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. Slow West
    John Maclean’s impeccably crafted writing-directing debut at times has a distinctly Coen-esque flavor in its mix of sly intelligence, bleak humor and unsettling violence, exuding fierce confidence even when these qualities don’t always cohere in the smoothest or most emotionally impactful fashion.
  2. Cinderella
    Though this Cinderella could never replace Disney’s animated classic, it’s no ugly stepsister either, but a deserving companion.
  3. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
    Armed with “Mad Max”-like design elements and a good sense of humor, this energetically executed bloodbath marks a promising feature bow for Australian brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner.
  4. Humpback Whales
    Veteran filmmaker Greg MacGillivray (“Everest”) seizes the opportunity with striking imagery, which goes a long way toward compensating for his frequently over-earnest messaging.
  5. Every Thing Will Be Fine
    While Wenders has argued intelligently in interviews for the merits of realizing character-driven drama in three dimensions, this isn’t the most helpful case-maker — not least because Norwegian writer Bjorn Olaf Johannessen’s screenplay has barely been rendered in two.
  6. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
    The beautifully modulated script, ripe with moments of liberating humor, builds to a crescendo of indignation, allowing Elkabetz several cathartic outbursts, but they’re no more riveting than the actress’ silences.
  7. 45 Years
    Above all, 45 Years is a drama of quiet restraint.
  8. Fifty Shades of Grey
    Glossy, well cast, and a consistent hoot until it becomes a serious drag, this neo-“9½ Weeks” is above all a slick exercise in carefully brand-managed titillation — edgier than most grown-up studio fare, but otherwise a fairly mild provocation in this porn-saturated day and age.
  9. Diary of a Chambermaid
    The film milks some brisk comedy from its upstairs-downstairs peekaboo, but is too breezy to convince in its depiction of obsessive erotic fixation — making for a “Diary” that oddly feels less exposing as it goes along.
  10. Queen of Earth
    An unnerving, acidly funny work that fosters an acute air of dread without ever fully announcing itself as a horror movie.
  11. Jafar Panahi's Taxi
    A film of quiet but profound outrage, laughing on the surface, but howling in anger just beneath.
  12. Fresh Dressed
    The breezily likable pic benefits from an underexposed topic and solid execution.
  13. Woman in Gold
    This is manufactured sentiment, less interested in provoking thought than in manipulating emotion, constructed of human obstacles overcome, stirring speeches delivered and heart-rending flashbacks unveiled, all suspended like so much Spam in the jelly of its own score.
  14. Life
    [An] engaging, elegiac portrait of a legend in the making.
  15. The Summer of Sangaile
    At its best, The Summer of Sangaile captures the special intensity of those relationships in which everything seems to fade away save for the other person.
  16. The Other Man: F.W. de Klerk and the End of Apartheid
    It’s an opportunity only half seized: Haphazard both as biography and historical survey, the film asks more salient questions than it can answer in a rushed 76 minutes.
  17. Seymour: An Introduction
    This first documentary directed by Ethan Hawke happily sidesteps any vanity-project pitfalls, granting full expression to Bernstein’s wise and witty commentary on a craft that he’s spent decades honing — as well as the proper application of that craft when the demands of art are often outweighed by the pressures of commerce.
  18. Knight of Cups
    Those who have had their fill of the director’s impressionistic musings will find his seventh feature as empty as the lifestyle it puts on display; for the rest of us, there’s no denying this star-studded, never-a-dull-moment cinematic oddity represents another flawed but fascinating reframing of man’s place in the modern world.
  19. Queen of the Desert
    Herzog’s script loses its way in the desert at one point, dutifully chronicling a life whose principal conflicts are a bit too abstract to dramatize. In the end, it’s not clear what’s driving Bell, nor what’s holding her back.
  20. Mr. Holmes
    The more vital subject of Mr. Holmes turns out to be our need for stories themselves and, in particular, the role of fiction as an escape from the pain and loss of everyday life.
  21. 5 to 7
    Courageously sentimental in an age of irony, Victor Levin’s refreshingly articulate 5 to 7 delivers romance of the sort thought lost since the days of Audrey Hepburn, for those who appreciate such finery.
  22. Ballet 422
    The documentary moves with the same fluidity that characterizes Peck’s choreography.
  23. 3 Nights in the Desert
    The characters, situations and dialogue too seldom escape cliche in Gabriel Cowan’s watchable but unmemorable feature.
  24. McFarland USA
    A rare studio entertainment featuring a largely Latino ensemble, yet necessarily fronted by a big-name draw like Costner, McFarland, USA feels at once mildly progressive and unavoidably retrograde.
  25. 1971
    The film offers surprisingly cogent, lived-in evocations of a period too often glossed over in impersonal, by-the-book montages.
  26. Entertainment
    Take it or leave it, Alverson’s fourth feature is singular stuff, and it reconfirms the director as one of the truly bold voices in the all-too-homogenous U.S. indie film scene.
  27. Dreamcatcher
    Conventionally constructed but remarkable for the honest, intimate rapport it achieves with highly vulnerable human subjects.
  28. Jupiter Ascending
    While the Wachowskis have always put their greatest emphasis on aesthetics, they allow the visual impulse to get the best of them here, investing so much attention in creating unique fashions, technology, architecture and design that they’ve blinded themselves to the huge logical gaps in their own story.
  29. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
    For Scientologists, going clear refers to a coveted status awarded to those who have completed a certain level of auditing. But for the men and women on screen here, it means something else: reclaiming their own voices and demanding to be heard.
  30. Don Verdean
    The expected satire of religious gullibility and charlatanism proves toothless; worse, a cast of very funny people is given very little funny to do.
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