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. Acasă, My Home
    Balance and objectivity are laudable instincts, but they can put the film at a slightly frustrating remove.
  2. American Dream
    Kaminski takes a similarly dour, no-nonsense approach to what could be a cheerfully all-nonsense story — as if stripping junk food of its fat — and this “American Dream” dies somewhere in the impasse.
  3. Blizzard of Souls
    With its muscular direction by former documentarian Dzintars Dreibergs, atmospheric cinematography and careful attention to period detail, this account of a troop of Latvian Riflemen fighting first for the Russian Imperial Army against invading German forces and then for an independent Latvia should appeal to WWI buffs and fans of Sam Mendes’ “1917.”
  4. The Dig
    It’s hard to say whether the period this picture exhumes was any more innocent than what the world now faces, but that’s certainly the way Stone plays it, acting like an urbane orchidologist, cross-breeding contemporary art-house touches with the old-school refinement of a vintage Masterpiece Theatre production. Sometimes the best escape from the craziness of today is to lose oneself in history.
  5. Skyfire
    This thrill-packed tale about an angry volcano wreaking havoc on thinly written characters at a luxury island resort plays like a souped-up and much better remake of Irwin Allen’s 1980 turkey “When Time Ran Out.”
  6. If Not Now, When?
    It’s not groundbreaking but, written by Bass, the movie serves as a fine reminder of the pleasures of a female-focused story with the stuff of adulthood at its core.
  7. Locked Down
    Locked Down, at times, generates an uneasy mixture of intimacy and showiness, yet it’s a kick to watch a couple of actors who are this terrific pull out all the stops.
  8. Outside the Wire
    Apart from his programming, there’s little that sets Leo apart from your average action hero. And that, of course, is the problem with nearly all of these Netflix movies in the end: They approximate, but seldom surpass, what they’re meant to replace.
  9. Stray
    Throughout the mostly wordless “Stray,” we wonder with compassion and considerable self-critique whom the society uplifts and supports vs. whom it chooses to disregard and deem invisible.
  10. Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy
    Nelson, who has the ace documentarian’s flair for making history far more interesting than the mythologies it’s cutting through, has directed a film that stays true to the epic devastation crack left in its wake and, at the same time, examines all the ways that the government and the media used the grim reality of crack, turning it against the very people who were being victimized by it.
  11. Stand!
    Earnest and plainly felt, this grafting of a cross-cultural romance onto the story of a critical turning point in Canadian workers’ rights doesn’t want for incident and emotional commitment, but Robert Adetuyi’s film does fall a little short on showmanship.
  12. Grizzly II: Revenge (1983)
    “Grizzly II” never finds a rhythm — not even a giddily camp one.
  13. The Mauritanian
    The story gains momentum as it goes, and by the end, it’s positively gripping.
  14. The Marksman
    The director, Robert Lorenz, stages the action with a convincing ebb and flow, but thanks to an undercooked script what happens in between is mostly boilerplate.
  15. Redemption Day
    If Redemption Day were any more generic, the first thing you’d see on screen would be a bar code in place of the opening credits.
  16. The White Tiger
    The White Tiger isn’t a fairy tale, but by the end the movie still leaves you feeling that it has made a wish into a command.
  17. The Reason I Jump
    Nimbly switching between different lenses and sonic streams, Rothwell invites viewers inside the psychological isolation and overwhelming sensory awareness felt by people at various points on the spectrum, as well as cathartic breakthroughs in expression and connection with others.
  18. My Octopus Teacher
    My Octopus Teacher never loses our goodwill: If we wind up wishing it had a little less man and a little more beast, that only serves its cause.
  19. Fatale
    The story provides basic satisfactions expected from its ilk — infidelity is punished, pure malevolent craziness likewise — even if more rotely than one might hope. Part of the reason there’s a diminished climactic payoff here is that Swank, credible enough early on, can’t quite summon the demented spark Val needs.
  20. Tove
    Marking her fifth feature, Bergroth flexes her considerable cinematic powers, conjuring vibrantly expressive visuals and confident performances from her talented cast, especially the petite theater thesp Pöysti, who excels in her first leading film role and strongly resembles the real Tove.
  21. Monster Hunter
    Very little of Monster Hunter makes sense, but it’s visually interesting at least and not un-fun to stream at home with a friend, asking questions and cracking jokes along the way.
  22. Queer Japan
    I wish that “Queer Japan” had delved more into historical matters of fashion and androgyny, or into the life of someone like Yukio Mishima. It’s a very present-tense movie, but how did the movements on display evolve? Kolbeins would have done well to show us. Instead, he presents a snapshot of a revolution in midair, leaping to find a form for how to remake the future.
  23. Modern Persuasion
    Alex Appel and Jonathan Lisecki’s film is both too innocuous and too flatly imagined to stir much feeling either way. What it does have going for it is Alicia Witt, a likable, spirited star too little used by Hollywood of late.
  24. Greenland
    In its relatively small-scale, often rather plodding B-movie way, it wants to do for apocalypse thrillers what “Contagion” did for outbreak movies. And there are moments when it does.
  25. Wonder Woman 1984
    For nearly two hours of its 151-minute runtime, Wonder Woman 1984 accomplishes what we look to Hollywood tentpoles to do: It whisks us away from our worries, erasing them with pure escapism.
  26. Wild Mountain Thyme
    Wild Mountain Thyme is the kind of film you want to love, just as you want these two characters to fall in love, and it’s simultaneously exasperating and original that they don’t go about their courtship in the usual fashion.
  27. Sing Me a Song
    While more than an hour and a half seems like a long time to make the simplistic statement that the internet is bad, Balmès has greater profundity in mind when disseminating astute observations about how modern necessities and communicative devices impact cultures and ecosystems.
  28. Small Axe: Education
    The brilliance of this particular episode is how it allows us to see ourselves in Kingsley and to consider the many unseen forces at play in our own socialization. For Black audiences, it confirms many of those invisible barriers. For white ones, it may lead them to question whether the myth of their “success” owes in part to keeping others back.
  29. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
    In its middlebrow celebratory way, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart reveals the Bee Gees’ saga to be one of the most fascinating and, at times, awe-inspiring in the history of pop.
  30. Shawn Mendes: In Wonder
    Singer does find a slight bit of drama to seize on at about the two-thirds point of the film, which, for understandable purposes of having anything at all happen in the movie, he trumps up to the point it becomes nearly comical.
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