Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,832 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 2.3 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: 9,164 out of 17832
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17832
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17832
17832 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    True to its subtitle, the film feels like a fresh start. And like this summer’s blockbuster “Superman” reboot over at DC, that could be just what it takes to win back audiences suffering from superhero exhaustion.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Curse of Frankenstein
    Peter Cushing gets every inch of drama from the leading role, making almost believable the ambitious urge and diabolical accomplishment.
  3. June Zero
    Though it occasionally brushes up against intricate ideas about memory and memorialization — who gets to be commemorated, who must not and the genesis of the “never forget” ethos — June Zero itself leaves a quickly fading impression.
  4. Black '47
    Daly’s characterful, slow-burn tale is a well-crafted experiment in grafting genre onto disregarded history.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Asylum
    It's a trim little chiller, with a moderate quota of blood and mayhem, polished performances and smooth direction.
  6. Don't Leave Home
    The result is a diverting-to-a-point curio whose nice atmospherics and good performances ultimately don’t add up to quite enough to satisfy the constructs of horror, allegory, satire — or anything else.
  7. The Aggressives
    Documaker Daniel Peddle also works as a casting director, and so it is small wonder his crisp, concise, intimate portrait of six very different, self-styled "aggressives" -- women who stress their masculine sides -- should reveal in each a curious integrity and beauty.
  8. Leo
    However immature Sandler’s sense of humor may have been in the past, he seems to have a pretty good handle on what makes kids tick. The movie can be making potty jokes one minute and delivering practical advice the next, wrapping with the sensible suggestion to “find your Leo.”
  9. Aristide and the Endless Revolution
    A vital if less than objective slice of film journalism on the U.S.'s troubled history in the Third World.
  10. The Lovers and the Despot
    While a more thorough archival survey of Choi and Shin’s work together (pre- and post-abduction) would have allowed for a deeper perspective, this real-life romantic thriller/escape saga still boasts enough fascinating details and angles to qualify as essential stranger-than-fiction viewing.
  11. Ondine
    A decidedly specialized affair that will appeal only to certain tastes, but there's plenty to appreciate if you let it seep in.
  12. Plus One
    [A] winning film ... Genre fans won’t want to miss it.
  13. Down in the Valley
    Result is imperfect and overlong, but hugely ambitious and often breathtaking.
  14. Monsieur N.
    An intricate, fetchingly lensed tale of historical speculation framed as a plausible thriller.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Year of Living Dangerously
    Here is an astonishing feat of acting by New Yorker Linda Hunt, cast by Weir because he could not locate a short male actor to fit the bill. A bizarre, yet touching, romantic triangle develops between Gibson, Hunt, and Sigourney Weaver as a British Embassy official.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mississippi Burning
    Though its credibility is undermined by a fanciful ending, Mississippi Burning captures much of the truth in its telling of the impact of a 1964 FBI probe into the murders of three civil rights workers.
  17. In a Better World
    However didactic the film's final scenes, there's no denying the sheer dramatic intensity Bier achieves.
  18. Bonsái
    By turns gentle, deadpan, droll and sarcastic, Jimenez's film reflects on Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" to track a sweet but doomed love affair between literary -- and pleasurably randy -- college students.
  19. Touch Me Not
    Pintilie is the opposite of a misanthrope — she’s genuinely invested in opening the mind to the body’s sensations. Keeping it all balanced is where she gets bogged down.
  20. Please Baby Please
    Kramer sketches out a feverish queer manifesto on gender that feels both novel and familiar.
  21. Point and Shoot
    Curry’s interest is in obsession, not Libya, yet surely a corrective is needed, and dressing up a nation’s collapse as if it were an American triumph smacks of the same willful delusion as George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished.”
  22. Photograph
    For all the complex class politics and bottled-up desires at play in its narrative, Batra’s film is perhaps a shade too timid for its own good; it touches the heart, but hovers just short of the soul.
  23. Last Breath
    Last Breath delivers every incident with so much specificity that it’s like a cinematic piece of journalism. Yet it leaves you with a minor tingle of the uncanny.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silkwood
    A very fine biographical drama.
  25. James' Journey to Jerusalem
    There's a fable-like quality to this first feature by documaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz that packs just as much punch as a more "serious," didactic movie while entertaining the viewer at the same time.
  26. Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands
    Students of the astonishing body of films won’t find much that enhances their understanding, yet Thomsen’s footage offers more than mere scraps from a great career, and deserves inclusion in the corpus.
  27. Close to Home
    Mixes humor, tragedy, tenderness and political acumen into a well-observed coming-of-age format.
  28. 100 Nights of Hero
    It’s a gorgeous-looking film, but a drag.
  29. Outrage
    An exploding bathroom stall of a movie, Outrage makes an excellent ipso facto case for itself: If closeted gay politicians vote against equal rights for gays to protect their own secrets, outing them is for the common good.
  30. The Pillow Book
    It is at first daunting but ultimately awesomely impressive and beautiful.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »