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. My Golden Days
    Desplechin perfectly times the moment when drollery ends and anguish begins, and it’s that sense of vulnerability that lends the film an unexpected emotional force as it moves toward its return-home epilogue.
  2. Our Little Sister
    Koreeda’s sensitive yet lucid helming keeps the performances precise yet natural.
  3. The Sea of Trees
    This risibly long-winded drama is perhaps above all a profound cultural insult, milking the lush green scenery of Japan’s famous Aokigahara forest for all it’s worth, while giving co-lead Ken Watanabe little to do other than moan in agony, mutter cryptically, and generally try to act as though McConaughey’s every word isn’t boring him (pardon the expression) to death.
  4. Sicario
    The opening of Sicario unfolds at such an anxiety-inducing pitch that it seems impossible for Villeneuve to sustain it, let alone build on it, but somehow he manages to do just that. He’s a master of the kind of creeping tension that coils around the audience like a snake suffocating its prey.
  5. Youth
    Paolo Sorrentino, with Youth, delivers his most tender film to date, an emotionally rich contemplation of life’s wisdom gained, lost and remembered — with cynicism harping from the sidelines, but as a wearied chord rather than a major motif.
  6. Dheepan
    What keeps Dheepan engaging throughout is the tremendous charisma of the performers.
  7. The Little Prince
    A respectful, lovingly reimagined take on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic 1943 tale, which adds all manner of narrative bells and whistles to the author’s slender, lyrical story of friendship between a pilot and a mysterious extraterrestrial voyager, but stays true to its timeless depiction of childhood wonderment at odds with grown-up disillusionment.
  8. One Floor Below
    Like a pot set to bubble only every few seconds, the drama is tightly measured to ensure a controlled level of tension that remains discreetly constant, nicely melding with Muntean’s skilled construction of three-dimensional bourgeois life.
  9. A Perfect Day
    By the end, thanks to Leon de Aranoa’s steady direction and the actors’ slow-building character work, “A Perfect Day” manages to coalesce into a reasonably tough-minded, compassionate vision of the difficulties and rewards of trying to do the right thing in an intractable situation, though the film has to overcome more than a few flat, indolent stretches to get there.
  10. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    [Portman's] drearily empathetic film lacks whatever universality has made “Tale” such an international phenomenon.
  11. Cooties
    Amusing as the Cooties script manages to be, one gets the distinct impression that its authors didn’t bother to visit a school at any point in the research or writing process, missing out on any number of jokes they could have made at public education’s expense.
  12. Love
    Given the escalating ambition of Noe’s oeuvre and the pornographic promo materials teased in advance of the pic’s Cannes premiere, who would have thought that Love would ultimately prove to be Noe’s tamest film?
  13. Uncertain Terms
    Silver offers up a generally assured and compelling film here.
  14. Disorder
    Winocour hurtles into a violent, heart-in-mouth third act rife with look-behind-you peril. It’s a silly but robustly effective escalation of the latent suspense already conjured in the impressive, snakily extended party sequence.
  15. Louder Than Bombs
    Strangely, Louder Than Bombs manages to be glaringly obvious and admirably subtle in the same breath.
  16. In the Shadow of Women
    A tightly focused romantic drama that exudes the narrative terseness of a good short story and the lucid craftsmanship of a filmmaker in full command of the medium.
  17. Green Room
    Characterization and emotional investment, however, are in disappointingly short supply, while crucial tension is permitted to dissipate in an anti-climactic final third.
  18. Cemetery of Splendor
    While Cemetery of Splendor is unabashedly a work of slow cinema, the oft-hurled pejorative of “difficult” seems a particularly poor fit for a film whose unforced lyricism could scarcely be more graceful or inviting.
  19. Time Lapse
    A first feature for helmer Bradley King and co-scenarist BP Cooper (though the latter has produced several indies), Time Lapse works due to both their escalating pileup of well-thought-out complications and credible character psychologies nicely communicated by expert performances.
  20. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
    Six just wants to shock, though his imagination is so primitive that the effort is strained and a bit pathetic. Initially abrasive, the whole enterprise grows simply tedious well before the now-epically-scaled titular phenom is unveiled in the prison yard.
  21. Poltergeist
    Less a steadily escalating thriller than a guided tour through a county-fair-style haunted house, Poltergeist offers some quality jump scares, and Kenan has a knack for staging solid individual setpieces. But he proves weirdly incapable of modulation or mood setting here.
  22. Tale of Tales
    Taken together, the parables serve primarily to entertain — an effect that has as much to do with Garrone’s command of the cinematic language as it does the content itself.
  23. Carol
    Even high expectations don’t quite prepare you for the startling impact of Carol, an exquisitely drawn, deeply felt love story that teases out every shadow and nuance of its characters’ inner lives with supreme intelligence, breathtaking poise and filmmaking craft of the most sophisticated yet accessible order.
  24. Irrational Man
    Allen’s visual direction and editing rhythms are particularly sharp and precise this time around, as is his work with the actors.
  25. Love at First Fight
    Though the slow-boil chemistry is there, the script feels flat, content to rely on the surface friction between its lead actors, rather than creating scenes in which we can really get to know the pair’s respective personalities before testing their limits in the field.
  26. Inside Out
    In execution, Pixar’s 15th feature proves to be the greatest idea the toon studio has ever had: a stunningly original concept that will not only delight and entertain the company’s massive worldwide audience, but also promises to forever change the way people think about the way people think, delivering creative fireworks grounded by a wonderfully relatable family story.
  27. It's Such a Beautiful Day
    Had James Thurber worked in animation, the waggish result might look and sound a bit like It’s Such a Beautiful Day, indie cartoonist Don Hertzfeldt’s alternately poignant and absurdist triptych.
  28. Tomorrowland
    The glaring failure of Tomorrowland is that its central premise — children are the future — is almost completely negated by the preachiness of the execution and the clumsiness of the storytelling.
  29. Amy
    Hardly innovative in form, but boasting the same depth of feeling and breadth of archival material that made Kapadia’s “Senna” so rewarding, this lengthy but immersive portrait will hit hard with viewers who regard Winehouse among the great lost voices not just of a generation, but of an entire musical genre.
  30. I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
    As endless processions of friends and colleagues attest to Spinney’s genius, and the filmmakers wallow in never-before-seen behind-the-scenes imagery, they fail to fully capture the actual art of puppeteering, with woefully few substantial excerpts from the show itself.
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