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. Empire of Light
    In the era when content is king, Sam Mendes still believes in moving pictures. Empire of Light is the proof.
  2. Pearl
    Its distinctive look and oddly appealing antihero (picture Norman Bates as Shelley Duvall might have played him) could actually make this the more popular of the two films.
  3. Women Talking
    The whole scenario is designed to get your blood boiling, while the resulting conversation can’t help but instill hope, as Polley gives these women a rare opportunity to reinvent their world.
  4. The Wonder
    An evenhanded but ultimately preposterous adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel, co-written by the author herself (with an assist from Alice Birch).
  5. Athena
    The result is nothing short of an urban war movie, as charismatic characters decide to do something about the outrage people have been expressing toward law enforcement in the real world.
  6. Bones and All
    Bones and All is a concept in search of a story. The film doesn’t draw us in. It stumbles and lurches and seems to make itself up as it goes along. You may feel eaten alive with boredom.
  7. Gigi & Nate
    What happens once the film vilifies the animal rights contingent, however, is an example of how movies can protect their heroes and create their scapegoats (pardon the expression) to the detriment of dramatic complexity.
  8. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
    So why is “Bardo,” for all its skill, reach-for-the-stars aspiration, and majestic sweep, such a windy, confounding, and — okay, I’ll just say it — monotonous experience? The movie is full of good things, but it’s three hours long and mostly it’s full of itself.
  9. Love in the Villa
    Love in the Villa’s building blocks may be as phony and manufactured as that balcony, but romantics will assuredly see and feel that the sentimental thematic resonance surrounding love and destiny comes from a genuine place.
  10. TÁR
    The movie is breathtaking — in its drama, its high-crafted innovation, its vision. It’s a ruthless but intimate tale of art, lust, obsession, and power.
  11. White Noise
    As a movie, White Noise announces its themes loudly and proudly, but the trouble is that it announces them more than it makes you feel them.
  12. The Invitation
    The predictability of events during the film’s first hour of gothic-thriller setup is all the more annoying because of the plodding pace. Evie finally stands up for herself during some modestly clever third-act turnabouts, but, really, that’s not quite enough to regenerate a rooting interest in the character.
  13. Me Time
    The disarray is baffling for the audience, and downright punishing for Hart, whose lead character is forced to shape-shift between scenes, veering from milquetoast to petty to tyrannical to pushed-around.
  14. Samaritan
    Samaritan is basic enough that it often plays like a video-game film in which someone forgot to add the CGI. But the movie builds to a very good twist, and Stallone, in his way, brings a vibe to it, complete with an ’80s kiss-off line (“Have a blast!”) delivered in a growl so deliberate it practically etches itself into the scenery.
  15. No Way Out
    There’s enough sex and violence here to hold attention for an hour and a half, but the care or conviction to explain why it all happens — let alone why viewers should care — proves elusive.
  16. Emergency Declaration
    Believe it or not, Emergency Declaration was conceived before the pandemic, but it’s just about the most thrilling way a film can capitalize on our fears — of the virus, of flying, of governments making a problem worse — without directly exploiting the international nightmare we’ve all been living lately.
  17. The Harbinger
    The Harbinger disappoints only in that it’s good enough to make you wish it were better — that it left an indelible impression rather than a slightly vague one.
  18. 13: The Musical
    13: The Musical is just catchy enough to make you forget how facile it is. It’s not greased lighting, but it glides right along.
  19. Fall
    Fall is a technical feat of a thriller, yet it’s not without a human center. It earns your clenched gut and your white knuckles.
  20. Glorious
    Even at 80 minutes, Glorious feels four times too long for what it is.
  21. The Next 365 Days
    Just because almost everyone’s exhausted by this crummy cash-cow franchise, doesn’t mean the franchise is exhausted in turn. The hope that The Next 365 Days will be the last “365 Days” merely because it’s based on the final book is a slim one, especially given how it ends.
  22. Orphan: First Kill
    Orphan: First Kill is draggy and suspense-free. Fuhrman, as before, invests her role with a cold creepiness, but the minimal, haphazard script sticks her with playing Esther as a one-note mascot of terror, somewhere between Freddy Krueger and Leprechaun.
  23. Beast
    If you can get past the idea that the two-ton lion threatening Idris Elba and his family in the movie is a singularly frightening combination of ones and zeros, not killer instinct and claws, then Beast is a blast.
  24. Look Both Ways
    While the filmmakers’ heads and hearts are in the right place with their resonant sentiments on taking risks and embracing fate, their execution of narrative basics proves lackluster.
  25. Kirikou and the Men and Women
    A broad-minded but pretty vanilla third film in the French toon series from Gallic helmer Michel Ocelot.
  26. Private Desert
    The film comes alive in its second half, which deepens and complicates the story we thought we were watching, about a disgraced cop trying to run away from the violence that’s set to cost him his job and his reputation. For some, the tender empathy that runs through the film’s latter half may not be enough to offset its choice of sympathetic leading man.
  27. Inu-oh
    Basically, Inu-oh is to Noh as spray-painted graffiti is to traditional Japanese calligraphy.
  28. Rogue Agent
    As a revenge spy thriller of sorts (the kind that seems tailor-made for a TV miniseries these days), “Rogue Agent” is an engaging affair. Much of it is due to Arterton, whose steely performance firmly anchors the film even during its most improbable twists and turns — especially as it careens toward its inevitable conclusion and its all too pat final image.
  29. Secret Headquarters
    With a solid cast, healthy sense of humor and polished visual effects, the film rises above so many of the sub-cinematic slogs littering the streaming fray. Expecting it to be memorable proves to be a big ask from the filmmakers, despite their hunger for a Marvel-style, Amblin-esque franchise starter. Still, the ease with which we forget its blights might just be the project’s real superpower.
  30. Day Shift
    At heart, though, it’s a knowingly eccentric goof of a movie, to the point that it’s hard, for a while, not to find it agreeable, even as you register what a preposterous piece of fluff it is. Unfortunately, it’s also an arduous piece of fluff. It’s full of blow-you-away action scenes, and it’s also full of rules — a satirical vampire cosmology that’s fun, until it starts to be just convoluted enough to give you a headache, especially when the rules are applied as inconsistently as they are here.
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