Variety's Scores

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For 17,837 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 17837
  2. Mixed: 7,034 out of 17837
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17837
17837 movie reviews
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  1. XY Chelsea
    While it’s hardly Hawkins’ error that his documentary feels unfinished — the self-defined activist’s dramatic saga is still unfolding as we speak — you can’t help but feel his unprecedented access to Manning should have emanated a portrait a lot more enlightening.
  2. The Line
    As with nearly all great drama, The Line is about conflict, although this particular narrative feels downright radical in the way it rejects aggression as an acceptable means of resolving problems.
  3. The Many Saints of Newark
    It’s a sharp, lively, and engrossing movie, one that provides a fascinating running commentary on how the world of “The Sopranos” came into being. Yet we can’t help but notice the difference in tone.
  4. Oranges and Sunshine
    A deeply moving study of emotionally scarred adults who were illegally deported as children to Australia from Britain in the 1940s and '50s.
  5. The Last Five Years
    Beyond scrappy, The Last 5 Years lacks a unifying aesthetic, as if this were merely the run-through, grabbed on the fly without lights, costumes or location permits. This approach does improve upon the stage show in one key respect, however, allowing us to see all those crooned-over emotions writ large on the faces of its two terrific lead performers.
  6. Any Day Now
    A stellar performance by Alan Cumming as the cross-dressing crooner-cum-caretaker is the picture's most marketable asset.
  7. Mary Queen of Scots
    Like an entire season of peak television crammed into the space of two hours, Mary Queen of Scots spares us not only the butchery but also a great deal of the drama that might explain how the misfortunate monarch came to find her neck on the line.
    • 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.
  9. Stealing Beauty
    A model of poise and restraint, the film flows in a way that is deliberately undramatic, but made no less involving by the dreamy gentleness of its approach.
  10. Fightville
    Ready-to-order fan base certainly means exposure, but helmers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein aren't interested in glorifying the gore of ultimate fighting as much as revealing its heart.
  11. Caroline and Jackie
    The sum of the film is greater than its parts, and while it does make demands of its audience, the cumulative emotional impact is startling.
  12. April's Daughter
    Frankly, it’s anybody guess why characters do what they do in April’s Daughter, which may be both realistic and admirably nonjudgmental on Franco’s part, but it makes for a confusing and at times clinical moviegoing experience, as the director applies his detached Michael Haneke-like style to material that begs a certain amount of clarification.
  13. Allied
    Allied is tense and absorbing, yet the film’s climactic act somehow falls short.
  14. (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies
    There’s no revelatory takeaway here, but this entertaining mix of anecdotal evidence, academic research and current affairs is a diverting survey.
  15. Fugitive Pieces
    The cool hand of Canadian writer-director Jeremy Podeswa proves a disappointing match for Fugitive Pieces, a generally dull and unmemorable adaptation of Anne Michaels' extraordinary prose-poetry novel.
  16. Dredd
    Grim, gritty and ultra-violent, Dredd reinstates the somber brutality missing from the U.K. comicbook icon's previous screen outing.
  17. A Sidewalk Astronomer
    Entertaining, painlessly educational documentary.
  18. The Adjustment Bureau
    Its fun first hour soon gives way to a leaden, expository approach that unwisely favors emotional stakes over speculative-fiction smarts.
  19. The Ghosts in Our Machine
    This off-putting pic requires open minds and iron nerves.
  20. Medusa Deluxe
    This kinetic if not-quite-novel presentation doesn’t entirely patch over the weaknesses of Hardiman’s script, with its exhausting whirl of characters more colorful than they are shaded, and plotting that eventually runs out of compelling diversions from the matter at hand.
  21. Scream
    The new Scream is about as good as “Scream 2” was — it keeps the thrill of the original “Scream” bouncing in the air like a blood-drenched balloon — but the film is basically a set of variations on a very old sleight-of-hand fear blueprint. Except that it’s now old enough to seem new again.
  22. C.O.G.
    The source material may be David Sedaris (this marks the first time the essayist has allowed one of his pieces to be adapted), but the tone couldn’t be more Kyle Patrick Alvarez, who once again steers auds to some gloriously uncomfortable places.
  23. The White Countess
    This final production from the team of James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant is itself adrift in more ways than one, with a literate but meandering script by "The Remains of the Day" novelist Kazuo Ishiguro that withholds emotional payoffs to an almost perverse degree.
  24. American Teacher
    Its inspiring portraits of hardworking subjects make a fine case for raising the bar by rewarding excellence rather than punishing failure.
  25. Lightyear
    Given that it’s a spinoff of the “Toy Story” series, which is the greatest and most sustained achievement in contemporary animation, it should be noted that this is one of those Pixar movies that feels like it has 50 percent Disney DNA.
  26. Overlord
    Even at its most suspenseful, when Jed Kurzel’s cello score stabs at the eardrums, Overlord feels familiar, a collage of cinematic nightmares checking off its influences.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Judgment at Nuremberg
    Judgment at Nuremberg is twice the size of the concise, stirring and rewarding production on television's Playhouse 90 early in 1959. A faster tempo by producer-director Stanley Kramer and more trenchant script editing would have punched up picture.
  28. GOAT
    In outline, GOAT doesn’t do anything terribly unorthodox, but the joy of the film lies in its dreamscape design, in the funky cut and thrust of its patter, and in its touching off-center sincerity.
  29. Good Boys
    A little too imitative of “Superbad” ... Good Boys lacks that film’s wit and heart. It’s a lively, slick package, yet crude and obvious at every turn.
  30. In the Land of Saints and Sinners
    When it comes time to move the story along, Lorenz often betrays his filmmaking’s lax virtues.
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