Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 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: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. A Bronx Tale
    A "GoodFellas" with heart, A Bronx Tale represents a wonderfully vivid snapshot of a colorful place and time, as well as a very satisfying directorial debut by Robert De Niro. Overflowing with behavioral riches and the flavor of a deep-dyed New York Italian neighborhood, the film also trades intelligently in pertinent moral and social issues that raise it above the level of nostalgia or the mere memoir.
  2. Love & Mercy
    A wonderfully innervating cure for the common musical biopic, Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy vibrantly illuminates two major breakthroughs — one artistic, one personal — in the life of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.
  3. Pervert Park
    The documentary broadens well beyond a portrait of this particular facility to address the underlying causes of these crimes and to question how society might more constructively deal with the issues, where offering counseling to abuse victims becomes as important as, if not more so than, persecuting their abusers.
  4. Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
    Steeped in both unfaltering and pleasant humanity, Vargas’ characters are what some might deem “problematic.” But they ultimately depict complicated mentalities, with shades of true-to-life negative and redeeming traits.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bugsy
    A melancholy and intimate gangster saga about a romantic dreamer with fatal flaws, Bugsy emerges as a smooth, safe portrait of a volatile, dangerous character. An absorbing narrative flow and a parade of colorful underworld characters vie for screen time with an unsatisfactory central romance.
  6. Costa Brava, Lebanon
    The gentle wisdom it contains is less to do with activist and environmentalist issues and more attuned to country, family and lifestyle choices as abstract concepts, as all the things we mean by the word “home,” which is where Akl’s heart is.
  7. American Honey
    Part dreamy millennial picaresque, part distorted tapestry of Americana and part exquisitely illustrated iTunes musical, “Honey” daringly commits only to the loosest of narratives across its luxurious 162-minute running time. Yet it’s constantly, engrossingly active, spinning and sparking and exploding in cycles like a Fourth of July Catherine wheel.
  8. You Hurt My Feelings
    You Hurt My Feelings stays true to the droll casualness of its title. It’s not a major Holofcener movie; it’s closer to a lively and digressive short story. Yet it’s compelling to see Holofcener merge the fates of all her characters through a grand tweak of the piety of positivity.
  9. Monrovia, Indiana
    Its methodical gathering of material never quite brings us to a more stirring understanding of the lives under its lens.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cabaret
    It is literate, bawdy, sophisticated, sensual, cynical, heart-warming, and disturbingly thought-provoking.
  11. Peter and the Farm
    With this rueful, cantankerous yet hugely charismatic figure at its center, Tony Stone’s beautiful documentary reveals the twin burdens of working the farm alone while beating back an encroaching inner darkness.
  12. True Grit
    Rather than a case of the Dude doing the Duke, Bridges' irascible old cuss is a genuine original who feels larger than the familiar saga that contains him.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mystery Train
    Mystery Train is a three-episode pic handled by indie writer-director Jim Jarmusch in his usual playful, minimalist style.
  14. A Hidden Life
    Whether or not he is specifically referring to the present day, its demagogues, and the way certain evangelicals have once again sold out their core values for political advantage, “A Hidden Life” feels stunningly relevant as it thrusts this problem into the light.
  15. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
    With no shtick to fall back on, Sandler is forced to act, and it’s a glorious thing to watch.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hombre
    Hombre develops the theme that socially and morally disparate types are often thrown into uneasy, explosive alliance due to emergencies. Paul Newman is excellent as the scorned (but only supposed) Apache. Fredric March, essaying an Indian agent who has embezzled food appropriations for his charges, also scores in a strong, unsympathetic – but eventually pathetic – role. Richard Boone is very powerful, yet admirably restrained as the heavy.
  17. Bigger Stronger Faster*
    More scrupulously reported than your average Michael Moore film but every bit as entertaining, Bigger, Stronger, Faster* is as commercial as documentaries come.
  18. The Blair Witch Project
    An intensely imaginative piece of conceptual filmmaking that also delivers the goods as a dread-drenched horror movie.
  19. I Wish
    This tale of two elementary-school brothers plotting to end the physical separation their parents' divorce has forced on them effortlessly pulls off the naturalism and charm desired from material that might have easily curdled into calculated preciousness.
  20. What Richard Did
    In the end, the material feels a bit attenuated, like a short that’s been stretched to feature length, even if the characters are enjoyable, sympathetic enough company for the pic’s 84-minute running time.
  21. Bending the Arc
    With the gripping appeal of a great epic novel, Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos’ documentary spans three decades of diligent work on the frontlines of global health crises to prove, in moving detail, the difference dedicated professionals can make in seemingly hopeless situations.
  22. Housekeeping for Beginners
    Stolevski’s lively, garrulous script may be plot-heavy, but the film isn’t propelled as much by grand narrative turns as it is by the powderkeg reactivity of its characters. Each scrap and squabble and occasional flash of understanding between them activates the film anew, so no interpersonal dynamic here ever feels comfortably settled.
  23. Iris
    A joyous celebration of creativity and razor-sharp wit sustained into old age, as evinced by outspoken nonagenarian fashion icon Iris Apfel, Iris also offers proof of Albert Maysles’ continued vitality as a documentarian.
  24. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    The reassuring familiarity of Abrams’ approach has its limitations: Marvelous as it is to catch up with Han Solo, Leia and the rest of the gang, fan service takes priority here over a somewhat thin, derivative story that, despite the presence of two appealing new stars, doesn’t exactly fire the imagination anew.
  25. My Favourite Cake
    What it lacks in edge, the film certainly makes up for in the quality of its performances and watching Farhadpour and Mehrabi mutually glow off each other is a pleasure that it feels almost cruel to have so abruptly denied.
  26. Last Men in Aleppo
    May not be the most comprehensively explanatory or analytical film yet made on the war, but it’s the one that provides viewers with the most sensorily vivid and empathetic sense yet of how it feels to live (and die) through the carnage.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
    Hard-driving, riveting film will be tough for many to take, but Henry – Portrait of a Serial Killer marks the arrival of a major film talent in the person of director, coproducer and cowriter John McNaughton.
  28. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    It succeeds emotionally in the cause of what seems to be its primary aim, to advance an attitudinal change in Australians not normally sympathetic to the aboriginal cause.
  29. Spellbound
    Docu dispassionately examines this strange phenomenon of anachronistic Americana, created as a newspaper promotion in 1925.
  30. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound
    Making Waves is a brisk 94 minutes, the last half hour of which is a quick-study primer on the categories of movie sound. The film is quite educational.
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