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. Diablo
    On the surface, Diablo would seem to have all of the proper ingredients for a rollicking retro Western, yet its sights are set a bit higher, which inspires both admiration for its moxie and disappointment that its script and direction aren’t up to the challenge.
  2. Intruders
    Less than a home run, then, Intruders is still an efficiently engineered suspenser, with solid performances and a tight pace.
  3. Solace
    Brazilian director Afonso Poyart (“Two Rabbits”) proves quite effective at building and sustaining a grim sense of suspense throughout.
  4. The Abandoned
    Despite the capable presence of Jason Patric in a thanklessly one-note role, this generic chiller clings so tightly to conventions that it fails to even moderately raise one’s pulse
  5. The Forest
    First-time director Jason Zada does generate an intermittently spooky sense of mystery that not even the muddled scripting can fully demolish.
  6. Embrace of the Serpent
    The film would nonetheless benefit from occasional tightening, its digressions and longueurs occasionally moving beyond the lyrical and into the belabored. Nevertheless, as a vision of the past, “Embrace of the Serpent” offers a stately, striking panorama and an entirely persuasive one.
  7. Other People's Children
    Ultimately there’s an intriguing arc here that rewards patience.
  8. Devil and Angel
    The leads’ chemistry is obvious, even when they’re at each other’s throats.
  9. Chevalier
    That Tsangari resists escalating the conflict, counting on subtle political insinuations to emerge as these perplexing social Olympics wear on, will leave as many viewers enervated as amused, but it’s an expertly executed tease.
  10. No Home Movie
    In its own highbrow way, the formally demanding and impossibly intimate video essay serves as an elegy to that sense of home that disappeared with the woman who, as far as the film is concerned, seems forever confined to her own bourgeois apartment.
  11. Martyrs (2008)
    French splatterfest Martyrs offers a few genuine scares early on, but they're quickly washed away by all the blood tossed around by writer-director Pascal Laugier.
  12. Yosemite
    Resolutely unshowy, sometimes almost too lower-case in its observations, Yosemite pays off in an authenticity that pervades both individual scene rhythms and performances.
  13. Daddy's Home
    Daddy’s Home isn’t so much a lump of coal as an empty box.
  14. Mojin: The Lost Legend
    Though the film lacks the spooky, macabre spirit expected of this subterranean subgenre, Mongolian-Chinese helmer Wuershan (“Painted Skin II: The Resurrection”) applies his outlandish visual panache to evoke an underground world of ethnic antiquity refreshingly distinct from traditional Han-Chinese culture.
  15. The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
    With its sultry two-tone, blue-and-bronze design, Sfar’s version certainly looks stunning, but it’s remarkably empty-headed.
  16. Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story
    The documentary adroitly sustains interest with a standard-issue mix of archival material, interviews with intimates and admirers, actors’ voiceovers and dramatic re-creations.
  17. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
    A mostly harmless yet plenty rough assemblage of musical numbers and rote chases that barely add up to a movie.
  18. The Creation of Meaning
    Throughout the film, the beauty of the landscapes and the totally natural insertion of human, animal and insect movement within the frame lend The Creation of Meaning a particular grace.
  19. The Winding Stream
    The Winding Stream is cogent and compelling as a pop-culture history lesson, and genuinely uplifting while it shows how contemporary artists — along with descendants like Rosanne and John Carter Cash — keep the legacy of A.P., Mother Maybelle, June and Johnny alive and thriving.
  20. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    The reassuring familiarity of Abrams’ approach has its limitations: Marvelous as it is to catch up with Han Solo, Leia and the rest of the gang, fan service takes priority here over a somewhat thin, derivative story that, despite the presence of two appealing new stars, doesn’t exactly fire the imagination anew.
  21. The Hateful Eight
    The movie absolutely delivers on the sheer moment-to-moment pleasures fans have come to expect, from dynamite dialogue to powder-keg confrontations.
  22. The Wave
    The Wave sticks mostly to the big-studio formula (albeit on a much smaller budget), introducing a handful of bland soon-to-be-victims before bombarding them with spectacular digital effects.
  23. The Ridiculous 6
    The scenery ain’t bad but the laughs are tumbleweed-sparse in The Ridiculous 6, a Western sendup so lazy and aimless, it barely qualifies as parody.
  24. Stinking Heaven
    Whether scenes tilt toward very mordant farce or gut-stabbing trauma, there’s a compelling sense — crafted or otherwise — that the actors are driving the tone from scene to scene, with Silver and his incisive editor Stephen Gurewitz determining the emotional transitions between them.
  25. Body
    The polished, bland low-budget presentation doesn’t raise much tension, and the script springs no real surprises
  26. Sisters
    Beneath the film’s entertainingly crude hijinks, there are actual human stakes here, as the two sisters recognize in each other the growing up they themselves need to do — though Pell’s script keeps the hugging and learning to a reasonable minimum.
  27. Sunday Ball
    Stunningly shot and marvelously edited to capture the rhythms of the game, the pic transcends its subject much in the way Roger Angell’s essays on baseball offer rare pleasures even to those uninterested in the game.
  28. Christmas Eve
    Christmas Eve isn’t likely to make anyone feel exceptionally merry. Still, it remains modestly diverting from scene to scene.
  29. The Fencer
    This well-acted, smoothly crafted drama tells a story of cross-generational bonding in the face of historical oppression, in touching if unsurprising fashion.
  30. The Club
    Those willing to enter The Club will discover an original and brilliantly acted chamber drama in which Larrain’s fiercely political voice comes through as loud and clear as ever.
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