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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chinese Portrait
    The compositions are rich with multiple layers; they explore the depth of the cinematic space, and suggest invisible presences at the edge of the frame.
  2. Only Cloud Knows
    Schematic and manipulative as it is, as a kind of team-effort between the New Zealand Tourist Board and whatever the Chinese equivalent of Hallmark is, Only Cloud Knows is, in the moment, undeniably effective at jerking tears.
  3. The Hottest August
    Story’s an original, and the film is a revelation — a movie that’s as deep as we’re willing to read into it, and an invaluable time capsule for summers far in our future, assuming we ever get there.
  4. Ip Man 4: The Finale
    Flat-footed storytelling meets fleet-footed choreography and sumptuous production values in the untaxingly fun Ip Man 4: The Finale.
  5. The Gentlemen
    The actors, splendidly kitted out in autumnal suiting and knitwear by costume designer Michael Wilkinson, have what fun they can with such thin, dated material, but everyone here deserves better.
  6. Cats
    Tom Hooper’s outlandishly tacky interpretation seems destined to become one of those once-in-a-blue-moon embarrassments that mars the résumés of great actors (poor Idris Elba, already scarred enough as the villainous Macavity) and trips up the careers of promising newcomers (like ballerina Francesca Hayward, whose wide-eyed, mouth-agape Victoria displays one expression for the entire movie).
  7. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    The Rise of Skywalker is, to me, the most elegant, emotionally rounded, and gratifying “Star Wars” adventure since the glory days of “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” (I mean that, but given the last eight films, the bar isn’t that high
  8. Spies in Disguise
    The trouble with a film like Spies in Disguise isn’t that it’s less than sparklingly animated but that as technically bravura as it is, there is never anything at stake.
  9. My Zoe
    Her (Delpy) risk-taking is admirable, and given the excellent craft, never less than engaging to watch, but it does not always pay off.
  10. Rabid
    Overlong, undercooked Rabid can’t settle on a unified tone for its actors, let alone its narrative. Even its misanthropy ultimately feels indecisive and trifling.
  11. Code 8
    Code 8 is better than a mere calling-card film, though one senses a desire to check all the boxes of fan expectation and professional packaging rated higher than the kinds of personal expression that might have lent it a more memorable idiosyncrasy.
  12. Mob Town
    “You think you’re in the movies or something?” crows Davi’s Genovese to an underling, but Mob Town’s wink-wink address of its own artificiality doesn’t excuse its inept execution, which extends to a stereotypical Italian score by Lionel Cohen.
  13. Cunningham
    Kovgan’s ode to choreography master Merce Cunningham is sensational in every sense of the word. Renewing one’s appreciation of the many wonders of the human body and the space in which it fills and drifts, Cunningham celebrates all the things our joints and flexed muscles are capable of, as seen through the mind and poetic dances of an iconic creator.
  14. Black Christmas
    You can’t take a movie like this too seriously, but it’s still one of the rare slasher films that offers a holiday from bloodshed for its own sake.
  15. The Great War
    The weapons look fake, the stiff action sequences play like poor re-enactments, and you frequently wonder how anyone managed to keep a straight face while firing off some embarrassingly simple-minded lines of dialogue. Even the bright red, corn-syrupy blood splattered around looks like it’s from a different decade of cinema.
  16. 6 Underground
    It’s certainly not great literature, but if you can get past the imbecilic script, there’s no question that Bay has seized the opportunity to make 6 Underground as visually stunning as such a project can withstand.
  17. Jumanji: The Next Level
    More often than not, effects-driven blockbusters get dumber as the series goes along, but Jumanji: The Next Level invents some fun ideas to keep things fresh.
  18. Bombshell
    Bombshell is a scalding and powerful movie about what selling, in America, has become. The film is about selling sex, selling a candidate, selling yourself, selling the truth. And about how at Fox News all those things came together.
  19. Knives and Skin
    The positive qualities lie in the surrealistic film’s bold cinematography, distinctive use of music, and diversity of cast, though that’s not enough to redeem this tedious viewing experience.
  20. En Brazos de un Asesino
    Even as a luxe fantasy of danger and hotness, the film falls short — though competently assembled in general, real high style is lacking. Too many scenes take place in empty warehouses or obviously dressed sound stages, budgetary concerns apparently hobbling the story’s feinted milieu of decadent haunts of the criminal-rich.
  21. Colewell
    The film’s finely crafted serenity is in keeping with its main character’s secluded state of affairs, and mind.
  22. Grand Isle
    A sub-Tennessee Williams potboiler triangle between restless sexpot, impotent husband, and hunky handyman ever-so-slowly congeals into a lumpy gumbo of thriller elements in Grand Isle.
  23. I See You
    An eerie suspense exercise that starts out looking like a supernatural tale — one of several viewer presumptions this cleverly engineered narrative eventually pulls the rug out from under.
  24. After Class
    Time and again during After Class, Schechter makes pinpoint-accurate choices that are even more impressive when, after it’s done, you replay the movie in your mind, and you realize what an exceptional piece of work it is.
  25. The Cat Returns (2002)
    Animated by Hiroyuki Morita -- a protege of Hayao Miyazaki -- story draws more from fairy tales than the eerie transformative productions by Studio Ghibli. Result is catchy entertainment for kids and adults.
  26. Better Days
    In Derek Kwok Cheung Tsang’s gripping, superbly performed melodrama — a deeply moving if occasionally overwrought exposé of bullying in the acutely competitive academic pressure cooker of a Chinese high school — it’s hard to imagine she can be nostalgic for her own school days.
  27. Away
    For those with the opportunity to see Away in a theater, the experience will either mesmerize or annoy, as the project feels like a promising first pass — a rough-rendered showcase of Zilbalodis’ myriad gifts, which are better suited to world-building and scenic design than character animation.
  28. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
    An exquisitely crafted documentary about the woman who was arguably the greatest movie critic who ever lived.
  29. After Parkland
    After Parkland has its gun politics, and its aching heart, in the right place, but we need more from a movie about this subject. We need to ask how where the contemporary American heart of darkness is coming from.
  30. The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
    Stands out in a field of generic, cookie-cutter dramas, not simply in terms of representation — though the female-made, indigenous-focused thriller offers a field day for intersectionality theorists — but also in the unconventional way the story unfolds.
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