Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. Nightbitch
    Sinking her teeth into Mother the way Mother herself might a bloody steak, Adams courageously embodies Mother’s exasperation, finding the comedy in every setback.
  2. Red Rooms
    In contrast to most movies about serial killers, this one offers nary a glimpse of violence, let alone any wallowing in sadism. Yet somehow that makes it all the more icky — at times the squirm factor is such that you may think no shower could wash a viewer’s taint-by-association away.
  3. Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2
    Doubling down on the first chapter’s intermittent triumphs but also on its grievous structural issues, it is an exercise in contradictions: incident-packed yet oddly sedate; replete with characters new and returning, yet largely lacking in compelling characterization; and, running to over three hours, simply too long a film to be so jarringly abrupt.
  4. Hard Truths
    Leigh’s films can feel shaggy and unstructured on first viewing, and Hard Truths is no different. But there’s profound poetry in every scene.
  5. We Live in Time
    It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories, and the sequence hardly matters.
  6. Baby Invasion
    Though little more than a gimmick, the baby angle gives Korine a hook for an experiment that’s only intermittently engaging for much of its running time.
  7. April
    April is loath to explain itself, inviting us instead to watch, listen and feel our way through it — a work marked, like the benevolent but unreachable woman at its center, by immense empathy and isolated, inconsolable despair.
  8. Winner
    It’s not a typical whistleblower movie, like “The Insider” or “Official Secrets” (both excellent), but more of a prickly character portrait, imbued with humor and a headstrong sense of defiance (courtesy of co-writer Kerry Howley, channeling Winner’s voice).
  9. Nutcrackers
    What the movie needs isn’t a shaggy Christmas pageant, but the kind of catharsis one might expect when four of its characters lost their mom and the fifth ought to be mourning his sister.
  10. Apocalypse in the Tropics
    The film backs away from the overtly personal narration of its predecessor, in pursuit of a bigger picture.
  11. And Their Children After Them
    Where the the writing is wan, the filmmaking compensates with emphatic braggadocio. Augustin Barbaroux’s cinematography is all humidly saturated tones and rolling, kinetic movement.
  12. The Front Room
    With the exception of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” Oscar nominee Kathryn Hunter’s fiercely committed performance, much of this well-designed but boring film yields a shrug.
  13. Rebel Ridge
    Ultimately muscular and effective if predictable, Saulnier’s latest reaffirms his bona fides as a deliverer of sturdy, tightly-controlled thrills.
  14. I'm Still Here
    Salles’ deeply invested filmmaking is remarkable in its grace and naturalism.
  15. Pavements
    It’s impossible not to be won over by the director’s efforts, which come to include at least four separate modes of production.
  16. Joker: Folie à Deux
    Joker: Folie à Deux may be ambitious and superficially outrageous, but in a basic way it’s an overly cautious sequel.
  17. ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!
    A hilarious behind-the-scenes account of that ill-advised investment, MTV Documentary Films’ unconventional — and unexpectedly inspiring — makeover doc follows along as the pair sink millions into rescuing the crumbling landmark out of bankruptcy.
  18. Queer
    The last third of “Queer” may prove to be a challenge for audiences — much more so than the film’s explicit eroticism. Yet Luca Guadagino is telling a version of the same compelling story that he told in “Call Me by Your Name”: that of a queer love that, instead of delivering the salvation it promises, withers under the gaze of the real world.
  19. Nickel Boys
    For the first hour or so, Nickel Boys feels like the most exciting narrative debut since “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Then Ross tries something bold that doesn’t quite work, and the experiment collapses upon itself.
  20. The Room Next Door
    The Room Next Door, as driven by the scalding humanity of Swinton’s performance, lifts you up and delivers a catharsis. The movie is all about death, yet in the unblinking honesty with which it confronts that subject, it’s powerfully on the side of life.
  21. Wolfs
    In Wolfs, Clooney and Pitt revel in the crack timing, in the I-truly-do-not-like-you obscene banter, that makes even the most casual insult take wing.
  22. Saturday Night
    Now, just one year shy of the pop phenom’s 50th anniversary, director Jason Reitman gives back, turning an oral history of the very first episode into a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage.
  23. The Brutalist
    It’s clear that Corbet made this movie because he wants it to mean something big. Whether it does may be in the eye of the beholder. Mostly, The Brutalist lets you feel that you’re seeing a man’s life pass before your eyes. That may be meaning enough.
  24. The End
    There may never be another film like The End, and that alone makes it special, though surely all involved would prefer for it to be seen. As it is, the film feels like an obtuse missive, hidden in plain sight, just waiting for intrepid seekers to unearth it.
  25. Cloud
    An offbeat internet-age drama that devolves into a vengeance actioner so deconstructed it’s almost existentially abstract: Beckett giving it both barrels.
  26. The Friend
    A by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser with a bit more on its mind than your typical canine-centric tearjerker.
  27. The Order
    What The Order accomplishes that’s most haunting, and perceptive, is that it shows us how white supremacy in America can be two things at once, two sides of the same coin: the legal and “presentable” side, and the underlying violent side.
  28. Conclave
    Conclave is one of those rare films that respects the audience’s attention, even as it sneaks a few tricks behind their backs.
  29. The Wasp
    The actors try to maintain the focus on the characters, but the screenplay fails them as it becomes more convoluted and trite, as if it’s merely trying to distract until the final twisty reveal.
  30. Eight Postcards from Utopia
    Eight Postcards From Utopia lingers in the mind as a sharp sociopolitical tangram that could be assembled any number of ways to differing academic and emotional effect: a vision of rebuilding or destruction, hope or nihilistic collapse, depending on what you’re willing to buy.
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