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. Juliet, Naked
    It’s a winsome screwball love story that grows on you and takes you somewhere charming.
  2. Bucky and the Squirrels
    The unshakable perkiness of the whole endeavor, its blithe lack of topicality, edge or satirical intent (it’s not even a spoof, just a goof) would be irritating if it didn’t work so hard to remind us that you don’t have to be mean to be funny.
  3. The Kindergarten Teacher
    Colangelo (whose underrated 2014 first feature “Little Accidents” was about the aftermath of a fatal mining accident) has created a consistently interesting if slow-moving drama that works very well as a showcase for its lead performer.
  4. The Long Dumb Road
    Instead of slapstick laughs, The Long Dumb Road pays attention to how these two opposites connect.
  5. Pity
    If Pity doesn’t quite have the shock of the new on its side, then, its sharpest passages nonetheless exert the bracing, mouth-shuddering tang of neat ouzo: You know how it’s going to taste, but it leaves you wincing anyway.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is an entertaining and emotionally involving western. Yet, while it is an enjoyable film it falls distinctly shy of its innate story potential.
  7. Adrift
    Woodley gives herself over to the physical and spiritual reality of each scene. She knows how to play an ordinary woman who’s wild at heart, and she keeps you captivated, even when the film itself is watchable in a perfectly competent, touching, and standard way.
  8. The Cured
    Just when you thought nothing new could be done with the undead, “The Cured” pulls off a fresh take on zombie terrain.
  9. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
    Hosking has a vision, and more often that not, it works.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bugsy
    A melancholy and intimate gangster saga about a romantic dreamer with fatal flaws, Bugsy emerges as a smooth, safe portrait of a volatile, dangerous character. An absorbing narrative flow and a parade of colorful underworld characters vie for screen time with an unsatisfactory central romance.
  11. Finding Your Feet
    The modest rewards in Finding Your Feet are ones of sprightly human chemistry rather than great narrative discovery, of all-round good humor rather than outright hilarity.
  12. The Price of Free
    The film’s edge, if not its worthiness, is slightly dulled by an over-slick approach that in the end makes it feel less like reportage than a first-class fundraising video.
  13. Hearts Beat Loud
    Clemons has been a luminous presence who could bloom into a great grown-up actress. Hearts Beat Loud proves she’s the real deal. As for the film around her, Haley’s 21-drum solo salute to the passage of time is, like Frank, merely fine. But he admirably keeps his characters’ victories small and their losses familiar, making his movie a ballad everyone can hum to.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Death Race 2000
    Script, from an Ib Melchior story, makes its satirical points economically, and director Paul Bartel keeps the film moving quickly.
  15. Are We Not Cats
    Though this is a slightly unreal world in which no one looks at their iPhones or uses a computer...the sweet earnestness of the two leads makes their characters real.
  16. Becks
    Becks is the kind of modest, non-earthshaking indie enterprise that ends up being so satisfying mostly because it’s about a character type familiar from real life but all too under-represented at the movies.
  17. The Reports on Sarah and Saleem
    If at times it feels like the Alayan brothers have bitten off more than they can chew, the core of the plot, and the weighty issues raised, fortunately remain front and center.
  18. The Peacemaker
    What brings a documentary like this one to life is a central character with something going on that’s thornier than his official idealism. Fortunately, that’s Padraig O’Malley.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Manhattan Project
    A warm, comedy-laced doomsday story. Using clever one-liners and many humorous situations, Brickman manages successfully to sugarcoat the story’s serious message.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Toy Soldiers
    Toy Soldiers is a very entertaining action film that updates 1981's sleeper hit Taps. Seeing Sean Astin (son of John Astin and Patty Duke) and his pranksters turn into commandos who wipe out the nasty invaders makes for purely escapist, crowd-pleasing pleasure.
  21. Ramen Heads
    Ramen Heads may be a tad lacking in visual excitement, but it succeeds in imparting the ineffable appeal of Japan’s national dish.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Toxic Avenger
    This madcap spoof on The Incredible Hulk is an outlandish mix of gory violence and realistic special effects.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Benji
    One of the wonders of the production, told simply and with no pretense of grandiose style, is the manner in which Benji – real name Higgins – performs. In this case, it isn’t a dog performing, but a dog acting, just as humans act. Much of the footage is shot from about 18 inches above the ground, upward from Benji’s point of view, and innovation is fascinating.
  24. Monster Hunt 2
    Monster Hunt 2 is so perfectly good-natured and so utterly nonsensical that it makes not-thinking-about-it basically an act of self-preservation, for which, bless its bouncing, gurgling, flolloping heart.
  25. Hannah
    This is an impressively rigorous exercise, in which the director’s sober formalism finds a kindred spirit in his leading lady’s studied, secretive restraint.
  26. Don't Talk to Irene
    Even when the film’s eccentricities feel too choreographed, it manages to deliver its preordained uplift with good-humored charm.
  27. Rogers Park
    It’s an ideal showcase for the four leads, who are given the latitude to create fully human characters.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Parent Trap
    David Swift, whose writing, direction and appreciation of young Hayley Mills’ natural histrionic resources contributed so much to Pollyanna, repeats the three-ply effort on this excursion, with similar success.
  29. Pyewacket
    It’s the rare horror film that’s actually more effective in psychological terms than in suspense ones.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Who's Harry Crumb?
    Foolishness in the right hands can be sublimely funny, and combo of star John Candy and director Paul Flaherty (former SCTV cohorts) puts the perfect spin on Who’s Harry Crumb?, a Naked Gun-style farce about a bumbling private eye who succeeds in spite of himself.
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