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. A Quiet Place: Day One
    “Day One” ought to have been the mind-blowing origin story, and instead it’s a Hallmark movie, where everyone seems to have nine lives — not just that darn cat.
  2. MaXXXine
    Ti West is a good filmmaker, but it may be time for him to stop reconfiguring trash. He needs to try embedding A ideas in an A-movie.
  3. The Nature of Love
    The Nature of Love refreshingly centers the female adulterer’s experience, in a richly comic mode.
  4. Ama Gloria
    The considerable power of Ama Gloria lies not in its take on colonial conscience, nor even in its insights into the complex economical and emotional dynamics of the child-nanny bond. It is in its unmatched portrait of one brave little heart, bruised but learning to beat on its own.
  5. Trigger Warning
    Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s well-crafted first English-language feature is too formulaically contrived to qualify as “elevated genre” or to boast the personal stamp of her prior work. Still, it’s an entertaining, pacey action melodrama.
  6. The Exorcism
    The darker the movie gets, the less there is at stake, and the more that Crowe seems to be going through the motions of trying to save not his soul but his career.
  7. I Am: Celine Dion
    Like all things Celine Dion, “I Am” feels intensely personal and sincere, but also managed to within an inch of its life.
  8. Despicable Me 4
    At times, it feels less like a feature than a collection of Looney Tunes-y shorts piled one on top of another.
  9. Jazzy
    At first glance, Jazzy might seem more polished and traditionally structured than its predecessor. But the two films share a proudly scrappy and loose-limbed spirit in their soulful, tranquil pace.
  10. Ultraman: Rising
    The movie winds up having it both ways once too often, to the extent that Ultraman’s fate and the movie’s message are ultimately unclear.
  11. Inside Out 2
    Inside Out 2 is a transporting fable about the desire to fit in, to be validated by the Cool Culture that’s, more and more, our collective seal of approval and success. And while the movie is an enchanting animated ride of the spirit (be prepared for it to help save summer at the box office), it may also be the most poignantly perceptive tale of the conundrums of early adolescence since “Eighth Grade.”
  12. The Kingdom
    It’s like “The Sopranos,” as seen through Meadow’s eyes. And though we’re all familiar with the lesson that the cost of vengeance is a never-ending circle of violence, Colonna’s retelling lands like a bullet in the head.
  13. Sweet Dreams
    It takes place on a sugar plantation, but Ena Sendijarević‘s magnificently composed, eerily satirical Sweet Dreams has something more like acid flowing through its veins.
  14. Tuesday
    There’s something undeniably exciting about Pusić’s vision, which confronts serious subjects with disarming irreverence. But her creative choices are peculiar, to say the least.
  15. I Used to Be Funny
    That convoluted storytelling tack at times threatens to muffle “Funny’s” potent narrative agenda. Yet in the end, this ambitious, imperfect drama does pull off a complex thematic mix.
  16. Starve Acre
    Daniel Kokotajlo‘s impressive second feature unfolds in a vein of British folk horror that has been popular of late — with films from Ben Wheatley’s “A Field in England” to Mark Jenkins’s “Enys Men” all tapping into that retro “Wicker Man” eeriness — but rarely with such rattling sensory specificity or formal refinement.
  17. The Watchers
    For a while, The Watchers is a reasonably well-made lost-in-the-woods horror movie, one that draws you in like a puzzle whose rules you need to learn (just as the characters do).
  18. Under Paris
    As a sensory experience, Under Paris is never less than seaworthy.
  19. To a Land Unknown
    To a Land Unknown is a film crafted with tremendous empathy.
  20. Look Into My Eyes
    Agnostic but empathetic, Wilson’s film suggests communing with the dead may just be a roundabout way of reaching the living.
  21. Let the Canary Sing
    Let the Canary Sing does an excellent job of tracing how Cyndi Lauper came to be…Cyndi Lauper. Yet it’s sort of an idiosyncratic movie, because that’s all it does.
  22. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    These two actors, with nothing matching but their goatees, have a spiky bromantic chemistry. They don’t just ping off one another’s lines — they lock and load each other.
  23. Invisible Nation
    There are no fancy flourishes in Invisible Nation. This is strong, effective observational documentary filmmaking that does not employ voiceover or text narration, and allows viewers to form their own views.
  24. Backspot
    It is Jacobs’ performance that makes “Backspot” such an exciting watch, even as it hits well-known beats and otherwise expected character arcs.
  25. Big Boys
    With low-budget Big Boys, Sherman crafts a memorable outing on limited means, brought to life by an unusually endearing cast.
  26. June Zero
    Though it occasionally brushes up against intricate ideas about memory and memorialization — who gets to be commemorated, who must not and the genesis of the “never forget” ethos — June Zero itself leaves a quickly fading impression.
  27. The Dead Don't Hurt
    That nonlinear narrative choice in an otherwise understated art-house Western serves to confuse more than it reveals, complicating things for the meat-and-potatoes crowd that regularly turn out for cowboy stories.
  28. Taking Venice
    Taking Venice is a very good documentary, though with a hint of pearl-clutching. There’s a “We were shocked, shocked…” undercurrent to the whole thing.
  29. Just the Two of Us
    Even as it dabbles in genre tropes, the film presents an all-too-unremarkable reality for many women.
  30. Summer Camp
    It’s surely a worthy enough premise for a good time, but one “Summer Camp” squanders through dull jokes, an uninspiring story without any real stakes and an overall phony feeling that the film can’t shake.
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