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
    • 90 Critic Score
    Old Yeller
    Disney organization's flair for taking a homely subject and building a heartwarming film is again aptly demonstrated in this moving story set in 1869 of a Texas frontier family and an old yeller dog. Based on Fred Gipson's novel of same tag, this is a careful blending of fun, laughter, love, adventure and tragedy.
  2. Eephus
    Its pearls of practical wisdom and jewels of melancholic wit make Eephus a gem, which is fitting, for a movie about a game played on a diamond.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Uncle
    Somewhat long for a comedy, Jacques Tati's film has inventiveness, gags, warmth and a 'poetic' approach to satire.
  4. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Mike Leigh's mellowest work yet, and his most purely entertaining.
  5. Lassie
    Competent journeyman writer-helmer Charles Sturridge ("Brideshead Revisited") and his overqualified thesp ensemble steer a steady course between dogged fidelity to Eric Knight's sentimental original novel and modern auds' need for a little humorous bite with the barking.
  6. Shrek
    This spirited and often very funny lark accomplishes something that most films in the bygone Hollywood studio era used to do but is remarkably rare in today's world of niche markets: It offers entertainment equally to viewers from 4 to 104.
  7. Youth (Hard Times)
    At nearly four hours in length, it surpasses even its gargantuan predecessor “Youth (Spring),” but it also uses that film as a platform for deeper exploration.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Letter
    Never has [the W. Somerset Maugham play] been done with greater production values, a better all-around cast or finer direction. Its defect is its grimness. Director William Wyler, however, sets himself a tempo which is in rhythm with the Malay locale.
  9. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    A heady spirit of spontaneity permeates the proceedings, suggesting the entire pic, much like the concert it documents, was conceived, planned and completed in a single burst of creative enthusiasm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Victor Victoria
    A sparkling, ultra-sophisticated entertainment from Blake Edwards.
  11. Our Time Machine
    Sun and Chiang strike a tricky balance between a high-stakes making-of documentary and an intimate, observational family portrait, but Maleonn is such a thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant subject that the film is compelling no matter where on the creative spectrum they find him.
  12. The Day I Became a Woman
    A powerful statement about the social oppression of women in today's Iran.
  13. The Quiet American
    One of Caine's meatiest roles, and he handles it with power, humanity and remarkable emotional fluidity; from the opening moments, an enormous amount comes through his eyes alone.
  14. The Pinochet Case
    It's hard to walk away unaffected from this heartfelt, well-researched, feature-length documentary.
  15. The Fallout
    It’s a remarkable accomplishment: a film with the confidence to pose big questions, and the humility to leave them unanswered.
  16. Weiner
    Filmmakers Josh Kriegman (a former Weiner aide) and Elyse Steinberg utilize their seemingly unfettered access to deliver a rollicking and never-dull insider’s view of a political campaign in crisis mode, but the most fascinating questions surrounding Weiner’s epic fall remain unanswered.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stalag 17
    The legit hit about GI internees in a Nazi prison camp during the Second World War is screened as a lusty comedy-melodrama, loaded with bold, masculine humor and as much of the original’s uninhibited earthiness as good taste and the Production Code permit.
  18. Iraq in Fragments
    As beautiful as it is unrevealing, James Longley's Iraq in Fragments rests on a debatable but firm premise -- that the embattled country is irrevocably separated by its three dominant groups, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds -- but brings back nothing journalistically substantial from the war front .
  19. Mystic River
    This full-bodied adaptation of Dennis Lehane's involved and involving 2001 bestselling crime novel about old friends in Boston's working-class Irish neighborhood finds Clint Eastwood near the top of his directorial game with a cast of first-rate actors.
  20. Glengarry Glen Ross
    But it doesn't quite all come together here as it did onstage, and relentless scabrousness, heavy claustrophobia and a vaguely dated feel are among the elements that will keep mainstream audiences away.
  21. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    Although The Last Jedi meets a relatively high standard for franchise filmmaking, Johnson’s effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors’ visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic.
  22. The Cove
    Eco-activist documentaries don't get much more compelling than The Cove, an impassioned piece of advocacy filmmaking that follows "Flipper" trainer-turned-marine crusader Richard O'Barry in his efforts to end dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rocco and His Brothers (re-release)
    It's plotted in the form of an epic poem, each stanza dedicated to a member of the group.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coal Miner's Daughter
    A thoughtful, endearing film charting the life of singer Loretta Lynn from the depths of poverty in rural Kentucky to her eventual rise to the title of 'queen of country music'. Thanks in large part to superb performances by Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones, film [based on Lynn's autobiography, with George Vescey] mostly avoids the sudsy atmosphere common to many showbiz tales.
  25. Mutual Appreciation
    If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation.
  26. Stray Dogs
    Tsai here seems to be stripping his ornately eccentric style down to formal fundamentals. A certain pictorial grace remains; his sense of humor, sadly, appears to have been largely tossed out with the bathwater.
  27. The Rescue
    A stunning documentary of bone-deep moral resonance and cinematic mastery that deserves to be experienced on the big screen.
  28. Universal Language
    Rankin may have conceived Universal Language in the spirit of homage, but there’s something undeniably original about the end result. Don’t be surprised if that translates into a modest cult following and more creative ideas in the future.
  29. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    Though it sounds like an offbeat idea even for horror fans, the tech work is so well done that it could disarm unwary buffs attracted by the campy title.
  30. 13 Assassins
    This at first slow-moving and then wildly kinetic actioner possesses a cool classicism that will appeal to offshore audiences as well as those at home.
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