Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. 127 Hours
    While Franco can sometimes be a wild card, getting increasingly self-conscious with recent roles, his take on Ralston feels both credible and compelling; few actors could have made us care so much, or disappeared so completely into the role.
  2. Tell No One
    Though almost laughably intricate in its plotting, this thoroughly Gallic adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel reps an entertaining sophomore outing for thesp-turned-director Guillaume Canet.
  3. Mars One
    Tracking the personal anxieties and challenges of the family members as they pursue differently shaped dreams of escape, it is sincerely meant and deeply affectionate toward its decent, striving foursome, but it’s a little disorienting that it should cue up a gut-punch only to deliver a hug.
  4. The Deep Blue Sea
    Davies is in fine form here, with luminous performances, especially from Rachel Weisz, rounding out a classy package whose only major problem is it may be a bit too true to its period sensibility and legit origins.
  5. The End of the Tour
    The two leads’ clashing styles might work if the film were entirely about two superficially similar people’s inability to truly find common ground. But as we’re finally intended to judge their meeting a profound connective one on at least some levels, the chemistry simply feels off.
  6. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    By turns amazing, amusing and appalling.
  7. Labyrinth of Cinema
    Opening with a riotous bombardment of sound and image that risks confusing and losing some viewers even as it sends others into rapturous delight, Labyrinth of Cinema then makes sense of the chaos and emerges as a touching plea for peace and an exuberant celebration of the artifice and transformative power of cinema.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Shawshank Redemption
    Central to the film's success is a riveting, unfussy performance from Robbins. Freeman has the showier role, allowing him a grace and dignity that come naturally.
    • Variety
  9. Vortex
    Vortex doesn’t let us off the hook. Gaspar Noé never does. But if he did, he might transcend his “Behold, you will know the dark side” brand.
  10. There Is No Evil
    There Is No Evil comes across as four films for the price of one, none of its segments anemic, and each contributing fresh insights to the paradoxes of capital punishment in Iran.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Thieves Like Us
    Thieves Like Us proves that when Robert Altman has a solid story and script, he can make an exceptional film, one mostly devoid of clutter, auterist mannerism, and other cinema chic.
  12. Acasă, My Home
    Balance and objectivity are laudable instincts, but they can put the film at a slightly frustrating remove.
  13. Maiden
    Shattering a glass ceiling has rarely been more engrossing — or grueling — than it is in Maiden.
  14. War for the Planet of the Apes
    It’s fitting that the visual effects have advanced so dramatically since 2011, as it allows the series to suggest that its ape protagonists have evolved to an equivalent degree, and yet, “War’s” story is beneath their intelligence.
  15. Duma
    A superior all-ages adventure pic made by a filmmaker who knows more than a thing or two about the genre.
  16. The Constant Gardener
    Succeeds in capturing the book's essential themes and concerns, albeit in a hectic style that could not be more antithetical to that of the literary master of international intrigue.
  17. You Won't Be Alone
    The film’s last act brings everything full circle in a way that should satisfy both horror and art-house audiences, but then the movie, like its protagonist, is never content to be just one thing.
  18. Grand Tour
    But for anyone feeling a pessimism creeping in like slow poison and taking the edge off any appetite for adventure, Portuguese singularity Miguel Gomes comes like a comet across the Cannes competition with “Grand Tour,” an enchanting, enlivening, era-spanning, continent-crossing travelogue that runs the very serious risk of infecting you with the antidote: a potent dose of wanderlust-for-life.
  19. Short Term 12
    This compelling human drama finds fresh energy in the inspirational-teacher genre, constantly revealing new layers to its characters.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Parenthood
    An ambitious, keenly observed, and often very funny look at one of life's most daunting passages, Parenthood's masterstroke is that it covers the range of the family experience, offering the points of view of everyone in an extended and wildly diverse middle-class family.
  21. Two of Us
    The tale of two older women whose decades-long secret relationship is threatened after tragedy strikes covers emotional and thematic ground that transcends the sexual preferences of the two main characters.
  22. Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street
    A highly satisfying HBO documentary ... that wisely places roughly equal emphasis on how the sausage was made and how the culture was changed.
  23. House of Hummingbird
    A touch overlong, “House of Hummingbird” doesn’t leave the most powerful emotional mark. Still, it lands on a poignant aftertaste through Kim’s serene attentiveness to the rhythms and details of everyday life ... with a peaceful style reminiscent of Hirokazu Kore-eda.
  24. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
    We are active participants in the creation of this (or any) work of cinema. And given how much this movie loves the movies, as well as dogs, music, children, soccer, ice cream, the ancient Georgian town of Kutaisi, and the very process of falling in love, there is something immensely hopeful and moving about being thus invited to collude.
  25. A History of Violence
    Lack of depth, complexity or strangeness make this a relatively routine entry for the director.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
    A worthy sequel to "Star Wars," equal in both technical mastery and characterization, suffering only from the familiarity with the effects generated in the original and imitated too much by others.
  27. Our Beloved Month of August
    A tantalizing mix of documentary, fiction and everything in between (including music video), Miguel Gomes’ 150-minute love song to rural Portugal, Our Beloved Month of August, scores viscerally as well as intellectually.
  28. Grand Theft Hamlet
    The infrastructure of the game leaves things wide open for human creativity to take it in directions that couldn’t be predicted and people foster connections without any superficial prejudices getting in the way as Crane and Oosterveen assemble a cast.
  29. Joyland
    Tartly funny and plungingly sad in equal measure, this is nuanced, humane queer filmmaking, more concerned with the textures and particulars of its own intimate story than with grander social statements — even if, as a tale of transgender desire in a Muslim country, its very premise makes it a boundary-breaker.
  30. Sugar
    Sympathetic, genial and exceedingly wholesome, it's a film that, once seen, will permanently and favorably influence the way viewers regard the characters' real-life counterparts.
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