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. Showdown in Manila
    Its intrigue and action neither very well developed nor integrated, Showdown in Manila feels like a checklist of elements typical of such movies — hey, where’s our training montage?!? — with arthritic-level connective tissue.
  2. Forever My Girl
    Forever My Girl is a sweet but slight romantic drama that got lost on its way to the Hallmark Channel — or, more likely, was rebuffed by that channel’s gatekeepers for being, even by their standards, entirely too predictable — and wound up in theaters instead.
  3. The Green Fog
    If this hour-long collage might fairly be summed up as little more than an inspired goof, of primary interest to cineastes, it’s nonetheless one whose giddy fun will hold up for such an audience through repeat viewings.
  4. The Banishment
    The undeniably talented helmer’s sophomore feature has little of the emotional power of “The Return,” though d.p. Mikhail Krichman does stellar work and thesping is faultless.
  5. Kangaroo
    Kangaroo deserves credit for presenting a wealth of informed opinions and impressing the need for a change of thinking if solutions are ever to be found.
  6. Den of Thieves
    Den of Thieves is better at set-up than follow-through. The movie is clever enough, until it cheats. It tries to fill in its characters, until reducing them to plot devices.
  7. Maze Runner: The Death Cure
    Downplaying some of the property’s sillier elements when not jettisoning them entirely, and streamlining the narrative into a rousing and at times even emotional action film, “Death Cure” is the most successful entry in the franchise by far.
  8. 12 Strong
    On its own terms, the film is watchable enough, but it’s blunt and stolid and under-characterized, and at 130 minutes it plods.
  9. Early Man
    The result is a welcome return to a form of stop-motion that takes pride in the technique’s inevitable imperfections (such as thumbprints in the modeling clay), while putting extra care into the underlying script, with its daffy humor and slightly-off characters.
  10. Humor Me
    Humor Me manages to earn its audience’s indulgence, if never its full affection.
  11. Acts of Violence
    The script has been written compactly if without great imagination by Nicolas Aaron Mezzanatto, and directed likewise by actor-turned-helmer Donowho, whose work here reps an uptick from his prior, mostly B-grade horror features.
  12. Nostalgia
    Though lent a degree of executional grace by helmer Mark Pellington, Nostalgia nonetheless emerges an inorganic experiment that might’ve seemed more at home developed for the stage or as a novella.
  13. What Lies Upstream
    What Lies Upstream is a quietly devastating documentary that’s all the more attention-grabbing for being such a scrupulously restrained and slickly polished piece of work.
  14. Proud Mary
    Henson is the right actress to play a contract killer grown weary, but as a thriller Proud Mary doesn’t quite do her justice. It’s a connect-the-dots underworld trifle, watchable and minimal...though Henson holds it together and, at moments, comes close to convincing you that you’re watching a better movie.
  15. Saturday Church
    The movie’s not only appropriate for teen audiences, but also constructive in the way it invites viewers to consider and discuss issues of intolerance and hypocrisy, even as it encourages those who don’t fit the straight, marriage-oriented paradigm to embrace their own identities.
  16. Freak Show
    Freak Show...doesn’t exhibit an understanding of queer identity that goes much deeper than the sheer sequined fabulosity of Billy’s image.
  17. The Vanishing Of Sidney Hall
    Sidney Hall strings its audience along on a tedious journey that runs out of steam long before reaching an embarrassingly overwrought finale.
  18. Western
    Without advertising itself as such, Western could be viewed as a wry reflection of the European Union’s sometimes fractious present-day state — though much of its character conflict hinges on a more universal fear of the other.
  19. Vazante
    When Thomas’ film does find its voice, it is as authentically immersive an experience of a harsh and loveless past as one could hope for, composed of the sensual details that can make the pleasures and horrors of 200 years ago feel like now.
  20. Stratton
    Solidly pro in overall packaging yet cliched, pedestrian and indistinct in specific contributions, this thriller never finds (let alone raises) its own pulse.
  21. In the Land of Pomegranates
    By the end of this meandering yet fascinating documentary, viewers are left with the impression that such attempts to bridge gaps and heal wounds, however well-intentioned, will have, at best, extremely limited success.
  22. Blame
    Shephard has a lively eye for the neurotic ripples of high-school society, but her most audacious gambit is to dare to place the audience in a grey zone between innocence and judgment regarding a relationship that plays out more sympathetically than it should.
  23. Sheikh Jackson
    All told, it’s a well-crafted but middling drama whose attention-catching gimmick only gets in the way.
  24. Insidious: The Last Key
    Despite the indomitable Shaye’s best efforts, however, new director Adam Robitel is rarely successful in shaking the cobwebs off this increasingly creaky franchise: The Last Key is wildly uneven, confused and confusing, and it appears to leave the “Insidious” saga written into a corner yet again.
  25. The Commuter
    The Commuter’s breakneck incoherence — not to mention a generally dour demeanor, shorter on incidental humor than most of the helmer’s work — makes it a notch less fun than those previous ex-trash-aganzas.
  26. Hangman
    If Hangman were just a tad less formulaic, and settled for a slightly smaller body count, it might pass muster as the pilot movie for a basic cable police procedural.
  27. Sundowners
    Pleasant in the blandest sense of the term, writer-director Pavan Moondi’s film likely won’t entice anyone outside die-hard fans of cult-comic co-star Tim Heidecker.
  28. Ethel & Ernest
    Mainwood’s fidelity to Briggs’ illustrative aesthetic is welcome, as it maintains a homey, appropriately somewhat retro air redolent of pencil sketches and pastels. Hewing to the book’s sparse text is a little less ideal.
  29. The Thousand Faces of Dunjia
    Bloated with visual effects, martial artists combat and amorous shenanigans, the one thing missing in The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is a comedic touch, which might have made this elaborate blockbuster more appealing.
  30. Father Figures
    Father Figures...is a limply spritzing fountain of unconvincing (and unfunny) tricks out of the how-to-write-a-comedy-hit manual.
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