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. Venom
    Venom is a textbook case of a comic-book film that’s unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura.
  2. Johnny English Strikes Again
    There are a minor handful of scenes in Johnny English Strikes Again that will make you laugh. A bit.
  3. All Square
    Away from the baseball diamond, All Square effectively pivots to moments of surprisingly affecting drama.
  4. Hell Fest
    Eye candy without much to offer the brain or emotions, Hell Fest is a competently crafted slasher film rendered instantly forgettable by its disinterest in character, plot, and motivation, let alone original ideas.
  5. Bad Times at the El Royale
    At two hours and 21 minutes, this 1969-set period thriller is taxingly slow and almost oppressively self-indulgent, constantly backtracking and replaying already-drawn-out scenes from multiple perspectives.
  6. Tyrel
    Sharply observed but lacking in the probing psychological insights of Silva’s best movies, Tyrel is a chamber piece whose rhythms feel entirely natural (it’s shot in cast member Arze’s house), but which doesn’t resonate greatly after the fadeout.
  7. Little Women
    This contemporary adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s enduring classic is certainly admirable in its attempt to give the material a modern spin. However, what’s new only serves to frustrate and detract from the reasons why this material has been beloved for generations.
  8. Scaffolding
    [A] gripping, realist drama.
  9. Black '47
    Daly’s characterful, slow-burn tale is a well-crafted experiment in grafting genre onto disregarded history.
  10. 306 Hollywood
    306 Hollywood is best when it gets either very scientifically dry, or reaches beyond its liminal cuteness into ambitious visual poetry.
  11. The Oath
    Here’s a project that had the nerve to address these tensions in a megaplex environment, only to squander them on a standoff it pretends could be so glibly resolved.
  12. Night School
    Night School has a handful of laughs, but it’s a bloated trifle that, at 111 minutes, overstays its welcome.
  13. Overlord
    Even at its most suspenseful, when Jed Kurzel’s cello score stabs at the eardrums, Overlord feels familiar, a collage of cinematic nightmares checking off its influences.
  14. Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable
    The pull of Garry Winogrand’s photographs is that they dissolve the line between art and life.
  15. Tea with the Dames
    A wholly delightful talkathon.
  16. The Song of Sway Lake
    The Song of Sway Lake never finds a thematic center around which to pivot its action.
  17. The Last Suit
    [A] touching, albeit occasionally heavy-handed, drama.
  18. Call Her Ganda
    With access to only one side of its central conflict, and a scattershot approach that skims over key details and points of interest, this well-intentioned documentary leaves audiences feeling like they’re only getting part of a much larger story.
  19. Smallfoot
    It’s messy and distressingly unmemorable, which is a shame since there are no shortage of great Looney Tunes-level cartoon gags wasted along the way, including an ingenious rope bridge sequence worthy of golden-age Warner Bros. animation.
  20. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
    While not terribly original, it would be fair to call the movie inventive, like one of those eccentrics who’s constantly pestering the patent office with what he thinks are fresh ideas, only to discover that someone else got there first.
  21. Teen Spirit
    Teen Spirit is too tidy, concocted, and safe. It longs to channel the high of great pop, but as a movie it lacks the ecstatic imagination to do what great pop does. It never soars.
  22. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?
    While always attractive, the look conveys a level of non-spontaneous construction that often takes away from the potency of hard, brutal reality.
  23. Unbroken: Path to Redemption
    It would be unfair, and not entirely accurate, to dismiss “Path to Redemption” as irredeemably dull and without merit.
  24. The Dawn Wall
    It’s a riveting and spectacular documentary.
  25. A Boy. A Girl. A Dream.
    If Basir and Samantha Tanner’s screenplay ultimately feels like less than a full meal, its intelligence and restraint — particularly in resisting the lure of a heavier-handed message — are nonetheless admirable.
  26. The Command
    Vinterberg’s Kursk occasionally lands an emotive blow but only in its more fictionalized stretches, while it pulls its punches with the thorniest and most provocative elements of the real story, an instinct that unduly submerges much of the real horror and lasting consequence of this tragically, enragingly, heartbreakingly bungled incident.
  27. The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
    What could have been a powerful ode to the impact that movies have in shaping our identities — and by extension, the reason broken people are drawn to the profession, through which they hope to reach others like themselves — becomes an over-the-top celebration of Dolan himself.
  28. Don't Leave Home
    The result is a diverting-to-a-point curio whose nice atmospherics and good performances ultimately don’t add up to quite enough to satisfy the constructs of horror, allegory, satire — or anything else.
  29. Smuggling Hendrix
    [A] delightful, droll, and intelligent comedy, which captures the absurdity and tragedy of a complicated political situation with a consistently light touch.
  30. Hold the Dark
    Boasting the sort of shocking brutality and unnerving menace that has become Saulnier’s signature, Hold the Dark is also a strangely seductive film, and one that understands the difference between simple plot resolution and catharsis, leading us on a journey into Alaska’s frigid heart of darkness that poses more questions than it answers.
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