Variety's Scores

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:
17779 movie reviews
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Disney organization's flair for taking a homely subject and building a heartwarming film is again aptly demonstrated in this moving story set in 1869 of a Texas frontier family and an old yeller dog. Based on Fred Gipson's novel of same tag, this is a careful blending of fun, laughter, love, adventure and tragedy.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    So you don't believe in Santa Claus? If you want to stay a non-believer don't see Miracle.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It has all the ingredients. It's a naughty but nice romp of the hyper-romantic naughty 90s of Paris-in-the-spring, in the Bois, in Maxim's, and in the boudoir. How can it miss?
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Taylor has a major credit with her portrayal of Maggie. The frustrations and desires, both as a person and a woman, the warmth and understanding she molds, the loveliness that is more than a well-turned nose – all these are part of a well-accented, perceptive interpretation.
  1. While Antebellum is no zombie movie, it treats systemic racism as a kind of contagion that refuses to die, eating the brains of successive generations. There’s only one way to stop it, and that’s by blowing the minds of all those infected — which is precisely the impact Antebellum achieves.
  2. Even though Chatwin is only seen in a handful of snapshots and one brief video snippet, Herzog brings him to vivid life.
  3. Slay the Dragon is an incisively made and morally suspenseful film, at once chilling and stirring.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The compositions are rich with multiple layers; they explore the depth of the cinematic space, and suggest invisible presences at the edge of the frame.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Death on the Nile is a clever, witty, well-plotted, beautifully-produced and splendidly acted screen version of Agatha Christie's mystery. It's old-fashioned stylized entertainment with a big cast and lush locations.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Outstanding performances by Susan Sarandon and James Spader, working from a relentlessly witty script, make White Palace one of the best films of its kind since The Graduate (1967).
  4. In his sophomore feature, the France-born, Budapest-based helmer (perhaps best known for his prize-winning 2018 short “Chuchotage”) sensitively establishes and sustains an affecting but understated dramatic tone, aided by his superb leads.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Quigley Down Under is an exquisitely crafted, rousing western made in Oz.
  5. At once a celebration and a lament, simultaneously jubilant and ineffably sad, it’s a film worth sticking around to see.
  6. Chung transforms the specificity of his upbringing into something warm, tender and universal.
  7. On the Record presents a searing, at times shocking exposé of alleged criminal acts. Yet here, as in those earlier chronicles, what’s extraordinary is the disturbingly intimate communion the film creates between the audience and the survivors. Not just the facts but the meaning of these alleged crimes comes scarily alive in the emotional details of their telling.
  8. To get the desired emotional reaction, The Painter and the Thief proves able to deceive in ways that are best discovered for yourself. It works: In a genius final stroke, Ree pulls back to reveal the entire canvas, putting key aspects of this unconventional portrait into startling new perspective.
  9. The Dissident is riveting, but it’s also a moving testament to a man whose courage burned too brightly to die with him.
  10. The ironically inviting title only hints at part of the story in this wholly devastating documentary: The crisis, it turns out, is all around us.
  11. In light of my own experience with the film, I recommend the following. See it twice: a virgin viewing, simply to take in the strange counterintuitive way the story unfolds, and then again, with a bit of distance, knowing where the journey is headed, so that you might fully appreciate the genius of its construction. I’m convinced that A White, White Day is the work of one of the most important voices of this emerging generation, arriving at a stage where we have yet to learn his language.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A well-crafted, hardboiled mystery by Joe Eszterhas, with sharp performances by murder suspect Jeff Bridges and tough-but- smitten defense attorney Glenn Close.
  12. Nine Days is that rare work of art that invites you to re-consider your entire worldview.
  13. The Father is a chamber piece, but it has the artistic verve to keep twisting the reality it shows us without becoming a stunt.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crazy People combines a hilarious dissection of advertising with a warm view of so-called insanity... Finished film is a credit to all hands.
  14. The movie’s pulse seldom rises above resting, but the director invites audiences to dive as deep as they want to go into the film’s themes, to read subtext into body language, silence and the space between characters.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    An impeccably faithful, beautifully played and occasionally languorous adaptation of E.M. Forster's classic novel about the clash of East and West in colonial India.
  15. The laughs come at a clip few movies can sustain, stacked so dense, repeat viewing (and in some cases, strategic freeze-framing) is required to catch them all.
  16. 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    With its emphasis on youthful idealism despoiled by treacherous, manipulative adults, Lady Jane emerges as a tragic historical romance tinged with a strong 1960s feeling...Performances are all top-drawer, beginning with newcomer Helena Bonham Carter in the title role.
  17. A Disneynature documentary that drops on Disney Plus on April 3, simply get out of the way and let the ancient creatures of the sea seduce us with their surreal evolutionary form-follows-function wild splendor.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Family Plot is a dazzling achievement for Alfred Hitchcock masterfully controlling shifts from comedy to drama thoughout a highly complex plot. Witty screenplay, transplanting Victor Canning's British novel, The Rainbird Pattern, to a California setting, is a model of construction, and the cast is uniformly superb.

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