Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. André Is an Idiot
    The film is most enlightening and affecting when it settles into a perceptive, finely detailed examination of everyday domesticity lived under the weight of rushing mortality.
  2. Indignation
    This may be Schamus’ directorial debut, but he’s no amateur, and his experience — both in cinema and in life — comes through onscreen.
  3. The Devil's Backbone
    Though it fails in its final reels to capitalize on its early promise, picture is still stylish, accomplished and tremendously enjoyable fare.
  4. Speak No Evil
    The director shoots and cuts almost every scene so that the most innocuous action seems charged with the expectation that something awful is about to erupt, cranking viewer tension to an unpleasant degree.
  5. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
    With a pronounced Baroque palette and his usual astonishing use of light, picture looks ravishing -- individual scenes make a deeper impact than the characters themselves.
  6. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
    An assured melange of dramatic re-creation, archival material and interviews, it is a uniquely entertaining venture.
  7. Enough Said
    Enough Said may be her cleanest, most polished and broadly funny effort to date; its emotional generosity is undeniable, but so is its tendency to smooth over some of the hard, brittle edges that have been the more interesting hallmarks of Holofcener’s work.
  8. Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds
    Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is a droll, spirited, and disarmingly intimate documentary that now feels karmically timed.
  9. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
    Fox is a charismatic guy, and even though his personal story has been overshadowed by Parkinson’s disease, Guggenheim’s upbeat and ultra-polished documentary reminds what a peppy, relatable personality he was — and is — on-screen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Play Misty for Me
    When it’s not serving as an overdone travelog for the Monterey Peninsula-Carmel home environment of star, producer and debuting director Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me is an often fascinating suspenser about psychotic Jessica Walter, whose deranged infatuation for Eastwood leads her to commit murder. For that 80% of the film which constitutes the story, the structure and dialog create a mood of nervous terror which the other 20% nearly blows away.
  11. A Different Man
    With A Different Man, Schimberg attempts — and mostly succeeds, with deliciously awkward results — to cram a lifetime of thoughts about beauty and ugliness, attraction and disgust, identity and performance into a postmodern meta-film mold that few (apart from Charlie Kaufman, perhaps) have managed to make tolerable.
  12. The Green Fog
    If this hour-long collage might fairly be summed up as little more than an inspired goof, of primary interest to cineastes, it’s nonetheless one whose giddy fun will hold up for such an audience through repeat viewings.
  13. Sr.
    Sr. packs a wallop in the end, when it comes time for father and son to say goodbye.
  14. 28 Weeks Later
    A full-bore zombie romp that more than delivers the genre goods.
  15. An Unfinished Film
    By entwining reality with dramatization to such an inseparable degree, An Unfinished Film runs the emotional gamut, with a pulsing naturalism that few films about the recent pandemic (or any real disasters) have ever managed to achieve.
  16. Paul McCartney: Man on the Run
    Neville’s movie serves as a splendid jukebox, offering rapid-fire clips that bowl you over anew with just how rapidly McCartney’s own synapses were firing on ingenious hit after hit.
  17. The Age of Shadows
    If anything, the film is most indebted to classic cloak-and-dagger movies, in which sharp, richly succinct dialogue and plenty of atmosphere seem effortlessly carried along by the force of magnetic personalities.
  18. Chile '76
    What begins as a muted marital melodrama slowly boils into a restrained political thriller, with an ease and skill all the more impressive in a first feature.
  19. Les Misérables
    It’s a furious work of social geography that satisfies slightly less as a character piece: In its ambitious attempt to dramatize the violent anxieties of men on both sides of the law, Les Misérables risks selling some victims a little short.
  20. Insomnia
    Gripping, highly dramatic thriller that more than confirms the distinctive talent of young Brit helmer Christopher Nolan.
  21. Kajillionaire
    In the end, Kajillionaire is less about the con than it is the connection, and we’re all the richer as a result.
  22. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
    A labor of love made over the course of seven years that crucially matches the energy and passion Langlois himself embodied, this deep-dish account of the life and times of the longtime head of the Cinematheque Francaise will enthrall buffs.
  23. The House of Mirth
    Visually detailed but emotionally dry.
  24. My Flesh and Blood
    One leaves My Flesh and Blood with admiration for the lenser's craftsmanship, and for her ability to remain an unobtrusive observer during moments of extreme emotional turmoil.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Roman Holiday
    [William Wyler] times the chuckles with a never-flagging pace, puts heart into the laughs, endows the footage with some boff bits of business and points up some tender, poignant scenes in using the smart script and the cast to the utmost advantage.
  26. Private Property
    Boasting a script so clear and airtight that shrinks could use it for family therapy courses, the sole caveat is the unrelenting unpleasantness of the stronger-willed son.
  27. The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story
    Engaging documentary draws on plentiful archival footage and A-list interviewees, and should lure dedicated nostalgists.
  28. The Supreme Price
    With beauty, brains and dignity to burn, Hafsat Abiola inherits her mother’s mantle and offers riveting insight into the contradictions of a dynasty of reformist aristocracy.
  29. Long Strange Trip
    It has the sprawl and generosity of a good Dead show, yet there’s nothing indulgent about it — it’s an ardent piece of documentary classicism.
  30. Crane World
    The pic is made up of small events and incidents, well observed and naturalistically performed.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »