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. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
    Writer-director Jared Moshé’s solidly entertaining period drama...can be enjoyed as both a straight-shooting homage to crotchety sidekicks and shoot-’em-up conventions, and a well-crafted movie about loyalty, betrayal, and redemption.
  2. California Dreams
    As is Ott’s wont, California Dreams blurs the line between simulated vérité and authentic observation, making it often impossible to tell whether those on camera are playing themselves, simply being themselves or a combination of the two.
  3. Skyscraper
    On the scale that ranges from implausibly entertaining to entertainingly implausible, Skyscraper comfortably falls toward the compulsively over-the-top end, generating thrills by straining credibility at every turn, relying on Johnson’s invaluable ability to engage the audience while defying physics, common sense, and the sheer limits of human stamina.
  4. Karl Marx City
    Epperlein offers Karl Marx City as her own act of painful transparency, an essential warning about what happens to societies when ordinary citizens are being watched.
  5. Band Aid
    Band Aid has wit and nasty charm to burn in the earlygoing, generating enough goodwill to power it through an uneven final act.
  6. Folk Hero & Funny Guy
    It’s mostly interested in the off-kilter but natural chemistry of its leads, who despite their differences come across as comrades who genuinely care about each other, and whose bond is solidified by their shared hangups.
  7. California Typewriter
    A lively and appealing analog-nostalgia documentary.
  8. UglyDolls
    UglyDolls is “Trolls Lite,” and the way things work I have no doubt we’ll be seeing a movie in the next few years that’s “UglyDolls Lite.” Yet this is still a winsomely appealing and joke-happy bauble for kiddies.
  9. One Week and a Day
    This sentimental film takes things one step at a time.
  10. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    Although its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, Catherine Bainbridge’s Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World earns respect as much for its achievement as its ambition.
  11. The Cage Fighter
    An engaging and sympathetic documentary.
  12. Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back
    Axelrod plays along with her eccentric subject’s insouciant attitude vis à vis his own identity to mostly delightful effect.
  13. Alex Strangelove
    It’s hard to dislike Alex Strangelove; one just wishes the film didn’t lean in quite so insistently to be petted.
  14. Animal Crackers
    Though inevitably derivative in some ways (it won’t be hard to spot the influence of “Shrek” and various Disney classics), Animal Crackers asserts its own identity, combining some of the most distinctive voices with an ensemble of personality-rich, sequel-ready characters.
  15. Tomorrow
    When Tomorrow starts to make intellectual as well as geographical leaps and to draw macroeconomic, political, and social factors into its bright-eyed, approachable orbit, that’s when cynicism gives way to admiration, and admiration can flare into inspiration.
  16. Deadpool 2
    In almost every respect, this sequel is an improvement on its 2016 predecessor: Sharper, grosser, more narratively coherent and funnier overall, with a few welcome new additions. It’s a film willing to throw everything — jokes, references, heads, blood, guts and even a little bit of vomit — against the wall, rarely concerned about how much of it sticks.
  17. Widows
    Widows, while a highly original and entertaining variation on the heist film, isn’t a home run.
  18. Everything Else (Todo Lo Demás)
    Though the concept of the gendered gaze can be over-pushed in film theory circles, in this case there’s no mistaking Almada’s privileging of a woman’s perspective, with its sympathetic non-judgmental stance and sense of female solidarity.
  19. Leaning Into the Wind
    Riedelsheimer is well-matched to Goldsworthy’s methods and interests.
  20. Abundant Acreage Available
    It’s a pleasure to see such a fine actress navigate the nuances of her role.
  21. House of Z
    House of Z captures the way in which direct hands-on engagement is vital to an artist’s continued relevance, and vitality.
  22. Ice Mother
    For the first time, older characters are at the heart of a Sláma film, and Kronerová and Nový repay the helmer-writer with warm, dignified turns that require both soul- and flesh-baring.
  23. The Trip to Spain
    That The Trip to Spain is unabashedly more of the same is good news…but not entirely good news.
  24. Gook
    Chon’s sophomore feature wavers uncertainly in tone, getting a little too cute for comfort in spots, but is otherwise a lively, auspicious breakthrough.
  25. Frozen II
    In a world where old-timers accuse the youth of being oversensitive snowflakes, Frozen II shows what it means to have one’s heart in the right place.
  26. Spettacolo
    Though at its core the film is about a dying way of life, the location and photography here are so beguiling that they semi-perversely encourage just the kind of foreign tourism that factors into that slow death.
  27. The Day After
    Even lesser Hong has its lackadaisical pleasures, and The Day After has its share of wry musings and twitchy banter between characters to counter its visual stasis and lulling storytelling.
  28. Happy End
    It’s as if the director has tied up loose ends from his earlier films, while forcing us to re-examine issues that have only grown more dire since he first brought them to our attention.
  29. In the Fade
    Diane Kruger’s powerhouse performance in her first German-language production goes a long way toward compensating for the narrative’s dip into overly crystalline waters.
  30. A River Below
    In the stories of both men, Grieco’s film highlights the double-edged nature of eye-opening visuals, which are just as apt to enrage others and endanger the messenger as they are to achieve noble ends.
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