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. Paul Williams Still Alive
    An engrossing and satisfying picture, one that can be enjoyed even by people who have never before heard of its subject.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Harder They Come
    Perry Henzell emerges a director with a solid visual flair who can mix action and inchoate rage sans excess to give the film a taut pacing and use the local color and a basically predictable tale with a few new twists.
  3. Cosmopolis
    An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, Cosmopolis probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves.
  4. Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    An entertaining, affectionate documentary created by three self-professed fanboys, which proves as nostalgic for the host himself as for a bygone broadcast era, before the reality-TV explosion allowed the inmates to fully take over the asylum.
  5. China Heavyweight
    As he did in his Three Gorges Dam documentary "Up the Yangtze," Chang examines how a particular strain of Western culture promises opportunity and prosperity for Chinese youth, even as it remains a continual source of intergenerational tension.
  6. Deadfall
    A highly satisfying Western-cum-noir in the old tradition, Deadfall is alive in ways that are all too rare among American movies.
  7. Cloud Atlas
    As inventive narratives go, there's outside the box, and then there's pioneering another dimension entirely, and this massive, independently financed collaboration among Tom Tykwer and Wachowski siblings Lana and Andy courageously attempts the latter.
  8. Arbitrage
    Between this cast and the conviction Jarecki brings to the table, the film feels incredibly accomplished for a first feature.
  9. Birders: The Central Park Effect
    Director Kimball's sharply focused, serenely ravishing nature photography provides reason enough to go armchair birding.
  10. The Imposter
    The Imposter makes slick work of its wily subject, using atmospheric reenactments and stark, soul-baring interviews to explore a mind-boggling case of false identity.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Last Ride
    Depicting a father-son relationship that's as tough as the Outback, engrossing road movie Last Ride reclaims the Australian landscape from the cartoonish cuteness of Baz Luhrmann's "Australia."
  12. Compliance
    In taut, gripping and deeply disturbing fashion, writer-director Craig Zobel measures the depths to which rational individuals will sink to obey a self-anointed authority figure in Compliance.
  13. Shut Up and Play the Hits
    Much like the band's self-conscious synth-pop itself, "Shut Up" is initially satiric but ultimately disarming in its emotional resonance.
  14. Stoker
    A splendidly demented gumbo of Hitchcock thriller, American Gothic fairy tale and a contemporary kink all Park's own.
  15. Mosquita y Mari
    First-time writer-director Aurora Guerrero beautifully captures the fluctuating dynamics of friendship between 15-year-old girls in Mosquita y Mari.
  16. Meet the Fokkens
    Rob Schroder and Gabrielle Provaas' raunchy, hilariously uninhibited documentary should wow arthouse audiences.
  17. This Must Be the Place
    Quirky, hilarious and moving, Sorrentino's first English-lingo production is a road trip of stunning scope yet deep intimacy, featuring an aged rock star-turned-Nazi hunter played by Sean Penn at his transformative best.
  18. All Is Lost
    A virtually wordless film that speaks with grave eloquence and simplicity about the human condition. Nothing here feels fancy or extraneous, least of all Redford’s superb performance.
  19. The Matchmaker
    This look back at late-'60s Haifa makes for strong, accessible, character-driven drama.
  20. Avengers: Age of Ultron
    The new movie is a sleeker, faster, funnier piece of work — the sort of sequel (like “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “Superman II” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” before it) that shrugs off the self-seriousness of its predecessor and fully embraces its inner Saturday-morning serial.
  21. For Ellen
    As a struggling rocker making a last-ditch attempt to gain shared custody of his daughter, Paul Dano delivers a beautifully wrought performance in a different key from any of his previous roles.
  22. Smashed
    A terrific performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a rock-bottom alcoholic is only one reason to appreciate Smashed, an affecting and immersive addiction drama about the unforeseen pitfalls along the road to recovery.
  23. Café de Flore
    Modeled on his 2005 hit "C.R.A.Z.Y.," Vallee's fourth feature is another dense, decades-spanning tale that lets a cherry-picked soundtrack and impressive visual sequences do the heavy lifting.
  24. Trolls
    It’s an ecstatically happy movie, a giddy EDM kiddie musical that sends you out on a high.
  25. Kung Fu Panda 3
    Emotionally, dramatically and perhaps most of all visually (it’s worth seeing in 3D), this delightful trilogy capper is almost as generously proportioned as its cuddly warrior hero, restoring a winning lightness of touch to the saga while bringing its long-running themes of perseverance and self-knowledge to satisfying fruition.
  26. American Autumn: an Occudoc
    This strong, well-crafted documentary preaches eloquently to the choir.
  27. The Central Park Five
    Mixing a breathtaking array of archival materials with new talking-head interviews, the film analyzes the monumental miscarriage of justice repped by the 1989 Central Park Jogger case.
  28. Edge of Tomorrow
    The pleasure of Edge of Tomorrow is that it’s not an action movie first and foremost, but rather a cheeky little puzzle picture in expensive-looking blockbuster drag.
  29. Saving Mr. Banks
    It’s a bit square, never particularly surprising, yet very rich in its sense of creative people and their spirit of self-reinvention.
  30. Ant-Man
    Reed’s movie succeeds well enough as a genial diversion and sometimes a delightful one, predicated on the rarely heeded Hollywood wisdom that less really can be more.
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