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. Half Magic
    Half Magic is hobbled by a debut director’s desire to be liked. But Graham’s passion is sincere, even if her tone and rushed pace — the byproduct of cramming in every idea in case she doesn’t get a second chance — teeters on sitcom.
  2. Curvature
    Part metaphysical thriller, part inquiry into scientific ethics and the morality of revenge, the sci-fi indie Curvature wants to get the heart racing and the mind bending simultaneously, but flatlines in both departments.
  3. The Cured
    Just when you thought nothing new could be done with the undead, “The Cured” pulls off a fresh take on zombie terrain.
  4. Every Day
    There’s a playfulness to Every Day, to how the film says to its audience — through the very structure of its Afterschool Special sci-fi design — that if you want to find love, you’ve got to look beyond the surface.
  5. The Housemaid
    When its many secrets spill out in the finale, “The Housemaid” has to cheat a little to pull off a humdinger of a twist, but it’s enormously satisfying anyway, if only for bringing the core historical conflict back to the fore.
  6. Kings
    Kings is a tangle of conflicting moods and emotions.
  7. Where Is Kyra?
    The emotional range of Pfeiffer’s riveting performance isn’t a broad one, though this frequently nonverbal film is entirely reliant on her cutting powers of expression as she progresses from harrowed to exhausted and back, at risk of disappearing into herself entirely.
  8. Unsane
    We’re in schlock corridor here and Soderbergh runs with it, cellphone in hand; under the buzzing suspense mechanics, however, a cautionary note on the perils of disbelieving women is just audible.
  9. Annihilation
    For those willing to put in the effort, Annihilation achieves that rare feat of great genre cinema, where we are not merely thrilled (the film is both intensely scary and unexpectedly beautiful in parts) but also feel as if our minds have been expanded along the way.
  10. Game Night
    The movie manipulates its audience in cunning and puckish ways. It’s no big whoop, but you’re happy to have been played.
  11. November
    It’s having the ordinary in such close proximity to the outlandish that makes November so uncanny. And it’s rooting the bizarre behaviors of its characters in such understandable motivations (usually greed) that makes it so unexpectedly funny and scabrously relatable.
  12. Hannah
    This is an impressively rigorous exercise, in which the director’s sober formalism finds a kindred spirit in his leading lady’s studied, secretive restraint.
  13. Looking Glass
    The movie offers a great deal more mood than matter.
  14. Monster Hunt 2
    Monster Hunt 2 is so perfectly good-natured and so utterly nonsensical that it makes not-thinking-about-it basically an act of self-preservation, for which, bless its bouncing, gurgling, flolloping heart.
  15. The Monkey King 3
    With Monkey, the film”s most potent protagonist, sidelined for much of the film, the action feels truncated.
  16. Red Sparrow
    Lawrence, in this movie, shows you what true screen stardom is all about. She cues each scene to a different mood, leaving the audience in a dangling state of discovery. We’re on her side, but more than that we’re in her head. Even when (of course) we’re being played.
  17. Samson
    Even if you’re willing to forgive the laughably fake beards, the unconvincing computer-generated imagery, and a man-versus-lion skirmish that might have embarrassed Ed Wood, the overall clunkiness of this enterprise may tempt you to shout rude things at the screen.
  18. America's Musical Journey
    Even at 40 minutes, America’s Musical Journey could have taken us on an organic and inspiring musical adventure. But what’s odd about the movie is that instead of reveling in the jewels of our cultural past, it seems to be twisting itself in knots to avoid the past.
  19. Isle of Dogs
    If mounds of garbage aren’t quite what viewers have come to associate with Planet Wes, the slight scuzziness of Isle of Dogs is its great surprise: From the occasional eye-watering blurriness of its fast tracking shots to the loopy, laissez-faire nature of its storytelling, the whole enterprise might just be as messy as the director lets himself get.
  20. Basmati Blues
    Basmati Blues is one of those movies that isn’t terrible but still leaves you wondering why it exists.
  21. Are We Not Cats
    Though this is a slightly unreal world in which no one looks at their iPhones or uses a computer...the sweet earnestness of the two leads makes their characters real.
  22. Seeing Allred
    As the cases against Cosby, Trump, O’Reilly, Weinstein, etc. reveal, the courts don’t appear to be equipped to correct a gender-biased system, whereas Allred has pioneered a new way of fighting injustice.
  23. The Peacemaker
    What brings a documentary like this one to life is a central character with something going on that’s thornier than his official idealism. Fortunately, that’s Padraig O’Malley.
  24. Irreplaceable You
    Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a charming actress who radiates poise and intelligence, which is why Irreplaceable You — in which her character acts in ways that are clearly self-destructive and counterproductive — rings so false.
  25. Permission
    Permission is a small story made with big performances from leads Stevens and Hall, and while it hasn’t gotten the promotional push for audiences to pay attention, people lucky enough to stumble across it will fall for everyone involved, and commit to keeping tabs on Crano’s career.
  26. Becks
    Becks is the kind of modest, non-earthshaking indie enterprise that ends up being so satisfying mostly because it’s about a character type familiar from real life but all too under-represented at the movies.
  27. Entanglement
    Like James’ direction, full of off-center and oddly angled compositions that aren’t warranted by the action, Entanglement dresses up familiar romantic-comedy themes with affected gimmicks to jumbled ends.
  28. Bomb City
    Bomb City will keep you in its grasp during every moment leading to its climactic violence. And it won’t let go until the closing credits roll.
  29. Outside In
    Outside In feels eventful, even somewhat suspenseful, as we worry that being around so many screwups of one sort or another might endanger Chris’ still-fragile freedom.
  30. The 15:17 to Paris
    The oddity of the movie — and this is baked into the way Eastwood conceived it, sticking to the facts and not over-hyping anything — is that this vision of real-life heroism is so much less charged than the Hollywood version might be that it often feels as if a dramatic spark plug is missing.
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