Variety's Scores

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:
17847 movie reviews
  1. This slick-enough mediocrity will pass the time tolerably for less discriminating genre fans. But it’s a little sad to see Antonio Banderas reduced to a B movie with grade-C material.
  2. For 92 minutes, it more or less succeeds in sawing through your boredom, slicing and dicing with a glum explicitness that raises the occasional tingle of gross-out suspense but no longer carries any kick of true shock value.
  3. This drama about the spiritual awakening of “the world’s most famous atheist’” is predictably simplistic and maudlin in content. But it should satisfy the target demographic with an inspirational family-values message wrapped in a sudsy narrative.
  4. If, in the final analysis, this is an experiment that doesn’t quite gel, it’s still one that will be worth the risk taken for adventurous viewers.
  5. There’s value in examining the myth of Mansfield and its impact, but here poor Jayne herself is lost.
  6. [ Jessica M. Thompson’s ] simply-structured film is harrowingly effective in its streamlined, low-frills way: sensitive without ever being sanctimonious, brutally frank without ever lapsing into exploitation.
  7. No film drama can make us “know” PTSD, but by the end of Thank You for Your Service, you feel as if the agony, and bravery, of our soldiers has become less remote and more tangible. Hall’s filmmaking is crisp, assured, and, at times, quietly audacious.
  8. In any case, it works: Coco’s creators clearly had the perfect ending in mind before they’d nailed down all the other details, and though the movie drags in places, and features a few too many childish gags...the story’s sincere emotional resolution earns the sobs it’s sure to inspire.
  9. The only thing more reliable than bad weather is bad movies, and in that respect, Geostorm is right on forecast.
  10. This riotously endearing comedy is substantially funnier, sharper, and more peculiar than that premise is bound to make it sound.
  11. Tyler Perry hasn’t generally been in the business of sequels, but apart from Joe’s overly salty soul-food patter, this one has a joyless, obligatory, cardboard feeling that marks it as one of Perry’s least satisfying films.
  12. Stylishly decorated and generating all-important sympathy for a character living precariously in two worlds, director Kentaro Hagiwara’s feature debut gets the drama right but is let down by visual effects that are sometimes unconvincing.
  13. Chris Baugh’s accomplished debut feature manages to develop its own distinct flavor while fitting snugly into the general tradition of latter-day U.K. gangster pics, with their rueful humor, colorful characters and realistically nasty violence.
  14. The documentary wisely avoids questioning beliefs, but it does force audiences to question how those responsible for shepherding the faithful use their influence, for good or bad.
  15. There’s a point beyond which it’s difficult to believe anything that happens on screen, and impossible to care what is supposed to be real or not. Unfortunately, the movie continues for a lengthy stretch after that, until it literally trudges into a deep, dark hole.
  16. Jim & Andy is fleetly edited and engrossing, animated by a sense of discovery.
  17. While it’s not saying much, Thor: Ragnarok is easily the best of the three Thor movies — or maybe I just think so because its screenwriters and I finally seem to agree on one thing: The Thor movies are preposterous.
  18. The well-intentioned biopic is ungainly, overtly articulating everything it doesn’t need to yet failing to explain much of what starts out as unclear about the tale.
  19. Billed as a “documentary musical,” this potential crowd-pleaser gets considerable comic mileage out of the friction between two very different brands of cultural eccentricity — but it succeeds as more than a diverting novelty, packed as it is with pointed observations on diplomacy and censorship in a country that’s still a mystery to many.
  20. Mexican-Salvadorean helmer Tatiana Huezo superimposes her subjects’ recollections over lyrical images that complement the emotions conveyed by their voices.
  21. It’s got movement and flow, it’s got a vibrant sunset look of honky-tonk nostalgia, and it’s got a bittersweet mood of lyrical despair that the film stays true to right up until the final note. It’s also strikingly acted.
  22. Even when their bananas premise grows a bit stale, the directors prove at least semi-serious about their material’s rawer emotions, thereby making the film an uncanny character study about an alienated anthropomorphic primate who yearns to be himself.
  23. This open-air thriller is decently crafted by director Lucky McKee (whose prior films have landed closer to horror terrain), and it eventually summons up enough seriocomic neo-noir perversity to comprise a fun, semi-guilt-free ride.
  24. For a long time now, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” has been two movies, and the hypnotic film-geek documentary 78/52 is an ingenious and irreverent master class in both of them.
  25. As admirable as its aims may be, however, M.F.A.’s themes call for a careful, consistent tone that it is rarely able to maintain, and an increasingly ridiculous third act squanders much of the empathy and engagement that Leite works so hard to build in the early going.
  26. It’s a gripping and powerfully emotional portrait of yee-haw heroism, pitting a squad of cocky, calendar-purty white dudes against an adversary with no creed or color, just an unquenchable appetite for destruction.
  27. this compassionate film is as much about its very specific Cambodian setting as it is the characters, with the film’s standout star its neon-pastel location work.
  28. There’s a lot happening on the surface of Alfredson’s perplexing winter wonder-why, but considerably less going on inside.
  29. Happy Death Day is “Groundhog Day” dipped in blood, and if the movie isn’t all that clever, it’s just clever enough to get by.
  30. The Foreigner amounts to an above-average but largely by-the-numbers action movie in which Chan does battle with generic thugs and shadowy political forces.

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