Variety's Scores

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For 17,828 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: 9,160 out of 17828
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17828
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17828
17828 movie reviews
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  1. The Way Back
    I’d love to see Affleck star in a film about an addict with nothing to explain his addiction but his own flawed, desperate, hungry soul. That’s a movie that could speak to us — the way that Ben Affleck’s real story already does — far more than this modestly well-made Sunday-school lesson.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Border
    Despite Jack Nicholson's multi-leveled performance, The Border is a surprisingly uninvolving film.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cannery Row
    This long-in-the-works adaptation of John Steinbeck's waterfront tomes [Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday] displays more appreciation for the values inherent in the material than it does ability to breathe life into it.
  4. To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
    The trouble with “P.S. I Still Love You” is that nearly all the reasons that Lara Jean makes such a refreshingly different romantic lead are contained in the earlier film, and here, she’s reduced to a version of the passive Disney princess, trying to decide between two dudes who both think she’s swell.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Splendor in the Grass
    Elia Kazan's production of William Inge's original screenplay covers a forbidding chunk of ground with great care, compassion and cinematic flair. Yet there is something awkward about the picture's mechanical rhythm. There are missing links and blind alleys within the story. Too much time is spent focusing on characters of minor significance.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Two Mules for Sister Sara
    Two Mules for Sister Sara might have worked. But with Clint Eastwood as one of the mules, an American mercenary looking for a fast peso in old French-occupied Mexico, Shirley MacLaine as a scarlet sister disguised in a nun's habit, and Don Siegel's by-the-old-book direction, it doesn't.
  7. Gretel & Hansel
    The problem is that so many of its virtues feel compromised.
  8. I Still Believe
    Thanks to the immensely appealing performances by Apa and Robertson, it’s easy for the audience to take a rooting interest in the sometimes awkward, sometimes amusing development of the budding romance between Jeremy and Melissa.
  9. Last Night in Soho
    Wright’s particular affections for B-movies, British Invasion pop and a fast-fading pocket of urban London may be written all over the film, but they aren’t compellingly written into it, ultimately swamping the thin supernatural sleuth story at its heart.
  10. Klaus
    What goodwill the movie does inspire owes more to the splendid visual world than to anything the story supplies.
  11. Semper Fi
    Though professionally smooth in execution, Semper Fi has the frustrating sum impact of a movie at fundamental conflict with itself.
  12. An Officer and a Spy
    An Officer and a Spy has a this-happened-and-then-this-happened quality. And that’s why the movie, beneath the two-dimensional jauntiness of its acting and the period vividness of its sets and costumes, feels more dutiful than riveting.
  13. Martin Eden
    The outcome is an unwieldy intellectual sprawl whose incontestable visual pleasures (much like Marcello’s “Lost and Beautiful”) distract from the shallow characterizations. ... The overarching impression is of a film too much in thrall to theory.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Suddenly, Last Summer
    It has some very effective moments, but on the whole it fails to move.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Village of the Damned
    Tapers off from a taut beginning into soggy melodrama. Wolf Rilla’s direction is adequate, but no more.
  16. Disappearance at Clifton Hill
    Shin’s film gets tangled up in its own web. ... His film leaves a vivid impression without quite leaving a mark.
  17. Sound of Metal
    Sound of Metal is two hours and 10 minutes long, and it moves at a snail’s pace, not because “nothing happens,” but because Marder hasn’t filled in the dramatic interior of what does happen. He has made a movie about deafness that’s at once experiential and too muffled to hear.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lord of the Flies
    The theme of young boys reverting to savagery when marooned on a deserted island has its moments of truth, but this pic rates as a near-miss on many counts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Killers
    Coon’s screenplay is burdened with affected dialog and contrived plotwork. Virtually nothing of the original Hemingway remains.
  20. The Last Full Measure
    No amount of marquee talent, however, can fully compensate for the inert melodrama peddled by this inspired-by-true-events film
  21. 6 Underground
    It’s certainly not great literature, but if you can get past the imbecilic script, there’s no question that Bay has seized the opportunity to make 6 Underground as visually stunning as such a project can withstand.
  22. The Pretenders
    While the film’s sense of experimentation carries a fair amount of intrigue, it traps its central threesome in an Easter egg-filled intellectual exercise punctuated by melodramatic strokes. It’s skillful enough to tickle the mind and the emotions but not effective enough to fully engage them.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Race with the Devil
    As followup by 20th-Fox to its surprise success with last year’s Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, this Peter Fonda-Warren Oates meller should do okay with action audiences, since it includes the requisite road chases and other hyped-up thrills, some of them slickly executed by director Jack Starrett. Otherwise the production is a sloppy, cynical blend of second-hand plot elements.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drop Dead Fred
    Oscillating between long arid stretches, inspired explosions of slapstick and disarming warmth, Drop Dead Fred [suggested by a story by Elizabeth Livingston] has an almost irresistible premise - kid's imaginary friend comes back to help the grown woman work out her problems - but it's probably too slow and mushy for kids and too sporadic in its rewards for adults.
  25. The Turning
    Lacking spine-tingling dread, taut tension, and the deservingly provocative ending needed to make its modern sentiments land, this re-imagining is less than a classic.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lolita
    Vladimir Nabokov's witty, grotesque novel is, in its film version, like a bee from which the stinger has been removed. It still buzzes with a sort of promising irreverence, but it lacks the power to shock and, eventually, makes very little point either as comedy or satire.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Experiment in Terror
    The film treatment embraces a number of unnecessary character bits that merely extend the plot and, despite their striking individual reaction, deter from the suspense buildup.
  28. Kinetta
    Lanthimos’ point seems to be that everyone has their own private weaknesses, but after a Lynchian first act in this strange world, he avoids any mainstream dramatic or satiric elements.
  29. Farming
    Unremittingly, bludgeoningly bleak in its portrayal of his own degradation and humiliation, and displaying only a passing interest in his eventual rehabilitation, the film is remarkable for its lack of self-pity, but it makes the experience of “Farming” a merciless one for the audience too.
  30. The Three Musketeers
    A handsome but pallid affair aimed squarely at a young Disney audience. Those who have never seen a previous "Musketeers" adaptation or a truly exciting Hollywood adventure in the grand style may be swept along, but the mechanical feel of this outing is too evident to ignore.
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