The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 A Life Less Ordinary
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. What's Up, Tiger Lily?
    When it does work, it's very funny, and worth a look both as an example of Allen's still-developing talent and—thanks to The Lovin' Spoonful—as the source of one of the greatest rock 'n' roll title songs ever to come out of a decade filled with excellent rock 'n' roll title songs.
  2. Asylum
    Mackenzie's film could almost use one or two lurid touches in place of its stately distance. Then again, a more stylized approach might have allowed less room for Richardson, whose unsparing performance makes other elements almost irrelevant.
  3. Levity
    Solomon handles their crises of conscience with a studied compassion that hangs over scenes like a lead weight, though the actors (particularly Dunst) do their best to bring more range to his gray palette.
  4. Elf
    The cast wrings laughs out of David Berenbaum's script as if it were a damp washcloth.
    • The A.V. Club
  5. The Hard Word
    Roberts' script and direction show sparks of wit, but the plot comes lifted from countless heist films.
  6. Shrek 2
    The lovable characters remain, but they never do much of interest in a sequel that's safely above average but superfluous.
  7. À cause d'un garçon
    Though its milieu is often ugly and its story fairly soft, You'll Get Over It gets by thanks to its cast. The French film industry has a knack for finding attractive, expressive young actors, and this movie is no exception.
  8. A Sidewalk Astronomer
    Jacobs focuses almost exclusively on Dobson's theories and mission, which he illustrates by contrasting jaw-dropping images of the sun's surface with people ignoring Dobson's entreaties to "Come look at the sun."
  9. Red Dawn
    As an action movie, Red Dawn is a repetitive headache, and anyone with Blue State sympathies will be appalled at its manipulations and exaggerations. But there's smart subtext beneath the big dumb explosions.
  10. The Time Machine
    Machine makes its look-to-the-future-not-the-past message as clear as a Grammy acceptance speech, but as an exploration of regret and the elusive quality of time, it falls well short of "Memento," another film starring a sad-eyed Pearce.
  11. Tattoo
    Unlike so many "Seven" followers, it makes its missteps memorably, and offers a variety of stylistic rewards by way of compensation.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shooting Fish
    As a cute diversion, it's a pleasant, painless, wonderfully forgettable surprise.
  13. The Take
    The Take tells a compelling story of courageous, industrious people, but it begs for a second act.
  14. God's Sandbox
    The sensual sex scenes and raw violence of God's Sandbox make it pretty much an exploitation film, and as an exploitation film, it isn't bad.
  15. The Dancer Upstairs
    Though he never quite rescues the film, Bardem continually suggests the tensions bubbling under the surface that Dancer itself never penetrates.
  16. Entrapment
    Entrapment is ostensibly some sort of action film, but perhaps out of deference to its sleepwalking star, it moves slowly and contains very little actual action.
  17. The Beautiful Country
    A gorgeous film, framed with an eye that makes every country seem beautiful in one way or another. It's probably fitting that the human element seems fragile and flat by comparison, but the contrast leaves Beautiful Country fairly bland.
  18. Johnny English
    Johnny English's international popularity may or may not translate here, but in a sequel-glutted summer, even a mildly amusing time-waster can't help but stand out.
  19. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
    As her character resorts to increasingly cruel and devious pranks, Hudson only seems funnier and more endearing.
  20. Persons of Interest
    The absence of style can be numbing, but it serves a purpose, positioning the documentary as a public record, not a work of art. As such, the film is eye-opening.
  21. Pellet
    When El Bola isn't drawing cheap sentiment from the sight of a bruised and scarred little boy, Mañas raises vexing questions about how and why parents leave lasting impressions on their children, and whether good intentions really matter.
  22. The Last Shot
    Given an irresistible premise, Nathanson doesn't trust his material enough to follow through without excessive mugging, but his sense of the absurd leads to amusing digressions along the way.
  23. Lan Yu
    The connection between Hu and Liu seems more scripted than real, founded on musty allegorical clichés about innocent country folk and corrupt city slickers.
  24. Kundun
    A slow, meditative movie-an appropriate choice given the subject matter-that ultimately fails, in spite of clearly heartfelt good intentions, because of its almost inhuman detachment.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Men in Black
    Deserves credit for supplementing its special effects with a breezy script and genuinely charismatic performances by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
  26. The Shape of Things
    Carries a potent statement about the superficialities of appearance, and how they're more meaningful to people than anyone likes to acknowledge. But when the players themselves are conceived this superficially, LaBute winds up invalidating his own point.
