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. Moving On
    Tomlin’s terrific in this mode. The script is as bland as the “cardboard” they serve in her rest-home cafeteria, but she manages to inject it with vinegar and attitude, while embracing the realities of aging.
  2. Isn't It Romantic
    While there’s virtually no risk that “Isn’t It Romantic” will make you to love your favorite rom-coms any less, Strauss-Schulson hasn’t figured out how to have his cake and eat it, too — to look down on the very confection he’s so busy peddling.
  3. Red Dragon
    Audiences will be excused for any feelings of déjà vu the new film might inspire. That won't prevent them from watching it in rapt, anxious silence, however, as the gruesome crimes, twisted psychology and deterministic dread that lie at the heart of Harris' work are laid out with care and skill.
  4. The Beaver
    The troubled actor delivers a performance very few could pull off as a depressed father who begins communicating through a hand puppet, but Foster doesn't know how to manage it or navigate the script's seismic tonal shifts, and ends up producing a film that's deeply strange, yet incapable of leaving an impression.
  5. Time and Tide
    An almost plotless effort that features charismatic stars and plentiful scenes of finely choreographed mayhem.
  6. Calendar Girls
    Though the film is never dull, and playing by the cast is spirited, it's actually a surprisingly gentle movie, with no big "Full Monty"-like finale to send auds buzzing into the street.
  7. Gray's Anatomy
    Removing a live audience from the equation, Soderbergh becomes a bold participant in the storytelling. The backdrop keeps changing, from a brick wall to drapes, windows and assorted landscapes. The lighting is in constant flux, often punctuating the text on cue.
  8. Animal Crackers
    Though inevitably derivative in some ways (it won’t be hard to spot the influence of “Shrek” and various Disney classics), Animal Crackers asserts its own identity, combining some of the most distinctive voices with an ensemble of personality-rich, sequel-ready characters.
  9. The Fox
    The issue becomes throwing in a little too much, both for the characters and for writer-director Dario Russo, who may have a few too many good story ideas to fully flesh out. Yet, he delivers a promising and imaginative feature debut.
  10. AUM: The Cult at the End of the World
    Braun and Yanagimoto go for comprehensiveness over comprehension, bringing in many more commentators — writers, lawyers, reporters, eyewitnesses — each to peel back one further, fascinating fold in the infinite origami of the Aum story.
  11. Norman
    Recalls last year's "World's Greatest Dad," similarly using a snowballing fib to lampoon the ambulance-chasing relationship between morbidity and celebrity. But unlike that primarily satirical exercise, Norman gradually ditches the snark in favor of poignant, understated dramatics.
  12. Soul Boys of the Western World
    TV-style and desperately in need of cutting, “Soul Boys” does convincingly position its subjects as key trendsetters, and their most memorable tunes continue to be enjoyable.
  13. Mighty Aphrodite
    A zippy, frothy confection that emerges as agreeable middle-range Woody.
  14. Len and Company
    Amid the film’s narrative lulls and lapses, it’s the actors who hold our attention.
  15. The Aeronauts
    The duo [of Redmayne and Jones] hand-in-hand elevates [The Aeronauts] ... from a flimsy action-adventure to something worth watching on the biggest possible screen, even if it operates on a handful of clichés with little character-based substance to speak of.
  16. A Magnificent Life
    Magnificent as Pagnol’s achievements may have been, it’s a pity that the decades-spanning account of one of France’s greatest storytellers didn’t make for a better story unto itself.
  17. Little Joe
    An artfully unnerving, austerely hypnotic horror movie about a very sinister plant.
  18. All Day and a Night
    All Day and a Night is made with empathy and skill, but it’s as clear-eyed and remorseless as a news report.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Godfather: Part III
    Part III matches its predecessors in narrative intensity, epic scope, socio-political analysis, physical beauty and deep feeling for its characters and milieu.
  20. Night Always Comes
    It’s a compelling tale of increasingly hazardous desperation, even if the star and her fellow-Brit director Benjamin Caron (oth veterans of royalty drama series “The Crown) aren’t necessarily an ideal fit for this very American, down-and-out milieu.
  21. Fuze
    The action is entertaining enough in the moment, but not especially memorable.
  22. Under the Silver Lake
    Under the Silver Lake gets its hooks in you, but it’s a good-bad movie: an academic stab at making the darkness visible.
  23. The Unknown
    With all due apologies to any real-world sufferers of supernatural body-switching, who perhaps regard the film’s high-mindedness as a welcome corrective to the condition’s flippantly comedic treatment in pop culture more generally, the real unknown of The Unknown is the reason behind making a body-swap movie feel so wholly disembodied.
  24. Happy Here and Now
    Isn't for everyone. It seems certain to confound as many viewers as it will inspire. But pic will foster a core critical contingent that will find itself transfixed and, ultimately, deeply moved by the film's ravishing power.
  25. The Fencer
    This well-acted, smoothly crafted drama tells a story of cross-generational bonding in the face of historical oppression, in touching if unsurprising fashion.
  26. Finally Dawn
    One can sense what Costanzo’s trying to do, but he’s made a fatal miscalculation: Mimosa is not leading lady material, and 140 minutes is far too long to spend pretending otherwise.
  27. The Sisterhood of Night
    An alternately sensitive and heavy-handed small-town drama that turns the Salem witchcraft trials into a tenuous metaphor for the intense pressures brought to bear on today’s female youth.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What About Bob?
    Bill Murray finds a real showcase for his oft-shackled talent in this manic comedy.
  29. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    You may enter a film like this one believing you had some grasp of how gravity works, or the human threshold for pain, or what constitutes a good movie, but the experience is so exhilaratingly mind-altering, so radically untethered from terra firma, you basically have to readjust your basic understanding of everything you know to be true and just go with the flow.
  30. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
    Good-humored and endearing, full of energy and color (sometimes neon) if not quite Pixar-level invention.
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