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. Mekong Hotel (2012)
    The pic plays like a bonus track to the Thai auteur’s Palme d’Or winner, “Uncle Boomee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” its esoteric symbiosis of Thai folk culture, spiritualism and current sociopolitical conditions simplified, but no less mystifying.
  2. Jim: The James Foley Story
    Oakes’ film may not share its subject’s hard-headed journalistic drive, but as an articulation of grief — directed by a childhood friend, with significant participation from the Foley family — it’s undeniably moving.
  3. Creative Control
    A contemplative tone, a zigzagging narrative, superb widescreen black-and-white cinematography and an infusion of dry humor make it feel genuinely fresh.
  4. The Automatic Hate
    This arresting seriocomedy deftly walks a tightrope between droll and tense, over a gaping pit of crazy.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Juice
    Dickerson and co-writer Gerard Brown exhibit a sharp ear for dialog and have some real finds in their largely unknown cast.
  6. Nuts!
    This now-obscure historical chapter can’t help but be silly in the retelling, and Lane surrenders whole to that silliness.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Jack City
    Filmmakers pull off a provocative, pulsating update on gangster pics with this action-laden epic about the rise and fall of an inner city crack dealer. Strongest element is the anger and disgust directed squarely at drug dealers.
  8. The Great Gilly Hopkins
    While uneven in places, The Great Gilly Hopkins works because it boasts an actress tough enough for the title role.
  9. The Mermaid
    Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid defies the time-worn nature of its material, concocting pure enchantment with the director’s own blend of nutty humor, intolerable cruelty and unabashed sweetness.
  10. Fire at Sea
    Rosi has long been drawn to quiet lives, but has never been quite so successful in conveying the soulful qualities he sees in them to his audience — until now, using the oblique approach of Lampedusa’s residents to spotlight this growing international crisis, while using his young protagonist’s obliviousness to reflect and indict our own.
  11. Emelie
    This potentially lurid material is lent considerable ballast and believability by the excellent work of its trio of child actors.
  12. A Beautiful Planet
    Short of putting Emmanuel Lubezki through astronaut training, it’s difficult to imagine more rapturously beautiful images of the Earth from orbit than those supplied by A Beautiful Planet, the latest collaboration between Imax and NASA.
  13. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
    The fleeting counterbalance of seriousness makes the funny business marginally yet appreciably funnier.
  14. The Meddler
    With no car chases or artificial villains to get in the way, and no treacly contrivances to force unearned emotions, the bright, vaguely sitcom-styled movie is free to make audiences feel good on its own genuine terms.
  15. A Space Program
    It’s a singularly off-kilter vision of repurposed invention, though even at 72 minutes, the film struggles to keep itself afloat, its central conceit too slender to maintain its sense of mirth or wonder.
  16. Men & Chicken
    In its own playful way, this tonally astounding, genre-confounding movie offers a variation on the famous chicken-and-egg debate, being a twisted inquiry into the characters’ origins and mankind’s own search for meaning.
  17. Life
    Life’s a thrill when it’s smart, but it’s even more exciting when the characters are dumb — which is ultimately a paradox the film wears proudly, to the possible extinction of the human race.
  18. Annabelle: Creation
    Here, Sandberg once again plays with both lighting, composition and suspense, framing shots in such a way that we’re constantly searching the shadows for hints of movement, while drawing out scenes for maximum tension.
  19. Being Charlie
    Being Charlie is far from a home run, but it’s the kind of solidly struck single after a string of strikeouts that can be just the thing to help set a veteran back on track.
  20. Standing Tall
    Bercot studiously avoids the sort of catharsis-oriented pop psychology the genre so often peddles.
  21. Don't Breathe
    A muscular exercise in brutal, relentless peril that should please genre fans.
  22. Art Bastard
    It reveals Robert Cenedella to be an artist far too infused with life to ever let a movie like this one live up to its title.
  23. Kill Zone 2
    Helmer Cheang and action director Li Chung Chi offer an impressive array of rock-’em-sock-’em setpieces — including a battle royale at a cruise ship terminal, and grand finale in a Hong Kong high-rise — and the performances, especially those by Wu, Koo and Zhang, are thoroughly attuned to the movie’s overall tone of fever-pitched martial-arts noir melodrama.
  24. Look at Us Now, Mother!
    The symbiosis between mother and daughter is by turns appalling, charming and endearing.
  25. David Brent: Life on the Road
    A late third-act turn into sentimental territory, in which the original show’s misanthropy is sugared up, may feel artificial to viewers drawn to the series’ persistent despairing streak; still, it makes a certain sense given that the film would otherwise entirely lack an emotional arc.
  26. Queen of Katwe
    The film’s strongest assets are undoubtedly its actors.
  27. Hush
    Siegel’s likable perf keeps the audience on her side and highlights Maddie’s knack for thinking on her feet. Gallagher is even better as the mysteriously motivated antagonist.
  28. Murder Party
    An amusingly over-the-top horror comedy.
  29. Wedding Doll
    Though the darker tonal shift toward the end is a bit jarring, director/scenarist Gilady demonstrates a deft, confident hand with the storytelling, cast and general packaging, and makes assertive use of the dramatic desert setting.
  30. Kicks
    An arresting visual experience, Kicks has style to spare, and in fact it probably should have spared a little, as this first-time director sometimes crowds his film with more auteurial flourishes than his rather simple story can support. Nonetheless, this is a debut of undeniable promise, both for its director and its largely unknown cast.
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