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. Obit
    If, overall, Obit is merely pleasant in a predictable, innocuous way, it’s nonetheless well-crafted and moderately educational.
  2. Amazon Adventure
    Slee’s film boasts such a high level of writing, acting, and overall production polish that youngsters may be fooled into thinking they’re watching a mindless blockbuster, when in fact, they’ve actually been fooled into thinking.
  3. Phoenix Forgotten
    After 40 or so minutes of teasing hints that its makers may have hit upon a fresh approach to found-footage thrillers, “Phoenix Forgotten” indicates the genre may be having its last gasp on life support as the movie devolves into yet another threadbare patchwork of mounting hysteria, faux cinéma vérité, and shaky-cam visual clichés.
  4. Urban Hymn
    Competent if pedestrian Urban Hymn takes a familiar walk down the path of inspirational youth drama.
  5. Love in the Buff
    It’s the narrative non sequiturs and comic vignettes sprinkled throughout that give the freewheeling pic its playful charm.
  6. Love Off the Cuff
    The dialogue is dirtier than ever, and the gags outrageous, and yet, like the two central characters and the seven-year relationship they labor to keep alive, “Love Off the Cuff” shows signs of fatigue.
  7. Wakefield
    Cranston humanizes his sociopathic character, which is essential, considering that Wakefield is essentially a one-man show whose star grows increasingly creepy as his beard fills in and his fingernails lengthen and turn back.
  8. The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
    This portrait of the artist as an old woman is a gentle-hearted gem, as profoundly subtle as it is subtly profound.
  9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    Shot for shot, line and line, it’s an extravagant and witty follow-up, made with the same friendly virtuosic dazzle. Yet this time you can sense just how hard the series’ wizard of a director, James Gunn (now taking off from a script he wrote solo), is working to entertain you. Maybe a little too hard.
  10. Behind the White Glasses
    There was a time when audiences lined up around city blocks to see the movies of Lina Wertmüller. Behind the White Glasses lets you revisit a bit of that passion, without quite nailing what it was.
  11. Let It Fall: L.A. 1982-1992
    There are moments in “Let It Fall” that feel like a significant reframing of the riots, both in terms of what actually happened and in terms of who’s really to blame.
  12. Unforgettable
    It’s tawdry “Sleeping With the Enemy”-style fun while it lasts, boasting a better cast and splashier production values than the next closest Lifetime movie, while being so ridiculous at times that audiences can’t help but talk back to the screen.
  13. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    The movie just about pulses with contemporary resonance.
  14. Sandy Wexler
    While the humor mostly misfires, there’s a certain pleasure to be had simply from spotting the celebrity cameos in Sandy Wexler.
  15. Lucky
    Everything Harry Dean Stanton has done in his career, and his life, has brought him to his moment of triumph in “Lucky,” an unassumingly wonderful little film about nothing in particular and everything that’s important
  16. Fast Five
    The 10-year run of the “Fast and Furious” roadshow isn’t slowing down a bit in Fast Five, by most measures the best of the bunch, combining fresh casting choices, interesting Rio locales and literally smashing bookended action sequences.
  17. Spark: A Space Tail
    It’s hard to imagine that even the least demanding of tykes will ask for a second sampling of this thoroughly second-rate animated feature, which has all the charm, and twice the volume, of a barking dog.
  18. Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back
    Axelrod plays along with her eccentric subject’s insouciant attitude vis à vis his own identity to mostly delightful effect.
  19. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
    Writer-director Jared Moshé’s solidly entertaining period drama...can be enjoyed as both a straight-shooting homage to crotchety sidekicks and shoot-’em-up conventions, and a well-crafted movie about loyalty, betrayal, and redemption.
  20. Finding Oscar
    A standard-issue piece of heart-tugging reportage better suited to small screens than art houses.
  21. Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary
    “Chasing Trane” is a seductive piece of middle-of-the-road documentary filmmaking; it gives you the basics, but beautifully.
  22. Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo
    The film benefits greatly from its ability to review events from the viewpoints of the men on the ground in Houston.
  23. Speech & Debate
    Though energetically shot and blessed with some appealing performances (including winningly strange cameos for theater darlings Lin-Manuel Miranda and Darren Criss), Speech & Debate never manages to make a convincing case for itself.
  24. All These Sleepless Nights
    Taken as a whole, All These Sleepless Nights presents a restless, some-might-say-dynamic portrait of characters who seem to be going absolutely nowhere.
  25. Glory
    The film quietly builds to a feeling of inexorable disaster, guided by terrific performances as well as spot-on editing.
  26. Born in China
    To the extent that Born in China is, by its very existence, a minor act of cross-cultural diplomacy, its most progressive effect is to unveil the majestic diversity of Chinese landscapes.
  27. City of Tiny Lights
    Director Pete Travis’s film is distinguished by some transposition of noir tropes into cultural spaces not traditionally associated with the genre — from the London bar scene to a mosque — that keeps things from feeling too déjà vu.
  28. Heal the Living
    It’s Quillévéré’s soaring visual and sonic acumen (with an assist from composer Alexandre Desplat, here in matchless form) that suffuses a potentially familiar hospital weeper with true grace.
  29. The Fate of the Furious
    The Fate of the Furious is nothing more than pulp done smart, but scene for scene it’s elegant rather than bombastic, and it packs a heady escapist wallop.
  30. Last Men in Aleppo
    May not be the most comprehensively explanatory or analytical film yet made on the war, but it’s the one that provides viewers with the most sensorily vivid and empathetic sense yet of how it feels to live (and die) through the carnage.
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