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. A Million Ways to Die in the West
    Seth MacFarlane has delivered a flaccid all-star farce that’s handsomely dressed up with nowhere to go for most of its padded two-hour running time.
  2. Maleficent
    Uncertain of tone, and bearing visible scarring from what one imagines were multiple rewrites, the film fails to probe the psychology of its subject or set up a satisfying alternate history, but it sure is nice to look at for 97 minutes.
  3. Force Majeure
    Visually stunning even in its most banal moments and emotionally perceptive almost to a fault.
  4. Girlhood
    As in “Water Lilies” and “Tomboy” before this, Sciamma pushes past superficial anthropological study to deliver a vital, nonjudgmental character study.
  5. National Gallery
    The effect of National Gallery is to reinforce the notion that paintings are objects to know and understand.
  6. Party Girl
    [An] accomplished if unexceptional debut feature.
  7. The Blue Room
    While this appropriately brief film unravels its enigma at a tidy clip, it gathers neither enough heat, nor quite enough of a chill, to linger in the bones.
  8. White God
    Not merely a story of interspecies hierarchy, then, White God also puts forward a simple but elegant metaphor for racial and class oppression, as the outcast (or even outcaste) masses, sidelined in favor of the elite few, band together to assert their collective strength.
  9. Grace of Monaco
    Amel’s script is agonizingly airless and contrived
  10. Lost River
    A risible slab of Detroit gothic that marks an altogether inauspicious writing-directing debut for Ryan Gosling.
  11. Bird People
    Where the film goes is both unexpected and necessary, since however grounded and relatable these thinly detailed characters might be, the movie doesn’t actually seem to be going anywhere.
  12. Timbuktu
    In the hands of a master, indignation and tragedy can be rendered with clarity yet subtlety, setting hysteria aside for deeper, more richly shaded tones. Abderrahmane Sissako is just such a master.
  13. Still the Water
    Kawase embraces nature worship and pompous philosophizing in her indulgently mannerist style, which, over the course of two hours, overwhelms a small yet potentially moving story of two teenagers dealing with separation within their families.
  14. The Search
    Intermittently stirring and undeniably well made as it slowly unspools a multi-pronged drama set during the 1999 outbreak of the Second Chechen War, the picture has run-of-the-mill pacing and storytelling lapses that are compounded by its ultimately hectoring, didactic approach.
  15. Jimmy's Hall
    A minor-key but eminently enjoyable work by a master craftsman.
  16. The Homesman
    Unlike other actor-directors, Jones never seems to indulge excess on the part of his cast. Though the characters are strong, the performances are understated.
  17. Clouds of Sils Maria
    Binoche leaves audiences with the same exhilarating feeling here — of having witnessed something precious and rare — answering the challenge of Assayas’ script by revealing a character incredibly closer to her soul.
  18. Saint Laurent
    The upside for Saint Laurent’s admirers is that Bonello’s film reflects more of the designer’s tortured creative drive in its dark onyx surfaces; it’s the slightly deranged auteur portrait that a fellow artist and iconoclast deserves.
  19. Wild Tales
    Szifron does a terrific job of pacing thanks to expert editing (he shares credit with Pablo Barbieri) within each episode and a genuinely subversive sense of humor.
  20. Two Days, One Night
    The Dardennes once again find a richness of human experience that dwarfs most movies made on an epic canvas.
  21. The Captive
    The deftness with which the helmer manipulated time in his earlier pics eludes him in this generic procedural context... leaving us with obfuscation but no genuine sense of mystery.
  22. Maps to the Stars
    “Maps” is the most overtly comedic screenplay Cronenberg has ever directed, but he hasn’t tailored his lensing or editing style to fit. The laughs come anyway.
  23. Mr. Turner
    Leigh has made another highly personal study of art, commerce and the glacial progress of establishment tastes, built around a lead performance from longtime Leigh collaborator Timothy Spall that’s as majestic as one of Turner’s own swirling sunsets.
  24. Leviathan
    This is the director’s most accessible and naturalistic film, using everyday characters to test how well modern-day Russia is maintaining the social contract with its citizens.
  25. Goodbye to Language 3D
    As in all Godard’s best work, precise meaning is subsumed in an exhilarating tide of sound and light, impish provocations and inspired philosophizing.
  26. Mommy
    It’s uncanny how much Dolan’s style and overall solipsism have evolved in five years’ time, resulting in a funny, heartbreaking and, above all, original work — right down to its unusual 1:1 aspect ratio — that feels derivative of no one, not even himself.
  27. The Wonders
    An appealing yet oddly insubstantial work, like an early impressionist sketch in need of a little more focus, and perhaps a more suitable frame.
  28. Winter Sleep
    Nuri Bilge Ceylan is at the peak of his powers with Winter Sleep, a richly engrossing and ravishingly beautiful magnum opus that surely qualifies as the least boring 196-minute movie ever made.
  29. Coming Home
    Heartbreaking in its depiction of ordinary lives affected by political upheaval, this ode to the fundamental values that survive even under such dire circumstances has an epic gravity that recalls another great historical romance, “Doctor Zhivago.”
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