Variety's Scores

For 17,771 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 2.5 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:
17771 movie reviews
  1. Tyler Taormina‘s delightful stocking-stuffer Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is as alive to the domesticated magic of the season as a classic carol.
  2. 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.
  3. Parthenope is a film that rumbles with the hum of nostalgia, recapturing the feeling of youthful, summer freedom while refusing to shy away from the uncertainties of young adulthood. But it’s no mere coming-of-age story; rather, it’s a film about coming-to-oneself.
  4. Baker’s subversively romantic, free-wheeling sex farce makes "Pretty Woman" look like a Disney movie.
  5. As The Shrouds goes on, it becomes more earnest and more nutty. I think Cronenberg thinks he’s making movies that audiences will experience as feature-length versions of his own dreams. Here’s the difference: When you’re in a dream, you believe what’s happening.
  6. For its first half, “The Apprentice” is kind of a knockout: the inside look at how Trump evolved that so many of us have imagined for so long, and seeing it play out is both convincing and riveting. Yet I have an issue with the movie, and it all pivots around the mystery of Trump. I don’t think “The Apprentice” ever penetrates it.
    • Variety
  7. Audiard wonders how much people really change when they transition. In Emilia’s case, less than she’d like, but enough to inspire positive change in society.
  8. The Substance is the work of a filmmaker with a vision. She’s got something primal to say to us.
  9. It’s a Garfield movie for audiences who have never heard of Garfield, which reads as an attempt at erasing history and reintroducing him in this high-octane, overly stimulated form for a generation with reduced attention spans.
  10. There’s a hallowed place in cinema for multi-character dramas. But “Horizon,” simply put, doesn’t feel like a movie. It feels like the seedbed for a miniseries. Much of what happens is wispy and not very forceful; the film doesn’t build in impact, and it seldom seems to aim in a clear direction.
  11. Jia’s risky experiment is so uncannily successful that it is possible to come away from “Tides” with the whimsical impression that this was the film he was building toward all this time, as though all those lauded previous movies were simply him amassing the raw material for this one.
  12. The film is trying for something, but it’s also sketchy in the extreme.
  13. Oh, Canada presents a dying artist’s final testimony as a multifaceted film-within-a-film, honoring Banks while also revealing so many of Schrader’s own thoughts on mortality.
  14. The Damned has a tendency to meander, but in so doing, it strives toward something authentic.
  15. For all its cool, compelling proficiency, there’s little about the film that feels idiosyncratic, either stylistically or in its surface-level human portraiture.
  16. Rúnarsson’s film eschews easy melodrama for a more tacit, sensory exploration of the sudden connections that death forges among the living. The future waits in limbo; simply getting through the day is drama enough.
  17. Blending molasses-dark comedy with searing poetic realism to capture contemporary Zambian society at a generational impasse between staunch tradition and social progress, this is palpably new, future-minded filmmaking, at once intrepidly daring and rigorously poised.
  18. The extremity of suffering on display here makes for difficult viewing, scarcely leavened by the expressionistic beauty of its presentation. But von Horn’s film never plays as empty miserablism, in large part thanks to its grave understanding of the moral and spiritual reasoning behind unimaginable acts of violence.
  19. After all the despair, the piling up of glitzy delusion, there’s a feeling of redemption to it connected to what a good movie can do.
  20. The film is Arnold trying to have the integrity of her severity and eat it too. Bird is a feel-bad movie that turns into a feel-good movie. What it never feels like is a totally authentic movie.
  21. Thelma the Unicorn avoids being rendered completely unoriginal by its overly familiar premise thanks to consistent splashes of acid humor and a plethora of wacky supporting characters.
  22. Paul Crowder’s Imax documentary feels both more honest than most in its intentions and more effective in highlighting that organization’s excellence.
  23. Lanthimos trades in discomfort, trusting his audience enough to take his brand of provocation as they please.
  24. To call this garish, idea-bloated monstrosity a mere “fable” is to grossly undersell the project’s expansive insights into art, life and legacy.
  25. "Chapter 1” can’t help feeling like an ersatz imitation at times, but it seems the franchise’s well hasn’t run dry just yet.
  26. “Furiosa,” like “Beyond Thunderdome,” wants to be something loftier than an action blowout, but the movie is naggingly episodic, and though it’s got two indomitable villains, neither one quite becomes the delirious badass you want.
  27. IF
    Krasinski’s concept borrows generously from Pixar films like “Monsters Inc.,” but is so chaotic and half-considered that you don’t feel as inspired as you should be, making it hard to submit to the film’s alternate reality.
  28. Dupieux’s strategy seems to be flipping or repeating certain punchlines for fresh effect, which is fine for a while, until you realize that neither The Second Act nor those second-degree readings have much to say.
  29. 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.
  30. It’s a lean, tight, and stylishly clever B-movie about a bank robbery gone wrong.

Top Trailers