Variety's Scores

For 17,757 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:
17757 movie reviews
  1. The director, Andrew Patterson, has a vision — of life, and of how to tell a story — that he enacts with so much confidence and verve that even when what he’s doing doesn’t totally work, you may find yourself going with it, because this is what independent filmmaking is about: unfurling a story on the high wire.
  2. There’s too much passion and creativity on display to declare “O’Dessa” a complete catastrophe, but the committed performances and detailed production design and costumes all come across as the product of bibles’ worth of backstory that couldn’t possibly be carried over with the constraints of time.
  3. With its dramatic themes spread across two wildly different halves, it makes for a unique, propulsive thrill ride whose baffling existence is key to its enjoyment.
  4. You might be wondering if “Clown in a Cornfield” is at least scary. No, it’s not, and it’s not trying too hard to be.
  5. These people all look and sound so important that the message that blankets every moment of The Age of Disclosure is: They’re official. And what they have to say is official.
  6. Mason, a close friend of Hutchins, constructs a propulsive and compelling narrative by skillfully interlacing interviews with people involved in the tragedy — including the OSHA investigator who uncovered a pattern of risky behavior on the “Rust” set — with news footage, police interrogations, and video recorded on cellphones and police minicams.
  7. Holland blossoms in the space where all-American domestic fantasy ends and nightmares begin, but never quite delivers on its premise, if only because the resolution feels so familiar.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The pat nature of its surprisingly sentimental conclusion only highlights the degree to which Johnson’s directorial interventions feel like attempts to gild the lily, registering as surface-level oddities deployed in a half-successful attempt to replace the psychological insight needed to truly explore identity in such an extreme scenario.
  8. This sophomore directorial effort proves Clapin’s adept hand for soulful, existentialist tales with an offbeat touch, regardless of the medium he’s creating in.
  9. It’s a junk-food thriller fried to near-perfection, balancing the tensions of kidnapping, conspiracy and murder with those of a nerve-wracking first date. It’s crisp and delicious.
  10. In Novocaine, it’s the romance that keeps us going, more than whatever sadistic delight the co-directors take in poking Nathan full of holes, treating him like some kind of Looney Tunes character.
  11. Queen of the Ring is more of a montage of the highlights of Burke’s illustrious life, rather than an entertaining film.
  12. The Accountant 2 is an agreeably loopy hyperviolent good time.
  13. As first features go, Death of a Unicorn is considerably more ambitious and imaginative than so much of what studios greenlight these days, which goes a fair distance to excuse some of its flaws.
  14. The Simple Favor films fill a niche, one that they helped create: the knowing synthetic thriller rooted in the angst of contempo motherhood. But this one both diverts and drags on.
  15. “CHAOS” ends up suggesting that the Manson murders were a grand plot, orchestrated from on high (by the CIA? the Deep State? Nixon?) to turn America against the counterculture. I don’t believe that theory for a second, but there’s one way I think it stays true to the spirit of Charles Manson: It’s pure madness.
  16. The filmmakers have diluted the source material, showing a clear lack of interest in making their creation just as haunting, searing and satisfying as the original product.
  17. Sweet, silly and sincere, director Prarthana Mohan’s spin has a clear understanding of what makes its source material revelatory and resonant.
  18. Black Bag is a reminder of just how enjoyable Soderbergh can be when he’s riffing on well-worn genre material.
  19. Being Maria is a flawed but fascinating look at the turbulent life of actor Maria Schneider.
  20. So, is it all just high-concept pornography? Well, yes and no. The majority of the runtime consists of sex scenes, but they are punctuated with slogans which flash onscreen during and after the action, almost like demonstration placards at a march in support of sexual and political liberation.
  21. The director and star’s efforts may have lifted the German-language edition, but this static, lost-in-translation revamp just comes off as effortful, for little reward.
  22. Last Breath delivers every incident with so much specificity that it’s like a cinematic piece of journalism. Yet it leaves you with a minor tingle of the uncanny.
  23. Charlotte Fassler and Dani Girdwood (the duo also goes by “Similar but Different”) demonstrate visual dexterity within the propulsive action sequences, yet fail to avoid the lazy, clichéd pitfalls of the pre-existing narrative.
  24. Sex
    Sex certainly comes up early and often in this playful, intricately nuanced character study, but in consistently surprising, stereotype-averse ways.
  25. While many movies these days feel stretched too thin to sustain their few real ideas, Rounding emerges in the end as a project that ought to have shed some surplus ideas to better focus on a few. Either that, or the compact pacing should’ve been eased to allow them all more breathing space.
  26. It’s a small, slyly humorous movie that nonetheless ends on a note of more dramatic substance than you’d expect.
  27. Frederik Louis Hviid’s second feature is an absorbing true-crime tale that readily holds attention for two hours, while lacking the deeper emotional involvement to linger in the mind long afterward.
  28. It’s a ham-handed, lurchingly obvious mess, without the glimmer of human interest that even a sensationalist horror film needs.
  29. What should be a plucky, whip-smart character-driven actioner about an elderly assassin fighting career obsolescence morphs into a dusty, no-stakes patchwork of clichés that shrugs off any resonance, let alone entertainment value.

Top Trailers