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. Love, Rosie
    As appealingly humanized by Collins and Claflin, Rosie and Alex are sufficiently flawed, three-dimensional beings for their continued attachment to each other to convince.
  2. The Duke of Burgundy
    An act of cinephilic homage that transcends pastiche to become its own uniquely sensuous cinematic object, Strickland’s densely layered, slyly funny portrayal of the sadomasochistic affair between two lesbian entomologists tips its hats to such masters of costumed erotica as Jess Franco, Tinto Brass and Jean Rollin, without ever cheapening its strange but affecting love story.
  3. ABCs of Death 2
    Far too many of the shorts prove instantly forgettable.
  4. Private Violence
    The obstacles against effectively protecting battered women and prosecuting their abusers are vividly illustrated in Private Violence.
  5. The Golden Era
    Seemingly caught between a daring impressionistic approach and a pedantic recital of dates and locations, this three-hour endurance test is marked by sincere adoration of its subject.
  6. The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga
    Oreck spins a mesmerizing web that appropriates a wealth of disparate Eastern European images — of mushrooms, farmers, falling trees and war-destroyed buildings — to illustrate its lyrical discourse.
  7. John Wick
    If you can stomach the setup, then the rest is pure revenge-movie gold, as Reeves reminds what a compelling action star he can be, while the guy who served as his stunt double in “The Matrix” makes a remarkably satisfying directorial debut, delivering a clean, efficient and incredibly assured thriller.
  8. The Best of Me
    This tale of two former lovers reuniting after a 21-year separation also functions as a study of two terrific actors struggling to overcome the relentless mediocrity of their material.
  9. Housebound
    Separating Housebound from most films of its type is super-smart plotting and confident tonal control, as Johnstone’s screenplay throws one terrific curve ball after another and never allows its goofy humor to compromise its genuinely scary components.
  10. The Book of Life
    The Book of Life is undoubtedly stuffed with more business than its fleet, kid-friendly running time can properly handle. Yet Gutierrez’s confident delivery of the material remains so buoyant and passionately felt throughout that he almost gets away with it.
  11. Citizenfour
    Adapting the cold language of data encryption to recount a dramatic saga of abuse of power and justified paranoia, Poitras brilliantly demonstrates that information is a weapon that cuts both ways.
  12. Addicted
    The sudsy quality of the production ensures all the performers look terrific, but aren’t given particularly impressive material to work with.
  13. Fury
    Though colorfully embellished with authentic detail and logistically complex to bring to the screen, Ayer’s script is bland at the most basic story level, undermined by cardboard characterizations and a stirring yet transparently silly climactic showdown.
  14. Life Partners
    The movie belongs to thesps Jacobs and Meester. Jacobs fully inhabits her less-than-completely-sympathetic role with warmth and just the right touch of unconscious entitlement, while Meester luminously expands the film’s affective core.
  15. You're Not You
    While the film’s last two acts begin to deepen its characters in generally satisfying ways, You’re Not You throws down its initial gauntlet with an off-putting lack of subtlety.
  16. Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead
    High-spirited but hobbled by lame dialogue and sheer overkill, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead marks an instance where too much of a good thing means it just isn’t good anymore.
  17. Watchers of the Sky
    An impressive and artful cinematic thesis of palpable substance.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Innocents
    Catches an eerie, spine-chilling mood right at the start and never lets up on its grim, evil theme. Director Jack Clayton makes full use of camera angles, sharp cutting, shadows, ghost effects and a sinister soundtrack.
  19. Open Windows
    A fiendishly inventive thriller built around an audacious if unsustainable gimmick, Open Windows elevates Hitchcockian suspense to jittery new levels of mayhem and paranoia.
  20. The Supreme Price
    With beauty, brains and dignity to burn, Hafsat Abiola inherits her mother’s mantle and offers riveting insight into the contradictions of a dynasty of reformist aristocracy.
  21. Diplomacy
    To be sure, we are in that authorial fantasy by which historical figures become shrewder, sharper and wittier than they surely were in life — the domain of Peter Morgan and Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” But when the actors and the dialogue are this good, one scarcely objects.
  22. Inherent Vice
    Anderson’s seventh feature film is a groovy, richly funny stoner romp that has less in common with “The Big Lebowski” than with the strain of fatalistic, ’70s-era California noirs (“Chinatown,” “The Long Goodbye,” “Night Moves”) in which the question of “whodunit?” inevitably leads to an existential vanishing point.
  23. Inner Demons
    The goofiness is redeemed somewhat by a wickedly violent climax — the exclamation point at the end of a rather simple sentence.
  24. Last Hijack
    Hulsing’s illustrations suggest a depth to pirate Mohamed Nura that remains hidden in the flesh.
  25. Annabelle
    When it comes to Annabelle’s five or six big stinger moments, Leonetti manages to deliver the jolts, and if audiences are sure to head home complaining about how dumb and predictable it all was, many may also find themselves nursing their significant others’ lightly bruised forearms.
  26. Drive Hard
    The fact that the film isn’t quite boring is about the most one can say for it.
  27. The Hero of Color City
    Cheerfully exhorting imagination, creativity and bravery in children while demonstrating none of those virtues itself, The Hero of Color City proves to be a dispiritingly colorless feature-length babysitter.
  28. For Those in Peril
    Wright’s strongest achievement here is an evocative depiction of place, where young teens flee from adult supervision and danger lies in wait. And while the story may feel claustrophobic, the visuals are free-flowing.
  29. The Pact 2
    The Pact 2 simply stretches out rather than elaborating on its predecessor’s already thin premise, creating holes that are poorly patched over with false scares and unconvincing character behavior.
  30. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
    A passable, tolerable, not unbearable, totally inoffensive adaptation of Judith Viorst’s beloved 1972 children’s book.
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