Variety's Scores

For 17,808 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:
17808 movie reviews
  1. Cutter Hodierne makes an accomplished feature debut with this very well-crafted, empathetic hijacking drama.
  2. Kundo: Age of the Rampant delivers a thoroughly entertaining if overlong gallop through the trusty old story of honorable bandits stealing from nasty rich people and distributing the proceeds to downtrodden peasants.
  3. Even for sci-fi, some logic has to enter the plot, which also needs to be devoid of major holes if it’s not to fall into ridiculousness, and that, unfortunately, is where Automata lies.
  4. Altina makes for loose, exasperating but oddly endearing viewing.
  5. Two Night Stand’s strength lies in the doubts and the ambivalence it expresses about the way we love now.
  6. Unsatisfying on a musical level, it’s nonetheless a well-acted, sporadically impressive piece of filmmaking.
  7. Bjork’s charm has always hinged on her ability to be guileless and unknowable at once; “Biophilia Live” is no exception.
  8. In Jauja, Alsonso saves his most dazzling trick for last: a sudden plunge down a Lynchian rabbit hole that should, by all means, rupture the film’s hypnotizing atmosphere, but instead pulls the viewer in even deeper.
  9. Despite a game lead performance from smallscreen star Katie Cassidy (“Arrow”) as a young woman with multiple personality disorder and an incorrigible punk attitude, this latest low-budget outing from helmer John Suits simply doesn’t have the imagination or resources necessary to pull off its clumsy stabs at visual pizzazz.
  10. Surgically precise, grimly funny and entirely mesmerizing over the course of its swift 149-minute running time, this taut yet expansive psychological thriller represents an exceptional pairing of filmmaker and material.
  11. The strength of Red Army lies in its deep appreciation for the many ironies of the situation, the bone-deep complexities of national identity, and the fact that, on some level, home will always be home.
  12. Fort Bliss is a flawed little gem of a movie, but Monaghan’s flawless performance is its own quiet call to arms.
  13. [A] slight, predictable debut.
  14. Alan White’s polished but pedestrian pic mines little real suspense and few surprises from a formulaic script.
  15. It takes a special kind of imagination to recognize the entertainment potential trapped in such a mundane scenario, and an incredibly resourceful filmmaker to spin it into as much fun as Daly does here.
  16. For unabashed agitprop, Pump is quite entertaining.
  17. La Scala is able to maintain interest and sustain narrative momentum throughout his fantastical narrative, even while he covers overly familiar territory. In this, he gets immeasurable aid from the sincere performances by his game cast.
  18. Too formally well crafted to be dismissed, but too straightforward and uncurious to be particularly exciting or insightful.
  19. All sorts of interesting questions swirl beneath the surface.
  20. It’s hard to imagine anyone, however, having a “Eureka!” experience watching these lame movies, this latest least of all.
  21. Though While We’re Young is primarily a comedy — and a very funny one at that, managing to be both blisteringly of-the-moment and classically zany in the same breath — Baumbach has bitten off several serious topics, for which laughter serves as the most agreeable way to engage.
  22. Rock is enormously appealing here, balancing his patented comic abrasiveness with a real tenderness, the faint bewilderment of an ordinary man blindsided by his own success. And Dawson makes an excellent foil.
  23. What’s onscreen is less a cerebral experience than a stirring and bittersweet love story, inflected with tasteful good humor, that can’t help but recall earlier disability dramas like “My Left Foot” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
  24. Julianne Moore guides us through the tragic arc of how it must feel to disappear before one’s own eyes, accomplishing one of her most powerful performances by underplaying the scenario.
  25. Scherfig approaches the milieu with shrewd anthropological wit, amplifying Wade’s research with her own keen outsider insights — this on top of an expert grasp of tension and tone as the club’s initial allure turns to anxiety and disgust.
  26. The film is a master class in comic timing, employing pacing and repetition with the skill of a practiced concert pianist.
  27. Absent the ability to really get the audience’s heads in the game, the film succeeds better at presenting chess as a subtle metaphor for the psychological warfare being waged behind the scenes.
  28. Ferrara finds himself imitating rather than innovating.
  29. Where “Heart” excels, however, is simply in capturing the rhythm of life.
  30. An enthralling, gorgeously mounted depiction of the complicated relationship between the post-Enlightenment writer and philosopher Friedrich Schiller and the sisters Charlotte von Lengefeld (who would become his wife) and Caroline von Beulwitz (his eventual biographer).

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