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. Bone Lake
    While not perfect, the psychological thriller is cleverly conceived and confidently executed enough to make for a fun ride, one that eventually takes the full plunge into bloody black comedy terrain.
  2. Honey Don't!
    Honey Don’t! is a deliberate throwaway — a knowingly light and funny mock escapist thriller, one that’s just trying to show you a flaky good time.
  3. Marcella
    "Marcella” is most interesting, however, when it peels away the layers of achievement and adulation to show us the brisk, unpretentious woman who surprised nobody more than herself by becoming a culinary icon, and articulates something of the oddly intimate but entirely parasocial relationships we form with our most trusted cookery writers.
  4. Echo Valley
    When you’re simply looking for something semi-interesting to stream, stories like these don’t necessarily require great actors, but great actors are the reason some of them still reverberate in our memory decades later.
  5. Megadoc
    In the end, it’s inspiring to see a director of Coppola’s stature back at work, and better this than some impersonal job for hire.
  6. Desert of Namibia
    Like Kana, it’s gloomy, purposeless and hard to love — but that only makes the film, and its lead, feel more pulsating alive.
  7. To Live and Die and Live
    For all its tastefully exasperating gaps in character and storytelling specifics, “To Live & Die and Live” still has a persuasive overall vision, one that holds out the possibility of salvation for its hero — and its city — albeit only if history and the toll it still exacts are faced head-on.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Murder!
    Well photographed and mounted, it contains all the gadgets of the pet Alfred Hitchcock technique, from quick cutting to skillful dialog blending. The dialog is very well written. Long episodes have clever satirical values as attacks on the conventional and lower-class English.
  9. The Little Sister
    Sensitive and empathetic but a little timid in storytelling and style, The Little Sister rests considerably on its lead performance by first-time actor Nadia Melliti.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Breathless
    There are too many epigrams and a bit too much palaver in all this. However, it is picaresque and has enough insight to keep it from being an out-and-out melodramatic quickie.
  11. Good Fortune
    Even though it’s fairly obvious where “Good Fortune” is headed, Ansari manages to surprise in how he gets there. Like his character, the writer-director-producer-star seems to be juggling one too many jobs here, and yet, it’s that very connection to overworked, undercompensated Americans that makes his movie so right for this moment.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Secret Agent
    Secret Agent dallies much on the way but rates as good spy entertainment, suave story telling, and, in one particular case, brilliant characterization.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Topaz
    Topaz tends to move more solidly and less infectiously than many of Alfred Hitchcock's best remembered pix. Yet Hitchcock brings in a full quota of twists and tingling moments.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jamaica Inn
    Superb direction, excellent casting, expressive playing and fine production offset an uneven screenplay to make Jamaica Inn a gripping version of the Daphne du Maurier novel.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    Pacing his assignment at a steady gait, Hitchcock catches all of the laugh values from the above par script of Norman Krasna.
  16. Inside
    Inside has a suspense hook to drive it forward and a climactic violent set piece, if not quite the one we were expecting. But the question of who’s going to kill or get killed ultimately proves less important than how their pasts have shaped these men — or rather trapped them, like quicksand.
  17. Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
    It is engrossing stuff, as a cautionary tale as well as a taste of the spirit that leads people into explorations more bold than wise. The lure of the ocean’s mysteries (and the Titanic’s enduring romance) are vividly conveyed.
  18. Queens of the Dead
    Its aesthetic approach seldom lives up to its gestures toward camp as a guiding principle or its weighty themes (except, perhaps, in its surprisingly raucous final act). However, its flimsy aesthetic foundations are supported by remarkably well-formed characters.
  19. The Travel Companion
    Even as it dabbles in toe-curling cringe comedy, The Travel Companion is ultimately too genial a work for such tonal extremes.
  20. Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything
    Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything is a documentary a lot like its subject. It’s sharp and inquiring in a playful way. It asks friendly questions but knows just when to toss in a tough one. It sizes up important people with clear-eyed worldly perception, but it’s also enthralled by the seductions of fame and money and power.
  21. Enigma
    Enigma, an HBO production that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, derives its strength mostly from Lear’s resolve to always be herself. And with that, the film can inspire courage in its audience, whatever their identity.
  22. La Grazia
    The movie will not exactly set your pulse racing. It’s staid. But there’s a hum of inspiration to its meditation.
  23. Prelude to a Kiss
    Thanks to a magnetic cast and intelligent adaptation, "Prelude to a Kiss" has made a solid transfer from stage to screen. Back in the 1930s or '40s, this sort of sophisticated, literary-oriented treatment of a simple romantic idea would have been the norm.
  24. Köln 75
    You don’t need to be a Keith Jarrett fan to enjoy Köln 75, but for anyone who is the movie is a savory anecdote that colors in his fluky rapture.
  25. The Forbidden City
    The action sequences are well choreographed and intuitive enough to follow, but romance doesn’t work quite the way we might expect, which proves to be yet another of the film’s distinguishing features.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shoeshine
    With the shoeshine boys of Rome’s streets as background, this film is a preachment on Italian juvenile delinquency. Producers used real shoeshine boys and the absence of experienced actors works out okay. Scenes in Rome’s jail emphasize the need for drastic reforms there.
  27. Is This Thing On?
    It’s an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie, yet there’s an inner softness to it, a slightly pandering quality.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Favorite Wife
    Irene Dunne and Cary Grant pick up the thread of marital comedy at about the point where they left off in The Awful Truth. With these two stars working again with Leo McCarey, a surefire laughing film is guaranteed.
  29. The Girls Are Alright
    The duly playful, freeform result occasionally skirts preciousness but is mostly rather affecting, bound by a palpable sense of female friendship and a perceptive interest in the dynamics thereof.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mrs. Parkington
    Mrs Parkington is a successful picture from any angle. Film version of Louis Bromfield's novel is an absorbing and warmful presentation of the history of an American empire builder. With Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon topping a strong cast of competent performers, there's a smooth-flowing script despite the extended running time.
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