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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    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Hopes
    Leigh builds a slight story intended to be a microcosm of today’s London.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Limelight
    Departing from most forms of Hollywood stereotype, the film has a flavor all its own in the sincere quality of the story anent the onetime great vaudemime and his rescue of a femme ballet student from a suicide attempt and subsequently from great mental depression.
  3. McQueen
    Itself crafted with great artistry and ingenuity, McQueen works both as a spectacular visual album of his work and an achingly moving account of the incomplete life behind it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Black Stallion
    The Black Stallion is a perfect gem.
  5. Earth Mama
    Leaf recognizes that whatever happens to Gia, the problem remains. Her portrait is intended to illuminate, and Nomore makes for a wonderful collaborator in this.
  6. Booksmart
    Not since “Superbad” has a high school comedy so perfectly nailed how exhilarating it feels to act out at that age ... In this year’s class of first-time feature directors, Wilde handily earns the title of Most Likely to Succeed.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wise Blood
    John Huston, with uncluttered direction and expert handling of actors, has fashioned a disturbing tale of the fringe side of overzealous religious preachers in the deep South.
  8. Writing with Fire
    Thomas and Ghosh have found their angle, and it’s a powerful one.
  9. Small Axe: Red, White and Blue
    Yet Red, White and Blue mostly lacks the gritty period flavor of the other Small Axe films. It’s a little glossed over. The (minor) daring of the movie is its downbeat narrative. It’s structured like the air seeping out of a tire, so that it presents us with a character of idealistic strength, commitment, and personal heroism only to plop him into a set of circumstances that won’t allow him to be a hero.
  10. Ascension
    It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of her project, and it’s Kingdon’s work as editor that makes Ascension such a remarkable achievement. She organizes all these disparate scenes into a logical upward progression, and even though we seldom know where we are or who exactly we’re observing, these foreign situations are relatable, engaging and often unforgettable.
  11. Lantana
    A wonderfully acted, acutely observed psychological drama.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Friends of Eddie Coyle
    A very fine film about real people on the fringes of both crime and law enforcement.
  13. Reality
    Reality can be stranger than fiction, but “Reality” fuses the two to become stranger, and more riveting, still.
  14. Séraphine
    An extraordinary performance by vet thesp Yolande Moreau in the title role.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Oliver Twist
    From every angle this is a superb achievement.
  16. Marx Can Wait
    Straightforward in concept yet psychologically profound, the film draws the audience in with a lingering sadness made more potent by the director’s clear yet unspoken sense of guilt.
  17. Paper Tiger
    The movie is engineered to be seen as “powerful.” Right now, though, I’d say that he’s an ace director who’s still being undercut by the holes in his screenplays.
  18. 49 Up
    It doesn't make for involving drama, unless the audience is already invested in the subjects' fortunes. Thus, 49 Up will have more appeal for long-time followers than newcomers.
  19. To a Land Unknown
    To a Land Unknown is a film crafted with tremendous empathy.
  20. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    [A] sprawling, thrilling, finally heart-bursting group portrait of Parisian AIDS activists in the early 1990s.
  21. The Joy Luck Club
    Wang has made a dramatically confident move into the mainstream on his own terms with highly congenial material.
  22. Sirât
    This thrilling directorial confidence, given his film’s elegant opacities and ambiguities, is a quality to marvel at, even as it’s binding your hands and tying you to your seat and forcing you to watch, possibly against your will.
  23. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
    The situation Rasoulof depicts is hardly limited to Iran. There are echoes of Nazi Germany and modern-day China in the way average citizens submit, while the pressures to inform on one’s neighbors recall pre-perestroika Soviet policies. Rasoulof’s genius comes in focusing on how this dynamic plays out within a family, which makes it personal.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Postman Always Rings Twice
    Development of the characters makes Tay Garnett’s direction seem slowly paced during first part of the picture, but this establishment was necessary to give the speed and punch to the uncompromising evil that transpires.
  25. To Leslie
    It’s a downbeat diary that hooks us by taking the form of an addict’s picaresque. For two hours, we don’t know where Leslie is going to land next any more than she does, and that lends the film a searing, unvarnished quality.
  26. American Beauty
    A script as fresh and distinctive as any produced in the States in recent memory.
  27. Harmonium
    Shot in a meticulous yet unmannered style, the film provides the veteran cast with an ideal framework to mount masterful performances.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kagemusha
    Kurosawa, at 70, shows himself young indeed in the impressive handling of this historical drama laced with shrewd insights into the almost Shakespearean intrigues of power.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    That Obscure Object of Desire
    A gem-like, almost hypnotic, tale of an older man's obsession with a young woman.
  30. Far From Heaven
    An accomplished marriage of elaborate style and content.
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