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. Testament of Youth
    Deftly balancing restrained sentimentalism with tough-minded human tragedy, this impressive, unashamedly classical feature debut by TV helmer James Kent has the populist heft one expects from producer David Heyman, while preserving the solemn intimacy of Brittain’s account of lives and loves severed by the conflict.
  2. Pete's Dragon
    One of the year’s most delightful moviegoing surprises, a quality family film that rewards young people’s imaginations and reminds us of a time when the term “Disney movie” meant something: namely, wholesome entertainment that inspired confidence in parents and reinforced solid American values.
  3. The Witch
    Writer-director Robert Eggers’ impressive debut feature walks a tricky line between disquieting ambiguity and full-bore supernatural horror, but leaves no doubt about the dangerously oppressive hold that Christianity exerted on some dark corners of the Puritan psyche.
  4. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
    Blending wit and modesty, Mann fits the bill, coming across as an overgrown kid with a good heart, but virtually no practice in relating to others — which is perhaps the thing that makes his experience so profoundly relatable.
  5. Mistress America
    If nothing else, Mistress America confirms Gerwig as one of the great, fearless screen comediennes of her generation — a tall, loose-limbed whirligig who careers through scenes with the beatific ditziness of a Carole Lombard or Judy Holliday.
  6. Tangerine
    Writer-director Sean Baker’s sun-scorched, street-level snapshot is a work of rueful, matter-of-fact insight and unapologetically wild humor that draws a motley collection of funny, sad and desperate individuals into its protagonists’ orbit.
  7. Best of Enemies
    Both fascinating as a glimpse at the not so distant past, and provocative as an account of what arguably was an early step in the decline of political discourse on television.
  8. Digging for Fire
    A lovely slice of everything and nothing.
  9. Finders Keepers
    [A] hysterical, insightful and genuinely empathetic documentary.
  10. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
    For Scientologists, going clear refers to a coveted status awarded to those who have completed a certain level of auditing. But for the men and women on screen here, it means something else: reclaiming their own voices and demanding to be heard.
  11. Meru
    Harrowing and ultimately moving.
  12. Dreamcatcher
    Conventionally constructed but remarkable for the honest, intimate rapport it achieves with highly vulnerable human subjects.
  13. Steve Jobs
    Writer Aaron Sorkin, director Danny Boyle and star Michael Fassbender have given their subject the brilliant, maddening, ingeniously designed and monstrously self-aggrandizing movie he deserves.
  14. Love & Friendship
    [Stillman] takes the inherent sophistication of Austen’s worldview and introduces just the right note of sly, self-deflating mockery.
  15. Queen of Earth
    An unnerving, acidly funny work that fosters an acute air of dread without ever fully announcing itself as a horror movie.
  16. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
    The beautifully modulated script, ripe with moments of liberating humor, builds to a crescendo of indignation, allowing Elkabetz several cathartic outbursts, but they’re no more riveting than the actress’ silences.
  17. Aferim!
    While its tone is occasionally overly strident, Aferim! is an exceptional, deeply intelligent gaze into a key historical period, done with wit as well as anger.
  18. La Sapienza
    The unresolvable tension between logic and feeling animates Eugene Green’s La Sapienza, an exquisite rumination on life, love and art that tickles the heart and mind in equal measure.
  19. Experimenter
    Experimenter offers a heady brew of theories about the essence of human nature, and a Peter Sarsgaard performance that catches Milgram in all his seductive, megalomaniacal brilliance.
  20. Lambert & Stamp
    As much as the movie rocks, Lambert & Stamp drops the needle to reveal the deep pain barely hidden in the grooves.
  21. Krisha
    Shults’s approach craftily favors observation over exposition, and he proves as attentive to Krisha’s surroundings as he is to her inner life.
  22. It's Such a Beautiful Day
    Had James Thurber worked in animation, the waggish result might look and sound a bit like It’s Such a Beautiful Day, indie cartoonist Don Hertzfeldt’s alternately poignant and absurdist triptych.
  23. 10,000 km
    From first frame to last, the filmmaking exudes intelligence and control, with none of the chilly emotional distance those qualities can imply. Form and content are in near-perfect balance.
  24. The LEGO Batman Movie
    The first thing to say about The Lego Batman Movie is that it’s kicky, bedazzling, and super-fun.
  25. Cemetery of Splendor
    While Cemetery of Splendor is unabashedly a work of slow cinema, the oft-hurled pejorative of “difficult” seems a particularly poor fit for a film whose unforced lyricism could scarcely be more graceful or inviting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Road Warrior
    Director Miller keeps the pic moving with cyclonic force, photography by Dean Semler is first class, editing is supertight, and Brian May’s music is stirring.
  27. In the Shadow of Women
    A tightly focused romantic drama that exudes the narrative terseness of a good short story and the lucid craftsmanship of a filmmaker in full command of the medium.
  28. My Golden Days
    Desplechin perfectly times the moment when drollery ends and anguish begins, and it’s that sense of vulnerability that lends the film an unexpected emotional force as it moves toward its return-home epilogue.
  29. Son of Saul
    The result is as grim and unyielding a depiction of the Holocaust as has yet been made on that cinematically overworked subject — a masterful exercise in narrative deprivation and sensory overload that recasts familiar horrors in daringly existential terms.
  30. Rams
    As Hakonarson’s beautifully modulated film progresses, recurring images contrast and poignantly resonate with meaning.
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