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. The Force
    The strength, and fascination, of The Force is that the movie isn’t on anyone’s side. It’s cognizant of the brutality and violence that police officers, in our era, have been caught on phone cameras committing. At the same time, it’s not out to demonize the police — it’s out to capture the pressures they’re under, and to show us what their job looks like from the inside.
  2. Message from the King
    It’s a dark and all-around unpleasant journey to take.
  3. It's Not Yet Dark
    Not a film for cynics, It’s Not Yet Dark at times risks overplaying its heart-on-sleeve emotions, as Fitzmaurice also hazards in his writing. But both subject and execution here summon the skill, as well as sincerity, required to overcome skepticism.
  4. Columbus
    The hypnotically paced drama carried by the serendipitous odd-couple pairing of John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson is lovely and tender, marking Kogonada as an auteur to watch.
  5. Women Who Kill
    A shaggy, banter-driven quasi-thriller in the mode of “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (or the “Thin Man” movies, for that matter), Women Who Kill offers a drolly amusing, lightly macabre variation on the standard lesbian romantic comedy.
  6. It Stains the Sands Red
    Watchable if never really scary or funny enough to leave a memorable impression.
  7. The Emoji Movie
    There have been worse ideas, but in this case the execution isn’t good enough to bring the notion of an emoji movie to funky, surprising life.
  8. First Kill
    Frankly, if forced to bet between John McClane and Anakin Skywalker, I’d take the “Die Hard” tough guy every time, but that’s just the underdog factor Miller is going for, staging a reasonably entertaining series of off-road chases and backwoods shootouts en route to that final confrontation.
  9. Santoalla
    While Santoalla is a small story, its poignancy resonates, like an echo finding its way through the peaks and valleys of this windswept, eternal landscape.
  10. Thunderstruck
    A by-the-playbook, family-friendly basketball comedy that never strays outside the paint, Thunderstruck likely won’t score much coin during its limited theatrical runs. Still, this lightly amusing confection — a Warner Premiere presentation that all too obviously resembles a typical made-for-homevid product — could rebound during playoffs in smallscreen platforms.
  11. Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk
    Corbett Redford’s film channels and sustains the energy of restless youth while communicating the distinctive qualities of a community that carried collectivist 1960s ideals into a new generation, even as it rejected any vestige of their hippie parents’ music.
  12. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    Although its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, Catherine Bainbridge’s Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World earns respect as much for its achievement as its ambition.
  13. A Family Man
    Sparing no maudlin contrivance in a quest to jerk tears that remain stubbornly dry, this hokum is slickly executed by producer Mark Williams in his feature directorial debut. But the result never rises above polished plastic, formulaic, and pedestrian.
  14. Logan Lucky
    Logan Lucky is Soderbergh in mid-season form, and there should be a solid summer niche for a movie that’s this much ripsnorting fun.
  15. Detroit
    Bigelow, working from a script by her regular collaborator Mark Boal (it’s their first film since “Zero Dark Thirty”), has created a turbulent, live-wire panorama of race in America that feels like it’s all unfolding in the moment, and that’s its power. We’re not watching tidy, well-meaning lessons — we’re watching people driven, by an impossible situation, to act out who they really are.
  16. The Midwife
    What do you call a movie about a midlife non-crisis? How about tame, competent, mildly touching, and a little dull — except for Catherine Deneuve's fearless turn as a boozing, ailing wreck.
  17. Killing Ground
    Tasmania-born Damien Power’s impressive first feature, Killing Ground, transcends the cliches even as the film uses plenty of familiar tropes, laying down a solid hour of effective buildup to a duly hair-raising, prolonged climax.
  18. The Girl Without Hands
    Each shimmering frame is composed of multiple layers of diverse drawing and painting techniques and washes of color combined with 2D computer animation.
  19. Amnesia
    There are a lot of compelling ideas afloat in “Amnesia” that never fully congeal, but the undeniable sincerity and personal commitment of Schroeder’s vision help to carry the film over its rough patches.
  20. The 4th
    This pileup of frustrations is variably funny, often just mildly so, but rooting value is slight since floppy-haired Jamie is such a passive figure, one defined by little more than his constant cell-phone rambling and general brospeak.
  21. The Gracefield Incident
    There are some unintentional laughs to be had from this hectic, silly, defiantly un-scary mashup of stock “cabin in the woods” and alien-invasion formulae. But that dubious plus won’t be enough to soften the scorn of horror fans who plunk down hard cash for this feeble, somewhat amateurish if enthusiastic retread.
  22. Our Beloved Month of August
    A tantalizing mix of documentary, fiction and everything in between (including music video), Miguel Gomes’ 150-minute love song to rural Portugal, Our Beloved Month of August, scores viscerally as well as intellectually.
  23. Dunkirk
    This is what audiences want from a Nolan movie, of course, as a master of the fantastic leaves his mark on historical events for the first time.
  24. 68 Kill
    Haaga and crew aren’t aiming for realism (let alone plausibility) in their raw-luck tall tale, but they straddle cartoonishness and cruelty evenly enough that what some will find hilarious may strike others as just gratuitously mean-spirited.
  25. Escapes
    A unique, breezy pastiche that’s as nostalgic as a TV Land binge-watch, and as intimate as having one’s ear pleasurably bent by a garrulous “man of the world” at a dinner party.
  26. Lemon
    Lemon is a comedy of miserablism that keeps poking you in the ribs — and, quite often, fails to hit the rib it’s aiming for. Yet it’s a watchable curio, because beneath it all the director, the Panamanian-born Janicza Bravo, has a more conventional sensibility than she lets on.
  27. Blind
    The result is a watchable, albeit unsatisfying, vehicle for two stars who’ve now made a pair of movies together in which their skills constitute the main attraction, yet who aren’t particularly well-served by either film.
  28. Misfortune
    Misfortune is what it is, a small-budget neo-noir so generic that one half-expects to see a bar code rather than closing credits at the end.
  29. Wish Upon
    By any normal standards, teen horror flick Wish Upon is a pretty bad movie. But its badness is of such a distinct and kooky character that it can’t help but exert an inadvertent charm.
  30. Girls Trip
    The movie’s equal-opportunity irreverence makes for a welcome addition to the bachelor-party genre, so often aimed at the frat-boy crowds.
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