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. Kaili Blues
    Led by performances imbued with barely concealed sorrow, regret and longing to come to terms with that which has been lost, Kaili Blues affords a view of people, and a nation, caught in between a haunting yesterday and — as implied by the film’s conclusion — a hopeful tomorrow.
  2. Almost Holy
    Hoover’s style seems equally fit for a bleak documentary, suspenseful thriller, black comedy, dystopian sci-fi nightmare and grisly horror film.
  3. The Nice Guys
    The Nice Guys is an ultra-violent burlesque, the sort of cheerfully hostile buddy bash that’s been a staple since the ’80s, only this one is singularly clever about its own triviality, and it offers the scruffy pleasure of seeing two great actors dial down their gravitas with style.
  4. The BFG
    No matter how fantastical the tale (and it gets pretty out-there at points), this splendid Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation makes it possible for audiences of all ages to wrap their heads around one of the unlikeliest friendships in cinema history, resulting in the sort of instant family classic “human beans” once relied upon Disney to deliver.
  5. Divine Access
    None of Jack’s relationships are handled with enough conviction to make them stick, and that carries over to a religious message that’s squishy in the extreme. “Agreeable” is a good quality, but it should never be the best quality a film possesses.
  6. Under the Gun
    It’s not necessarily artful, but it’s also never less than compelling. If anything, Soechtig has only refined her skills at packaging a slick, audience-friendly documentary with a subject that feels even more urgent.
  7. Search Party
    As it stands, there are only enough comic ideas here, most of them bad ones, to reach 82 minutes; the other 11 are taken up by a postscript scene, a blooper, and closing credits that move, in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, as slow as molasses in January.
  8. Money Monster
    As an indictment of Wall Street chicanery, it’s largely toothless; as a pure thriller, it only quickens the pulse once or twice; as a conspiracy saga, its central mystery falls flat. Yet somehow the film hangs together surprisingly well.
  9. The Innocents
    Hope and horror are commingled to quietly moving effect in Agnus Dei, a restrained but cumulatively powerful French-Polish drama about the various crises of faith that emerge when a house of God is ravaged by war.
  10. Café Society
    The movie, watchable as it is, never quite overcomes the sense that it’s a lavish diagram working hard to come off as a real movie.
  11. Alice Through the Looking Glass
    The problem with “Alice” is its lack of narrative imagination.
  12. X-Men: Apocalypse
    Although the X-Men ensembles are usually large, there are simply too many characters for the action-heavy “Apocalypse” to properly juggle.
  13. Tickled
    An alarming cautionary tale about how easy it is in the Internet age to ruin people’s lives while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, the pic boasts a humorously titillating entry hook that soon gives way to engrossing conspiracy-thriller-like content.
  14. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    Tempering the strong medicine of its social-justice protestations with a streak of outlandish melodrama, this “Monster” may not have quite as many facets as its title implies, but Pla’s formally deft manipulation of perspective keeps the pic both urgent and even-handed.
  15. The Angry Birds Movie
    A fast, fizzy and frenetically entertaining extension of the manic gaming franchise.
  16. Bridgend
    Even when the director pushes too far...the film’s formal severity feels appropriately claustrophobic — another form of authority closing in on the light.
  17. Mad Tiger
    This aptly colorful documentary doesn’t provide all that much insight into the act’s history, and the human conflicts aren’t fully illuminated, either. But it’s fun entering these performers’ universe even with a less than all-access pass.
  18. Viva
    Viva appealingly makes up for a coy approach with gutsy, grabby follow-through on the high notes.
  19. Our Kind of Traitor
    The shattering of one’s noble ideals is a delicate thing to capture on film, and White plays the moment of rupture with a banality that threatens to undermine our faith in her as storyteller more than in the system itself.
  20. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
    The film has a knowingly conflicted engagement with millennial-generation feminism that freshens its outlook even as it unevenly rejigs many of its predecessor’s gags. Still, while a subtly clawed Chloë Grace Moretz proves a worthy new foil, it’s Zac Efron’s tragicomic anatomy of a dudebro that remains this series’ sharpest asset.
  21. Being Charlie
    Being Charlie is far from a home run, but it’s the kind of solidly struck single after a string of strikeouts that can be just the thing to help set a veteran back on track.
  22. Sin Alas
    A sensual, brainy, immersive experience that could invite plenty of festival love and attention for its first-time writer-director.
  23. The Take
    It’s Watkins’ lean, keen instinct for choreographing and cutting action set pieces that keeps Bastille Day afloat.
  24. Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands
    Students of the astonishing body of films won’t find much that enhances their understanding, yet Thomsen’s footage offers more than mere scraps from a great career, and deserves inclusion in the corpus.
  25. Papa: Hemingway in Cuba
    Disappointingly plodding and ham-fistedly obvious in its attempts to offer an up-close and personal portrait of a mood-swinging, self-loathing 59-year-old Ernest Hemingway.
  26. A Beautiful Planet
    Short of putting Emmanuel Lubezki through astronaut training, it’s difficult to imagine more rapturously beautiful images of the Earth from orbit than those supplied by A Beautiful Planet, the latest collaboration between Imax and NASA.
  27. Ratchet & Clank
    Whether or not they’re familiar with the source property, kids are unlikely to be bothered: There’s just enough blaring sound and color to this knowingly silly tale of interplanetary derring-do to adequately offset its impersonal corporate sheen.
  28. Mother's Day
    Atrociously written, begrudgingly acted, haphazardly assembled and never more backward than when it thinks it’s being progressive.
  29. L'Attesa (The Wait)
    Benefiting enormously from its evocative Sicilian setting, this widescreen experience makes bewitching use of space, time and sound, creating an almost meditative atmosphere in which patient-minded auds might respond to its themes.
  30. Special Correspondents
    Gervais’ tale is primarily consumed with middle-of-the-road squabbling between its headliners, whose yin-yang chemistry never results in more than a few chuckle-worthy bon mots.
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