Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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  1. Songs from the Second Floor
    One of the most highly crafted pics in recent memory, and certainly the most original in vision of the 23 features competing at Cannes this year, Songs From the Second Floor rapidly wears out its welcome after the first few reels to finish up as a perplexing objet d'art.
  2. Project Hail Mary
    Project Hail Mary will likely be a hit, but the movie we need right now — or, really, anytime — is one whose drama extends beyond its ability to push our buttons.
  3. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
    Jim & Andy is fleetly edited and engrossing, animated by a sense of discovery.
  4. Relic
    Not everyone will appreciate the ambiguity of a climax that can be read as either an uplifting act of pure and selfless love or a depressing capitulation to the malign forces of inevitable decline, but either way, “art-house horror” has its 2020 tidemark set high.
  5. 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
    Silver (“Who is Dayani Cristal?”) keeps the focus outside the courtroom primarily on Davis’ parents, who see prosecution as their only hope of some closure in losing their only child. Their grief, bafflement and attempt to maintain some hope in the justice system lends 3 1/2 Minutes considerable poignancy.
  6. Advocate
    Tsemel’s hard demands on her family and co-workers alike are kept in view: “Advocate” isn’t a bland hagiography, but a textured nonfiction character study of complicated heroism. You can’t challenge the system, after all, without being a bit challenging yourself.
  7. Small Axe: Alex Wheatle
    “Alex Wheatle” is like a sketch for the biopic it might have been, but by the end you feel you’ve glimpsed the key fragment of a life.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ruby in Paradise
    A wonderfully expressive character study exhibiting a thoughtfulness and concern for real life rare in American cinema, Ruby in Paradise rewards the care put into it and the patience it asks of audiences. After an eight-year layoff from filmmaking after A Flash of Green, Victor Nunez has returned with a film of gentle, intelligent qualities, vividly portraying a young woman's inner life.
  9. Chi-Raq
    Lee’s vision of a scarred, gutted city may not please the tourism board, but his movie is better for it: Its seething dramatic texture captures a deeper, more elusive beauty that — like reconciliation, reform or any other human ideal — can only be achieved when the illusion of safety is left behind.
  10. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
    Its martial arts spectacle is scattered across a sprawling refugees-and-triads saga that, while adequately laying foundation for the aforementioned fisticuffs, is seldom coherent or engaging on its own.
  11. We Feed People
    [A] technically polished and emotionally stirring close-up view of celebrity chef José Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen.
  12. Thelma
    Thelma may bill itself as an unconventional action movie, but it’s more of a sitcom, really.
  13. Olga
    Even before Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion, Olga was an incredibly strong film, but now, the Kino Lorber release should be considered essential viewing for art-house audiences.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Saturday Night Fever
    The clumsy story lurches forward through predictable travail and treacle, separated by phonograph records (or vice versa).
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pump Up the Volume
    Writer-director Allan Moyle's story about a shy high school student who galvanizes an Arizona suburb with a rebellious pirate radio show has rambunctious energy and defiant attitude.
  16. Starving the Beast
    Starving the Beast repeatedly sounds cautionary notes that escalate to the level of fretful alarms. And yet, for all that, the movie never seems shrill or didactic.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Animal Crackers
    First give Paramount extreme credit for reproducing Animal Crackers intact from the stage, without too much of the songs and musical numbers.
  18. The Tuba Thieves
    Without the rigidness of a concrete story, O’Daniel is able to command the medium in an invigorating manner. Though it requires that audiences surrender to its unconventional tactics, the reward is the opportunity to rediscover the familiar with a fresh set of eyes and ears.
  19. Love Lies Bleeding
    Love Lies Bleeding turns consciously wild and garish, and you may think that the film is losing control, yet Rose Glass is fiercely in control of what she’s doing. She’s made a midnight noir that shoots over the top of our expectations but lands where it should, at a place where even valorous people have to go to extremes.
  20. The Invite
    The Invite is marvelously entertaining, but part of the reason for that is that I think a lot of people are going to see themselves mirrored in this movie, which for all its sharp-tongued bravura is humane enough to play a truth game that rings true.
  21. Girls State
    The film’s seven protagonists are the result of McBaine and Moss’s broad and deep interview process. Demographically diverse, the women are immensely watchable and touchingly articulate.
  22. Calvary
    Grounded by a performance of monumental soul from Gleeson as a tough-minded Irish priest marked for death by one of his parishioners, the film offers a mordantly funny survey of small-town iniquity that morphs, almost imperceptibly, into a deeply felt lament for a fallen world.
  23. Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
    While trying to confront grief with a sense of mischief, the movie’s impish tonal approach takes the sting out of death a little too often, rendering its catharsis null. It’s hard not to respect a big swing, but Wladyka ultimately misses.
  24. The House I Live In
    A ballsy mix of interviews and editorializing that's daring enough to question a costly crackdown that has long had the public's support.
  25. Vinyl Nation
    The clichéd word that’s most bandied about by vinyl enthusiasts really does apply to the movie that’s been made about it: “warmth.”
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Breakfast at Tiffany's
    Out of the elusive, but curiously intoxicating Truman Capote fiction, scenarist George Axelrod has developed a surprisingly moving film, touched up into a stunningly visual motion picture.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hustle
    The film’s drawbacks are simply a lack of some restraint, since otherwise all the elements are present for a sensational, hardhitting human story.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tom Jones
    It has sex, Eastmancolor, some prime performers and plenty of action. Tony Richardson has directed John Osborne’s screenplay with verve, though, occasionally, he falls back on camera tricks and editing which are disconcerting.
  29. Suzume
    Come for Shinkai’s skies, stay for the feels.
  30. Apprentice
    The movie feels a little too sparse and literal in places.
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