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 Beast
    Laden with enticing ideas and images that never quite activate each other, “The Beast” instead coagulates into a thick 146-minute triptych of general, fidgeting malaise, and strands a hard-working Léa Seydoux and George MacKay in a cross-time, cross-purposes relationship that keeps shape-shifting without getting us terribly involved.
  2. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a soft-hearted fable that works on you in an enchanting way.
  3. The Forty-Year-Old Version
    Better late than never, this film is Blank’s shot, and by staying so true to her voice, her aim hits home.
  4. Take Out
    This day in the life of a young man attempting to earn cash for his family back home gathers impact by the reel.
  5. Compartment No. 6
    The humdrum and heartswelling Compartment No. 6 evokes a powerful nostalgia for a type of loneliness we don’t really have any more, and for the type of love that was its cure.
  6. Lucky
    Everything Harry Dean Stanton has done in his career, and his life, has brought him to his moment of triumph in “Lucky,” an unassumingly wonderful little film about nothing in particular and everything that’s important
  7. 7 Prisoners
    7 Prisoners’ unfolds satisfyingly, precisely by not offering us complete satisfaction or certainty. The question hovers of whether Mateus can ever escape his prison altogether, or merely into one with more comfortable furniture.
  8. Irma Vep
    A slender but appealing divertissement about a has-been auteur attempting to remake the French silent classic "Les Vampires," the film's wry digs at the institution of Gallic art movies and at the anarchic confusion of the filmmaking process should amuse hip fest audiences.
  9. The Band's Visit
    A warm and delightful take on cross-cultural relations that proves that sometimes a light touch is just what's needed to address serious topics.
  10. Anne at 13,000 ft
    Anne at 13,000 ft might look like mumblecore, but it plays as a psychological horror and a ticking-clock thriller that morphs into a wild, windswept tangle of incipient, but never quite arriving tragedy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dead Man Walking
    An intimate chamber piece for two, superbly acted by Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, this is a mature, well-crafted movie.
  12. In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50
    In the Court of the Crimson King is really about as good as rock documentaries get, in capturing the essence of a group of musicians and how they relate to each other, the world and a muse whose demands result in literal and figurative calluses.
  13. Call Me Kuchu
    While a local filmmaker’s perspective may have brought more dimensions, the coverage of events here is impressive and on the mark.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Children of a Lesser God
    It’s another seamless performance for Hurt. Matlin, who makes her professional acting debut here and is in real life hearing impaired, as is much of the cast, is simply fresh and alive with fine shadings of expression.
  15. In the Mirror of Maya Deren
    This well researched, detailed examination of the life and work of the legendary avant-garde filmmaker, writer and dancer, Maya Deren, should provoke renewed interest in her -- she emerges as a beautiful, willful, wayward talent with an exceptional vision and a great love for life and for the avant-garde world.
  16. Berberian Sound Studio
    Icily disquieting rather than scary, the film is less an exercise in narrative than in tonal mastery.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    North Dallas Forty
    What distinguishes this screen adaptation of Peter Gent’s bestseller is the exploration of a human dimension almost never seen in sports pix. Most people understand that modern-day athletes are just cogs in a big business wheel, but getting that across on the screen is a whole different matter. And in large measure, that success is due to a bravura performance in the lead role by Nick Nolte.
  18. Tokyo Sonata
    Though there's nothing here that hasn’t been dealt with in other Japanese movies, picture benefits considerably from its pitch-perfect performances.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lorenzo's Oil
    Lorenzo's Oil is as grueling a medical case study as any audience would ever want to sit through. A true-life story brought to the screen intelligently and with passionate motivation by George Miller, pic details in a very precise way how a couple raced time to save the life of their young son after he contracted a rare, always fatal disease.
  20. Desert One
    You emerge from Desert One knowing certain aspects of the Iran-hostage crisis better than you did before. That makes it a worthy film, and an absorbing one.
  21. Il Futuro
    Even though mood trumps character psychology, the entire cast provides mesmerizing, evocative performances.
  22. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
    Cheating flagrantly, helmer Michael Winterbottom has pulled off the trick -- sort of -- with the wickedly playful Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.
  23. Good Night, and Good Luck.
    A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry.
  24. Human Resources
    A cogent human drama.
  25. Firecrackers
    Mozaffari has an incredible eye for the details that bring a situation or place to life, working with inexperienced actors to create electrifying characters and a sense of edgy unpredictability.
  26. David Crosby: Remember My Name
    In David Crosby: Remember My Name, Crosby is more than just a rock ‘n’ roll survivor nursing a lifetime of second thoughts. He’s a romantic witness to a time that was genuinely about following the road of excess to the palace of wisdom.
  27. Aquarela
    A feast of HD imagery so crisp as to be almost disorienting, this is immersive experiential cinema with no firm storytelling trajectory, though viewers can read what environmental warnings they may into its rushing spectacle.
  28. The Pearl Button
    What “Nostalgia for the Light” did for the desert, The Pearl Button is meant to do for water, but the deft melding of past and present that characterized Patricio Guzman’s earlier film becomes muddied here by the Natural Science 101 voiceover and an unsatisfying bridge between two rather disparate subjects.
  29. Deep Water
    As it explores the limits of human endurance, the pic should suck even landlubbers into a whirlpool of gripping adventure, overblown ambitions and sheer human folly.
  30. The Force
    The strength, and fascination, of The Force is that the movie isn’t on anyone’s side. It’s cognizant of the brutality and violence that police officers, in our era, have been caught on phone cameras committing. At the same time, it’s not out to demonize the police — it’s out to capture the pressures they’re under, and to show us what their job looks like from the inside.
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