Variety's Scores

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:
17765 movie reviews
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Despite the caliber of its cast, “The Fabulous Four” never shakes the feeling that its on-screen talent is being severely misused.
  5. This singular mutant satire works best as an irreverent homage to what’s come before, as opposed to the prototype for future superhero movies.
  6. Elements that might feel frivolous on first mention invariably pay off later, as Elliot brings things around in thoughtful and emotional ways, to the point you forget you’re watching people made of Plasticine.
  7. Kliris negotiates tonal shifts effortlessly: The jokes never undercut the drama as both dovetail neatly into each other.
  8. Even though Great Absence, is a little overlong and its framing device, an avant-garde theater piece, feels unnecessary, in another way its multiple strands and many endings are extraordinarily, poetically appropriate.
  9. The film is light enough without being funny enough, most of it staged, by director Peter Segal (“Tommy Boy,” “The Naked Gun 33 1/3”), in a kind of generic action overdrive.
  10. This gentle, unfussy romance contains a heart-clutching finale that’s as classically restrained as it is emotionally resounding.
  11. There’s ambition exceeding your grasp, and then there’s Lumina.
  12. There’s a elastic, enjoyable restlessness to all this behind-closed-court-doors bustle and bitchery, recalling less the sparse, close-up character interrogation of “Corsage” than the snippy gamesmanship of “The Favourite,” buoyed by the itchy friction between Hüller’s anxious, aspirational energy and Wolff’s cool, complacent hauteur.
  13. The evocative visuals here sing in unison with the characters’ yearning to fulfill the promise of their lifelong dreams. They are chasing a glimmer of light before twilight.
  14. There’s just enough of an interesting theme and strong production value (it’s impossible not to succumb to the breathtakingly imposing landscapes) to earn The Convert some grace.
  15. As its central crisis deepens and darkens, Lazraq’s script keeps teasing a gear-shift into mordant farce to which it never quite commits, leaving both the characters and the drama a bit stymied. Still, this is a notably punchy debut, both visceral and confidently cavalier in its depiction of everyday underworld brutality, with a sharp, streetlit sense of place.
  16. Staring up at the tornadoes in Twisters, I felt like I’d already seen something exactly like them — and that when it comes to footage of actual tornadoes, I’d already seen something more incredible. Twisters, fun as parts of it are, is a movie where reality ultimately takes a lot of the wind out of its gales.
  17. Fly Me to the Moon only needs to sell one thing: that beneath Kelly and Cole’s fast-paced dialogue and combative flirtation, there exists a mutual attraction compelling enough to keep us guessing. We already know how the lunar mission turns out, but never tire of gazing upon stars such as these.
  18. How many horror movies can claim to hijack your subconscious? With Longlegs, writer-director Osgood Perkins (“The Blackcoat’s Daughter”) delivers the kind of payoff we sought out as kids, daring ourselves to watch films about boogeymen that made us want to sleep with the lights on.
  19. The power of documentary filmmaking often lies in discovering seams of humanity running though even the bleakest environments. But the sledgehammer impact of Hollywoodgate comes from director Nash’at peering into the Taliban leadership’s inner circle for a year and finding not even a glimmer of goodness. Finding, in fact, nothing — a terrible emptiness.
  20. Panopticon may not have quite the all-seeing eye its title implies, but its gaze is piercing and sharp and strange.
  21. With “Axel F.,” a parade of watchable clichés (not just retro-cop-thriller clichés but Eddie Murphy clichés) staged by director Mark Molloy in a slovenly utilitarian style, the series comes full circle: the product/schlock of the ’80s meets the product/schlock of Netflix. Welcome to nostalgia minus the soul!
  22. The film is based on screenwriter Catherine Léger’s play, and perhaps the herky-jerk structure works on stage. On screen, however, it just feels undisciplined, as its Quentin Dupieux-style visual drollery never quite gels with its more obvious, broadly smutty farce.
  23. A movingly sincere valentine from a filmmaker now due his own equivalent tributes, shortening the distance between youthful discovery and senior nostalgia.
  24. The movie hardly ever turns its gaze out the windows, but the scenery never gets old, since Bhat has a head for creative close-quarters combat.
  25. The aggressively spectacular (and, again, CGI-intensified) action set-pieces are generously plentiful and undeniably thrilling, and the lead players are charismatic enough, or over-the-top villainous enough, to seize and maintain interest.
  26. While free-floating and airy in its construction, the film’s deceiving familiarity slowly erodes, morphing into an unsettling, formally astute brain-tickler observing the placid domesticity of an affluent Texas family in their natural habitat.
  27. Despite being a tad too long and a trifle repetitive, the documentary essay “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” from American helmer Penny Lane is a thought-provoking personal investigation into a subject rarely examined: the nature of altruism.
  28. Everything about the film manages to be forward-thinking and old-school at the same time, giving the genre a bite in the neck it might not have wanted but certainly needed.
  29. Sadly, the film plays more like an artless quickie than a fully fleshed-out romance.
  30. The result is a movie that ultimately falls short on both suspense and ideas, though it remains watchable enough.

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