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. A Beginner's Guide to Snuff
    The problem is that this watchable indie isn’t all that funny, clever or surprising despite its outré premise.
  2. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press
    What the film offers is evidence of a pattern, the shadows of a disturbing trend that add up to a warning: If we, as a society, don’t push back against the chipping away of the freedom of information, it’s only going to get worse, until it eats us alive.
  3. Person to Person
    Mildly amusing, a tad amateurish in some aspects, this little ensemble piece about funny little people is ultimately just too damn little.
  4. War for the Planet of the Apes
    It’s fitting that the visual effects have advanced so dramatically since 2011, as it allows the series to suggest that its ape protagonists have evolved to an equivalent degree, and yet, “War’s” story is beneath their intelligence.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story
    “Can’t Stop” is essentially a post-reality-TV documentary: It’s got quick-cut pacing, dozens of talking heads, flashbacks in the form of vintage footage and visits to old neighborhoods, and most of all, the snowballing drama inherent in working toward a looming, difficult goal.
  6. In Transit
    Sampling snippets and snatches of lives and conversations, Maysles and his fellow filmmakers undertake a folk odyssey through northern landscapes that proves a fitting farewell to an American ethnographer.
  7. Some Freaks
    All the performances are very nicely turned in a movie that deliberately excludes any significant adult presence in order to immerse us fully in an adolescent world.
  8. Bill Nye: Science Guy
    Bill Nye: Science Guy is an efficiently thought-provoking study of what it means to be a rational and analytical advocate for science in an age when deniers of evolution and climate-change often seem to have higher profiles, deeper pockets and louder voices. But it’s even more interesting as the story of a beloved celebrity who wants to reinvent himself, to be taken more seriously.
  9. Transformers: The Last Knight
    For the first time, the messy hyperactive form and nihilistic crunched-metal content seem to reinforce each other.
  10. Annabelle: Creation
    Here, Sandberg once again plays with both lighting, composition and suspense, framing shots in such a way that we’re constantly searching the shadows for hints of movement, while drawing out scenes for maximum tension.
  11. Moka
    Watching these two fine actresses circle each other in a kind of watchful alligator’s tango, each waiting for the other to blink first, is the chief pleasure on offer in Moka.
  12. Once Upon a Time in Venice
    What scant charms this direct-to-video-style Nineties throwback has belong mostly to Willis.
  13. 47 Meters Down
    Director Johannes Roberts’ mostly underwater thriller is a compact and sturdily crafted B-movie that generates enough scares and suspense to qualify as — well, maybe not a pleasant surprise, but a reasonably entertaining one.
  14. All Eyez on Me
    Comprehensive but sketchy, richly atmospheric but often under-dramatized, it is not, in the end, a very good movie.... Yet it’s highly worth seeing, because in its volatility and hunger, and the desperation of its violence, it captures something about the space in which Tupac Shakur lived.
  15. Kill Switch
    Had Smit developed his themes as scrupulously as his visual effects, Kill Switch might have been the next “Primer” or “District 9,” but instead it feels like a demo reel for a game that nobody can play.
  16. Despicable Me 3
    Yes, Despicable Me 3 is unwieldy, but it mostly works, as co-directors Pierre Coffin (who also voices the Minions) and Kyle Balda never lose sight of the film’s emotional center, packing the rest with as much humor as they can manage.
  17. Hampstead
    Gleeson and Keaton, for their part, play this bourgeois rags-to-tweed fairytale with such good humor that one is fleetingly able to overlook the frank bogusness of the mechanics that bring them together.
  18. The Book of Henry
    The film’s muted yet still rather flamboyant terribleness derives from the fact that it seems to be juggling three or four borderline schlock genres at once.
  19. Rough Night
    Rough Night, a bachelorette-party-from-hell thriller comedy that’s got some push and some laughs, despite its essentially formulaic nature, is a perfect example of why Hollywood needs (many) more women filmmakers.
  20. Viceroy's House
    Such a sprawling, two-pronged saga may well have been better served in television miniseries format.
  21. Harmonium
    Shot in a meticulous yet unmannered style, the film provides the veteran cast with an ideal framework to mount masterful performances.
  22. The Journey
    The Journey, thanks to its buddy-movie structure, is destined to feel a little corny, but the movie gets at something real. It’s a celebration, by two splendid actors, of the art of political theater.
  23. Cars 3
    Cars 3 is a friendly, rollicking movie made with warmth and dash, and to the extent that it taps our primal affection for this series, it more than gets the job done.
  24. Strange Weather
    There’s no free-at-last rain dance for Darcy, but just about every other lyrical cliche appears on cue.
  25. Letters from Baghdad
    The bottom line is that Oelbaum and Krayenbühl have fleshed out a complex, fascinating figure.
  26. Camera Obscura
    “Camera” scores more points for an intriguing premise than for its execution, which grows more muddled conceptually as the horror elements grow more prominent. Still, this is an accomplished effort that holds full attention while you’re watching it, even if it leaves a few too many questions dangling at the end.
  27. Moscow Never Sleeps
    The various story currents move swiftly but don’t run particularly deep, so the film works better as a kind of best-foot-forward overview of modern urban Russia — “Moscow, I Love You” — than it does as a multi-stranded human drama.
  28. Middle Man
    Crowley’s thinly conceived debut feature only has one big joke, and everything around it is either long-winded setup or deflating letdown.
  29. The Mummy
    The Mummy is a literal-minded, bumptious monster mash of a movie. It keeps throwing things at you, and the more you learn about the ersatz intricacy of its “universe,” the less compelling it becomes.
  30. My Cousin Rachel
    It’s pure pleasure to watch Weisz as Rachel, who is also an actress of sorts, adapting to suit the needs and desires of whoever she’s seducing. Her manipulations feel more intuitive than conniving and need not be explicitly sexual per se.
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