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. Runoff
    The universal theme of personal principle vs. human necessity gets a workout in languid but inexorably powerful morality play, Runoff.
  2. Mala Mala
    Beginning as a colorful documentary about the Puerto Rican transgender community, candidly showcasing nine very different subjects, Mala Mala slowly morphs into a celebration of solidarity and collective activism without ever losing sight of its likable protagonists.
  3. The New Girlfriend
    This delectable entertainment is as surprising for its continually evolving (and involving) dynamics of desire as for its slow-building emotional power.
  4. Five Star
    A low-key but powerfully affecting urban drama that tells a familiar story — of drugs, power and respect on the inner-city streets — with such unusual authenticity and dramatic force that it’s as if we’re seeing it for the first time.
  5. Breathe
    Melanie Laurent brings a sure, sensitive hand to tonally tricky material and draws superb work from relative newcomers Josephine Japy (“Cloclo”) and Lou De Laage (“Jappeloup”).
  6. We Come as Friends
    A masterfully composed and suitably outraged look at the neocolonialist exploitation of South Sudan.
  7. The Second Mother
    The script is executed with enough naturalism to ward off complaints of contrivance — all the way up to a tidy, but quite satisfying, denouement.
  8. Spotlight
    Like so many films consumed with the minutiae of daily journalism, Spotlight is a magnificently nerdy process movie — a tour de force of filing-cabinet cinema, made with absolute assurance that we’ll be held by scene after scene of people talking, taking notes, following tips, hounding sources, poring over records, filling out spreadsheets, and having one door after another slammed in their faces.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Metropolitan
    Metropolitan succeeds on several levels, offering rich, sparkling dialog, distinct characters and an intriguing peek into a seldom seen milieu.
  10. Barcelona
    After examining the rarefied world of debutante socialites with wit and obvious expertise in “Metropolitan,” Stillman opens up his artistic universe a bit more here and displays an increased ease with filmmaking craf
  11. Theeb
    Like all well-done adventure tales, especially those with an intimate human focus and an expansive, epic vision, “Theeb” works on multiple levels.
  12. Eye in the Sky
    A rivetingly suspenseful drama that deftly intertwines elements of ticking-clock thriller and tragic farce.
  13. Prophet's Prey
    Berg’s interviews with past members of the polygamy-practicing Mormon denomination make for damning testimony, but the lasting power of “Prey” is its grim insight into the mentality of the deceived, and its despairing recognition that spiritual and psychological bondage doesn’t end simply by putting a monster behind bars.
  14. Office
    This boardroom tuner charmingly mines humor, romance and no shortage of eccentric lyrics from the world of spreadsheets and stock portfolios, but its real achievement is a formal and conceptual one, conjuring a tongue-in-cheek vision of modern capitalism in splendidly Brechtian terms (and in widescreen 3D, to boot).
  15. Sherpa
    This film from experienced Aussie documaker Jennifer Peedom packs an emotional punch to match its awe-inspiring imagery.
  16. Blood of My Blood
    With consummate artistry and the self-assurance that comes from experience, master helmer Marco Bellocchio continues to play with form and content with an originality that make younger directors look like they’re grasping at ephemeral straws.
  17. From Afar
    Looking, not touching, is the act of choice for a sexually wary gay man in From Afar, and his hands-off approach is shared by the expert storytelling in Venezuelan helmer Lorenzo Vigas’ pristinely poised but deeply felt debut feature.
  18. Western
    A low-key but sharply observed work that benefits from real local flavor and a gift for lyric image making.
  19. The Treasure
    Porumboiu’s particular brand of farce is always shot through with the pulse of everyday life and its Sisyphean struggles. He is, simply put, one of our great contemporary observers of the human comedy.
  20. Toy Story 4
    "Toy Story" ushered in the era of computer-animated cartoon features, and the fourth movie wraps up the saga beautifully. At least, for now.
  21. Ixcanul
    What emerges, finally, is a film that gives an urgent, original voice to a people too frequently marginalized in both movies and society at large.
  22. Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (1971)
    Its mind-bending storytelling and themes of play and paranoia make it perhaps the quintessential Gallic movie of its era.
  23. Frame by Frame
    A piercing, poignant and — as befits its subject — beautifully composed exploration of the challenges and responsibilities faced by photojournalists in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban free press.
  24. The Dark Horse
    The Dark Horse is as good a title as any for a film that takes an overplayed genre — the inspirational mentor story — and still manages to surprise, sneaking up to deliver a powerful emotional experience within a formula we all know by heart
  25. Kubo and the Two Strings
    With such awe-inspiring artistry, designed so as to never distract from the material it serves, Kubo and the Two Strings stands as the sort of film that feels richer with each successive viewing, from the paper-folded Laika logo at the beginning (an early taste of the stunning origami sequences to follow) to the emotional resonance of its final shot.
  26. Sunday Ball
    Stunningly shot and marvelously edited to capture the rhythms of the game, the pic transcends its subject much in the way Roger Angell’s essays on baseball offer rare pleasures even to those uninterested in the game.
  27. The Winding Stream
    The Winding Stream is cogent and compelling as a pop-culture history lesson, and genuinely uplifting while it shows how contemporary artists — along with descendants like Rosanne and John Carter Cash — keep the legacy of A.P., Mother Maybelle, June and Johnny alive and thriving.
  28. War Dogs
    War Dogs marks a key turning point for Phillips. After all these years of yocks, it’s his first true grown-up movie, and it’s a nimble, gripping, and terrific one, with plenty of laughs, only now they’re rooted in the reality of fear, and in behavior that’s authentically scurrilous.
  29. Men Go to Battle
    Striking in its evocation of a demanding time and place, this intimate drama about individual and national transformation heralds the arrival of an arresting new filmmaking voice.
  30. Little Men
    Ira Sachs’ Little Men is a little movie brimming with little truths about modern life. It won’t change the world, but it does understand it
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