Variety's Scores

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For 17,833 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: 9,165 out of 17833
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17833
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17833
17833 movie reviews
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  1. Princesas
    This loosely-structured pic feels authentic, its underdramatized script resolutely nonjudgmental.
  2. Always Be My Maybe
    Perhaps the best sequences are multi-purpose. They’re both funny and genuine, add a bubbly buoyancy through deft wit and charm, and tweak genre conventions.
  3. The Lost Bus
    The Lost Bus resembles several other Greengrass films in that it’s also slim on character (only one of the kids has a name and personality), but succeeds in plunging audiences into the action — which, in this case, means trying to steer an unwieldy vehicle through hell itself.
  4. The New Boy
    In Warwick Thornton’s thoughtful magical-realist fable The New Boy, spiritual differences aren’t treated with violence, but echo bloody territorial conflict just the same.
  5. The Queen of My Dreams
    It does little to separate itself, thematically or stylistically, from a now repetitive form of “third culture” storytelling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The French Lieutenant's Woman
    The casting of Meryl Streep as Sarah/Anna could not have been better. Sarah comes complete with unbridled passions and Anna is the cool, detached professional. There is never a false note in the sharply contrasting characters.
  7. The Patience Stone
    Sensual and horrifying, The Patience Stone plays like a mesmerizing, modern take on the tales of Scheherazade and a parable on the suffering of Afghan women.
  8. The Truth About Cats & Dogs
    What really makes The Truth About Cats & Dogs special in places however, is Garofalo's dry, self-effacing wit and Thurman's ditzy, old-style Hollywood glamour.
  9. Jean Gentil
    The relentlessly dour picture traces the slow voyage into oblivion of a talented immigrant looking for his place in a world that thinks it doesn't need him.
  10. Renoir
    There is no major drama here save the encroaching end of one great artist and the birth of another, but Bourdos and his fellow screenwriters have translated something so monumental into a succession of such small domestic tableaux in which the Renoirs are seen as people first and artists second.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Straight Time
    Straight Time is a most unlikeable film because Dustin Hoffman, starring as a paroled and longtime criminal, cannot overcome the essentially distasteful and increasingly unsympathetic elements in the character. Ulu Grosbard's sluggish direction doesn't help.
  12. Grateful Dawg
    The music is fine, but there's little else here to hold the attention of non-Deadheads.
  13. Big Bad Wolves
    The filmmakers’ undeniable chops and bizarre tonal shifts fail to transform the material into anything more than a stylishly gruesome exercise.
  14. I Dream in Another Language
    Contreras’ film uniquely honors the memories and experience embodied in our elders — which it is our responsibility to preserve, and their prerogative to take to their graves, if they so desire.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Red Tent
    Some spectacularly beautiful Arctic footage, plus an exciting personal story of survival, make the production compelling and suspenseful.
  16. The Lost Weekend: A Love Story
    “The Lost Weekend” is a compelling movie and a valuable puzzle piece, but it’s only pretending to be the whole puzzle.
  17. The Pursuit of Happyness
    The Pursuit of Happyness is more inspirational than creatively inspired -- imbued with the kind of uplifting, afterschool-special qualities that can trigger a major toothache.
  18. In Praise of Love
    The film offers a frequently obscure but (for fans) always watchable look at history, memory and -- in the most rarefied sense -- love.
  19. Eight Below
    An easy watch, thanks to the splendors of frosty scenery and furry canines.
  20. Wolfgang
    As Wolfgang, directed by David Gelb (“Jiro Dreams of Sushi”), entertainingly captures, Puck tumbled into innovations that became more influential than anyone, including him, might have expected.
  21. The Bad Guys 2
    If you let yourself get on that wavelength of frisky innocence, The Bad Guys 2 exerts a wholesome and slightly mischievous appeal.
  22. Bombshell
    Bombshell is a scalding and powerful movie about what selling, in America, has become. The film is about selling sex, selling a candidate, selling yourself, selling the truth. And about how at Fox News all those things came together.
  23. Belle
    That the film still works as well as it does is due to not only its polished craftsmanship and disarming comedy-of-manners approach, but also its fascinating insights into the conflicted mindset of British society
  24. Suspiria
    Suspiria has been made with enough skill to get inside your head, but enough ominous pretension to leave you scratching it.
  25. Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers And The Emergence Of A People
    Though a tad uneven, as a whole the documentary cannily juggles an overview of African-American history in general with the specifics of its photographic representation and talents.
  26. Avenue Montaigne
    A well-oiled script is nicely served by a multigenerational cast, a bittersweet and consistently entertaining mainstream comedy that tackles the big themes of Life and Art with unpretentious brio.
  27. 1408
    For star John Cusack, it's a perfect fit.
  28. The Low Down
    The lowdown on The Low Down: charm 8, content 2.
  29. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
    It's shiny, amusing, incessantly clever, but sometimes a tad too snarky for its own good.
  30. Mondays in the Sun
    A tough-but-tender movie driven by perfectly modulated performances, an accomplished script and naturalistic dialogue, all at the service of an oft-told message about overcoming circumstances.
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