Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Marwencol
    Hogancamp is a complex character, and Marwencol introduces the man in layers, creating an incomplete yet sympathetic portrait specialty audiences and hipsters can agree on.
  2. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    Though tastily lensed and with a convincing cast led by Cillian Murphy, essentially small-scale picture lacks the involving sweep of Loach's earlier historical-political yarn, "Land and Freedom."
  3. Rye Lane
    Short, sweet and sparky, Raine Allen-Miller's immensely likable debut doesn't reinvent the wheel, but instant chemistry between stars Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson keeps it spinning.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    To Catch a Thief
    While a suspense thread is present, director Alfred Hitchcock doesn't emphasize it, letting the yarn play lightly for comedy more than thrills.
  5. The Lobster
    A wickedly funny protest against societal preference for nuclear coupledom that escalates, by its own sly logic, into a love story of profound tenderness and originality.
  6. Forrest Gump
    Manages the difficult feat of being an intimate, even delicate tale played with an appealingly light touch against an epic backdrop.
  7. Rose of Nevada
    The richest, most enduring pleasures here are formal ones, beginning with the exacting still-life compositions and oily, vehement primary hues of Jenkins’ 16mm lensing, which can make a painterly subject of a maritime squall or a mustard-yellow wading boot.
  8. The Nightmare Before Christmas
    If it were a normal holiday animated film, The Nightmare Before Christmas would be an entertaining, amusing, darker-than-usual offering indicating that Disney was willing to deviate slightly from its tried-and-true family-fare formula. But the dazzling techniques employed here create a striking look that’s never been seen in such sustained form, making this a unique curio that will appeal to kids and film enthusiasts alike.
  9. Breaking the Waves
    Watson is a major find as Bess. Graced with delicate, expressive features, she gives an extraordinary performance.
  10. The Squid and the Whale
    Pic makes up in strong performances and wry observation what it sometimes lacks in narrative drive. Result is a perceptive (and unexpectedly moving) portrait of lives in crisis.
  11. Winged Migration
    Visually stunning, practically dialogue-free and very family-friendly.
  12. School of Rock
    Combined with hilarious physical business and perfectly overearnest delivery of pseudocool lines like, "Let your fingers do the rocking!," he (Black) pretty much single-handedly keeps the formulaic progress funny.
  13. Life and Nothing More
    Whereas a Hollywood director might use subjective framing or emotional soundtrack cues to nudge audiences’ reactions in a certain way, Esparza strips away nearly all those techniques to a pure, neorealist approach: life and nothing more.
  14. The Girl with the Needle
    The extremity of suffering on display here makes for difficult viewing, scarcely leavened by the expressionistic beauty of its presentation. But von Horn’s film never plays as empty miserablism, in large part thanks to its grave understanding of the moral and spiritual reasoning behind unimaginable acts of violence.
  15. Star Trek
    Blasting onto the screen at warp speed and remaining there for two hours, the new and improved Star Trek will transport fans to sci-fi nirvana.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They Live by Night
    Nicholas Ray adapted the novel and directed, demonstrating a complete understanding of the characters. It’s a firstrate job of moody storytelling.
  17. A Quiet Place
    A Quiet Place is a tautly original genre-bending exercise, technically sleek and accomplished, with some vivid, scary moments, though it’s a little too in love with the stoned logic of its own premise.
  18. Riefenstahl
    It’s a portrait that’s really a meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, the question of her guilt. And one of the things it does is to remind you of what a singularly provocative and insidious and mysterious figure she was.
  19. Carmine Street Guitars
    Carmine Street Guitars is a one-of-a-kind documentary that exudes a gentle, homespun magic.
  20. The Namesake
    A richly compelling story of family and self-discovery.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Frances Ha
    Baumbach pushes beyond sincerity in search of truth, drawing from such stylistic forebears as the French New Wave, Woody Allen and Andy Warhol's Factory films to capture a reality that has eluded him on his more polished dramedies.
  22. Socrates
    Malheiros’ terrific turn makes this protagonist credibly tough by necessity, and mature beyond his years. Ordakji is also excellent as the not-much-older new friend whose reluctance to be more helpful is, like other backstory elements here, only partly explained later on. Despite the film’s raw realist air, these two actors aren’t amateur discoveries, but rather theater studies graduates making their screen debuts — at no doubt the beginning of long careers.
  23. C'mon C'mon
    C’mon C’mon proves plenty poignant, but it’s less entertaining than it might have been.
  24. Hunger
    Picture represents a powerful, pertinent but not entirely perfect debut for British visual-artist-turned-feature-helmer Steve McQueen, who demonstrates a painterly touch with composition and real cinematic flair, but who stumbles in film's last furlough with trite symbolism.
  25. Howl's Moving Castle
    The tireless volley of ideas and inventions make this a delight that should connect with kids and adults in both dubbed and original-language versions.
  26. Cold Comfort Farm
    The fun that Schlesinger and his first-rate ensemble must have had while working on this production is infectious, for there isn't one dull -- or quiet -- moment in the film.
  27. A Hijacking
    Hostage thrillers are all-too-often shrill affairs, with clock-watching screenwriters wringing maximum melodrama from spiraling disorder. Not so Tobias Lindholm’s superb A Hijacking, which actually grows more chillingly subdued as its nightmare scenario unfolds.
  28. Nocturnes
    Its meditative, hyper-fixated approach to process — as seen through the eyes of seasoned lepidopterists — proves so hypnotic that any appeals or augments the movie makes are deeply felt before they’re intellectually understood.
  29. Black Box Diaries
    Without undue manipulation or sentimentality, Black Box Diaries pulls viewers’ emotions in sharp extremes that mirror the peaks and valleys of this hard-fought five-year case.
  30. Crimson Gold
    Succeeds as a universal account of frustration applicable to any urban center where the gap between haves and have-nots is tauntingly visible.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »