Variety's Scores

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For 17,835 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: 9,166 out of 17835
  2. Mixed: 7,032 out of 17835
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17835
17835 movie reviews
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    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Legal Eagles
    Loss of intrigue with a scattered plot involving art fraud and murder is made up for by an often witty, albeit lightweight dialog led by the ever-boyish star Robert Redford.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Mercy
    Despite some graphically brutal violence and a fair bit of 'too-cool' police jargon, No Mercy turns out to be a step above most other films in this blooming genre of lone-cop-turned-vigilante stories.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yentl
    In league with ace cinematographer David Watkin, Streisand has created a fine-looking period piece, working on Czech locations and in English studios.
  4. The Ghost of Peter Sellers
    So what is The Ghost of Peter Sellers? It’s a record of what it was like to shoot an empty shambolic piece of junk that drained the coffers of everyone involved. It’s a record of the kind of damage that a debonair misfit like Peter Sellers could cause when he put his mischievous (and maybe, in some ways, unstable) mind to it.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Octagon
    A wildly incredible but entertaining tale.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gorky Park
    There's enough menace and romance in Gorky Park to appeal to many, especially those helped by the memory of Martin Cruz Smith's successful novel.
  7. The Trip to Greece
    The Trip to Greece marks a spirited and convivial return to form, even if it’s lofty enough to present Coogan and Brydon’s six-day journey through Greece as a retracing of the path of Odysseus.
  8. Love Wedding Repeat
    It unfolds, more or less, in real time, which gives it an existential comedy-of-suspense element that trumps the usual Styrofoam rom-com plotting. The classical music playing in the background doesn’t make the film stodgy; it creates a sustained operatic flow. And the actors are simply terrific.
  9. Tape
    “Bombshell” aside, Tape is one of the very first dramas of the #MeToo era to confront, head-on, what harassment looks like and how it really works. Yet even as the film feels up-to-the-minute, it’s been made with a certain threadbare, streets-of-New-York punk feminist mythologizing that may remind you, at times, of the films of Beth B.
  10. The Platform
    Once the major ideas are on the table, the momentum wobbles and The Platform trades thrills for the empathetic weight of imprisonment. There’s more blood and less hope, though Aranzazu Calleja’s music box-inspired score can lighten the mood to that of a storybook fable.
  11. Malignant
    It’s hard to say whether a film this bonkers “works” or not, but it’s impossible not to admire both the craft and the extravagant bad taste behind its go-for-broke energy.
  12. Shithouse
    This is a modest film, well-acted but rather clumsily assembled, that almost certainly would have benefited from an in-person SXSW, where it’s possible to bask in the shared laughter of an enthusiastic first screening.
  13. Blue Story
    Blue Story is very much a blast of something present tense. Rapman’s scenes boil over with life, as he crafts an opera of innocence infected by gangsta pathology.
  14. She Dies Tomorrow
    The film feels a bit too experimental at times, suffering from lags in tempo and purpose, but it never succumbs to the ordinary either. There is a rare, unrefined quality to Seimetz’s film — a personal work of art that feels deeply honest throughout.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Obsession
    Robertson’s low-key performance is as crucial to the manifold surprise impact as Bujold’s versatile, sensual and effervescent charisma.
  16. Waldo on Weed
    More than the film’s activist message, however, it’s writer-director Tommy Avallone’s portrait of whatever-it-takes parental risk and sacrifice that will help it resonate with audiences no matter their views on marijuana.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Random Harvest
    The film transcription of James Hilton’s novel Random Harvest, under Sidney Franklin’s production and Mervyn LeRoy’s direction, achieves much more than average importance.
  18. The Half of It
    It’s also made fresh by the myriad literary and cinematic references Wu weaves into Aster’s correspondence with “Paul.” With its slightly nerdy, play-on-wordy title, The Half of It alludes to the ancient Greek belief that two-faced humans were separated by the gods, devoting their lives to finding their lost soulmates (if you like the idea, read Plato’s “Symposium,” or check out “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”).
  19. Who You Think I Am
    Who You Think I Am is a surprise package that plays its trump cards with shrugging insouciance, yielding giggles and gasps in equal measure, sometimes at once.
  20. Abe
    It’s kind of a tradition among cooking-themed movies (from “Like Water for Chocolate” to “Chocolat”) for a bit of magical embellishment to sneak into the kitchen. Abe is stubbornly earthbound by contrast, but that’s OK. It’s more responsible this way, and young audiences will devour it with no less enthusiasm.
  21. Kubrick by Kubrick
    Kubrick by Kubrick is most interesting for the ways that it undercuts the Kubrick mythology.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Other Music
    More than any other visual document, it celebrates and immortalizes the culture of the record store and record nerds.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Last Hard Men
    The Last Hard Men is a fairly good actioner with handsome production values and some thoughtful overtones. Charlton Heston and James Coburn are both fine as a retired lawman and his half-Indian nemesis matching their wits in 1909 Arizona along the way to one last bloody confrontation.
  24. Butt Boy
    If your sense of humor favors stupid ideas done smartly, however, Butt Boy offers pleasures that aren’t even all that guilt-inducing.
  25. Circus of Books
    Circus of Books is an affectionate look at one of the most unusual mom and pop businesses in America, directed by the person who knew Mom and Pop best.
  26. Villain
    Actor Philip Barantini’s first directorial feature is nothing wildly original in content or style. Still, it punches both elements across with a satisfying low-key confidence, and does not shrink from occasionally letting things get pretty rough.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Concorde... Airport '79
    Unintentional comedy still seems the Airport series' forte, although excellent special effects work, and some decent dramatics help Concorde take off.
  28. Most Wanted
    Along with Pilon’s striking performance, the film’s sturdy, subdued craftsmanship keeps it from movie-of-the-week territory, even as Roby’s script ticks overly familiar boxes.
  29. Cat in the Wall
    Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova’s smart, bristly film makes some room for oblique everyday poetry in its depiction of immigrants asserting their ground in an unstable country, but is angry enough not to bury its rhetoric in artifice and niceties: Shot through with intimate love-hate knowledge of its South London turf, this is a funny, frustrated yell from a demographic tired of being talked over.
  30. A Secret Love
    At once a misty-eyed romance and a harsh depiction of the practical and emotional challenges of giving up independent living, A Secret Love isn’t subtle in its Kleenex-clutching tactics — as you’d expect from a project bearing the imprint of TV titan Ryan Murphy — but it’s certainly effective.
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