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. The Girls in the Band
    Plentiful screen time for three generations of femme jazzers, led by energetic and witty gals from the golden age of big band and swing who unlock a treasure trove of memories, make this a real crowdpleaser.
  2. Berberian Sound Studio
    Icily disquieting rather than scary, the film is less an exercise in narrative than in tonal mastery.
  3. In the Fog
    In the Fog explores the moralities of wartime with restraint and exacting execution.
  4. The Great Beauty
    Sorrentino continues to tackle major topics using an extraordinary combination of broad brushstrokes and minute detail. Passion via the intellect has become his trademark, well suited to this dissection of empty diversions, indulged in by latter-day Neros fiddling while Rome burns.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Life Is Sweet
    As a precise observation of British types and a virtuoso piece of carefully observed ensemble playing, the film would be hard to beat.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Vincent & Theo
    One of Robert Altman’s most cinematically conventional films as well as one of his most deeply personal.
  7. Big Words
    The dialogue — natural, vibrant and totally embedded in the moment, never sententious or showoff-y — is delivered with consummate believability by an excellent cast.
  8. Snowpiercer
    Snowpiercer has been brought to the screen with the kind of solid narrative craftsmanship, carefully drawn characters and — above all — respect for the audience’s intelligence rarely encountered in high-concept genre cinema.
  9. After Tiller
    Well contextualized and sensitively shot with extraordinary access, the pic reflects the personal, moral and ethical struggles of the doctors as well as their patients.
  10. Our Children
    At this finely tooled tragedy’s core towers Emilie Dequenne, no longer the feral young thing seen in 1999′s “Rosetta,” but a trapped animal pushed to devastating extremes.
  11. The Trials of Muhammad Ali
    It’s an inspiring picture, particularly given the difficulty of imagining one of today’s sports superstars going so far out on a limb for unpopular beliefs.
  12. Fire in the Blood
    Though the film comprehensively details the political and economic subtleties of what it declares “the crime of the century,” its narrative remains primarily a human-focused one, highlighting the stories of selected steadfast victims, as well as the heroic movers and shakers in the struggle.
  13. Mother of George
    Simply relating the narrative of Andrew Dosunmu’s seductive immigrant drama Mother of George would do little to convey the film’s stark, poetic power, much less its extraordinary visual and sonic acumen.
  14. Herblock: The Black & the White
    Stevens offers a couple of revelations that bring the documentary to a dramatically and emotionally satisfying conclusion — and, not incidentally, leave a viewer with the pleasing sensation of discovering a worthy individual.
  15. Wadjda
    With enormous sympathy for all, Al Mansour captures the isolation of Saudi women and their parallel lives of freedom at home and invisibility outside.
  16. La Maison de la Radio
    Two minor problems in the closing reels hold the film back from instant-classic status.
  17. Out of the Clear Blue Sky
    The novelty of helmer Gardner’s approach to 9/11, her insider’s look at the almost unimaginable difficulties faced by Cantor Fitzgerald in the weeks following the attack, and the abundance of coverage spanning 10 years of inhouse interactions more than compensate for the docu’s occasional unevenness.
  18. Stranger by the Lake
    This is essentially an absorbing and intelligent exploration of queer desire spiced up with thriller elements.
  19. We Are the Best!
    It’s the rare film about adolescence that doesn’t seem exclusively targeted either to teens or to adults. Rarer still, it’s one that takes an interest in the nourishing qualities of female friendship.
  20. The Armstrong Lie
    Director Alex Gibney delivers not just a detailed, full-access account of his subject, in all his defiance, hubris and tentative self-reckoning, but also a layered inquiry into the culture of competitiveness, celebrity, moral relativism and hypocrisy that helped enable and sustain his deception.
  21. October November
    A carefully constructed and beautifully acted tale of two very different sisters brought together when their aging father falls seriously ill.
  22. Wolf Children
    Embracing the patient, poetic style of such Japanese masters as Ozu and Mizoguchi, Hosoda sees no need for the manic energy and manufactured conflict of other recent toons.
  23. Valentine Road
    Though the ugly phobia that gave rise to the killing and permeated the legal proceedings boils the blood, the film’s tone is somber rather than angry, and its effect is quietly devastating.
  24. Blood Brother
    Despite its ostensibly depressing subject and a few tough-to-watch sequences, Blood Brother is never less than engrossing, and it’s often delightful.
  25. Narco Cultura
    Narco Cultura is as overwhelming as it is absorbing.
  26. Golden Slumbers
    Golden Slumbers is an elegantly assembled and deeply moving remembrance of Cambodian cinema
    • 99 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Intolerance
    Intolerance reflects much credit to the wizard director, for it required no small amount of genuine art to consistently blend actors, horses, monkeys, geese, doves, acrobats and ballets into a composite presentation of a film classic.
  28. Tim's Vermeer
    The result is just about the most fun you can have while learning, partly because it strips away any tangents beyond the task at hand, offering a lean, 80-minute account of how this crazy guy erected his own Everest and then proceeded to climb it.
  29. Spy
    An uproarious blast of globe-trotting action-comedy delirium that doesn’t spoof the espionage-thriller genre so much as drop a series of banana peels in its path.
  30. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    At once questioning and reaffirming the pleasures of cinematic espionage, this is the rare sequel that leaves its franchise feeling not exhausted but surprisingly resurgent at 19 years and counting.
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