Variety's Scores

For 17,777 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:
17777 movie reviews
  1. It’s a deliciously pessimistic testament, for those on its deliberate, low-frequency wavelength, to the power of an unapologetically auteurist, art-house approach to genre.
  2. Shephard jabs well-placed elbows at modern day media celebrity, where the public’s attention veers in an instant from tutting about death to applauding as Danni does goat yoga.
  3. Nope doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of happenings that spill out in an impressionistic and arbitrary way. Logic often takes a back seat, and that has the unfortunate effect of lessening our involvement.
  4. The tried and true way to break viewers’ hearts is to make them care deeply. Aftershock wastes no time in doing just that.
  5. Cracknell approaches the project with confidence and a clear (if clearly derivative) vision. Her compositions are striking and swooningly romantic at times, though she has a curious idea of Anne Elliot.
  6. A quiet, tightly wound horror film, Bass’ fourth and most briskly accomplished feature might flirt with the supernatural, but finds terror aplenty in social dynamics that, to many a South African, are perfectly ordinary.
  7. As a superbly crafted, thematically rich fable, it administers a potent dose of #MeToo vengeance, all while wearing its nasty sense of humor like a red-lipstick grin applied to a perfectly masklike face.
  8. What makes The Gray Man exciting — and let’s not beat around the bush: This is the most exciting original action property Netflix has delivered since “Bright” — are the shades the ensemble bring to their characters and the little ways in which the Russos come through where those other films fell short.
  9. “Paws of Fury” is an efficient yet underimagined animated fable that barely musters the flavor of a cliché Western comedy.
  10. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once a mystery, a romance, a back-to-nature reverie full of gnarled trees and hanging moss, and a parable of women’s power and independence in a world crushed under by masculine will.
  11. This striking feature debut by U.S. filmmaker Jake Wachtel takes viewers on a fascinating and frequently wondrous expedition to a place where science and metaphysics intersect.
  12. Fabian’s film is charming enough, though his attempts at romance remain earthbound as he makes a clean break from the TV version, offering a different interpretation of the character.
  13. This solid little thriller does a good job balancing character drama and suspense elements, its smooth craftsmanship belying the creator’s newbie status in multiple creative roles.
  14. Even though this Netflix original doesn’t condescend to its targeted teen audience, it fails to surmount basic issues dealing with narrative credulity and the outcome’s predictability.
  15. 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.
  16. Doula ultimately comes across less as an actual comedy and more as a slice of life that’s lighthearted but also low stakes.
  17. Fourth of July is a trifle, and a facile, easy-to-watch one. But what it’s offering under the surface feels, in part, like a clandestine defense of Louis C.K.’s transgressions. In about 45 minutes, the family swings from being louts to saints. That’s supposed to be a lesson to us all. It’s not a convincing one.
  18. A smarter script would’ve found ways to work a historical critique (or some “Shrek”-like satire, at least) into its relatively brainless string of set pieces.
  19. [A] scorchingly smart, superbly crafted thriller, in which the morality is blurry with heat haze, but the real lines that divide society are starkly defined: Out here, you are either corrupt or complicit, or collateral for those who are.
  20. It’s a compelling tale, well cast and directed with vivid intensity by Ronnie Sandahl. Still, the somewhat frustratingly limited insight we get into our hero’s addled head may affect export prospects for a film that is more about psychology than athletics.
  21. Even before Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion, Olga was an incredibly strong film, but now, the Kino Lorber release should be considered essential viewing for art-house audiences.
  22. A throwback buddy action-comedy that offsets its run-of-the-mill sense of humor with a pair of appealing leads.
  23. Greg Björkman’s directorial debut has a catchy hook and atmospheric pull — yet the material leaves far too much underdeveloped, unrealized and incohesive to connect with viewers’ heads and hearts.
  24. Director Richard Gray’s well-crafted and handsomely mounted indie is as much a solidly constructed mystery as it is it a conventionally satisfying oater, with much to recommend to fans of either genre who rarely get to sample such a mix.
  25. Braiding the reflections of nine variously affected individuals on the subject, David Henry Gerson’s film successfully keeps the big picture and the smaller canvas in conscientious balance, disrupting overwhelming tragedy with more hopeful flashes of invention and inspiration.
  26. Good cartoon characters tend to be ageless, and Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe is just clever enough not to feel like an anachronism. The duo’s creator and forever naughty guiding light, the writer-director Mike Judge (who also does their voices), flows the characters into the present day without a hitch in style or a stitch in time.
  27. Late-night stakeouts, dinner dates gone awry and greenscreen Cristiano blunders often make My Fake Boyfriend feel like a collection of skits and sketches strung together. Some are very funny and they are led by two very capable performers.
  28. It’s a horror ride that holds you, and it should have no trouble carving out an audience, but I didn’t find it particularly scary.
  29. The wonderful thing about Wild Men, a movie that suggests a dream-team collaboration of Hal Hartley and the Coen Brothers, is that everyone involved takes themselves extremely seriously, even as they behave and speak in ways that cause viewers who get the joke to smile, chuckle and occasionally laugh out loud.
  30. In the end, The Sea Beast is a movie about challenging conventional wisdom and figuring things out for yourself, and that’s a philosophy that worked on both sides of the camera.

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