Variety's Scores

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For 17,765 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: 9,125 out of 17765
  2. Mixed: 7,004 out of 17765
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17765
17765 movie reviews
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  1. Incoming
    As a standalone, Incoming hits its marks, but its cast amounts to a collection of tics, while its appetite for raunch seems unfulfilled.
  2. Moon
    While the multiple ellipses may annoy the more narratively-driven viewer, others will thrill to the mood Ayub creates and the way she plays with audience expectations.
  3. Blink Twice
    [Kravitz] composes the movie out of vibrant close-ups, using each shot (a cocktail, a glance, a social-media cutaway) to tell a story, drawing us into the center of an encounter, so that we’re staring at it and experiencing it at the same time. Her technique is riveting; this is the work of a born filmmaker.
  4. Mountains
    [Mountains] carries an undeniable veracity and compassion. Its narrative proves less insightful, however: too wary to crack into its protagonist’s troubled psyche, softening the film’s worthwhile political anxieties into sympathetic messaging that seems ho-hum and predetermined.
  5. Skincare
    While it’s expected that creative liberties will be taken, especially given its roots as a tabloid-style news story, it’s surprising that the filmmakers chose to leave out details that would have enhanced their portrayal.
  6. The Good Half
    The Good Half reclaims attention every now and then with its occasional humor and grace notes around its side characters. . . But what we eventually get with The Good Half doesn’t even feel half good.
  7. The Union
    The trouble with The Union is that neither the film nor its characters have much in the way of personality, to the point it’s not even clear how they feel about one another.
  8. Jackpot!
    Fitting neatly between “The Heat” and 2016’s “Ghostbusters” reboot, Jackpot! finds the dapper director squarely in his comfort zone, falling back on some of the tricks that worked so well in “Bridesmaids,” minus the underlying relatability of that film’s brilliant screenplay.
  9. Youth (Hard Times)
    At nearly four hours in length, it surpasses even its gargantuan predecessor “Youth (Spring),” but it also uses that film as a platform for deeper exploration.
  10. Alien: Romulus
    This is closer to a grandly efficient greatest-hits thrill ride, packaged like a video game. Yet on that level it’s a confidently spooky, ingeniously shot, at times nerve-jangling piece of entertainment.
  11. Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds
    A truly spectacular psychedelic excursion in the vein of head-trip classics “The Fantastic Planet” and “The Yellow Submarine.”
  12. The Beautiful Summer
    In the end, this is a tender tale befitting its summer trappings. It is wistful and witty, sultry and soothing.
  13. The Last Front
    This English-language production may not be among the most memorable period war films in recent years, but its straightforward, sometimes brutal progress and assured craftsmanship will more than satisfy audiences looking for something other than simple combat spectacle.
  14. The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
    Still, there are moments of minor magic here. Deep friendship is among the most enchanting inventions after all. And Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean show how to honor it.
  15. Borderlands
    Marketed to look like a cross between “Suicide Squad” and a Zack Snyder movie, director Eli Roth’s tamer-than-expected take on “Borderlands” doesn’t have half the attitude or style its cyberpunk ad campaign might suggest.
  16. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
    Taylor’s voice is singular in its expressiveness — she is insolent, mournful, sexy, outraged, dripping with debauched delight, and always casually candid. Her words invest even the most familiar events with a revealing intimacy.
  17. It Ends with Us
    When I say it’s a soap opera, I mean that as praise. Based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel (the script is by Christy Hall) and directed by Justin Baldoni (who is one of the film’s costars), it’s an avid and emotional movie that pulls you right along. If you go in not knowing what it’s about, and are therefore all the more surprised by where it goes, it may be even more effective.
  18. Sebastian
    Despite the film’s confident naturalism, it seems less intimate as it goes on, with Max somehow growing more distant and generic as he becomes more comfortable in his own skin.
  19. The Duel
    The movie looks sharp enough, but lands like a rapier with a cork on it.
  20. Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
    It’s not as inspired as grown-ups might want, but innocuous enough for the kids.
  21. I’ll Be Your Mirror
    You come to Blood for its aura of spiritual sustenance, only to leave it feeling curiously alienated and undernourished.
  22. Coup!
    This is quick, nippy entertainment that raises plenty of sociopolitical talking points without digging too deep into any of them.
  23. Trap
    Asking an audience to go with something this fundamentally farfetched borders on an insult. More to the point: It’s not fun.
  24. The Instigators
    From a filmmaking perspective, it’s no easy feat taking what looks like so much chaos and organizing it into a character-driven comedy, but that’s just what Affleck and co-writer (and “City on a Hill” series creator) Chuck MacLean have accomplished, giving Liman the blueprint to alternate between unpredictable set-pieces and more relaxed examples of male bonding.
  25. Close to You
    Page’s performance isn’t moving merely for whatever parallels it might hold to his life: Rather, it’s a reminder of what a deft and perceptive actor he can be, capable of both naked emotional candor and acidic wit — both assets to a script that sometimes errs on the side of caution.
  26. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
    Its martial arts spectacle is scattered across a sprawling refugees-and-triads saga that, while adequately laying foundation for the aforementioned fisticuffs, is seldom coherent or engaging on its own.
  27. Harold and the Purple Crayon
    The film ends with an overly spelled-out plea for the value of “imagination,” but about the only thing the filmmakers are drawing with their purple crayon is algorithms.
  28. Widow Clicquot
    Widow Clicquot certainly makes a virtue of its milieu and rolling landscape, richly shot throughout in dusky earth tones, and more substantively, of the rather romantic lore surrounding the widow in question.
  29. Faye
    As “Faye” presents it, Dunaway was too volcanic and troubled a personality not to pour herself into her roles. That’s part of what made her great. Yet the film also wants to cue us to the gossipy and reductive way that this kind of thinking has too often been applied to her.
  30. The Fabulous Four
    Despite the caliber of its cast, “The Fabulous Four” never shakes the feeling that its on-screen talent is being severely misused.
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