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 Blazing World
    Ambitious but tediously precious, sincerely conceived but derivatively realized, The Blazing World throws an ornate heap of production design at an anemically scripted psychological metaphor, and counts on a combination of fairy dust and sheer determined nerve to make the whole contraption fly.
  2. Luzzu
    An honest, affecting slab of working-class portraiture, altogether bracing with its thorny labor politics and salty sea air.
  3. Detention
    The absorbing and entertaining Detention works well enough as a primer on a traumatic period of history, and as a story of semi-supernatural salvation for sins past, that it earns its surprisingly moving final moments, and even its heavily on-the-nose exhortation to modern-day Taiwan to remember and honor its ghosts.
  4. Great Freedom
    Meise’s film is an exquisite marriage of personal, political and sensual storytelling, its narrative and temporal drift tightened by another performance of quietly piercing vulnerability from Franz Rogowski.
  5. Freeland
    Where Freeland is an unadulterated success is in capturing the physical, psychological and spiritual space Devi inhabits.
  6. Held for Ransom
    Partly, the balance between gritty, true-life fidelity and pacy, exciting storytelling is achieved because in Rye, to whom Eric Kress’ warm, compassionate camera clings so doggedly, we have such a sympathetic, human protagonist.
  7. The Scary of Sixty-First
    A brash, gutsy, morbidly funny first feature from actor-filmmaker-podcaster Dasha Nekrasova, it runs on a premise that could have been written as a dare, or a prank.
  8. Antlers
    What makes suggestion-driven Antlers so disturbing isn’t the movie’s tension- and dread-building mechanics so much as the way the filmmaker burrows into the minds of his two main characters.
  9. South of Heaven
    The movie gives Jason Sudeikis a chance to act without the safety net of comedy, and he proves that he’s got the right stuff. But next time he needs to do it in a movie that offers the safety net of believability.
  10. The Tender Bar
    It’s not easy being Ben Affleck, by which I mean, there aren’t many actors who seem so comfortably themselves on-screen, and now that Affleck has reached middle age, he’s capable of bringing fresh depth to his performances.
  11. Ron's Gone Wrong
    It’s a shame that the mile-a-minute plot of “Ron’s Gone Wrong” isn’t more focused.
  12. Madame X
    Madame X, on the joy scale, feels drained. The show is a concert that plays, at times, like a lecture — or maybe the world’s most extended Oscar/Grammy star-makes-a-statement speech. But I don’t say that because I begrudge Madonna’s message. It’s just that she didn’t use to be so deadly serious and, at times, almost punitive about it.
  13. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
    The good news for “Ghostbusters” fans is that “Afterlife” does nothing to tarnish what has come before.
  14. Knocking
    Crisply made and gutsily performed as it is, this slender 78-minute film too often feels like pointed social allegory in search of a really good cover story.
  15. The Harder They Fall
    As much fun as Majors, Elba, Beetz and King are to watch in roles that allow for plenty of scenery chewing (and oh what scenery!), it’s Stanfield who steals the show here as the part-Indian, part-Black Cherokee Bill.
  16. V/H/S/94
    Overall, this is a fun way to spend 100 minutes or so, warts and all.
  17. Bingo Hell
    It works hard stylistically to provide a good time. But that would have been a better bet had at least as much effort been put into a screenplay whose ideas, both comic and macabre, remain undernourished.
  18. The Addams Family 2
    In the case of The Addams Family 2, Tiernan and Vernon have used the sequel as an opportunity for an upgrade. The script is by an entirely new team (Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, Ben Queen, and Susanna Fogel), and in some ineffable bats-in-the-belfry way the jokes now land with a more inspired and spontaneous creepy kookiness.
  19. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
    Managed (more than directed) by motion-capture star-turned-aspiring blockbuster helmer Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There Be Carnage has all the indications of a slap-dash cash grab. The set-pieces look sloppy, the visual effects are all over the place, and the laughs come largely at the movie’s expense.
  20. No Time to Die
    No Time to Die is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neo-classical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.
  21. Britney Vs. Spears
    This shapeless doc feels overlong at just over 90 minutes, because it’s unclear what, exactly, Carr and collaborator Jenny Eliscu want to say about Spears.
  22. There's Someone Inside Your House
    While a bit of ironic detachment isn’t necessarily a hindrance, too many latter-day horror flicks’ attempts to show they’re in on the joke make it difficult to get invested in their stories. Despite initially appearing poised to repeat this too-cool-for-school mistake, “Someone” moves past it by emphasizing not vengeance but redemption.
  23. The Tragedy of Macbeth
    It shows you, through the ironic empathy summoned by Washington’s performance, just how fast the human race can slip off the tracks. And it brings that drama into ravishing deep focus.
  24. The Auschwitz Report
    The film is a powerful reminder never to underestimate the historical evils that have been, and could again be, unleashed.
  25. Apache Junction
    Once again, Lee prefers to canter rather than gallop as he spins his storyline, allowing his well-cast leads enough time to reveal themselves in sometimes leisurely, sometimes suspenseful dialogue exchanges.
  26. Birds of Paradise
    As Birds of Paradise reveals its (admittedly predictable) secrets one by one, it does so with style and a merited sense of confidence so assertively that even the biggest skeptics of the genre might pause before dismissing it as just another slight YA entry.
  27. Medusa
    The audacity of de Silveira’s concept — in which enrollees at an upscale Christian college indulge in secret, moralizing vigilante mayhem — and her deliberately over-the-top aesthetic render Medusa a compelling mixed bag. It may miss the bull’s-eye, but not for lack of intriguing ideas or style.
  28. The Many Saints of Newark
    It’s a sharp, lively, and engrossing movie, one that provides a fascinating running commentary on how the world of “The Sopranos” came into being. Yet we can’t help but notice the difference in tone.
  29. Only You
    It might do writer-director Harry Wootliff a disservice to call her mature, thoughtfully conceived debut feature Only You one of the latter, but the tinderbox connection between stars Laia Costa and Josh O’Connor is what elevates this grown-up relationship study from respectable to lovable.
  30. True Things
    Harry Wootliff’s jaggedly grown-up psychological drama True Things thrives on the hot, tense chemistry between its two excellent leads: It’s what pulls the audience through an obstacle course of potentially implausible scenarios that instead ring stingingly true.
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