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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  1. Magpie
    The first-time director, Sam Yates, working from a utilitarian script by Tom Bateman, slathers on mood, yet there’s a primitive charge to the film’s no-frills staging.
  2. I Don't Understand You
    Things spiral wildly out of control for Dom and Cole, but the foundation feels real.
  3. The Contestant
    Titley consistently anchors her unfolding chronicle to the kind of backstage emotional truths often hidden from the audience, and in the process, she crafts something halfway between sensationalist exposé and intimate confessional — a remedy to reality TV based on its own format — co-authored by her subjects
  4. I Wish You All the Best
    The pleasant, polished drama provides a compassionate take on a high schooler undergoing considerable change, its only debit being the arguably too-neat depiction of that transitional circumstance.
  5. I Love You Forever
    In observing how Mackenzie absorbs feelings of shame for any time she’s disappointed him, they consider all those who hold onto romantic notions too long, finding a fresh take on a toxic relationship.
  6. Oddity
    McCarthy and editor Brian Philip Davis deploy high-voltage moments with expert timing, using the dark to their favor in refreshing fashion.
  7. Transition
    Watching this steadfast person survive in such close quarters with those most unaccepting of his situation offers remarkable insight into issues of gender expression and acceptance, which might well translate to the social strictures back home.
  8. Just the Two of Us
    Even as it dabbles in genre tropes, the film presents an all-too-unremarkable reality for many women.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Laughing Policeman
    After an extremely overdone prolog of violent mass murder on a bus, The Laughing Policeman becomes a handsomely made manhunt actioner, starring Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern in excellent performances as two San Francisco detectives.
  10. A Perfect Day for Caribou
    Set over the course of a single day on the fringes of some dead American anytown, this at once quiet and talkative two-hander covers no especially new ground, but strides known territory with a keen eye for lonesome landscapes, and an ear for the eternal communicative impasse felt by men who know each other all too well and not at all.
  11. Speak No Evil
    McAvoy’s big grin full of knives quickly dissolves any semblance of social credibility. But the film matches Paddy’s boorishness and commits to being a comedy about a bad marriage crumbling under the fist of a freak-of-nature vacation host.
  12. Aisha
    While passive and/or helpless characters rarely make for the most engaging protagonists, the sensitivity with which this story is told coupled with Wright’s performance makes for an experience that’s never less than engaging.
  13. Enter the Clones of Bruce
    David Gregory’s documentary won’t convince most viewers that the resulting flood of opportunistic cheapies are worth more extensive investigation. But they’re certainly cheesy fun in excerpt, and interviews with surviving participants provide an entertaining window into an anything-goes heyday for Hong Kong cinema.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mackenna's Gold
    The plot [from Will Henry's novel McKenna's Gold] is good, the acting adequate. But it's the scenery, the vastness of the west, the use of cameras, and of horses, and the special effects which keep the viewer involved and entertained.
  15. Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story
    Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s documentary “Any Other Way” combines archival materials, interviews and animated reenactments into a compelling investigation of an elusive life, as well as a talent so striking you’ll be amazed it remained forgotten for so long.
  16. Karate Kid: Legends
    It’s a movie that’s unapologetically basic and wholesome and, at 94 minutes, refreshingly stripped down. In its formulaic way, it works as an antidote to the bloat and clutter of your average “high-powered” teenage/kiddie flick.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dead Reckoning
    Humphrey Bogart's typically tense performance raises this average whodunit quite a few notches. Film has good suspense and action, and some smart direction and photography.
  18. 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.
  19. You're Cordially Invited
    Whether they’re playing naughty or nice, Witherspoon and Ferrell are two of the rare stars who can be charming even when trying to sabotage someone else’s most important moment, and You’re Cordially Invited is most fun when they’re on the warpath.
  20. The Damned
    The Damned has a tendency to meander, but in so doing, it strives toward something authentic.
  21. The Blue Angels
    Paul Crowder’s Imax documentary feels both more honest than most in its intentions and more effective in highlighting that organization’s excellence.
  22. The Sales Girl
    It takes its time to get there, but in the end, The Sales Girl is about taking charge of one’s own life, where sex is just one dimension of a well-rounded process of self-discovery.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fandango
    Fandango emerges as a quite promising feature debut by writer-director Kevin Reynolds, with its feet squarely within the overused boys-coming-of-age genre but its heart betraying an appealingly anarchic, iconoclastic bent.
  24. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
    Gudegast, for all his casualness toward plausibility, is an energizing filmmaker. He keeps the mano-a-mano standoffs humming, and he’s got a sixth sense for how to showcase Butler as a glamorously disheveled schlock version of Dirty Harry–meets–Popeye Doyle-meets– “Lethal Weapon”-gone-lone-wolf.
  25. Santosh
    While often more intellectually stimulating than emotionally engaging, Santosh lays bare the dark heart of communal divisions in modern India.
  26. The Balconettes
    The directorial energy being channelled here is closer to that of early Pedro Almodóvar, as Merlant piles up saturated, hot-hued melodrama, garrulous female bonding and cheerful lashings of blood and sex.
  27. 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.
  28. Wolfs
    In Wolfs, Clooney and Pitt revel in the crack timing, in the I-truly-do-not-like-you obscene banter, that makes even the most casual insult take wing.
  29. 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.
  30. All Shall Be Well
    The lack of inflection in the film’s infinitely broad-spectrum compassion can sometimes feel less like restraint and more like timidity. Anger is alien to Yeung’s style but it is sometimes justified, and without it, All Shall Be Well is a plea for understanding that should by now, by rights, be a demand.
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