Variety's Scores

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For 17,758 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 17758
  2. Mixed: 7,002 out of 17758
  3. Negative: 1,635 out of 17758
17758 movie reviews
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  1. Suitable Flesh
    There’s no lack of effort here, but too often Suitable Flesh just feels effortful, rather than the outrageous good time aimed for.
  2. Leave the World Behind
    Per Howard Hawks’ too-easy rubric, “A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes,” this one’s a keeper. The best scene may be the last.
  3. Old Dads
    For a first movie, Old Dads shows promise. Bill Burr is onto something about how the new culture of control messes with the heads of ordinary people. Next time, though, he should channel the rage instead of flaunting it.
  4. Evolution
    So heavy until now, the movie ends on a soaring note of optimism.
  5. Close Your Eyes
    Erice’s first feature in 31 years — and only his fourth overall — arrives as something between a desert oasis and a mirage: a shimmery, nourishing culmination of ideas and ellipses in a career so elusive as to have taken on a mythic quality, to the point that his latest feels almost dreamed into being.
  6. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Scripted by “Chicken Run” alums Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, along with newcomer Rachel Tunnard, the sequel doesn’t offer many surprises plotwise, but is consistently amusing in its dad-jokey kind of way.
  7. The Kitchen
    Even at its shakiest, however, “The Kitchen” gets by on the steam of its own fury, and on its tender depiction of a trampled underclass staving off defeat through small, everyday acts of care and empathy.
  8. Dear Jassi
    The two characters at the center of Amit Rai’s screenplay are superficially defined beyond their all-consuming devotion, and that lack of nuance and texture makes for some flat stretches across a leisurely 134-minute runtime — though a shattering finale, staged with brilliant formalist rigor, leaves the most lasting impression.
  9. The Magic Flute
    There's not much magic left in Kenneth Branagh's The Magic Flute. Relocating the 1791 opera to WWI and adopting a hard-edged approach that worked for "Hamlet," Branagh has wrought a "Flute" for high-end aficionados only. Lavishly mounted and well sung, but thin on charm and spontaneity, pic is likely to hit a bum note at general wickets.
  10. Plan C
    Urgent and unvarnished, Tracy Droz Tragos’ documentary Plan C is an early entry in what might be considered post-Roe cinema, focusing less on pro-choice ideology than on the practicalities of ensuring choice in a system increasingly stacked against the idea.
  11. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
    For most fans, this show isn’t so much about watching her career flash before their eyes — although there’s that — but their own roller-coaster lives. It’s sort of Broadway, kind of psychotherapy/church, and all too well-executed.
  12. Reality Winner
    It’s an involving, empathetic if one-sided portrait.
  13. Strange Darling
    Writer-director JT Mollner flips the script on this tired genre, crafting the cleverest thriller of its kind in a while with a mighty assist from a pair of killer performances by co-leads Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner. Best experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible, Strange Darling demands a bit of patience, but it also rewards it.
  14. Ex-Husbands
    Ex-Husbands . . . is likable enough in intention, but flounders en route to its destination. Not unlike its befuddled protagonists, who can’t seem to translate meaning well into doing well.
  15. The Exorcist: Believer
    The Exorcist: Believer, in its superficially competent and poshly mounted way, feels about as dangerous as a crucifix dipped in a bottle of designer water.
  16. Wildcat
    It’s emotionally exhausting, but audiences come away with a sense of her legacy, as well as an appreciation for the adversity she faced (and, to a lesser degree, a sense of the criticism that has been leveled against her).
  17. Daddio
    Every aspect of Daddio is designed to spark conversation. But it’s sweeter and more satisfying than you might expect, especially as Hall pays off ideas introduced early in her script.
  18. Finestkind
    If you choose to focus on the family connections, then it’s clear that Helgeland has something to say.
  19. Brightwood
    Awkwardly enamored by the thin novelties of its sci-fi trappings, Brightwood doesn’t possess the imagination to blossom beyond them, occupying an unflattering intersection of modest production resources and unrefined form.
  20. Story Ave
    [An] affecting debut feature.
  21. A Silence
    The film’s first half-hour keeps our emotional investment at bay as we work out the precise geometry of the characters and their unhappy histories. But there is a gasping power to its staggered reveals, and a searching sadness to the emerging family portrait that outweighs the film’s shock factor.
  22. The Successor
    Taken literally, The Successor is a chilling thing to watch. Step back and imagine what it’s saying on a metaphorical level, and it’s clear that writer-director Xavier Legrand has crafted one of the most damning depictions of patriarchal power imaginable.
  23. Un Amor
    Making no cozy compromises in its portrayal of a young woman socially and sexually exploited by rural patriarchy — while still foregrounding the consuming strength and autonomy of her desire — it’s a tricky balancing act that mostly works, thanks also to a crackling lead performance by Laia Costa.
  24. Reptile
    Reptile comes on as “smart,” but the movie, for all its sinister-ominous-music atmosphere, is opportunistic enough — or maybe just enough of a consumer product — to swallow its own premise, if not its own tail.
  25. Foe
    Foe wants to end with a big “Whoa.” Instead, it leaves us going “Huh, interesting” and “Whuuut?” at the same time.
  26. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
    "The Caine Mutiny,” for all the tinkering, remains a warhorse of a play. And that’s both a good and a limited thing. The way Friedkin has directed it, it certainly plays.
  27. Heist 88
    It’s a crime film that finds little joy in criminality, crammed with characters who’ve been backed into a corner, hindered by an overarching morality that doesn’t match the material.
  28. Dancing in the Dust
    Dispensing with heavyhanded symbolism, Farhadi tells the tale engrossingly and with a lot of physicality through the two main actors.
  29. Saw X
    The torture set pieces in the “Saw” films are lavish gifts of baroque horror presented to the audience. They are, quite simply, the reason we came. Tobin Bell, with his stare of pitiless wisdom, is also a draw, but “Saw X” raises the issue of how much of John Kramer’s hand-wringing is too much. In the eyes of a lot of “Saw” fans, hand-wringing < hands cut off with mechanized garden shears.
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