Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. Four Hands
    While the supernaturally-tinged plot may be outlandish, the commitment and confidence of the actors, and of Kienle in delivering what could be shallow twists with a surprising amount of emotional effect and psychological insight, give the film its melancholic, meditative texture.
  2. Active Measures
    While it’s not as if the film comes up with some smoking gun that Robert Mueller hasn’t yet, it fills in the Trump-Russia connection in a dogged, rigorously reported, eyebrow-raising way.
  3. Blue Iguana
    Blue Iguana strains to be antic in every joint, from gimmicky editorial and camera choices to a soundtrack cluttered with early ’80s New Wave tracks by the B-52’s, Violent Femmes, Only Ones — great stuff, but they can’t get a party started that’s already flatlined.
  4. Jane Fonda in Five Acts
    Lively, confessional, and entertaining.
  5. Makala
    French helmer-lenser Emmanuel Gras’ camera embraces the subject’s every move with such rapt intimacy and cinematic poetry it’s easy to forget this is not a fictional drama.
  6. Arizona
    As a debut film, Arizona shows that Watson could become a director with interesting ideas, but this housing crisis horror comedy is definitely just a rental.
  7. The Happytime Murders
    It should come as no surprise that “Happytime” comes up farcically short as a metaphor for racism. But its most fatal miscalculation is the decision to frontload so many of its crassest setpieces into the first 15 or 20 minutes, depriving the rest of the film of the shock value that is its entire raison d’etre.
  8. Operation Finale
    The last thing you want a movie like this one to feel like is a slick Hollywood suspense drama with famous historical names plugged in. Operation Finale doesn’t feel like that, yet taken on its own here’s how it really happened terms, the movie is at once plausible and sketchy, intriguing and not fully satisfying.
  9. Minding the Gap
    It exists because it’s the movie Liu was born to make, the one he had to get off his chest before he could move on in his filmmaking career.
  10. The Bookshop
    This is a frustratingly patchy adaptation, in which some of Fitzgerald’s shrewdest observations on the savage politics and politesse of supposedly tranquil English village life get a little bit lost in the Europudding. A fine, sensitive leading turn from Emily Mortimer helps shore up these quiet, lightly dust-covered proceedings, but can’t quite put The Bookshop in the black.
  11. Billionaire Boys Club
    There are no billionaires here, just a lot of testosterone where the movie’s brains ought to be.
  12. The Motive
    Whatever attracted Cuenca (“Cannibal”) to this material is seldom evident in his handling of it. Yet the material itself still lends the film its genuine if all-too-modest pleasures.
  13. We the Animals
    As if by magic, Zagar has managed to foster a sense of familiarity among the boys that sells the illusion that they’re related, further reinforced by the editors’ trick of including moments of spontaneous, unscripted tomfoolery between the young actors.
  14. Madeline's Madeline
    Madeline’s Madeline mistakes intimacy for honesty, and it mis-assumes that audiences care nearly as much about the creative process as actors and directors do.
  15. Mile 22
    Berg, when he wants to be, is a surgical craftsman of chaos. Yet Mile 22 has little weight or resonance.
  16. Songwriter
    Murray Cummings’ film is a cautiously peppy, unrevealing affair, showing little of the trial and tension that goes into artistic creation — just the finger-snapping moments when it all comes together.
  17. The Ranger
    Diehard gorehounds may be disappointed by its relatively infrequent reliance on graphic and grisly mayhem (relative to this particular subgenre’s standards, that is), but Wexler’s discretion in this area turns out to be one of her film’s few distinguishing characteristics.
  18. Cielo
    Affording viewers a trip to the Chilean desert to gaze up at the crystal-clear sky, Cielo is a rapturous act of cinematic contemplation.
  19. Alpha
    Alpha, a spectacular prehistoric eye-candy survival yarn, is enthralling in a square and slightly stolid way.
  20. Slender Man
    Slender Man is the kind of movie in which images come before logic, because there really isn’t much logic. There’s just a movie out to goose you.
  21. Elizabeth Harvest
    The disorienting impact of this early shock, coupled with the zig-zaggy progression of the time-tripping narrative, goes a long way toward distracting from a fairly conventional premise that ultimately asserts itself above all the flash and filigree. Indeed, you could describe the entire movie as an elaborate con job — and intend that appraisal as a compliment.
  22. The Spy Gone North
    This well-crafted work deserves to be seen for its thorough account of intricate workings of secret service and political skullduggery.
  23. Crazy Rich Asians
    Director Jon M. Chu (“Step Up 2: The Streets”) has crafted a broadly appealing charmer in which practically anyone can identify with Wu’s character as she’s whisked into this elite milieu.
  24. The Meg
    If there’s a disappointment to The Meg, it’s not just that the movie isn’t good enough. It’s that it’s not bad enough.
  25. Summer of 84
    Summer of ’84 is only cute and competent enough to be diverting; it’s neither funny nor scary enough to leave a lasting impression.
  26. Dog Days
    Unfortunately, the behaviors on display have virtually nothing to do with real life, serving as empty escapism for the dog lover in all of us.
  27. Like Father
    So, if you like piña coladas, or movies in which severe childhood trauma can be hugged out on an ocean cruise, then you’ll like Like Father. For everyone else, skip the imitation and seek out “Toni Erdmann” instead.
  28. La Familia
    An honest, urgent two-hander, tracking a struggling single father and his wayward son on the run from more than one undefined enemy, Córdova’s film brings little that’s new to its stylistic school of observational realism — but hits the Caracas sidewalks hard and purposefully enough to compensate.
  29. The Forest of the Lost Souls
    The Forest of Lost Souls is a nasty and impressive little thriller that goes about its business with ruthless cinematic efficiency.
  30. Christopher Robin
    The movie basically ingratiates itself with kids by scolding adults for losing track of what’s important, and yet, both in the 1930s and today, a responsible father doesn’t really have the option of quitting his job.
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