Variety's Scores

Select another publication »
For 17,786 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: 9,137 out of 17786
  2. Mixed: 7,013 out of 17786
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17786
17786 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bunny Lake Is Missing
    What Preminger has achieved is an entertaining, fast-paced exercise in the exploration of a sick mind.
  2. Broker
    Kore-eda is surprisingly generous toward his characters, nearly all of whom are breaking the law, but whose fundamental decency is brought out when dealing with others in need.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
    More or less relegated but capital as the bulwark of the entire mission is Spencer Tracy's conception of Doolittle. Van Johnson is Ted Lawson and Phyllis Thaxter his wife. It's an inspired casting.
  4. Queen of Earth
    An unnerving, acidly funny work that fosters an acute air of dread without ever fully announcing itself as a horror movie.
  5. Paddington
    Affectionately honoring the everyday quirks of Bond’s stories, while subtly updating their middle-class London milieu, King’s film may divide loyal Paddingtophiles with its high-stakes caper plot, but their enraptured kids won’t care a whit.
  6. Women Talking
    The whole scenario is designed to get your blood boiling, while the resulting conversation can’t help but instill hope, as Polley gives these women a rare opportunity to reinvent their world.
  7. Mississippi Grind
    For all the impressive authenticity of the various settings, it’s Gerry and Curtis’ continually evolving push-pull dynamic that deservedly takes centerstage here, in a picture driven far less by narrative incident than by its gently pulsing comic undercurrents and vivid contemplation of character.
  8. The League
    If one measure of a documentary’s quality is whether it inspires you to learn more about its subject after the credits roll, The League is an unqualified success.
  9. The Virgin Suicides
    Humor prevails throughout, but it doesn't deflate the disturbing elements of the tale, which miraculously manages to stay droll, heartfelt and poignant to the end.
  10. Mother of George
    Simply relating the narrative of Andrew Dosunmu’s seductive immigrant drama Mother of George would do little to convey the film’s stark, poetic power, much less its extraordinary visual and sonic acumen.
  11. Wetlands
    Wetlands might have landed with the thud of empty shock value were Helen not such an innately engaging character, or Juri so commanding in the role.
  12. Fly Away Home
    An animal, kid and family picture of the first order, "Fly Away Home" marks an impressive return to form for Carroll Ballard, his best work since "The Black Stallion" 17 years ago.
  13. Pollock
    Distinguished by its quiet, intelligent, admirably restrained approach and by two finely wrought performances from Harris and Marcia Gay Harden in the leading roles.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crimes and Misdemeanors
    Alda is perfect casting as a successful TV comedy producer, whose pompous attitude and easy romantic victories with women (including Farrow) exasperate Allen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Annie Get Your Gun (re-release)
    Annie Get Your Gun is socko musical entertainment on film, just as it was on the Broadway stage. (Review of original release)
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Christmas Story
    Writer-director Bob Clark had long dreamed of making a movie based on Shepherd’s work and his reverence for the material shows through as detail after nostalgic detail rings true with period flavor.
  17. 51 Birch Street
    A tonal triumph of true-life storytelling told with equal measures of tension and redemption.
  18. Alamar (To the Sea)
    A lovely, soulful feature from multihyphenate Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio that plays on the border between documentary and fiction.
  19. Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness
    Joseph Dorman's intelligent if conventional bio-doc of Sholem Aleichem proves particularly revealing, since the famed, dandyish Yiddish writer led a life as full of colorful ironies as the motormouth schlemiels that populate his stories.
  20. The World Before Her
    While much of The World Before Her speaks to global womanhood, other aspects are more specific to India, but that’s what gives the film much of its life and spark.
  21. Expedition to the End of the World
    With a mood and setting worthy of a murder story by Jack London, this audience-friendly, atmospheric work could be remade as a thriller, although that’s really what it is already.
  22. Icaros: A Vision
    This trippy work maps the intersections of West and East, body and spirit, faith and terror with beguiling grace.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Masque of the Red Death
    Vincent Price is the very essence of evil, albeit charming when need be.
  24. Let It Be Morning
    This is a farce of stasis, not frenzied activity. By holding his characters literally captive — as the village is held, absurdly but violently, under siege — Kolirin forges an actual microcosm through which to examine the social and political status of Israel’s Arab community.
  25. Transition
    Watching this steadfast person survive in such close quarters with those most unaccepting of his situation offers remarkable insight into issues of gender expression and acceptance, which might well translate to the social strictures back home.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mrs. Miniver
    Superbly catching the warmth and feeling of Jan Struther’s characters in her best-selling book of sketches, “Mrs. Miniver,” Metro has created out of it a poignant story of the joys and sorrows, the humor and pathos of middle-class family life in wartime England.
  27. Wild Tales
    Szifron does a terrific job of pacing thanks to expert editing (he shares credit with Pablo Barbieri) within each episode and a genuinely subversive sense of humor.
  28. Corpus Christi
    All of this makes for compelling dramatic conflict, and it’s satisfying to watch an impostor shake up the status quo. But there’s also a soap opera-like dimension to Corpus Christi that threatens the more thoughtful aspects of the script.
  29. Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
    Laced with colorful stories. ... The movie is mostly content to be a portrait of Ronstadt the artist, and it’s more than satisfying on that front.
  30. Buoyancy
    In doing justice to the stories of thousands, Rathjen has somewhat undersold the personal story of its single protagonist.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »