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. What We Wanted
    It’s a handsome, sensitive entry in the genre — one that treats its internally bruised characters with the care of a patient, kindly therapist.
  2. Freaky
    As a meta entry in that most disposable of genres, the teen slasher movie, Freaky manages to feel original, which is saying something, since it’s basically warping conventions we’ve all seen a million times before.
  3. Fatman
    This, in other words, is not your father’s grungy one-joke yuletide action comedy. It’s “The Santa Clause” meets “Magnum Claus,” and it’s pitched to the Gibson faithful with the idea that they’ll follow him anywhere (which they probably will).
  4. Transhood
    While wholly sympathetic to the cause, Transhood isn’t just a work of blandly cheery activism: Liese frankly observes the practical obstacles and psychological swings endured by its four young subjects and their families, sometimes to upsetting effect.
  5. Monsoon
    Monsoon is a graceful and truthfully irresolute investigation into the strange, often poignantly unreciprocated relationship that many first- and second-generation emigrants have with the far-off foreign country of the past.
  6. Dirty God
    Much attention will deservedly be paid to Knight’s impressively nuanced performance – it’s one thing to cast an amateur who’s been through similar experiences, and quite another to get that person to inhabit a fictional character.
  7. Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist
    Essentially a single interview with Friedkin interspersed with repeatedly revisited clips, Leap of Faith chiefly examines — per its title — the film’s spiritual allusions and illusions, distinguishing it from just any old making-of doc.
  8. Hillbilly Elegy
    As long as Close is acting up an award-worthy storm (her performance is actually quite meticulous), Hillbilly Elegy is never less than alive. Adams does some showpiece acting of her own, but as skillful as her performance is, she never gets us to look at Bev with pity and terror.
  9. Mortal
    What surprises Mortal holds largely relate to the oddity of its construction and its tonal whiplash, as a thin, repetitive narrative skips from emo “Twilight” moping to dour Scandi-noir procedural to dollar-store Marvel ripoff.
  10. Kindred
    Kindred is a demonstration of how a naturalistic horror film can be derivative, in the most flagrant and shameless way, and still work.
  11. Mank
    Mank is a tale of Old Hollywood that’s more steeped in Old Hollywood — its glamour and sleaze, its layer-cake hierarchies, its corruption and glory — than just about any movie you’ve seen, and the effect is to lend it a dizzying time-machine splendor.
  12. The Killing of Two Lovers
    Crawford’s dominating performance makes David no hick but a sensitive and accommodating man a bit intimidated by his admittedly “much smarter” wife, flailing in his efforts to hold together a family unit he can’t go on without.
  13. Operation Christmas Drop
    An anodyne, friction-free romantic comedy that faintly distinguishes itself from its snow-sprayed genre brethren with enticingly balmy South Pacific scenery. If nothing else, it gives viewers something to daydream about while they keep half an eye on its story.
  14. Collective
    This is truly a documentary for our times, deserving of widespread exposure.
  15. Farewell Amor
    The simple humanism here makes the case for nurturing and celebrating America’s immigrant population in a more eloquent and persuasive way than a more polemical film ever could.
  16. Let Him Go
    Let Him Go isn’t subtle, but as a genre film it’s original and shrewdly made, with a floridly gripping suspense. And Lane and Costner give it their all in a casual way that only pros this seasoned and gifted can. They turn the movie into an unlikely thing: a touchingly bone-weary romance steeped in vengeance.
  17. The Donut King
    Gu’s to be commended for recognizing that the hollow part of a donut might provide such a rich window into another culture. There’s much to learn about the immigrant experience from her research, even if the movie leaves us craving two things: donuts, obviously, but also a more well-rounded sense of all the incredible personalities she too-politely engages with along the way.
  18. The Night
    Featuring excellent performances by Shahab Hosseini (“A Separation,” “The Salesman”) and Niousha Jafarian (“Here and Now”) as a married couple with a baby daughter and a frayed relationship, this predominantly Farsi-language production sneaks up on viewers and delivers a knockout final act.
  19. Spell
    This is a decently stylish thriller with occult elements that should satisfy viewers’ genre requirements, though few will demand a second watch (or sequel).
  20. Us Kids
    If it seems more of a flashback than a flashpoint — particularly as impeachment proceedings seem to crowd out discussion of anything else — Us Kids nonetheless reminds that this issue too often comes down to children, and whether our society places enough value on that supposedly most-precious-resource to meaningfully protect them.
  21. The Life Ahead
    The film, modest and often maudlin on its own storytelling terms, runs on a current of beyond-the-screen devotion that makes it compelling. Without that unquantifiable x-factor presence in the frame, it’s hard to say what reason this Netflix release would really have for being.
  22. Holidate
    Briskly directed by John Whitesell, written by Tiffany Paulsen, Holidate won’t change your mind about the tread-worn challenges of romantic comedies, but its leads leverage their charms nicely.
  23. Come Play
    Even though the kid is the hero we should clearly be rooting for, the filmmaker conjures equal amounts of empathy and compassion for the monster. That serves to add complexity to the characterizations, but balancing both sides muddles the poignancy of the climax.
  24. The Craft: Legacy
    The original “Craft” may be a mess, but it does have a legacy, and this ain’t it.
  25. Belushi
    In the film, Belushi’s own letters betray his fear that he had reached the point of no return. Yet there can be a shadow hint of intentionality to all that. Belushi was a bighearted person who craved no limits. In some terrible way, he went out like the rock star he was.
  26. Crazy, Not Insane
    You may not agree with everything Dorothy Lewis says in “Crazy, Not Insane,” but you come out of the movie alive to the place where evil and insanity meet and then fall back apart.
  27. After We Collided
    “After” was merely awful. After We Collided is atrocious. Naturally, it’s proving an enormous pandemic-era hit.
  28. Radium Girls
    Scrupulously sincere in its approach and well-meaning to a fault in intention, the film aims for inspirational true story, but is sadly uninspired, and its relationship to real history is obscured by the schematic way it is fictionalized.
  29. Coming Home Again
    While this is not exactly a premise with mass appeal, Wang’s movie is still an unassuming exercise, defiantly in contrast to Hollywood’s typically over-sentimental terminal illness fare.
  30. Friendsgiving
    This vagueness of purpose wouldn’t matter much if the film were genuinely, raucously funny, but comedian-turned-filmmaker Paone’s best gags are the kind to raise a smile rather than a laugh.
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