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. 10 Cloverfield Lane
    The tension is rooted in psychology rather than gimmickry, and evinces a command of craft that feels old-fashioned in the most refreshing possible sense.
  2. Marguerite
    This splendid satire benefits...from “The Singer” director Giannoli’s gift for striking just the right tone with such tricky material.
  3. Frank & Lola
    It’s poised between reality and paranoid daydream, it’s about the dangerous ways that love can go wrong, and it does the thing that noir was invented to do: It sucks you in.
  4. Christine
    Far from the austere death march it might threaten to be on paper, this is a thrumming, heartsore, sometimes viciously funny character study, sensitive both to the singularities of Chubbuck’s psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by any woman in a 1970s newsroom.
  5. Mavis!
    A spirited and captivating bio-doc that richly deserves the exclamation point in its title.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    House Party
    House Party captures contemporary black teen culture in a way that’s fresh, commercial and very catchy.
  7. Babe: Pig in the City
    Babe: Pig in the City is tour de force filmmaking that masks its achievement in a good ripping yarn.
  8. Holy Hell
    Like watching a takedown of Hitler by a disillusioned Leni Reifenstahl, what emerges is one of the decade’s strangest and most unsettling documentaries, especially given its as-yet-unwritten ending.
  9. Presenting Princess Shaw
    That rare Princess whose wishes do come true, Montgomery’s what is known as a “genuine discovery.”
  10. The Infiltrator
    Bryan Cranston gives the most authentic and lived-in performance as an agent pretending to be a criminal that I have ever seen.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Suspicion
    Alfred Hitchcock’s trademarked cinematic development of suspenseful drama, through mental emotions of the story principals, is vividly displayed in Suspicion, a class production [from the novel Before the Fact by Francis Iles] provided with excellence in direction, acting and mounting.
  12. Tickled
    An alarming cautionary tale about how easy it is in the Internet age to ruin people’s lives while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, the pic boasts a humorously titillating entry hook that soon gives way to engrossing conspiracy-thriller-like content.
  13. Aquarius
    Aquarius is a character study as well as a shrewd meditation on the needless transience of place and the way physical space elides with our identity.
  14. Raw
    Raw is a deliciously fevered stew of nightmare fuel that hangs together with a breezily confident sense of superior craft.
  15. Zero Days
    Clear, urgent and positively terrifying at times.
  16. Princess
    Princess plays out an unsettling scenario of underage sexuality in enigmatic, almost dreamlike terms.
  17. Nocturnal Animals
    Ford is a true moviemaker — a social observer who’s a junkie for sensation and narrative. He has structured Nocturnal Animals beautifully, so that the past feeds into the present, and fiction into reality.
  18. Life, Animated
    This latest film from Roger Ross Williams (“God Loves Uganda”) teems with insights into how children’s fantasy can and can’t bridge a developmental gap, but works on an even more basic, emotional level as a warm testament to a family’s love and resilience.
  19. Wicked
    Instead of feeling bloated, Wicked has found its ideal form, where every frame comes crammed with the kind of detail that could easily have been distracting, had a lesser talent than Cynthia Erivo been asked to carry it.
  20. Ralph Breaks the Internet
    It’s a poignant buddy movie that’s sincere in all the right places, but knows better than to take itself too seriously.
  21. Miss Sharon Jones!
    One can’t help but feel inspired by both Jones’ sparkplug attitude and the gentle way those around her respond to her needs.
  22. Long Way North
    In both tone and approach, this animated treasure couldn’t be more different from the lavish high-tech toons competing in the American marketplace.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Barry Lyndon
    Ryan O'Neal's excellent performance captures the shallow opportunism endemic to the title character who is brought down as much by his own flaws as by the mores of the ordered social structure of 18th-century England. Casting, concept and execution are all superb.
  24. A Dragon Arrives!
    Some viewers will work themselves into a state of severe agitation trying to keep pace with Haghighi’s panoply of diversionary tactics within diversions. Others may simply give in to the sensual allure of the whole contraption, as Haghighi gives lively indigenous treatment to motifs and atmospherics drawn from the Hollywood genre playbook.
  25. Three Colors: White
    The entertaining second seg of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy is involving, bittersweet and droll. A fine lead perf from Zbigniew Zamachowski anchors an ingenious rags-to-riches tale of revenge filtered through abiding love.
  26. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
    It can take a TV series an entire season to establish a political intrigue as elaborate as the one Cedar devises here — and even longer to flesh out such a fascinating protagonist, when all Cedar had to do was give this archetype a name.
  27. Darkest Hour
    Wright is both a virtuoso filmmaker and a natural showman, interpreting the screenplay as no other director could have possibly imagined it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Nocturama
    Bonello replies to the news with a magnetic and purely cinematic gesture.
  29. The Age of Shadows
    If anything, the film is most indebted to classic cloak-and-dagger movies, in which sharp, richly succinct dialogue and plenty of atmosphere seem effortlessly carried along by the force of magnetic personalities.
  30. Lady Macbeth
    An impressively stark, narratively ruthless Victorian chamber piece that feels about as modern as its crinolines will permit, William Oldroyd’s pristine debut feature slowly reveals a violent moral ambiguity that needles the mind far longer than its polite period-piece trappings suggest.
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