Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Widow of Silence
    Widow of Silence is a classic example of festival filler, the sort of issue-driven art-house film that masks a plodding obviousness of intent beneath a thick varnish of righteousness and attractive visuals.
  2. Volition
    It’s a film more gritty than stylish, but in any case with all key contributions lashed to the service of a tricky narrative with scant gratuitous fat or flamboyance.
  3. The Tobacconist
    In the end, what makes The Tobacconist effective despite its limitations is the way it focuses on the experience of a “typical” Austrian — that is, a citizen without political convictions.
  4. Never Too Late
    While Never Too Late goes for a few too many old-folk chuckles, it also aims to probe the serious.
  5. Archive
    The sleek result, like the scientist’s hi-tech Frankenstein creation, impressively looks and sounds the part, without quite having a soul of its own. That’s enough to make Archive a compelling calling card for the British freshman, with the promise of more advanced models to come.
  6. Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo
    The documentary tells the fascinating, and moving, tale of how Trejo got off the road to ruin and became the unlikeliest of Hollywood character actors.
  7. The Beach House
    In any case, it’s skillful enough to satisfy most viewers, if not quite sufficiently original in concept or striking in execution to leave a lasting imprint.
  8. Greyhound
    When the mortars aren’t firing, the movie ebbs, flows, occasionally sags, and sometimes rivets.
  9. The Old Guard
    It’s like an immortal-mercenary hangout movie. Chunks of the picture are logy and formulaic (it dawdles on for two hours), but the director, Gina Prince-Bythewood (making a major lane change after “Love & Basketball” and “The Secret Life of Bees”), stages the fight scenes with ripe executionary finesse, and she teases out a certain soulful quality in her cast.
  10. Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash
    Despite its probably modest budget, “Street Survivors” is actually first-class as convincingly harrowing aeronautical disaster movies go, if you’re a follower of the genre that has Peter Weir’s 1993 “Fearless” to live up to.
  11. Bungalow (2002)
    Not much happens in Bungalow, a deceptively low-key drama from Germany. But a series of mysterious offscreen explosions and general air of ennui express anxiety of the country’s post-unification youth.
  12. Suzi Q
    In some sense, Quatro was Jett before Jett was really Jett — laying down the leather law when no female rocker had yet managed the combination of sex appeal and pure machisma.
  13. Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America
    It does provide engrossing studies in human interest, as well as an empathetic look at the particular struggles of U.S. immigration in the new millennium.
  14. The Outpost
    Such a film may suffer from home viewing, and yet, The Outpost represents the most exhilarating new movie audiences have been offered since the shutdown began.
  15. John Lewis: Good Trouble
    A detailed yet paint-by-numbers study of the living legend who believes in the necessity of making good trouble as an instigator of societal change.
  16. Hamilton
    The film aims to be more intimate, but it frequently deprives audiences of the show’s ingenious spatial design. Still, this original cast is so charismatic — and Miranda’s ultra-dense, dizzyingly clever book and lyrics are so effective — that they maintain our attention even when the edit feels like one of those live sporting events, as a producer sits in the control booth choosing between cameras in the moment, rather than planning out the shoot in advance.
  17. Force of Nature
    None of this is particularly credible, let alone memorable, but it’s all executed with sufficient energy and humor to make for an enjoyable night’s entertainment.
  18. The Ghost of Peter Sellers
    So what is The Ghost of Peter Sellers? It’s a record of what it was like to shoot an empty shambolic piece of junk that drained the coffers of everyone involved. It’s a record of the kind of damage that a debonair misfit like Peter Sellers could cause when he put his mischievous (and maybe, in some ways, unstable) mind to it.
  19. Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things
    Woodhead’s movie is at its best in how neatly it delineates the different musical phases of Fitzgerald’s career.
  20. Nobody Knows I'm Here
    Still best known as Hurley from “Lost,” Garcia quietly electrifies here in a role that feels like a breakout; for all the film’s superior craft and unsettling atmosphere-building, it is his sympathetic soulfulness that delivers the most resonant harmonics.
  21. No Small Matter
    While it falls short of its promised earth-shattering, mind-altering revelations, it does cast an interesting hook from a creative perspective, thoughtfully packaging its message in visually coherent, engaging ways.
  22. Followed
    At nearly 100 minutes — way too many for material this flimsy — Followed even has time for a couple clumsily maudlin bits, not excluding brief yet awesomely trite address of “the homeless issue” in downtown L.A. A movie like this doesn’t need to have a social conscience. It ought to have worried first about having a brain, period.
  23. The Audition
    Weisse’s gripping, cool-blooded drama upends all manner of inspirational-educator clichés.
  24. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
    It’s a badly shot one-joke movie that sits there and goes thud.
  25. Saudi Runaway
    Muna’s plan won’t leave only misery behind, which is what gives Saudi Runaway its emotional heft and depth as it revs up to a finale of unalloyed, skin-prickling suspense.
  26. Irresistible
    Irresistible scores points yet feels behind the curve. You wish it were a bold satirical bulletin, or maybe just Stewart’s pricelessly amusing version of a Christopher Guest movie. Instead, the film is a lot like a politician: It makes a big show of leading the viewer, but without rocking the boat.
  27. Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall
    This bouncily entertaining doc may boast only a notch more formal ambition than a very well-assembled “Behind the Music” special, but is no less essential than Lee’s first MJ opus, the excellent “Bad 25.”
  28. If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise
    It is, frankly, a lot to absorb — and would risk crumbling under the weight of Lee’s ambition were it not for the second gut punch to the region that BP’s horrifying blunder delivered.
  29. Athlete A
    Athlete A is a testament to their perseverance, and to the courage of all those who stood up in court to face the man who had violated their humanity. But it’s also a testament to the obsession that gave cover to their abuse — to a culture that wanted winners at any cost.
  30. Disclosure
    Essential, thoroughly engaging documentary.
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