Variety's Scores

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For 17,839 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 17839
  2. Mixed: 7,035 out of 17839
  3. Negative: 1,638 out of 17839
17839 movie reviews
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    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Ref
    Ref takes a one-note premise and claustrophobic setting so far that its eventual message — communication and commitment are good things — arrives DOA after the third or fourth time Leary has carped his disgust at all things yuppiefied.
  2. Diamonds Are Forever
    Whatever connection Bond had to the real world has now been severed in favor of delivering the most satisfying possible experience for audiences, such as a throwaway scene of Q using an electromagnetic device to beat the slot machines or allowing homosexual henchmen Wint and Kidd to devise elaborate (and yet easily escapable) traps.
  3. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    Modestly engaging but mostly unexceptional.
  4. Beautiful Losers
    Full of energy and attitude.
  5. Stop! That! Train!
    More than their civilian counterparts, viewers familiar with “Drag Race,” its superstars and its lore will likely get much out of watching the cast trade on or tweak the personae for which they’re known on stage. But notwithstanding its queer-friendly lexicon (much of which has infiltrated social media anyway), Shankman’s film is an easily accessible, unexpectedly ingratiating experience.
  6. Music and Lyrics
    Grant carries the day as the fortysomething lad still living off his youth and just about getting away with it.
  7. Unfriended
    Simultaneously clever and exasperating, the film puts a novel spin on the genre Roger Ebert dubbed “the Dead Teenager Movie.”
  8. The Trotsky
    Both cartoonish and cerebral, and studded with in-jokes referencing multicultural life in "la belle ville" and classic cinema, the colorful pic stretches its premise a bit thin over nearly two hours.
  9. The Magician
    A talkative Melbourne hit man and his long-suffering marks are engaging company in "The Magician," an Aussie mockumentary cut from the same cloth as 1992 Belgian cult item "Man Bites Dog." Lacking the latter film's graphic violence, this pic opts for straight-on comedy and largely succeeds. [18 July 2005]
    • Variety
      • Posted Aug 4, 2022
  10. Breastmilk
    Ben-Ari seems just as invested, if not more so, in the social and psychological obstacles that can make breastfeeding problematic, and she explores them with impressive rigor, sensitivity and a refreshing lack of judgment, listening intently while prescribing little.
  11. The Automatic Hate
    This arresting seriocomedy deftly walks a tightrope between droll and tense, over a gaping pit of crazy.
  12. A Very Sordid Wedding
    A few of the gags land, most of them don’t, but the overall rhythm is stilted and rudderless, flattened further by d.p. Paul Suderman’s point-and-shoot camerawork.
  13. 1982
    Director Oualid Mouaness’ enriching use of images and sensitivity to narrative balance outweigh his unexceptional dialogue in 1982. Even with such a caveat, his debut feature succeeds in accessing emotional truths that leave a lingering bittersweet melancholy.
  14. Dachra
    Originality may indeed be scarce in writer-director Abdelhamid Bouchnak’s debut narrative feature. Yet this gory goulash of city slickers, creepy yokels, editorial jolts and cannibalism largely transcends its derivative basic elements, thanks to his astute, richly atmospheric handling.
  15. Superior
    Superior feels like a John Dahl movie given a “Twin Peaks” vibe on a Hal Hartley budget, with just the odd dash of Old Hollywood thrown in for good measure, like the deliberately “Rear Window”-aping, flashbulb-popping finale.
  16. Love After Love
    Love After Love goes through the motions of classic, rousing melodrama but not the emotions.
  17. Bono: Stories of Surrender
    While the show is honest and engaging, full of confessions and music and inside-the-band anecdotes and other savory tidbits, it all goes down almost a bit too smoothly, without quite hitting you with the force of revelation, since Bono has always had the loquacious talk-show-friendly slightly oversharing quality of an open book.
  18. The Banker
    You may wish that you were reading about these events in The New Yorker, because the movie is so choked with neutral detail that it’s a little bloodless. It lacks fire.
  19. Sharkwater
    As an eco-political inquiry, the film is compelling even if its grounding in scientific fact could be more solid.
  20. American Swing
    Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart's documentary is just functionally assembled, lacking the style or larger social context that distinguished similar studies like "Inside Deep Throat."
  21. This Is 40
    Judd Apatow's instincts have rarely been sharper, wiser or more relatable than in This Is 40, an acutely perceptive, emotionally generous laffer about the joys and frustrations of marriage and middle age.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Gauntlet
    In a major role reversal, Clint Eastwood stars in The Gauntlet as a person who might be on the receiving end of the violence epitomized in his famed Dirty Harry film series.
  23. Cliffhanger
    But where most rugged he-man films feature a few action sequences scattered throughout, director Renny Harlin keeps the adventure stuff in this reputed $ 65 million production coming at an astonishing pace.
  24. Cruella
    The director, who brought a wicked edge to pop-culture redux “I, Tonya” a few years back, has rescued Cruella from the predictability of the earlier “101 Dalmatians” remakes and created a stylish new franchise of its own in which a one-time villain has been reborn as the unlikeliest of role models.
  25. Nanny McPhee
    Under the surface, the movie has a streak of Roald Dahl-style darkness that dilutes the sugar.
  26. Wimbledon
    A fanciful tennis-themed romance that compounds the old dilemma of "Will he get the girl?" with "Will he get the trophy?" But the answers are too predictable and laughs too scattered for this middling Universal release to generate much in the way of humor or suspense.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strike Up the Band
    Direction by Busby Berkeley deftly carries through the story side, despite script deficiencies, but he is in his element in the staging of the production and musical sequences.
  28. What Happens Later
    Meg Ryan not only dazzles before the camera in What Happens Later, but behind it as well, as director and co-writer. Through the prism of one former couple’s relationship woes, this effervescent, enlightened romantic comedy explores our innate need for reconciliation within ourselves and with each other.
  29. The Ant Bully
    Lovely to look at but a headache to listen to.
  30. Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here)
    There is an undeniable quirky appeal to the creative world of Daniel Smith, though those who hope a behind-the-scenes look will explain his motivation or personality won't find the enigma resolved here.
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