Variety's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Yalda, a Night for Forgivness
    Bakhshi’s sure-handed assessment of Iran’s class struggle, a thoughtfully-parsed topic with universal implications, is the film’s most fascinating dimension.
  2. The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee
    “Mr. Dundee” is saved from total catastrophe by Hogan’s natural-born appeal.
  3. Gunda
    Its radiantly beautiful imagery and gently immersive storytelling aren’t in service of a single browbeating message, but a broader, holistic view of where we and the animals we rear, use and consume fit into a single circle of life.
  4. Sir Billi
    Sir Billi lacks the looks or charm of even the most rudimentary CG offerings being made today, as if not only the animation but also the plot and characters were spat out by off-the-shelf software.
  5. The Midnight Sky
    Some viewers will surely be moved. To me, though, The Midnight Sky just proves that a movie that reaches for the stars can still come up empty-handed.
  6. A Sun
    There’s a deep well of truth in “Parking” helmer Chung’s fifth narrative feature, and this unforgettable family drama promises both to devastate and to uplift audiences in virtually any country where a Mandarin-language masterpiece stands a chance at being released.
  7. Let Them All Talk
    It’s probably best to think of this as either an experiment or an exercise, Soderbergh’s way of challenging himself yet again. What results may not be literature exactly, but it broadens other creators’ of idea of what the medium can do.
  8. All My Life
    The warmth and touching tenderness of All My Life melts even the coldest of hearts in its quest to deliver happy and sad tears.
  9. Soul
    It all blends together beautifully, a marriage of Pixar’s square, safe, feel-good sensibility with what could be described as the “real world” — and one that, much as “Inside Out” anthropomorphized the mind, will leave audiences young and old imagining their own souls as glowing idiosyncratic cartoon characters.
  10. Godmothered
    The movie does serve up a rather satisfying ending, suggesting the studio’s latest politically correct reinterpretation of “true love.” The rest looks cheap and lacks much of a personality.
  11. Mayor
    It’s an acutely observed you-are-there procedural about a modern metropolis that dares to exist, even thrive amid the enduring repercussions of 1967’s Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the region.
  12. The Prom
    The movie has a universalist spirit that’s wired into its very form. It turns doing the right thing into a fizzy and elating high-camp showbiz high.
  13. Superintelligence
    Some of the funny business is very funny indeed, and the movie overall is more enjoyable than not. Which, again, makes it perfect for streaming.
  14. Zappa
    It’s a multimedia immersion, filled with rare footage of Zappa from his teenage years on and assembled with the loving dexterity we’ve come to expect from Alex Winter as a filmmaker.
  15. The Croods: A New Age
    For those who wish they’d just slow it down and tell a decent story, The Croods: A New Age feels like an assault on the cranium, a loud and patently obnoxious 21st-century “Flintstones” with far more sophisticated technology, but nothing new to offer in the script department.
  16. Happiest Season
    The film is cheeky and blithe and situational, suffused with enough upscale Christmas froth to get the audience high on spiced-cocktail fumes. In a key scene near the end, it’s more than willing to go over-the-top. Yet Happiest Season is also a deft and humane dramedy of manners that’s really about something.
  17. Vanguard
    This action spectacular seems hellbent on containing every possible marketable genre element, with no concern for whether they cohere or cancel one another out.
  18. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
    How fortunate that Boseman’s legacy should include this film, an homage to Black art that’s tough enough to confront the costs of making it.
  19. Run
    Between this and “Searching” (with its Asian American leads), Chaganty is actively expanding audiences’ ideas of what movie heroes can be. In the end, the character’s disability feels like an extension of the approach taken in his debut. Once again, perceived limitations become opportunities for more creative solutions, and differences disappear unless audiences decide to obsess over them.
  20. The Princess Switch: Switched Again
    Though inevitably the formula wears a little thinner in spots this time, it’s a frothy fantasy that should satisfy viewers’ itch for confectionary-looking Christmas fluff.
  21. Embattled
    At several points in Georgian director Nick Sarkisov’s roaring, blood-and-guts film, it’s hard not to wish it would take things down a notch: A hokey, old-fashioned father-son meller clothed in a younger man’s bling-encrusted robes, it increasingly sacrifices emotional credibility for the violent, amped-up bravado of MMA itself.
  22. Sound of Metal
    Sound of Metal is two hours and 10 minutes long, and it moves at a snail’s pace, not because “nothing happens,” but because Marder hasn’t filled in the dramatic interior of what does happen. He has made a movie about deafness that’s at once experiential and too muffled to hear.
  23. The Christmas Chronicles 2
    When Christmas movies cease to be special (when they’re all scooped out of the same river of nonstop product), there’s something almost reassuring about a Christmas movie that lifts you up by knowingly dumbing Christmas down.
  24. The Twentieth Century
    The more familiar one is with Canadian history, the funnier it is. But even without prior knowledge of our neighbor to the north, it can be enjoyed for its combination of supreme creativity, jaw-dropping audacity and amusing tongue-in-cheek dialogue.
  25. Hearts and Bones
    The intuitive selection of the four leads, and their complex, perceptive playing of the material, is a credit to Lawrence’s deft direction of both veteran and non-professional talent.
  26. The Ride
    The Ride doesn’t break new ground, but its likable cast delivers some nuanced even touching twists.
  27. The Endless Trench
    The Endless Trench plunges us into a living nightmare with enough atmospheric precision of its own: It needn’t literally spell things out for us.
  28. Come Away
    As it is, the film feels simultaneously far too heavy and not at all substantial, a long, slow buildup to something wondrous that never comes.
  29. Chick Fight
    Instead of the cleavage, hair-pulling and Jerry Springer antics it teases, Chick Fight serves up a blandly formulaic and scrupulously inoffensive tale of female empowerment.
  30. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
    His vision is big, but the execution clunky and crowded with detail, such that it all plays like a regional-theater production of “The Wiz” staged within the walls of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.” Talbert is positively unabashed about Jingle Jangle’s too-muchness, as if trying to make up for a century of underrepresentation by stuffing everything he can into two hours’ worth of Christmas pageantry.
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