Variety's Scores

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For 17,757 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 2.3 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: 9,120 out of 17757
  2. Mixed: 7,002 out of 17757
  3. Negative: 1,635 out of 17757
17757 movie reviews
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  1. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
    The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a scary, dizzying and essential documentary. If you have any interest in artificial intelligence (which is to say: the future), you should go out and see it right now.
  2. Tow
    Tow is a minor indie that doesn’t always make the right moves, but Byrne seizes her character and turns the question of whether you like her or not into the film’s dramatic motor.
  3. Pretty Lethal
    Pretty Lethal is a wonderfully original idea, but its execution falls flat.
  4. The Fox
    The issue becomes throwing in a little too much, both for the characters and for writer-director Dario Russo, who may have a few too many good story ideas to fully flesh out. Yet, he delivers a promising and imaginative feature debut.
  5. Brian
    That such a hefty topic can be used to create such breathless, eye-watering comedy without tipping into self-indulgence — and without robbing the film of its most meaningful drama — is practically a miracle.
  6. They Will Kill You
    The twists of its premise soon end up souring it conceptually, resulting in rapidly-diminishing returns, with derivative formal flourishes that largely recall other, better films. It is, by the time its credits roll, completely exhausting.
  7. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead.
    Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is an extended pilot, however, it’s a pleasingly cinematic one: unresolved and ragged with small open wounds, but self-contained in its fevered, filling-to-burst energy.
  8. Pizza Movie
    Pizza Movie is disposable, practically by design, but it may have happened upon a comic duo worth reteaming.
  9. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
    With its many references, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice takes a cue from its lead character Nick, who sees the past as something to build on rather than recycle, and ends up delivering quite a good time.
  10. Kill Me
    There are times when the film can feel weighted down by its clever framework. Externalizing the steps of deeply internal emotional progress Jimmy and Margot make with one another’s help can occasionally seem like a separate pursuit from satisfying genre expectations when it really does appear there’s a killer on the loose. However, the approach proves fresh more often than not.
  11. Power Ballad
    What makes Power Ballad a terrific film is how much we believe this story.
  12. Hokum
    Buoyed by Scott’s level-headed turn — he doesn’t transform into a scream king — Hokum is a proficient horror exploit, which hinges on atmosphere instead of gore, even if its many frightening threads feel disjointed, like rooms in distinctly different hotels.
  13. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
    “Ready or Not 2” delivers exactly what it promises: a garishly booby-trapped, winkingly clever-dumb good time. If that’s your idea of a good time.
  14. The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel
    "The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers” is totally worth seeing, but the film feels like an indirect act of contrition, which may be why it turns into an overdone lament.
  15. I Love Boosters
    It’s an incendiary prank of a movie that begs our indulgence at times yet also invites us to get high on what a playful provocation it is.
  16. Marc by Sofia
    Marc by Sofia isn’t particularly penetrating or eye-opening on Jacobs as an artist, businessman or human being, but it is a pleasant and casually glamorous hang.
  17. Reminders of Him
    Reminders of Him is notably restrained — a good thing more than not, even if the film does get a bit languid at times. It tells its story without making us feel used.
  18. Closure
    With a standout central protagonist and an urgent quest that is every parent’s nightmare, the film plays like a thriller but manages to deliver honest and piercing emotions at almost every sequence along the way.
  19. Barbara Forever
    Barbara Forever stands as a confident feature documentary for its filmmaker, yet also as a singular artistic statement after Hammer that should add new admirers for her work.
  20. 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.
  21. Gugu's World
    Gugu’s World is such a crowd pleaser that it deserves to be seen widely by audiences. They’ll be in for a real treat.
  22. Happy Birthday
    Goher, a screenwriter and producer making her feature debut, proves herself to be a director-writer of uncommon sensitivity.
  23. Midwinter Break
    Midwinter Break does nothing earth-shattering (it remains wee), but the movie touchingly colors in how it might be possible for two people to know each other too well and also not well enough.
  24. A Magnificent Life
    Magnificent as Pagnol’s achievements may have been, it’s a pity that the decades-spanning account of one of France’s greatest storytellers didn’t make for a better story unto itself.
  25. Dreams
    At times, the dramatic tension is so strong, “Dreams” could almost be a thriller.
  26. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
    "The Immortal Man” serves as a handsome reminder of what always felt quite cinematic about the series — both in its beefy-but-pulpy storytelling and its robust, well-patinated production values.
  27. The Bride!
    It’s a scrappy punk feminist tragicomedy of l’amour fou, a renegade take-off on the “Frankenstein” myth. And while the movie doesn’t quite work — it lumbers along and blows fuses; it has lots of flesh and blood but not enough storytelling spine — there’s a spark of audacity to it.
  28. For Worse
    For Worse might be a tiny step among its kind, but it still feels like a leap for its thoughtful auteur, ultimately celebrating new beginnings as an ageless milestone.
  29. An American Pastoral
    Edler and editor Barbara Bascou maintain a sense of urgency in this two-hour film by foregrounding human convictions and frailties amid a surfeit of increasingly ugly rhetoric.
  30. Our Hero, Balthazar
    It’s a cutting, audacious, and at times astonishing movie.
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