Variety's Scores

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:
17779 movie reviews
  1. Earnest and plainly felt, this grafting of a cross-cultural romance onto the story of a critical turning point in Canadian workers’ rights doesn’t want for incident and emotional commitment, but Robert Adetuyi’s film does fall a little short on showmanship.
  2. “Grizzly II” never finds a rhythm — not even a giddily camp one.
  3. The story gains momentum as it goes, and by the end, it’s positively gripping.
  4. The director, Robert Lorenz, stages the action with a convincing ebb and flow, but thanks to an undercooked script what happens in between is mostly boilerplate.
  5. If Redemption Day were any more generic, the first thing you’d see on screen would be a bar code in place of the opening credits.
  6. The White Tiger isn’t a fairy tale, but by the end the movie still leaves you feeling that it has made a wish into a command.
  7. Nimbly switching between different lenses and sonic streams, Rothwell invites viewers inside the psychological isolation and overwhelming sensory awareness felt by people at various points on the spectrum, as well as cathartic breakthroughs in expression and connection with others.
  8. My Octopus Teacher never loses our goodwill: If we wind up wishing it had a little less man and a little more beast, that only serves its cause.
  9. The story provides basic satisfactions expected from its ilk — infidelity is punished, pure malevolent craziness likewise — even if more rotely than one might hope. Part of the reason there’s a diminished climactic payoff here is that Swank, credible enough early on, can’t quite summon the demented spark Val needs.
  10. Marking her fifth feature, Bergroth flexes her considerable cinematic powers, conjuring vibrantly expressive visuals and confident performances from her talented cast, especially the petite theater thesp Pöysti, who excels in her first leading film role and strongly resembles the real Tove.
  11. Very little of Monster Hunter makes sense, but it’s visually interesting at least and not un-fun to stream at home with a friend, asking questions and cracking jokes along the way.
  12. I wish that “Queer Japan” had delved more into historical matters of fashion and androgyny, or into the life of someone like Yukio Mishima. It’s a very present-tense movie, but how did the movements on display evolve? Kolbeins would have done well to show us. Instead, he presents a snapshot of a revolution in midair, leaping to find a form for how to remake the future.
  13. Alex Appel and Jonathan Lisecki’s film is both too innocuous and too flatly imagined to stir much feeling either way. What it does have going for it is Alicia Witt, a likable, spirited star too little used by Hollywood of late.
  14. In its relatively small-scale, often rather plodding B-movie way, it wants to do for apocalypse thrillers what “Contagion” did for outbreak movies. And there are moments when it does.
  15. For nearly two hours of its 151-minute runtime, Wonder Woman 1984 accomplishes what we look to Hollywood tentpoles to do: It whisks us away from our worries, erasing them with pure escapism.
  16. Wild Mountain Thyme is the kind of film you want to love, just as you want these two characters to fall in love, and it’s simultaneously exasperating and original that they don’t go about their courtship in the usual fashion.
  17. While more than an hour and a half seems like a long time to make the simplistic statement that the internet is bad, Balmès has greater profundity in mind when disseminating astute observations about how modern necessities and communicative devices impact cultures and ecosystems.
  18. The brilliance of this particular episode is how it allows us to see ourselves in Kingsley and to consider the many unseen forces at play in our own socialization. For Black audiences, it confirms many of those invisible barriers. For white ones, it may lead them to question whether the myth of their “success” owes in part to keeping others back.
  19. In its middlebrow celebratory way, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart reveals the Bee Gees’ saga to be one of the most fascinating and, at times, awe-inspiring in the history of pop.
  20. Singer does find a slight bit of drama to seize on at about the two-thirds point of the film, which, for understandable purposes of having anything at all happen in the movie, he trumps up to the point it becomes nearly comical.
  21. When you watch a documentary, some talking heads are more arresting than others, and Joanna Harcourt-Smith, seated before Morris’ camera, seems like a supporting player who’s been elevated to the lead.
  22. “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.
  23. If Love, Actually had actually been as bad as its most vociferous detractors have long insisted, it would have looked and sounded a lot like this misfire.
  24. The film’s hyperbolic style and convoluted storytelling tend to exhaust patience rather than build intrigue, making for a muddle whose too-many twists and turns ultimately seem meaningless as well as implausible.
  25. That it’s so artfully and elegantly observed, and packs such a candid wallop of feeling, atop its frontline urgency is testament to the grace and sensitivity of its directorial team, not just their timely savvy.
  26. It’s a slick film that’s forgettable at best, annoyingly broad and unfunny at worst.
  27. Suspense is not the film’s strong suit, and while the trek in between needn’t be dull, Greengrass has made it curiously unengaging.
  28. Ultimately, the only respectable thing that remains consistent throughout The Stand In is the beguiling appeal Barrymore brings to both of the personalities, even though neither of them is particularly likable.
  29. Although Safety takes its cues from a true story, its beats are comfortingly familiar — or annoyingly so, depending on your fondness for the rhythms of the genre.
  30. Filmmakers Stern and Villena use an intimate approach with the participants in the documentary.

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