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. MLK/FBI
    MLK/FBI leaves you wanting more, but it provides a gripping chapter in the story of how the forces of American power set out to destroy one of America’s greatest leaders, even as his private behavior had the effect of handing them a weapon.
  2. Sportin' Life
    There’s at least something honest about the messiness and occasional superficiality of the documentary, as a ragged, unsynchronized collection of events and ideas — whether personal, trivial or globally resonant — that have passed through Ferrara’s eyes and his mind in the last year.
  3. Infidel
    Although Caviezel’s character is meant to stand in for all Americans unjustly imprisoned by Iran, it would be irresponsible to take the film’s “inspired by true events” claim too seriously. That doesn’t mean it’s not satisfying to watch Liz and several co-conspirators raid the facility in an attempt to liberate Doug and all those unjustly detained political prisoners. In this fantasy telling, at least, God is on his side.
  4. Mainstream
    A brittle, exasperated satire on social media celebrity, her sophomore film, like the tacky messiah it creates in Andrew Garfield’s YouTube sensation, soon becomes the very thing it sets out to expose: a glittery, jangly image machine that manufactures little of actual substance, except the conclusion that social media = bad.
  5. Laila in Haifa
    Gitai’s latest is a murky, largely po-faced affair, in which no character’s story urgently distinguishes itself from, or even within, a general morass of discontent.
  6. The Dark and the Wicked
    Ireland conveys subtle differences between paranoia and white-knuckled fear with an appealing fragility, while Oliver-Touchstone invites sympathy and disquiet with just a few twitches of her wrinkles. However, the glaring absence of any background to the main characters’ lives and relationships gives the cast less to work with than they deserve.
  7. The Way I See It
    The Way I See It mostly feels like a love letter to Obama.
  8. Rifkin's Festival
    A scenic summer-wind romcom that was presumably a good time for everyone involved. Saying the same for the audience would be a stretch, but on the spectrum of late Woody Allen clunkers, it registers on the mild, instantly-evaporating end of the scale, unlikely to change the positions of any loyalists, detractors, ex-fans or distributors with regard to the controversy-tailed filmmaker.
  9. Somebody Up There Likes Me
    The rocker, while never downplaying the danger of the fire he’s played with throughout his life, has to chuckle as he admits he’s led a largely charmed life. We end up charmed, too, if never really riveted.
  10. Small Axe: Lovers Rock
    Lovers Rock is nothing more (or less) than a snapshot of an era, a moment, a series of lives. Yet it lingers like a song you don’t want to get out of your head.
  11. Shadow in the Cloud
    Hardly a minute of the movie registers as “realistic,” but that hardly matters, since Liang so fully commits to its over-the-top sensibility that you’ll be clutching the armrest and grinning with glee for most of the ride.
  12. H is for Happiness
    Provides feel-good entertainment for the entire family without pandering — and definitely without sacrificing style or substance.
  13. Lost Girls & Love Hotels
    William Olsson’s film works as an atmospheric mood piece and sometime erotic drama. It’s less successful as a character study.
  14. Run Hide Fight
    Merely pedestrian at the levels of direction, craft and performance, the film instead makes a grab for attention by peddling an ambiguous line on gun control and eye-for-an-eye morality. Any controversy that ensues, however, won’t disguise the phoniness of this exploitation exercise, which milks the worst fears of millions in pursuit of empty tension.
  15. Penguin Bloom
    Shrewdly, Watts goes for something subtle and soft here — instead of clichéd garishness, her performance hinges on her doleful gaze and melancholic tinge, ultimately helping Penguin Bloom honor its real-life character’s journey with some respect.
  16. The Best Is Yet to Come
    The Best Is Yet to Come is superbly well-made, making a compelling case for recognizing the humanity of others even in the midst of illness, even when ignorance and politicized paranoia threaten your compassion. It’s not hard to discern the relevance.
  17. The Secrets We Keep
    This “Death and the Maiden”-like suspense drama is neither fully convincing nor particularly original, its narrative running a course that feels somewhat predictable from the outset. But it’s still strong enough to be effective.
  18. I Care a Lot
    A sleekly unnerving thriller.
  19. Mandibles
    Mandibles is as brazenly and riotously stupid as it sounds, but with a chill, dopey sweetness that makes it stick.
  20. Limbo
    Limbo sincerely and intelligently finds its own way.
  21. Hopper/Welles
    Given its gnarly small focus, Hopper/Welles is surprisingly entertaining to sit through.
  22. In Between Dying
    The existential road movie gets an offbeat, elliptical yet peculiarly compelling Transcaucasian makeover in director Hilal Baydarov’s second fiction feature, In Between Dying.
  23. Wolfwalkers
    In the decade since “Kells,” it’s not just the technological advances that make Moore’s latest so impressive, but the rapidly changing cultural conversations as well. He brings everything together by borrowing from timeless visual influences, leaving audiences with another stunning artwork for the ages.
  24. Shiva Baby
    Having grown up in a tight-knit Jewish community herself, Seligman tightly orchestrates it all with loving cultural specificity and nuance, working her satirical muscles to a thrilling extent.
  25. City Hall
    The result is both sober and inspiring: an urban progress report taking into account a plethora of government services, scutinized by Wiseman’s patient but unblinking eye.
  26. Joe Bell
    A movie like this would be a good start, if this were 1980. A decade and a half after “Brokeback Mountain,” however, it feels like a huge step backward.
  27. I Am Greta
    As a summation of her remarkable achievements to date in public life, Nathan Grossman’s film is reasonably thorough, and sometimes rousing, amply showcasing Thunberg’s candid gifts as a truth-to-power speaker. Yet as a portrait of the girl behind the cause, it’s cautious and rarely illuminating, speckled with moments of domestic intimacy that nonetheless feel carefully vetted.
  28. Final Account
    Clocking in at a swift 90 minutes, Final Account is like a teenager-friendly approach to “Shoah,” designed as an introduction to issues of responsibility, guilt and the banality of man’s inhumanity to man.
  29. Enemies of the State
    While Enemies of the State does not necessarily provide all the answers, it sneakily sharpens your analytical radar by its haunting end. And in today’s conspiracy-theory-fueled world, that just might be everything.
  30. Another Round
    Another Round is the kind of movie that’s so into its cool concept that it doesn’t sweat the details. Yet the film’s sloppy broadness ends up fighting the Dogme style, which keeps telling us that these people are authentic.
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