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. Sing Street
    The truest and most tearduct-tugging relationship here is that between Conor and his lank-haired college-dropout brother, played with spaced-out warmth and wistful good humor by the ever-likeable Reynor.
  2. Other People
    While Chris Kelly’s semi-autobiographical writing-directing debut gets off to a painfully broad start, it does intermittently find its footing as it progresses, gathering enough well-observed moments and details to counterbalance its otherwise flailing stabs at humor and pathos.
  3. Operation Avalanche
    Operation Avalanche demonstrates that there’s still plenty of room left within the found-footage format to craft fresh, high-concept projects, regardless of the fact that no one’s falling for their alleged authenticity any longer.
  4. Newtown
    Structured more like a requiem than a polemic, the doc ebbs and flows in accordance with the cycles of mourning as it speaks with parents of the murdered children, as well as the teachers, priests, doctors and neighbors afflicted with survivor’s guilt, elegantly and devastatingly capturing the tenor of a small town that will carry these scars for at least a generation.
  5. Morris from America
    This coming-of-age dramedy explores how the challenges of being young, black and misunderstood can be compounded in a foreign environment, but goes about it in a grounded, character-driven way that never smacks of manipulation or special pleading.
  6. Love & Friendship
    [Stillman] takes the inherent sophistication of Austen’s worldview and introduces just the right note of sly, self-deflating mockery.
  7. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
    The virtual future may be now, but “Lo and Behold,” with its stimulating volley of insights and ideas, always feels persistently, defiantly human.
  8. Little Men
    Ira Sachs’ Little Men is a little movie brimming with little truths about modern life. It won’t change the world, but it does understand it
  9. Kate Plays Christine
    Greene encourages our curiosity (and even a hint of caution) about documentary perspectives and techniques that other films prefer viewers to take as given.
  10. Joshy
    Joshy offers a strange mix of elements that never quite add up.
  11. The Intervention
    Actress Clea DuVall’s debut feature as writer-director is an ensemble piece that breaks no new ground in themes or execution, but is pleasingly accomplished on all levels.
  12. The Hollars
    Krasinki’s film remains resolutely resistant to surprise in style or story terms.
  13. The Fundamentals of Caring
    Solid performances and some genuinely sharp humor elevate writer-director Rob Burnett’s second feature.
  14. The Free World
    [A] well-meaning, well-acted but otherwise clumsily executed parable about second chances.
  15. Jane Got a Gun
    A solidly made and conventionally satisfying Western.
  16. The Fits
    Even at its conclusion, Holmer’s film refuses to provide easy answers regarding its meaning, instead using poised formal techniques to impart that which is not spoken — and, in the process, portends impressive things to come from its confident, capable director.
  17. Equity
    While the severity of the film’s environment convinces, the specifics of Amy Fox’s screenplay — tangled up in tech IPOs, post-Snowden security paranoia and venal investment banking practice — are less consistently persuasive.
  18. Ip Man 3
    Less offensively nationalistic than the second installment but falling short of the glowing humanity, genial Cantonese humor and visual flair of the first, the pic is somewhat tarnished by its pedestrian plot and limp characterization.
  19. Fifty Shades of Black
    At a minimum, a parody should be funnier than the film it’s sending up, but Fifty Shades of Black, a quick-and-dirty riff on last year’s S&M romance “Fifty Shades of Grey,” falls a laugh or two short of even that low standard.
  20. Eddie the Eagle
    The pic gets quite a lot of mileage out of several note-perfect musical choices...and Fletcher includes just enough odd angles and quirky compositions to suggest a slightly stranger, loopier vision for this film lurking somewhere beneath.
  21. Jim: The James Foley Story
    Oakes’ film may not share its subject’s hard-headed journalistic drive, but as an articulation of grief — directed by a childhood friend, with significant participation from the Foley family — it’s undeniably moving.
  22. Mekong Hotel (2012)
    The pic plays like a bonus track to the Thai auteur’s Palme d’Or winner, “Uncle Boomee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” its esoteric symbiosis of Thai folk culture, spiritualism and current sociopolitical conditions simplified, but no less mystifying.
  23. Dad's Army
    Amiable to a fault, with gags both broad and gentle, Oliver Parker’s pic prompts sporadic chuckles rather than guffaws.
  24. Indignation
    This may be Schamus’ directorial debut, but he’s no amateur, and his experience — both in cinema and in life — comes through onscreen.
  25. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
    For the most part, pic’s sheer good-naturedness pulls off a not particularly inspired crusty-old-coot-thawed-by-young-scamp concept, maintaining an agreeable tonal balance despite occasional wobbles between spoof, sentimentality and silliness.
  26. Goat
    To pretend that the pledges (who voluntarily submit to such harassment) are somehow the victims in an institution of exclusion, objectification and underage substance abuse goes far beyond disingenuous, and the resulting film falls far short of actually surprising those who already know a thing or two about fraternities.
  27. Eisenstein in Guanajuato
    Greenaway has wrought an outrageously unconventional and deliriously profane biopic that could take decades to be duly appreciated.
  28. Dark Night
    With a title easily confused for Christopher Nolan’s 2012 Batman sequel...Tim Sutton’s Dark Night is at once a glib play on words and a sobering rumination on the mindset of a suburban America simultaneously obsessed with and plagued by gun violence.
  29. Complete Unknown
    Luxuriously conversational in structure, it would make an outstanding stage play, and the two stars play it with chamber-piece rigor.
  30. Nina Forever
    Eccentric as this premise is, the Blaines’ screenplay trails behind their confident direction in terms of ringing interesting variations on a limited, somewhat repetitious theme.
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