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. Arrival
    Adams draws on her gift for making each and every moment quiver with discovery. The actress is alive to what’s around her, even when it’s just ordinary, and when it’s extraordinary the inner fervor she communicates is quietly transporting.
  2. Juno
    An ultra-smart-mouthed comedy about a planned adoption that goes weirdly awry.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Shorty
    Good, sly fun.
  4. Weapons
    Regardless of how you feel about the ending (and many will happily embrace the movie’s darkly comic finale), Cregger has achieved something remarkable here, crafting a cruel and twisted bedtime story of the sort the Brothers Grimm might have spun.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fly
    David Cronenberg's remake of the 1958 horror classic The Fly is not for the squeamish. Casting Jeff Goldblum was a good choice as he brings a quirky, common touch to the spacey scientist role.
  6. Everything Everywhere All at Once
    Everything Everywhere is ultimately too much of a good thing, a novel idea driven to the point of exhaustion.
  7. Blue Valentine
    On balance, this is a meaty, strongly realized dramatic work of considerable accomplishment.
  8. After Love
    Spare and pared-back in all respects ranging from performance to its clean, airily-lensed aesthetic, After Love carries bulky baggage with an elegant lightness, leaving its audience with further unpacking to do.
  9. Close
    I am convinced that Dhont has a masterpiece in him. But there’s an immaturity to his movies that he must first overcome. He’s already so close
  10. State Funeral
    Both as film and as history, State Funeral stands as a canonical work.
  11. Truman
    Cesc Gay’s wise, wistful and well-observed film about two friends enjoying a final reunion in the shadow of impending death, is by turns amusing and affecting — and quite often both at once.
  12. The Dissident
    The Dissident is riveting, but it’s also a moving testament to a man whose courage burned too brightly to die with him.
  13. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    Rare proof that a gigantic production in contemporary Hollywood can possess a distinctive personality and its own approach to storytelling, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World proves as bracing as a stiff wind on the open sea.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Trip to Bountiful
    The Trip to Bountiful is a superbly crafted drama featuring the performance of a lifetime by Geraldine Page.
  15. Godzilla Minus One
    Despite a few lapses into lumpy melodrama, Yamazki’s thoughtful script holds firm and is dotted with delightful humor at just the right moments.
  16. The Secret of Kells
    With its jewel-bright colors and intricate use of lines, the result is absolutely luscious to behold.
  17. Top Five
    Rock is enormously appealing here, balancing his patented comic abrasiveness with a real tenderness, the faint bewilderment of an ordinary man blindsided by his own success. And Dawson makes an excellent foil.
  18. Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
    As certain to get auds singing as the man himself, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is a terrific, multilayered portrait of a singer whose legacy extends beyond music and into every major social action movement since the 1940s. Always enjoyable, this docu proves that a few rare people actually deserve the hagiography treatment.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Simple Plan
    The key differences are in emphasis and tone: “Fargo” is deadpan noir; A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton as Mutt and Jeff siblings, is a more robust Midwestern Gothic that owes as much to Poe as Chandler.
  20. Closet Monster
    Canadian writer-director Stephen Dunn’s first feature treads no new ground in basic outline. But the risk-taking confidence with which he weaves in sardonic magical-realist elements, not to mention his unpredictable yet assured approaches to style and tone, make this a most auspicious debut.
  21. Godland
    [Pálmason's] a cinematic original whose voice grows stronger and more certain with each film.
  22. Katyn
    This plays almost like an academic master class, meticulously exploring the event's ramifications but only catching full fire at the end.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Klute
    Produced handsomely in New York, but directed tediously by Alan J. Pakula, the film is a suspenser without much suspense. Donald Sutherland shares above-title billing in a line-throwing, third-banana trifle of a part.
  24. Youth (Homecoming)
    Youth (Homecoming) stands on its own, as a genuinely sorrowful film about how deeply the churn of industry has worked its way into people’s bones, as though they’ve become one with the machines they operate.
  25. Coming Home
    Heartbreaking in its depiction of ordinary lives affected by political upheaval, this ode to the fundamental values that survive even under such dire circumstances has an epic gravity that recalls another great historical romance, “Doctor Zhivago.”
  26. Living in Oblivion
    An amusing look at the perils of film production, Living in Oblivion is an inside joke with a generosity of heart that makes it accessible to anyone who would take an interest.
  27. Coco
    In any case, it works: Coco’s creators clearly had the perfect ending in mind before they’d nailed down all the other details, and though the movie drags in places, and features a few too many childish gags...the story’s sincere emotional resolution earns the sobs it’s sure to inspire.
  28. My Joy
    Although discomfiting to audiences desiring a steady narrative thread (and less accessible to those unfamiliar with Eastern European history and culture), it sustains interest throughout as a devastating critique of Russian society.
  29. Little Richard: I Am Everything
    Little Richard: I Am Everything, directed with supreme love and insight by Lisa Cortés, is the enthralling documentary that Little Richard deserves.
  30. Bridge of Spies
    While the helmer’s myth-making approach makes for great Capra-esque entertainment, younger auds may find it terribly old-fashioned — and they’d be right to think so, although Spielberg would be the first to admit it was his intention to play things classical.
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