Variety's Scores

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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
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  1. This Changes Everything
    This Changes Everything is genuinely stirring as it details improbable victories and green-economy opportunities.
  2. The Creeping Garden
    Good-humored but not campy in its regard of some genuinely fascinating research, and full of trippy visuals, this science-fair bonanza would have been a midnight staple in the era of “The Hellstrom Chronicles.”
  3. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    Tempering the strong medicine of its social-justice protestations with a streak of outlandish melodrama, this “Monster” may not have quite as many facets as its title implies, but Pla’s formally deft manipulation of perspective keeps the pic both urgent and even-handed.
  4. Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans
    Ultimately, Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans comes across as a portrait of the artist as a spoiled jerk, albeit a jerk whose charisma cannot be denied, and whose artistic ambitions elicit grudging admiration.
  5. Going Away
    Garcia, co-scenarist Jacques Fieschi and the excellent cast (including a welcome Dominique Sanda as Baptiste’s regal mother) bring a sense of depth and shared history to even those figures we meet just briefly.
  6. Dukhtar
    A handsomely made, nicely modulated fugitive drama with forceful social overtones that decries the ongoing practice of marrying child brides in tribal regions of the country’s mountainous north.
  7. Mediterranea
    While many of their feelings are universally relatable, it can be hard work trying to follow what these two characters are thinking at any given moment, in part because of Carpignano’s grainy, handheld style.
  8. Cars 3
    Cars 3 is a friendly, rollicking movie made with warmth and dash, and to the extent that it taps our primal affection for this series, it more than gets the job done.
  9. Incredibles 2
    What was organic, and even obsessive, in the first outing comes off as pat and elaborate formula here. The new movie, energized as it is, too often feels like warmed-over sloppy seconds, with a what-do-we-do-now? riff that turns into an overly on-the-nose plot.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Magnificent Seven
    Until the women and children arrive on the scene about two-thirds of the way through, The Magnificent Seven is a rip-roaring rootin' tootin' western with lots of bite and tang and old-fashioned abandon.
  11. Why Him?
    It’s bluntly cheeky, it goes on for too long, but the concept keeps on giving.
  12. Censored Voices
    Loushy skillfully and briskly excerpts the material, although the film falls somewhere on the line between formal documentary and assemblage.
  13. Flowers
    The three lead actresses, beautifully cast, form just enough of a contrast to each other to create extratextual tension while maintaining a high degree of sympathy.
  14. 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.
  15. Godzilla vs. Kong
    Godzilla vs. Kong is most satisfying when it’s at its most simple, which happens either in quiet bonding scenes between Jia and Kong, or else in those deafening moments when the monsters are duking it out.
  16. The Girl in the Book
    Cohn handles all the performers very deftly.
  17. A Fistful of Fingers
    Loaded with unashamedly sophomoric humor, but fired with a kind of early Richard Lester-esque elan that doesn’t run out of gas, A Fistful of Fingers shows more wit and invention than most of its no-budget Brit saddlemates.
  18. Heneral Luna
    Anchored by a charismatic central performance by John Arcilla (“Metro Manila”) and peppered with exciting action sequences, the pic has the all-around energy to overcome the odd moment of bumpy storytelling and prosaic dialogue.
  19. A Royal Night Out
    Julian Jarrold’s brightly performed exercise in speculative history scores as a frothier, more feminine bookend to “The King’s Speech” — though it’s no less engaging or accomplished.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. Band of Robbers
    The performances are deft, the pacing is fleet, and the viewer is left with the agreeable impression that Band of Robbers is a promising work by filmmakers whose next one probably will be even better.
  23. The Girl on the Train
    As a big-screen thriller, The Girl on a Train is just so-so, but taken as 112 minutes of upscale psychodramatic confessional bad-behavior porn, it generates a voyeuristic zing that’s sure to carry audiences along.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. Allied
    Allied is tense and absorbing, yet the film’s climactic act somehow falls short.
  28. Touched With Fire
    Potent performances by stars Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby, strong contributions by well-cast supporting players and an overall sense of understated verisimilitude offset the predictable aspects of the narrative.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Le Mans
    Marked by some spectacular car-racing footage, Le Mans is a successful attempt to escape the pot-boiler of prior films on same subject. The solution was to establish a documentary mood.
  30. Very Semi-Serious
    A delightful if never particularly deep survey of an American comic institution.
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