Variety's Scores

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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
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  1. The Climb
    Beautifully written and performed by the director and real-life BFF Kyle Marvin, Covino’s film gets precisely the balance of dependency and denial that keeps a bad bromance afloat.
  2. A Hero
    A Hero, for all that’s good in it, is a Farhadi movie that speaks to our heads (and sometimes has us scratching them) more than it does our hearts.
  3. Three Kings
    An impudently comic, stylistically aggressive and, finally, very thoughtful manner.
  4. The Northman
    In most respects, Eggers is a unique artist with strong, singular ideas of how to script, stage and pace his films, and while The Northman is nothing if not a signature addition to a most original oeuvre — no one but Eggers would or could have reimagined “Hamlet” thus — it lacks the element of surprise that made “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” feel like instant classics.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Killer
    This extremely violent and superbly made actioner demonstrates the tight grasp that director John Woo has on the crime meller genre, and his ability to twist the form into surprisingly satisfying shapes. The picture creeps up on an audience. Melodramatic from the start, it finally goes over the top to deliver a solid emotional punch.
  6. Vulcanizadora
    By the time its end credits roll, Vulcanizadora proves surprisingly moving in its depiction of mid-life crises and of two men who feel so betrayed by the world (and by their own actions) that they see no escape from their malaise. To turn that feeling into coherent drama is hard enough.
  7. Neruda
    Surprises always come at the end of Pablo Larraín’s films, when everything suddenly comes together and the audience sits in the cinema feeling both illuminated and floored. Neruda is no different, representing the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise.
  8. Penguin Highway
    To simplify matters: If you see just one anime feature this year, it ought to be Penguin Highway. It’s not that the style or story is mind-blowingly original, the way the best Miyazaki movies are; rather, this well-written cartoon playfully complements the kind of storytelling that Westerners are already enjoying via American-made, live-action series, while incorporating lots of delightfully Japan-specific details along the way.
  9. All Shall Be Well
    The lack of inflection in the film’s infinitely broad-spectrum compassion can sometimes feel less like restraint and more like timidity. Anger is alien to Yeung’s style but it is sometimes justified, and without it, All Shall Be Well is a plea for understanding that should by now, by rights, be a demand.
  10. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
    Watching “Lost and Found,” you’re moved by a life that veered into tragedy, yet the place it lands lifts you up. More than a great photographer, Ernest Cole captured something essential. By the end you feel the ghost is speaking to you.
  11. Deaf President Now!
    The propulsive nonfiction story feels as inspirational as any scripted feature, reuniting the four Gallaudet grads who organized the movement to describe events in their own words — words of passion, dynamically signed on-screen and spoken aloud by unseen actors.
  12. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    Though its glacial pacing will represent a significant hurdle for many viewers, the film grows steadily more involving as dawn breaks and the men make their way back home, and its unflinching observations of the legal and medical establishment at work frequently rivet. Visually, it's as gorgeous a film as Ceylan has made.
  13. John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
    What on paper might be a standard sporting bio-doc, largely relevant only to tennis aficionados or fans of John McEnroe at the height of his powers, instead becomes a lovely meditation on time and movement, dedication and obsession, image and perception.
  14. A Walk to Beautiful
    Competently made, precisely shot and buoyantly humanistic.
  15. Art Talent Show
    Whether you view this illuminating doc as a portrait of an institution, a snapshot of a generation or a sketch of the dedication and stamina shown by those in the teaching profession, Art Talent Show bears sprightly comparison to the various styles and modes of artistic expression it showcases.
  16. Stranger by the Lake
    This is essentially an absorbing and intelligent exploration of queer desire spiced up with thriller elements.
  17. Ten Canoes
    Anthropology and entertainment are marvelously married in Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes. The first feature in an Australian Aboriginal language feels authentic to the core as it tells a cautionary tale set 1,000 years ago.
  18. The Stranger
    Confounding, disturbing and yet icily compelling, the experience of watching François Ozon’s The Stranger is not entirely dissimilar to that of reading Albert Camus’ 1942 classic.
  19. Gilles' Wife
    Told primarily via body language and facial expressions with a minimum of dialogue, beautifully observed, emotionally intense tale is an ambitious and rewarding outing for Frederic Fonteyne.
  20. Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
    What’s most moving about Oliver Sacks: His Own Life is that Sacks, whose extreme love of existence was there in every sentence he wrote, could embrace death because it would be the most out-there adventure of his life. What he saw is that we were all, in our ways, afflicted and all unique. And therefore all extraordinary.
  21. The Maid
    Saavedra is riveting as a servant whose unblinking focus on her routine masks a profound loneliness.
  22. Cowards Bend the Knee or The Blue Hands
    Ultimately, psychotically inventive pic is a formidable addition to the ever-evolving Maddin oeuvre.
  23. Pandas
    Pandas is less sentimental than you expect, but you can respect the film’s honesty and still leave it hoping that the next true-life panda adventure delivers more of a feel-good ending — for the audience, and mostly for the pandas.
  24. Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
    Undoubtedly the most wildly original and audacious documentary in this year's Sundance Film Festival, Kirby Dick's Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is an uncompromising chronicle of the flamboyant poet and performance artist who died in 1996.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jezebel
    William Wyler’s direction draws an engrossing cross-section of old southern manners and hospitality. It’s undoubtedly faithful to a degree, and not without its charm. At times it’s even completely captivating.
  26. Sicario
    The opening of Sicario unfolds at such an anxiety-inducing pitch that it seems impossible for Villeneuve to sustain it, let alone build on it, but somehow he manages to do just that. He’s a master of the kind of creeping tension that coils around the audience like a snake suffocating its prey.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Long Good Friday
    In many respects a conventional thriller set in London's underworld, The Long Good Friday is much more densely plotted and intelligently scripted than most such yarns.
  28. Bacurau
    Though shot in striking anamorphic widescreen and laced with references to John Carpenter, Sergio Leone and the like, Bacurau doesn’t quite work in traditional genre-movie terms. Rather, it demands the extra labor of unpacking its densely multilayered subtext to appreciate.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hamlet
    This is picture-making at its best.
  30. My Octopus Teacher
    My Octopus Teacher never loses our goodwill: If we wind up wishing it had a little less man and a little more beast, that only serves its cause.
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