Variety's Scores

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For 17,777 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 2.4 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: 9,133 out of 17777
  2. Mixed: 7,008 out of 17777
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17777
17777 movie reviews
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  1. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    Filtering the world's oldest paintings through the latest in cinematic technology, Werner Herzog delivers a one-of-a-kind art-history lesson in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
  2. The Dark Knight Rises
    While The Dark Knight Rises raises the dramatic stakes considerably, at least in terms of its potential body count, it doesn't have its predecessor's breathless sense of menace or its demonic showmanship, and with the exception of one audacious sleight-of-hand twist, the story can at times seem more complicated than intricate.
  3. The Trip
    Michael Winterbottom's The Trip is about 20 minutes too long, but the other 90 are among the funniest in recent memory.
  4. Trollhunter
    Enormously entertaining chiller.
  5. Like Crazy
    An exquisite, beautifully acted gem of a film, one that should serve as a prelude to bigger things for stars Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin, as well as director Drake Doremus.
  6. Rapt
    The issues come clashing together in an explosive package that, despite some snafus, remains fairly riveting to the end.
  7. Star Trek Into Darkness
    Markedly grander in scale, although never at the expense of its richly human (and half-human) characters, “Into Darkness” may not boldly go where no “Trek” adventure has gone before, but getting there is such a well-crafted, immensely pleasurable ride that it would be positively Vulcan to nitpick.
  8. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    If necessity is the mother of invention, then DreamWorks’ desire to extend the Dragon franchise has propelled the creative team in the most admirable of directions, resulting in what just may be the mother of all animated sequels.
  9. Young Adult
    Reteaming pop-savvy scribe Diablo Cody with "Juno" director Jason Reitman, Young Adult revels in breaking the rules of safe Hollywood storytelling.
  10. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    An exquisitely realized adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel. In a rigorously subtle performance as a woman coping with the horrific damage wrought by her psychopathic son, Tilda Swinton anchors the dialogue-light film with an expressiveness that matches her star turn in "I Am Love."
  11. Mozart's Sister
    Feminist without the arrogance of 20-20 hindsight, vividly precise in its depiction of 18th-century pre-revolutionary France (the filmmakers were allowed to shoot inside Versailles), alive with exuberantly thesped personages and awash in the joy and power of music, the picture is a stunner.
  12. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
    [Francis] Lawrence and his team have calibrated the entire experience for maximum engagement. And while its pleasures can’t touch the thrill of seeing the Death Star destroyed — not yet, at least — the film runs circles around George Lucas’ ability to weave complex political ideas into the very fabric of B-movie excitement.
  13. A Separation
    Tense and narratively complex, formally dense and morally challenging.
  14. Rid of Me
    Bracingly original, alarming and droll, the righteously ribald Rid of Me should prove a breakthrough for helmer James Westby and his producer and leading lady, Katie O'Grady.
  15. Outrage
    Focusing on the absurdly ultraviolent tit-for-tat tussles among a trio of Tokyo crime families, the film is a beautifully staged marvel that confidently reasserts Kitano's considerable cinematic gifts.
  16. Pina
    Offering further proof that the latest 3D technology is good for a lot more than just lunging knives and fantastical storylines, Wim Wenders' dance docu Pina reps multidimensional entertainment that will send culture vultures swooning.
  17. Silver Linings Playbook
    Never one to shy away from unlikely sources of comedy, David O. Russell tackles mental illness, marital failure and the curative powers of football with bracingly sharp and satisfying results in Silver Linings Playbook.
  18. Zero Dark Thirty
    Far more ambitious than "The Hurt Locker," yet nowhere near so tripwire-tense, this procedure-driven, decade-spanning docudrama nevertheless rivets for most of its running time.
  19. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
    Destined to rank as one of the major achievements in American documentary, the "Paradise Lost" project comes to a presumed end with Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.
  20. Hell and Back Again
    Similar in its battlefield passages to last year's Danish-made "Armadillo," Dennis' film scores a layered perspective that follows Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris into combat and back home.
  21. Jess and Moss
    Jeter's film takes on the quality of a sustained dream, as if the theatrical conceits of Jean Genet were married to a children's story retold via William Faulker's Southern brand of stream of consciousness.
  22. This Is Not a Film
    Standing at his balcony, filming the revelry with his iPhone, he seems to be saying that directing is more defiant an act than lighting a firecracker or two. Truth be told, Panahi's poignant "Film" is infinitely more explosive.
  23. Post Mortem
    Pablo Larrain's breathtaking visual command makes for enthralling viewing in Post Mortem, a rigorous, formally controlled yet emotionally gripping drama set during Chile's bloody 1973 military coup.
  24. The Master
    The writer-director's typically eccentric sixth feature is a sustained immersion in a series of hypnotic moods and longueurs, an imposing picture that thrillingly and sometimes maddeningly refuses to conform to expectations.
  25. How to Survive a Plague
    A concise overview's clarity and an epic narrative shape, with a happy ending to boot.
  26. Elena
    A wise and impeccably controlled drama that finds Russian helmer Andrei Zvyagintsev in outstanding form.
  27. Battle Royale
    Departing from two decades' worth of domestic and personal dramas and returning to his roots as Japan's maestro of mayhem, Kinji Fukasaku has delivered a brutal punch to the collective solar plexus with one of his most outrageous and timely films.
  28. The Sessions
    A film of tenderness and humor married to the unlikeliest of subjects.
  29. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    If the characters’ quandaries at times feel overly circumscribed, they’re also advanced with a bracing emotional directness, devoid of either cynicism or sentimentalism, that touches genuine chords of feeling over the course of the film’s fleet 130-minute running time.
  30. Wagner's Dream
    Tension flows organically from every phase of this dangerous endeavor, making for a highly entertaining outing for operaphiles and operaphobes alike.
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