed to have any fun at all, which is a rather devastating flaw for a movie that’s supposed to be set in an eternal wonderland of play and arrested childhood innocence.
  3. Remember
    Crafted in utilitarian fashion by Egoyan, Remember does little to earn the poignancy of Plummer’s stricken performance.
  4. Rabin, the Last Day
    In keeping with Gitai’s typically austere oeuvre, it’s a long, slow and sober piece — one could even call it a documentary, despite the fact that actors have been hired to perform deposition scenes derived directly from Shamgar transcripts.
  5. London Fields
    [A] misbegotten mess.
  6. Lolo
    Well cast and funny just often enough to recommend.
  7. A War
    A War doesn’t seek to break new ground in the ongoing cinematic investigation of the Afghanistan conflict; rather, it scrutinizes the ground on which it stands with consummate sensitivity and detail.
  8. Mr. Right
    This peculiar high-danger romance — which plays like watered-down Elmore Leonard or imitation Tarantino — is a risky retro back-step for an up-and-coming young screenwriter with such hip credits as “Chronicle” and “American Ultra” to his name.
  9. Neon Bull
    Neon Bull keeps a cinematic distance at nearly all times, seldom moving in for closeups and allowing most scenes to play out in a single shot. Whether his subjects are shoveling manure or showering down afterward, Mascaro prefers to celebrate these figures in their physical entirety.
  10. Sunset Song
    In full anamorphic 65mm splendor, the resulting landscapes are lovely, as is the face of relative newcomer Agyness Deyn in the role of hardy Scottish heroine Chris Guthrie, although the underlying feelings are all but lost, rendered in a difficult-to-fathom Scottish dialect and withheld by Davies’ overly genteel directorial approach.
  11. The Lady in the Van
    Low on narrative drive, and marred by a misjudged final-act swerve into extravagant whimsy, Nicholas Hytner’s amiable luvvie-fest is enlivened by Smith’s signature irascibility.
  12. Janis: Little Girl Blue
    Berg’s film is no stylistic innovator itself, but it’s the satisfying feature-length overview that Joplin’s brief, fiercely brilliant career has long merited.
  13. Into the Forest
    Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood are both superb in the lead roles, but Rozema’s emphasis on the primacy of family and nature exposes a deficit of visual and narrative imagination.
  14. In Jackson Heights
    In Jackson Heights is a classic example of Wiseman’s affinity for this type of subject, full of community organizers and advocacy meetings in which citizens and aspiring citizens learn to use their civic voices. In truth, the camera lingers longer than necessary in these gatherings, but the film has rewards on the macro and micro levels.
  15. From Afar
    Looking, not touching, is the act of choice for a sexually wary gay man in From Afar, and his hands-off approach is shared by the expert storytelling in Venezuelan helmer Lorenzo Vigas’ pristinely poised but deeply felt debut feature.
  16. Francofonia
    Does it all come together? Well, yes, if viewers think of the film as a freewheeling poetic essay, highly personal yet captivating.
  17. Evolution
    With its linear narrative and clear sense of a protagonist, Evolution is both more beautiful (thanks to gorgeous widescreen cinematography, including stunning underwater and nighttime footage, from “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” d.p. Manu Dacosse) and accessible than “Innocence,” though the two films clearly function best as the twisted diptych that they are.
  18. The Clan
    Argentine powerhouse Pablo Trapero (“Carancho,” “White Elephant”) takes a case so upsetting many refused to believe it was possible and retells it in ghastly detail from the p.o.v. of the perpetrators in The Clan, a muscular, Hollywood-style account of the Puccio fiasco.
  19. The Childhood of a Leader
    A overweening, maddening but not inconsiderable directorial debut for actor Brady Corbet
  20. Blood of My Blood
    With consummate artistry and the self-assurance that comes from experience, master helmer Marco Bellocchio continues to play with form and content with an originality that make younger directors look like they’re grasping at ephemeral straws.
  21. Regression
    Though performed with some perspiring conviction by Emma Watson and Ethan Hawke — as a confessed victim of cult abuse and the agnostic cop investigating her case — the pic is neither disquieting enough to take seriously, nor lurid enough for fright-night indulgence.
  22. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
    A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story is strong on Velasquez’s developing backbone and smarts with the support of school and family. As a rallying cry for anti-bullying legislation, however, the film is superficial.
  23. Captive
    Although Captive largely succeeds as a two-hander, it stumbles in the minimal attempts to broaden the scope beyond Smith and Nichols’ time together.
  24. Miss You Already
    Helmer Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight,” “Thirteen”) brings energy and craft to screenwriter-thesp Morwenna Banks’ maudlin, occasionally shameless script.
  25. Maggie's Plan
    Miller is greatly helped by all her major collaborators here.
  26. Trumbo
    Trumbo may be clumsy and overly simplistic at times, but it’s still an important reminder of how democracy can fail (that is, when a fervent majority turns on those with different and potentially threatening values), and the strength of character it takes to fight the system.
  27. Truth
    The keenly focused intelligence and low-boil intensity that James Vanderbilt demonstrated in his screenplay for “Zodiac” are on impressive display in Truth.
  28. Heart of a Dog
    While this alternately goofy, serious, lyrical and beguiling cine-essay serves primarily as a loving tribute to the memory of Anderson’s rat terrier, Lolabelle, its roving, free-associative structure brings together all manner of richly eccentric musings on the evasions of memory, the limitations of language and storytelling, the strangeness of life in a post-9/11 surveillance state, and the difficulty and necessity of coming to terms with death.
  29. High-Rise
    What began as a self-contained allegory on open class warfare becomes a showcase for stylistic anarchy, wherein the ensuing orgy of sex and violence serves to justify a near-total breakdown of cinematic form.
  30. He Named Me Malala
    Where the film falters is in its willingness to settle for canned uplift, reducing the substance of Malala’s global activism to multicultural montages, goosed by Thomas Newman’s emotional cattle prod of a score.
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