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
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Wild Child
    It progresses slowly but absorbingly. Truffaut underplays but exudes an interior tenderness and dedication. The boy is amazingly and intuitively well played by a tousled gypsy tyke named Jean-Pierre Cargol. Everybody connected with this unusual, off-beat film made in black-and-white rates kudos.
  2. Pain and Glory
    A mature work of meticulously tuned meta-fiction.
  3. Parasite
    Bong is back and on brilliant form, but he is unmistakably, roaringly furious, and it registers because the target is so deserving, so enormous, so 2019: Parasite is a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage.
  4. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
    Though this gorgeous, slow-burn lesbian romance works strongly enough on a surface level, one can hardly ignore the fact, as true then as it is now, that the world looks different when seen through a woman’s eyes.
  5. Sorry We Missed You
    Another intimate and powerful drama about what’s going on in people’s everyday lives. ... Loach stages all of this with supreme confidence and flow.
  6. Beanpole
    Beanpole is incredibly bleak, but crafted with such care that it’s also deeply compelling. Events so disturbing that you long to look away are presented in images so striking that you cannot.
  7. La Belle Époque
    In the end, the story’s custom reenactment gimmick may not even have been necessary, so well-written and executed is the personal journey that underlies it.
  8. The Lighthouse
    The movie, building on “The Witch,” proves that Robert Eggers possesses something more than impeccable genre skill. He has the ability to lock you into the fever of what’s happening onscreen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Misfits
    At face value, The Misfits, is a robust, high-voltage adventure drama, vibrating with explosively emotional histrionics, conceived and executed with a refreshing disdain for superficial technical and photographic slickness in favor of an uncommonly honest and direct cinematic approach. Within this framework, however, lurks a complex mass of introspective conflicts, symbolic parallels and motivational contradictions, the nuances of which may seriously confound general audiences.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Samurai Rebellion
    This Toho-Mifune production represents all the best in the Japanese period film.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Giant
    It is also, for the most part, an excellent film which registers strongly on all levels, whether it's in its breathtaking panoramic shots of the dusty Texas plains; the personal, dramatic impact of the story itself, or the resounding message it has to impart.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shane
    George Stevens handles the story and players in a manner that gives his production and direction a tremendous integrity. The casting is exceptionally good and the male stars have never been seen to better advantage.
  13. Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground
    Chuck Smith’s documentary is at once accessible and formally daring, echoing its subject’s style while simultaneously celebrating her radical achievements. It’s an enlightening nonfiction portrait of a feminist pioneer that, in this #MeToo era, should strike a timely chord.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Apartment
    Second half of the picture is loosely constructed and tends to lag as the rahers go through their paces in over-extending the major plot angle. Most of the time, it’s up to director Wilder to sustain a two-hour-plus film on treatment alone, a feat he manages to accomplish more often than not, and sometimes the results are amazing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Face in the Crowd
    Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg, who teamed to bring forth On the Waterfront, have another provocative and hardhitting entry, based on Schulberg's short story The Arkansas Traveler. It's a devastating commentary on hero-worship and success cults in America.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Anatomy of a Murder
    Preminger purposely creates situations that flicker with uncertainty, that may be evaluated in different ways. Motives are mixed and dubious, and, therefore, sustain interest.
  17. The Edge of Democracy
    The Edge of Democracy makes no claims to objectivity. This is documentary cinema in which facts tangle compellingly with feeling, while passages of solemn, stately mood-building split the difference.
  18. All Is Well
    A fascinating flip on themes contentiously raised in Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle,” underpinned by a breakout performance of raw candor by Aenne Schwarz, this is grown-up filmmaking of sharp, subtle daring.
  19. The Raft
    The surprisingly short leap from radical academic study to lurid exploitation is navigated with wit, sensitivity and rueful social awareness in Swedish director Marcus Lindeen’s gripping debut feature The Raft.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Defiant Ones
    The performances by Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are virtually flawless. Poitier captures all of the moody violence of the convict, serving time because he assaulted a white man who had insulted him. It is a cunning, totally intelligent portrayal that rings powerfully true.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Duck Soup
    In place of the constant punning and dame chasing, Duck Soup has the Marxes madcapping through such bits as the old Schwartz Bros. mirror routine, so well done in the hands of Groucho, Harpo and Chico that it gathers a new and hilarious comedy momentum all over again.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    El Cid
    El Cid is a fast-action color-rich, corpse-strewn, battle picture. The Spanish scenery is magnificent, the costumes are vivid, the chain mail and Toledo steel gear impressive. Perhaps the 11th century of art directors Veniero Colasanti and John Moore exceeds reality, but only scholars will complain of that. Action rather than acting characterizes this film.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
    A very special kind of picture, combining photographic ingenuity, imaginative story telling and fiscal daring.
  24. Local Hero
    While modest in intent and gentle in feel, Local Hero is loaded with wry, offbeat humor and is the sort of satisfying, personal picture that is becoming an increasingly rare commodity these days.
  25. This Is Not Berlin
    Hari Sama’s fourth feature as writer-director is something special, and one of the best of its particular subgenre.
  26. Jay Myself
    After watching Jay Myself, you yourself may begin to see the world in a whole new way, as if you’d woken up to all the images that might have been invisible before, but only because you passed them by.
  27. I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
    Of viciously pointed relevance anywhere populism is on the rise, “Barbarians” is a fiercely intelligent, engaging and challenging wake-up call, a film that leaves you smarter at the end than when you went in, but also sadder and significantly more terrified.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Breaker Morant
    As a sheer exercise in manipulation, it approaches the masterful and is extremely effective.
  29. Thor: Love and Thunder
    It’s the mix of tones — the cheeky and the deadly, the flip and the romantic — that elevates “Thor: Love and Thunder” by keeping it not just brashly unpredictable but emotionally alive.
  30. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a soft-hearted fable that works on you in an enchanting way.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »