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. A Kid Like Jake
    The movie doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere until it explodes, and the dazzling fireworks don’t quite offset its long, seemingly aimless fuse.
  2. Upgrade
    The film isn’t a dud — it “delivers the goods” in a certain reductive, baseline action-fanboy way. Yet Upgrade is the sort of movie that thinks it’s more ingenious than it is, starting with the premise, which is a semi-catchy, semi-stupido hoot in a way that the movie couldn’t have completely intended.
  3. Adrift
    Woodley gives herself over to the physical and spiritual reality of each scene. She knows how to play an ordinary woman who’s wild at heart, and she keeps you captivated, even when the film itself is watchable in a perfectly competent, touching, and standard way.
  4. Discreet
    Opaque and formally ungainly, this itchy meditation on a host of contemporary social ills offers audiences a vividly, deliberately ugly worldview, but finally makes for hollow viewing.
  5. The Cakemaker
    Tracing with exemplary sensitivity the unlikely bond formed between a gay German baker and the Jerusalem-based widow of the man they both loved, Graizer’s film works a complex range of social and religious tensions into its heartsore narrative, without ever feeling sanctimonious or button-pushing.
  6. The Workers Cup
    What emerges is a nuanced, if somewhat undernourished, portrait of the poorest inhabitants of the richest country in the world.
  7. Breath
    Though not without its flaws, the movie has authenticity and resonance; there have been plenty of good surfing documentaries, but very few good dramas about the sport — a short list on which Breath instantly earns a prominent spot.
  8. The Misandrists
    Misandrists is a diverting bad-taste frolic for the sufficiently jaded.
  9. Ibiza
    Loose-kneed, sloppy, and powered by charisma, this hangout flick doesn’t just embrace gross-out girl comedy cliches, it sticks Jacobs in the air roof of a limousine screaming, “Whooo! I am a total cliché right now and I don’t f–king care!”
  10. Feral
    This isn’t a dull film, but it lacks personality as well as originality.
  11. En el Séptimo Día (On the Seventh Day)
    Each elegantly framed shot, every deftly observed moment expresses something organic and moving.
  12. Papillon
    On its own terms, Noer’s adventure is ultimately a dramatic and dynamic-enough telling of an indelible fact-based story to connect with viewers.
  13. Who We Are Now
    Newton has made a beautiful little film about sacrifice and redemption, and he earns it one tiny brushstroke at a time.
  14. Knife + Heart
    Gonzalez has mastered the art of creating atmosphere and tone, but not tension, and the movie feels meandering and slow at times, since audiences are not invested in anyone’s survival.
  15. Treat Me Like Fire
    Monge’s deliciously seedy first film is light on originality but heavy on atmospherics: a sleazy, sultry, saxophone-blare echoing down a Parisian metro tunnel at night.
  16. Sorry Angel
    For years, “gay movies” were practically a genre unto themselves, neatly conforming to one of three categories: stories about coming out, stories about unrequited love, and stories about the impact of AIDS. “Sorry Angel” succeeds in ticking all three boxes without falling into any one.
  17. Shoplifters
    At once charming and heart-wrenching, this exquisitely performed film will steal the hearts of both art-house and mainstream audiences.
  18. Rafiki
    Even when Rafiki irons out its emotions a little too neatly, however, Mugatsia and Munyiva’s relaxed, sparking chemistry quickens its heartbeat.
  19. The Trouble with You
    Haenel’s role is a mercurial one, full of opportunities for Clouseau-esque following sequences, mistaken identity mixups, and bumbling acts of well-meaning quirk. But there’s something resolutely un-ditzy about the actress, with her matter-of-fact sexiness and earthy intelligence grounding even the screenplay’s most contrived moments. It is a pleasure to watch her face as she works things out.
  20. Long Day's Journey Into Night
    Plunging viewers into an extended dream sequence in the name of abstract motifs such as memory, time, and space, the film is a lush plotless mood-piece swimming in artsy references and ostentatious technical exercises, with a star (Tang Wei, “Lust, Caution”) as decoration.
  21. Sauvage / Wild
    There are fleeting moments of wit, bliss and even tenderness amid the gritty severity, as Vidal-Naquet perceptively portrays not just the lonely, drug-fueled rigors of the hustler lifestyle, but the simultaneously competitive and supportive fraternal community that sustains it.
  22. Dogman
    Fonte, it must be said, gives an expert performance as a saintly scamp who “blooms” into a butterfly of vengeance. I might have bought what he’s doing in a different film, but the one that Garrone has made strains too hard to have it both ways.
  23. Diamantino
    Part loopily queer sci-fi thriller, part faux-naive political rallying cry, glued together with candyfloss clouds of romantic reverie, it’s a film best seen with as little forewarning as possible: To go in blind is to be carried along by its irrational tumble of events as blissfully and buoyantly as its empty-headed soccer-star protagonist.
  24. Capernaum
    While this is unquestionably an issue film, it tackles its subject with intelligence and heart.
  25. Yomeddine
    Anchored by lead Rady Gamal’s warm-hearted charisma, the film is a sweet, solid first feature marbled with genuinely touching moments that make up for times when the siren call of sentimentality becomes a little too loud.
  26. The World Is Yours
    These criminals may be out of their league, but Gavras orchestrates it all with a surfeit of style and an irreverent sense of humor that spares no one, no matter their background.
  27. Woman at War
    Erlingsson’s genius lies in how he puts it all together with such witty intelligence, arranging beautifully shot picaresque episodes around a central figure who lives the ideals of the heroes she has hanging on her wall, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
  28. The Wild Pear Tree
    Even more than in his previous film, Ceylan and his fellow scriptwriters (wife Ebru Ceylan along with Akın Aksu, also acting) develop astonishingly complex spoken recitatives that weave philosophy, religious tradition, and ethics together into a mesmerizing verbal fugue.
  29. Leto
    If not as overtly political as “The Student,” Leto nonetheless represents about as flamboyant a statement of free artistic expression as Serebrennikov could make at this moment: There’s certainly nothing contained or inhibited about its celebration of artists who themselves were given little support or leeway by the Soviet government.
  30. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
    If anything, it’s what the director’s fans most feared: a lumbering, confused, and cacophonous mess
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