Variety's Scores

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For 17,825 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: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
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  1. The Bride!
    It’s a scrappy punk feminist tragicomedy of l’amour fou, a renegade take-off on the “Frankenstein” myth. And while the movie doesn’t quite work — it lumbers along and blows fuses; it has lots of flesh and blood but not enough storytelling spine — there’s a spark of audacity to it.
  2. The History of Sound
    The History of Sound is a movie that never fully finds a life beyond what it is on paper.
  3. Becoming Madonna
    Becoming Madonna, in other words, does not live up to the basic concept that it’s about Madonna becoming Madonna. Yet the strange thing about the movie is that it convinces itself it is about that by treating the glory days of her career as if she were still “becoming” who she was.
  4. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    The technical side isn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds, and there’s only limited interest in watching White navigate the icon’s first serious bout of depression. That is, unless one understands just how much that record represents to the next generations of musicians and why.
  5. Splitsville
    The push-pull kinetics keeping these increasingly raddled lovers together and apart eventually turn from manic to strenuous, not least because viewers are likely to be less invested than the film is in their final formation.
  6. Manny & Lo
    Despite the imaginative setup and the original sensibility, pic ultimately suffers from a slight, rather contrived narrative and a lack of secondary characters.
  7. Before We Forget
    Ultimately, though, Before We Forget feels much too tidy (didactic, even) in how it unfolds for it to land the emotional gutpunch it so wants to deliver.
  8. Saint Clare
    Despite a stronger premise this time, “Clare” echoes the filmmaker’s prior feature in remaining on a highly worked surface — one that doesn’t illuminate people and events so much as treats them like decorative pawns in a game whose rules, as well as its casualties, ultimately feel inconsequential.
  9. Animal Farm
    The message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.
  10. Nobu
    The movie often brushes past what might have been its most intriguing moments in favor of an unobtrusive hagiography. It approaches dramatic rigor and visual intrigue in only the briefest of scenes, often far too late into its runtime.
  11. Pretty Thing
    Donnelly seems reluctant to embrace melodrama at the same time that he fails to provide the psychological detailing needed to elevate this story above stock genre expectations.
  12. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants
    “Search for SquarePants,” while it has amusing moments, is mostly SpongeBob treading water.
  13. Keeper
    The mood is low-key and naturalistic, yet a streak of trippy weirdness keeps intruding. And here’s the thing: The weird parts don’t add up. That’s likely by design, but that doesn’t make it good.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goodbye Charlie
    Even by delving into fantasy for its wildly implausible premise this picturization of George Axelrod's not-so-successful 1960 Broadway play doesn't come off as anything but the mildest type of entertainment.
  15. Mortal Kombat II
    Mortal Kombat II, a sequel to the 2021 Mortal Kombat reboot, is still an old-school video-game trash extravaganza: all sound and fury and flying bodies and jargony world-building, propped up by a sludgy excuse for a story.
  16. Ballad of a Small Player
    Ballad of a Small Player looks great, but lacks the fundamental human insight to make it a winner.
  17. Trouble Man
    White’s bemused alpha authority carries the day. And this uneven, sometimes sloppy vehicle gets a real boost from Method Man. He lends his wannabe-main-character sidekick moments of comedic invention that make him MVP here, much as he was in the very different “Bad Shabbos” a couple months ago.
  18. Mahjong
    Pic is the eclectic Taiwanese helmer’s most accessible work since the 1986 “The Terrorizer” but is flawed by hit-and-miss scripting and performances.
  19. Dead of Winter
    Eventually, en route to a finale that strives for tragic poetry the rest of the film scarcely earns, the narrative ice wears so thin that it cracks under the weight of a moment’s thought.
  20. The Truth About Jussie Smollett?
    That this punctuation is, frankly, a little clumsy is also a key part of the experience of this doc, which gathers plenty of raw reporting, but assembles it into a story only as best it can, ultimately undone by the challenges its particular story presents.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Madame Bovary
    As a character study, Madame Bovary is interesting to watch, but hard to feel. It is a curiously unemotional account of some rather basic emotions. However, the surface treatment of Vincente Minnelli's direction is slick and attractively presented.
  22. The Woman in Cabin 10
    The sleek production design, symphonic score and performances from a killer ensemble act as a life preserver, making the shenanigans at sea a little less choppy.
  23. Couture
    Jolie, drawing on a family history of cancer for which she herself underwent preventative surgeries, gives a vivid performance, endowing Maxine with cool-director verve and then a fear and sorrow we can’t help but respond to. Yet it never feels like the health-crisis movie and the portrait-of-the-fashion-world movie entirely go together.
  24. Hamlet
    With director Aneil Karia’s interpretation, we get the great Riz Ahmed in the role, which is reason enough for the film to exist — but it’s perhaps the only one in a remake that might better have chosen not to be.
  25. Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie
    The movie, make no mistake, is a genial throwaway that skitters through incidents with a G-rated innocuousness that makes it perfect for a very pint-sized demo. Yet the design of it is captivating, and so, in a minor way, is the affection with which the film’s director, Ryan Crego, embraces childhood things.
  26. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    Hewing closer to the 1984 template, it’s an improvement on that film — not a particular high bar to reach — though a somewhat mixed bag overall.
  27. The Moment
    I actually think The Moment should have pushed further into crackpot satirical extremes. In that case, it wouldn’t have been a movie that featured a “real” version of Charli xcx. But it might have made you laugh more, because it would have been genuinely outlandish rather than just unconvincing.
  28. The Wrecker
    This tale of mob-related malfeasance and solo vengeance in Vegas is slick but thoroughly ridick. However, it’s pacy and colorful enough that those in the mood for a deep-fried knuckle sandwich with extra cheese may have fun.
  29. David
    Faith, “David” has in spades; soul, not so much.
  30. Goodbye June
    There’s a lot of acting here, little of it peak-form for the talent involved, though the ensemble lifts and colors Anders’ sometimes heavy-handed dialogue.
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