Variety's Scores

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For 17,758 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 2.3 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: 9,121 out of 17758
  2. Mixed: 7,002 out of 17758
  3. Negative: 1,635 out of 17758
17758 movie reviews
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  1. Maestro
    Maestro can’t help but be dominated by the grandeur of Bernstein’s passion, his outsize flaws, and the tightrope he walked between the need to find the meaning of beauty and the desire to stay fancy free. Yet Cooper and Mulligan make the movie a duet to remember.
  2. Poor Things
    Oddly moving in its fervor and abundance, Poor Things may appear a far cry from the harsh, stripped ascetism of an early work like “Dogtooth.” But they’re actually similar animals, fixated on taking people apart to find what makes them tick, what makes them swoon, what makes them interesting.
  3. All of Us Strangers
    The entire journey is not based in logic so much as a kind of emotional intuition, and as such, no two viewers will experience it the same way. What strikes some as manipulative will crack open others, as the film offers a kind of connection that’s all too rare, and maybe even impossible.
  4. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
    Practically all that’s missing is an appearance by Anderson himself, the way Alfred Hitchcock used to present episodes of his television series. Then again, one could say he’s present in every frame.
  5. Choose Love
    These filmmakers have trouble finessing their shenanigan-laced setups into anything but frequently frustrating, unsatisfactory conclusions. This title urges us to choose love, but audiences should choose to not play along.
  6. Ferrari
    The specter of death haunts the racing scenes in “Ferrari.” That’s part of their intoxicating charge. But it isn’t just the action that’s fraught with thrilling danger. Every moment of the drama moves with a sense of high-stakes dread, of underlying emotional turbulence.
  7. El Conde
    As a magnificently unlovable art-house object, El Conde is perhaps best approached as a challenge: Run the gauntlet if you dare, and if, at the other end, you emerge dazed and disturbed rather than straightforwardly entertained, perhaps those are just the splinters you get when you try to stake a vampire.
  8. Comandante
    If the characters, apart from Salvatore, had been more developed, there might be more drama to it, but Comandante, in its honorable and slightly gloomy way, has been conceived as the delivery system for a humanitarian message.
  9. The Equalizer 3
    Beyond the righteous action and visceral violence, it’s Washington’s swagger and charisma that compels.
  10. Vacation Friends 2
    If anything, delving into action/comedy territory distracts from what made the original kinda-sorta touching at a few key moments: the heart beneath the hijinks. It’s still beating here, but not as strongly as it did the first time.
  11. The Dive
    If The Dive’s final stretch feels a bit less urgent than what precedes it, one appreciates that the filmmakers did not pile on the usual melodramatic gotchas, hewing to a relatively realistic course of events.
  12. Our Father, the Devil
    A cutting, at times unwieldy exploration of trauma and forgiveness, the enigmatic drama goes places you almost certainly won’t expect — and, once there, makes you wonder how you ever thought it could have gone anywhere else.
  13. Retribution
    The film’s 90 minutes whiz by.
  14. Mob Land
    Maggio has cobbled together a modestly diverting, effectively atmospheric but blatantly derivative crime drama sprinkled with a few joltingly nasty plot twists.
  15. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah!
    Director Sammi Cohen and screenwriter Alison Peck bestow this hilarious, heartrending adaptation of Fiona Rosenbloom’s novel with an uplifting, effervescent vision and vitality, giving voice to a young Jewish girl’s struggle to figure out who she is before the most important night of her life so far.
  16. birth/rebirth
    Laura Moss’ superbly performed, enjoyably queasy Birth/Rebirth proves just how well the classic tale of scientific hubris and the desire to conquer death maps onto a gory maternity morality play, reanimating the truism that there’s little more (un)deadly than a mother’s love.
  17. Back on the Strip
    Despite wall-to-wall narration by Haddish (at her most raunchy), the movie does a clumsy job of telling a not-very-complicated story. Then again, this lean team effort is Sanders’ directorial debut, and he gets the laughs.
  18. Peter Case: A Million Miles Away
    Watching this film satisfying tie up Case’s loose ends, you can still lament the lost promise of the Plimsouls, or wonder what might’ve happened with a more copacetic label/artist relationship.
  19. Strays
    Strays balances human expectations and lost-in-translation animal experiences for a smart, suitably raunchy adventure that should resonate even if you don’t have a furry friend waiting at home for you afterward.
  20. Love in Taipei
    The story’s core strengths are undervalued in the translation from book to screen.
  21. Blue Beetle
    Maridueña, playing Hollywood’s first Latino superhero, proves an appealing star. And the novelty of casting a comic-book blockbuster with a mostly unknown crew of vibrant Latino actors finds its emotional grounding in Jaime’s family.
  22. Heart of Stone
    What makes Heart of Stone such an enervating experience isn’t that it’s incompetent but that nothing in it matters. It’s all bombast and noise, all hollow logistics, all virtual “Minority Report” screens and clattering fury signifying nothing. In other words: Time to start planning the sequel.
  23. The Last Voyage of the Demeter
    That’s the most poetic thing in the movie. The rest of the time, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is too explicit, too dawdling yet rapid-fire, too much like other horror films.
  24. Gran Turismo
    There’s an innocence to this one, and a surprise authenticity. It’s like a “Fast and Furious” movie made without cynicism, and it gets to you.
  25. Meg 2: The Trench
    The Meg 2 is numbingly formulaic, promiscuously derivative and, for a few stretches (like the over-the-top third act), diverting in its very shamelessness. It is, in other words, all an August movie really needs to be. But there’s a way that the line between August movies and movies, period, is growing thinner every day.
  26. The Beasts
    The film’s big scene is upsetting and unforgettable, one of those movie moments you can’t unsee and which seems destined to haunt you for years to come.
  27. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
    The movie’s mostly just meant to be fun, and that it is, skewing young while giving lifelong fans (including those who grew up on the Turtles) plenty to geek out about.
  28. Happiness for Beginners
    Well-behaved to a fault, Happiness for Beginners is sweet but a little tentative.
  29. Medusa Deluxe
    This kinetic if not-quite-novel presentation doesn’t entirely patch over the weaknesses of Hardiman’s script, with its exhausting whirl of characters more colorful than they are shaded, and plotting that eventually runs out of compelling diversions from the matter at hand.
  30. Haunted Mansion
    While the visual effects are surprisingly weak for a film of this scale, the script (from “Ghostbusters” writer Katie Dippold) proves far better than anyone might expect, establishing an emotional foundation for what might otherwise be a gimmick-driven haunted house movie.
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