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. Minding the Gap
    It exists because it’s the movie Liu was born to make, the one he had to get off his chest before he could move on in his filmmaking career.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All About Eve
    All About Eve has substance in virtually every dramatic and romantic mood, which have been given proper shading and projection by producer Darryl F. Zanuck and Mankiewicz.
  3. Non-Fiction
    This story of two couples dealing with change in their personal and professional lives, so packed with intellectual sparring, gets progressively lighter as it moves along, acknowledging the primacy of human interaction (foibles and all) over doctrine.
  4. The Favourite
    It’s a perfectly cut diamond of a movie — a finely executed, coldly entertaining entry in the genre of savage misanthropic baroque costume drama.
  5. Transit
    A refugee portrait that piles contrivance upon contrivance to somehow land at a place of piercing emotional acuity.
  6. Hereditary
    Ari Aster directs slowly, meditatively, purging the film of any of the usual horror-video razzmatazz. Instead, he creates scary coherent spaces for the audience to sink into.
  7. The Tale
    Fox’s directing and script are so purposeful and direct that it can be very hard to watch The Tale without having to look away.
  8. Loveling
    Brazilian director Gustavo Pizzi crafts a warm and wonderfully universal love story that comes across surprisingly unconventional for something so familiar.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Great Escape
    Producer-director John Sturges has fashioned a motion picture that entertains, captivates, thrills and stirs.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It Happened One Night
    One of those stories that without a particularly strong plot manages to come through in a big way, due to the acting, dialog, situations and direction. In other words, the story has that intangible quality of charm which arises from a smooth blending of the various ingredients. Difficult to analyze, impossible to designedly reproduce. Just a happy accident.
  11. Searching
    Cutting to the emotional core of what social media says about us, the result is as much a time capsule of our relationship to (and reliance upon) modern technology as it is a cutting-edge digital thriller.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    North Dallas Forty
    What distinguishes this screen adaptation of Peter Gent’s bestseller is the exploration of a human dimension almost never seen in sports pix. Most people understand that modern-day athletes are just cogs in a big business wheel, but getting that across on the screen is a whole different matter. And in large measure, that success is due to a bravura performance in the lead role by Nick Nolte.
  13. Night Comes On
    Night Comes On is, true to its title, blanketed in a dim, crepuscular state of waiting. Fishback, her film career unfurling clearly before her from scene to scene, blazes a way out of it.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Steel Magnolias
    Field does some spectacular underplaying through the bulk of the action, revealing layer after layer of the feelings of this kindly tempered, deeply worried mother.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Secret of NIMH
    The Secret of NIMH is a richly animated and skillfully structured film created by former Disney animators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy. As craft, their first feature film is certainly an homage to the best of an age ago.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tin Men
    The improbable tale of a pair of feuding aluminum siding salesmen, Tin Men winds up as bountiful comedy material in the skillful hands of writer-director Barry Levinson. Film is packed with laughs, thanks to taut scripting and superb character depictions by Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito and a fascinating troupe of sidekicks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    To Be or Not to Be
    Very funny stuff, indeed.
    • Variety
  18. Goldstone
    Goldstone is nothing if not a focused, unified piece.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Throw Momma from the Train
    A fun and delightfully venal comedy. Very clever and engaging from beginning to end.
  20. Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine
    One emerges from Breaking Point stunned and moved, with the realization that the Ukrainians are fighting for themselves, as they have for centuries, but also that they’re now fighting for all of us.
  21. The Workshop
    A sly, supple and repeatedly surprising collision of literary, moral and political lines of debate that marks an enthralling return to form for writer-director Laurent Cantet.
  22. Jinn
    Jinn is the rare coming-of-age story that doesn’t simply pat kids on the head and tell them they just need to love themselves. Instead, Mu’min holds her characters accountable for the way they discombobulate each other’s lives, while giving them the space to do better, if they can figure out what better is.
  23. Thunder Road
    At Thunder Road, you’ll giggle at moments, and you’ll also be moved, but mostly you’ll know the precise crazy-sane reality of who this man is.
  24. Unlovable
    There are times when you’re tempted to turn away when Joy makes the latest in a long line of really bad, even self-destructive choices. But deGuzman’s performance is so arresting and engaging, you keep your eyes glued to her — if only so you don’t miss the next development that will be hilarious or heartbreaking or both.
  25. Wild Nights with Emily
    If the film has a flaw, its that it’s so preoccupied with balancing its furious feminism with gags about Victorian life that there’s little running time to lavish on Dickinson’s actual poetry.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hit
    Frears and writer Peter Prince have taken a potentially familiar tale of a gangland betrayal and revenge and made something richly inventive and most entertaining.
  27. Matilda
    A delightfully twisted fairy tale that artfully juggles broad tomfoolery and sly drollery, along with a generous serving of sight gags enhanced by special effects. Even though it's being pitched primarily at younger moviegoers and their parents, pic is exuberantly quirky enough to please almost anyone.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    My Beautiful Laundrette
    As always, director Stephen Frears does a superb job of work when given a good script, and this is a very good script. It’s peopled with interesting characters, allowing for a gallery of fine performances and situations.
  29. Kids
    Disturbing because it is so believable, Kids goes well beyond any previous American film in frankly describing the lives of at least a certain group of modern teenagers.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tommy
    Ken Russell's filmization of Tommy is spectacular in nearly every way. The enormous appeal of the original 1969 record album by The Who has been complemented in a superbly added visual dimension.
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