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. Manufactured Landscapes
    This landmark glimpse into China's modern-day industrial revolution becomes something more -- a profound, open-ended meditation on man's physical impact on his environment.
  2. Li'l Quinquin
    The odd mix of elements makes for an alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) hilarious and unsettling whole.
  3. Zodiac
    Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Thin Blue Line
    A mesmerizing reconstruction and investigation of a senseless murder. It employs strikingly original formal devices to pull together diverse interviews.
  5. Love
    The action is compelling, the film good looking, the acting first rate and the circumstances -- people from neglected nations in an alienating if not hostile urban landscape -- is moving.
  6. Brand Upon the Brain!
    Billed as a silent film, Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain! is actually closer to a live theatrical event -- a feature-length motion picture screened with the accompaniment of a live orchestra, plus Foley artists, sound effects technicians and assorted vocalists, too. Together, they provide the elaborate soundscape for a typically frenetic, Maddin-esque amalgam of the autobiographical, Freudian and willfully absurd.
  7. Sand Dollars
    Chaplin’s performance is characterized by a lack of vanity and an almost magical combination of empathy and pathos.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story
    A documentary, at once acerbic and affectionate, that tracks Sievey’s one-of-a-kind, semi-off-the-rails career.
  9. Bread & Roses
    This film is a necessary howl of rage, one that argues cogently — via the simple expedient of capturing life as it is lived — that to ignore what it happening in Afghanistan is to condemn half the population of the country to oppression under a dictatorship that is both political and personal.
  10. Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
    Directed by Shoshannah Stern, who is hearing impaired, the documentary — made for the “American Masters” series and premiering at Sundance — is both straightforward and subtle.
  11. Priscilla
    The daring thing Coppola does, given that we’re used to seeing even sophisticated biopics weave the lives they’re showing us into dramatic arcs, is to present the rise and fall of Priscilla and Elvis’s relationship as a diary, one that simply flows forward in a kind of objective Zen fashion, never trumping anything up.
  12. The Innocents
    This superior chiller is both a satisfying genre exercise and a minute observation of the process by which young children acquire morality; its most striking aspect may just be the empathy Vogt displays for his 7- to 11-year-old stars, and the extraordinary juvenile performances that empathy brings out.
  13. Run Lola Run
    A highly accomplished, compact feature, which, while it may be light on depth, is rich in humor, rhythm, energy and inventiveness.
  14. Contemporary Color
    It’s not every documentary that can so exhilaratingly make us feel a part of something so special.
  15. South Mountain
    As highlighted by its pitch-perfect finale, South Mountain demonstrates a realistically complex conception of stock ideas like “vengeance,” “moving on” and “healing,” and Ethan Mass’s cinematography echoes the material’s dualities in its delicate interplay of light and dark. Guiding the material from start to finish, however, is Balsam.
  16. All In: The Fight for Democracy
    A powerfully timely and absorbing documentary.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The One and Only Dick Gregory
    The first-rate doc, written and directed by Andre Gaines, is a reminder to anyone familiar with Gregory of the breadth and prescience of his work; to the uninitiated, it will be an eye-opener.
  18. One to One: John & Yoko
    The rare rock doc that’s a must-see.
  19. Black Swan
    A wicked, sexy and ultimately devastating study of a young dancer's all-consuming ambition, Black Swan serves as a fascinating complement to Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," trading the grungy world of a broken-down fighter for the more upscale but no less brutal sphere of professional ballet.
  20. The Painter and the Thief
    To get the desired emotional reaction, The Painter and the Thief proves able to deceive in ways that are best discovered for yourself. It works: In a genius final stroke, Ree pulls back to reveal the entire canvas, putting key aspects of this unconventional portrait into startling new perspective.
  21. Black Bear
    This adventurous seriocomedy has enough surprising elements and off-kilter humor to keep one intrigued, even if the payoff is debatable.
  22. Our School
    Exercising admirable restraint in its expose of ingrained racism in the Romanian educational system, absorbing docu Our School follows the sad yet resilient journey of three Roma children over four years as they grapple with prejudice and stereotyping.
  23. Our Children
    At this finely tooled tragedy’s core towers Emilie Dequenne, no longer the feral young thing seen in 1999′s “Rosetta,” but a trapped animal pushed to devastating extremes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Midnight
    Story [from one by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz] is light, but with a good share of humorous moments, many of them of the screwball variety. It's a slender thread, however, on which to tie series of incidents in adventures of a stranded showgirl in Paris.
  25. Hilary and Jackie
    Eye-grabbing performances from Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths, who portray celebrated British cellist Jacqueline Du Pre and her older sister, Hilary, distinguish this ambitious but flawed biography.
  26. i'm thinking of ending things
    It’s not just a quirky, morose downer of a movie — it’s didactically morose.
  27. Angels Wear White
    Engaging female dynamics result in strong, convincing performances, especially as their relations eschew platitudes on sisterhood or exploitative images of victimization.
  28. Lurker
    A tight, nifty, and unsettling little parable of the pathology of fame in our time.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lady and the Tramp
    A delight for the juveniles and lots of fun for adults, Lady and the Tramp is the first animated feature in CinemaScope and the wider canvas and extra detail work reportedly meant an additional 30% in negative cost. It was a sound investment.
  30. The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks
    While best enjoyed by the already converted, it provides enough showbiz insight and interpersonal drama to entertain newbies.
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