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Variety's Scores

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For 13,834 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 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Citizen Kane
Lowest review score: 0 Being Human
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6,795 out of 13834
  2. Mixed: 5,654 out of 13834
  3. Negative: 1,385 out of 13834
13834 movie reviews
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  1. Becky
    Wilson’s nimble half-brat, half-she-devil performance is key to our buying the basic premise, aided by solid supporting cast contributions. James grows less intimidating the more dialogue he’s given in an otherwise trim script by marital duo Ruckus and Lane Skye.
  2. Feral
    This first narrative feature by cinematographer and documentarian Andrew Wonder is an intriguingly offbeat character sketch that falls somewhere short of a fully-rounded portrait. Nonetheless, his arresting subject matter and refined aesthetic make for a promising debut worthy of discerning viewers’ attention.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Will Make You Mine
    While the female leads reflect Chen’s desire to create richer parts for Asian actresses, the writer-director has said they also reflect facets of herself. That may be, but she’s written her character as the most aggravating of the three, which makes for a risky but also compelling ask of the audience.
  4. The Price of Desire
    It’s filled with risible dialogue, a visual style more suited to a Côte d’Azur fashion video (the slow motion, the tasteful, slightly obscured sex scenes), and plastered with an undistinguished score by Brian Byrne (“Albert Nobbs”).
  5. I'm No Longer Here
    Frías isn’t trying to change policy so much as perceptions.
  6. Papicha
    The screenplay’s seams show so glaringly, and the finish is so tonally mismatched, that notwithstanding audience identification and the inevitable “loosely inspired by real events” tagline, Papicha feels conspicuously manipulative.
  7. Stage: The Culinary Internship
    At just 78 minutes, this bustling, absorbing doc hasn’t quite enough time to entirely draw us into the lives and perspectives of its likable human subjects: We’re given sketched-in backgrounds and familial food histories, but their personalities remain somewhat elusive.
  8. Screened Out
    Why watch Screened Out? Because it shows you something you didn’t know.
  9. The High Note
    The script of The High Note, by Flora Greeson, is long on wish-fulfillment and short on inside authority, and the director, Nisha Ganatra (“Late Night”), stages it with a hit-or-miss geniality that keeps cutting corners on the story’s emotional honesty. The feel-good factor hovers over this movie like a fuzzy bland cloud.
  10. Villain
    Actor Philip Barantini’s first directorial feature is nothing wildly original in content or style. Still, it punches both elements across with a satisfying low-key confidence, and does not shrink from occasionally letting things get pretty rough.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Survive the Night
    Arguably, the most exciting turn goes to a foxy, blue vintage Dodge Challenger. A small knot of cattle comes in a close second, scampering away from roar of the car chase. Because, yes, there’s got to be one of those, too.
  12. The Last Vermeer
    This isn’t the kind of storytelling that flatters the audience’s intelligence, and yet, spelling things out ensures that viewers who don’t like to work too hard can follow along easily and focus on the film’s other pleasures — namely, Pearce’s performance and the twisty case of the missing “Vermeer.”
  13. Take Me Somewhere Nice
    Take Me Somewhere Nice has fun with the ride yet feels too derivative to leave much of an impression beyond a few vibrantly colored images.
  14. Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
    Taken as a celebration, however, both of the woman herself and the food to which she has dedicated her life, “Nothing Fancy” is cinematic comfort food of the first order.
  15. Crystal Swan
    No community is as straightforward as it seems in Zhuk and Landauer’s irony-rich, tone-switching script: What begins as a kookily comic quest is complicated by the emergence of human tragedy, prejudice and sexual threat.
  16. Inheritance
    This overlong tale spends most of its nearly two hours as a somewhat draggy, talky mystery before finally deciding to be a thriller, with credibility lacking throughout.
  17. The Lovebirds
    Bits and pieces of the movie are funny.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Body Cam
    Intriguing, though not exactly visionary; it’s more twisted puzzle than horror ride. Not that there aren’t jumpy moments, and tense interludes.
  19. Fourteen
    A wise, graceful but viciously felt study of middle-school best friends whose bond becomes a burden the further they recede into adulthood, it resorts neither to buddy-movie cliché nor melodramatic angst in portraying the ways we outgrow our friends, and they us.
  20. The Trip to Greece
    The Trip to Greece marks a spirited and convivial return to form, even if it’s lofty enough to present Coogan and Brydon’s six-day journey through Greece as a retracing of the path of Odysseus.
  21. The Wolf House
    It’s an endless metamorphosis that unfolds like some kind of real-time art installation, and in all honesty, it can be a touch overwhelming to take in at times — which is why the digital release of The Wolf House is a blessing in disguise, as audiences can rewind to fully appreciate this awe-inspiring film’s layers of details.
  22. Alice
    It’s one of the most daring films ever made, not so much because of anything it overtly depicts as what this controversial classic reveals about the infinitely complicated psychology of human sexuality.
  23. Scoob!
    This attractive but calculated attempt to connect 'Scooby-Doo' to other Hanna-Barbera characters abandons the show's fun teen-detective format.
  24. Graves Without a Name
    Sudden surges of emotion seem to guide its shuffling of symbols, techniques and points of view.
  25. Castle in the Ground
    The result is an earnest, sometimes skillful effort that nonetheless often feels slack and underwritten, as well as ultimately less-than-rewarding.
  26. The Wrong Missy
    The Wrong Missy is a harmless dumb-meets-smart-mouth comedy that doesn’t necessarily feed your appetite for more Netflix throwaways. But it does make you want to see Lauren Lapkus’s next act.
  27. Dads
    It’s mostly a vanilla documentary with no real destination, but one with plenty of cuteness to go around.
  28. Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics
    Those looking for much in the way of real insight will find this amiable enterprise doesn’t stray very far from a general, standard-stoner-yuks tenor of “OMG I was SO HIGH!!!”
  29. Capone
    Handsomely shot and small of scale, Capone ambles along without catching fire. That’s because the movie, at heart, is shaped as a pedestal for Hardy’s prankish mumbly Method showboating.
  30. Kubrick by Kubrick
    Kubrick by Kubrick is most interesting for the ways that it undercuts the Kubrick mythology.
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