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. Phantom Thread
    Phantom Thread sweeps you up and carries you along, much more, to my mind, than “The Master” did. Yet it’s a thesis movie: the story of a bullying narcissist who lacks the ability to have a relationship, and the outrageous way he’s schooled into becoming a human being. It’s the story of a control freak made by a control freak.
  2. The Post
    The Pentagon Papers marked an iconic moment in American history: the press claiming its own freedom to call out the excesses of power. The Post celebrates what that means, tapping into an enlightened nostalgia for the glory days of newspapers, but the film also takes you back to a time when the outcome was precarious, and the freedoms we thought we took for granted hung in the balance. Just as they do today.
  3. Birdboy: The Forgotten Children
    Though at first glance this ironically-sweet-and-very-sour mix might seem unappetizing, even repellent, it soon becomes fascinating in its oddball complexity.
  4. Psychopaths
    Devoid of characters or a story about which one might care, Psychopaths proves to be a fright-free pastiche without purpose — save, that is, for unimaginatively paying homage to a string of superior genre predecessors.
  5. Inoperable
    Inoperable is insufferable.
  6. The Dancer
    More problematic, even if we accept the film as pure fiction, is its pedestrian construction and ill-conceived script, unlikely to spark interest in one of the most innovative and influential performers of the last century and a quarter.
  7. A Bad Idea Gone Wrong
    First-time filmmaker Jason Headley, directing from his own screenplay, keeps his concoction moving briskly and humorously, with a light sprinkling of acceptably sweet sentimentality here and there.
  8. 24 Hours to Live
    Smrz brings considerable gusto if not much conceptual originality to the pileup of dire crises, keeping the pace brisk and seriocomic tone variable.
  9. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
    Too much of “Bombshell” skims over Lamarr’s more troubling and troubled aspects to paint her in somewhat stock terms as the victim of keep-her-on-that-pedestal misogyny.
  10. Remember Me
    Writer-director-star Steve Goldbloom’s debut feature is an uneven trifle overly dependent on the familiar, uninspired comedy of immature man-boys behaving badly. But it has an ace up its sleeve in the person of historied veteran Rita Moreno, whose unpredictable performance in an underwritten role gooses things to an amiable degree.
  11. Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars
    As absorbing as much of this material is, the lengthy feature does not feel definitive: It commits the typical music-doc sin of devoting nearly all its time to a celebrated first professional decade, then hastily skimming past all events since.
  12. Bad Match
    The movie is “Fatal Attraction” for the age of the revolving-door hook-up, and in its fevered low-budget way it’s just clever enough to do what it sets out to do. It gives toxic masculinity its just desserts.
  13. Song of Granite
    Pat Collins’ echoing, elegiac evocation of the spirit of Irish sean nós singer Joe Heaney is most interested in his haunted vocal gift, letting the troubled life that weathered it show through only in glimmers between the gorgeous songs.
  14. The Star
    As kid-friendly Christmas movies go, this one actually goes out of its way to remind what the holiday represents, which should please parents looking for something a little more sophisticated (but just barely) than the VeggieTales cartoons.
  15. Justice League
    The movie is no cheat. It’s a tasty franchise delivery system that kicks a certain series back into gear.
  16. Amanda & Jack Go Glamping
    A thin, sparkless romantic comedy that takes satirical aim at a host of current hipster-culture targets, before concluding that merely identifying them is droll enough.
  17. Small Town Crime
    Written and directed by sibling filmmakers Ian and Eshom Nelms with equal measures of respect and skepticism for pulp conventions, the movie comes across as neither pastiche nor parody, but rather as a seriously down-and-dirty crime story with a savage sense of humor.
  18. Wonder
    It’s a very tasteful heart-tugger — a drama of disarmingly level-headed empathy that glides along with wit, assurance, and grace, and has something touching and resonant to say about the current climate of American bullying.
  19. No Greater Love
    A fascinating and heartfelt documentary.
  20. Mayhem
    A smartly constructed and sardonically funny indie with attitude that somehow manages the tricky feat of being exuberantly over the top even as it remains consistently on target.
  21. Destination Unknown
    Survival is depicted as a double-edged sword in Destination Unknown, an accomplished and heartrending documentary.
  22. A Bride for Rip Van Winkle
    Artfully subverting the spirit of such soulful, diaphanous romances as “Love Letter” and “Hana and Alice” from earlier in his own career, Iwai exposes the desperation and deceit involved in the search for love.
  23. Bitch
    Acted and executed with brute conviction, if not much delicacy, by its writer-director-star, with an excellent foil in Jason Ritter’s boorish, baffled husband, the film feels overstretched in its latter half — with its central metaphor revealing only so many facets before the shock factor begins to pall.
  24. No Stone Unturned
    In a strange way, the movie, as doggedly made as it is, remains stubbornly uncompelling. That, I think, is because Gibney’s own connection to the subject, while it charges him with righteous passion, has resulted in a rare loss of perspective.
  25. Daddy's Home 2
    It arrives at a moment when the crackling voltage of the culture wars — blue state vs. red state, Trump haters vs. Trump lovers — is coursing through every fiber of the nation. This means that a film like Daddy’s Home 2, in its stupido-on-purpose way, can seem almost relevant in its trivial hit-or-miss yocks.
  26. The Final Year
    The Final Year clings to a precooked thesis about the Obama Doctrine that misses the behind-the-scenes drama and candor of superior political documentaries like “The War Room” or “Weiner.”
  27. Murder on the Orient Express
    Though he succeeds in creating the most memorable incarnation of Poirot ever seen on-screen (upstaging even Johnny Depp’s competing cameo), the movie is a failure overall, juggling too many characters to keep straight, and botching the last act so badly that those who go in blind may well walk out not having understood its infamous twist ending.
  28. Frank Serpico
    Frank Serpico is a finely etched and fascinating documentary.
  29. A River Below
    In the stories of both men, Grieco’s film highlights the double-edged nature of eye-opening visuals, which are just as apt to enrage others and endanger the messenger as they are to achieve noble ends.
  30. Princess Cyd
    Caring more about what its characters represent — and its empathetic representation of them — than about crafting a fully formed drama concerning flesh-and-blood people, Cone’s film has little more than its heart in the right place.
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