  27. Love Liza
    Love Liza needs more than mood on its side. A moment of recognizable human behavior would have been a fine place to start.
  28. Harrison's Flowers
    Moves forward on the conviction of its performances. Brody, in particular, shows uncommon sensitivity as a politically committed and temperamental photographer who responds to MacDowell's half-crazed resolution with heartbreaking zeal.
  29. Chrystal
    If the people in Chrystal are intended to be authentic, why do none of them look like they've ever seen the inside of a Wal-Mart?
  30. Piglet's Big Movie
    Though it's tough to find much fault with a film so sweet, Piglet's Big Movie never lives up to its title.
  31. Anything But Love
    Predictable and corny, but to their credit, Cary and Rose strive to make the situation real.
  32. The Goebbles Experiment
    Mostly though, The Goebbels Experiment proves that historical figures have the worst perspective on themselves.
  33. The Upside of Anger
    The film's outsized ambitions are deceptive: Everything here is less than meets the eye.
  34. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    By the film's halfway point, the subplots have all started to head in the most obvious directions imaginable, which is too bad, since they all have real potential. Ferrera's story of spending the summer as an out-of-place ethnic element in the milk-white suburbs stays interesting the longest, in large part thanks to her performance.
  35. Young Rebels
    The documentary is short, vividly shot, and packed with interviews in which desperate young men and women let loose their personal philosophies. In fact, there's so much philosophizing that there's not much time left for rap.
  36. Hard Goodbyes: My Father
    Panayotopoulou's background in photography shows in the way she lets her chiaroscuro lighting mirror her characters' emotions. It also shows in the still-life quality that Hard Goodbyes never quite gets beyond.
  37. How Stella Got Her Groove Back
    A glossy, attractive, ultimately empty soap opera that -- despite being based on a true story -- never seems remotely plausible.
  38. The Sacrifice
    Though bookended by extraordinarily powerful scenes that play off a potent religious metaphor, the middle section sinks into a morass of ill-defined relationships and uneven performances, which may be blamed in part on culture clash.
  39. Nenette and Boni
    Despite an alluring set-up and heartfelt performances from the leads, nothing ultimately coheres, and mood trumps logic on every occasion.
  40. Noi the Albino
    Only in the final minutes, when Kári overreaches for ironic effect, does the film plumb too far into the darkness.
  41. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    It's all innocuous, forgettable fun, but it's firmly aimed at those who find underwear endlessly funny.
  42. The Year of the Yao
    With their fawning documentary Year Of The Yao, directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo unreflectively buy into the spin on charismatic 7'6" basketball center Yao Ming, but on a certain level, who can blame them?
  43. The War Within
    Sometimes too pat and sometimes ragged with omissions and confusions, but it's still a fascinating look outside of that familiar world and into a harsher one.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That Thing You Do!
    Hanks nicely lampoons the smug, stagnant, assembly-line attitude of the American pop-music establishment of the time, but it's clear that Hanks intends his Boomer-pleasing nostalgia to be strictly of the declawed variety.
  45. Liar Liar
    For those who like Carrey and are waiting for a film they can honestly say they enjoyed through and through, this ain't it.
  46. The Fast and the Furious
    Better equipped to deal with the workings of nitro-injection systems than human emotions, director Rob Cohen's film grows less assured the more time it spends with its characters, particularly through its dull middle section. It does earn points for trying, however, and while Walker is a cipher, Diesel has enough personality for both of them.
  47. The Butterfly
    Cutesy and slight, but it's also polished and well-lit, and Muyl makes a weeklong hike roll by pleasantly, reducing it to about 80 minutes of screen time.
  48. The Girl from Monday
    There's ample opportunity here for a sharp consumerist satire, like a dryer cousin to the candy-colored pop-culture send-up “Josie And The Pussycats,” but Hartley misses his own joke.
  49. Ushpizin
    Ushpizin's effortlessly authentic depiction of Jewish orthodoxy--and the palpable, almost ecstatic sense of joy its characters take in it--ultimately tips the film's hand.
  50. The Cockettes
    Makes a terrific case for the group's historical importance, even though its performances seem more fun to discuss than watch.
  51. xXx: State of the Union
    Thankfully, State Of The Union's pulpy, adrenalized blaxploitation spin on the secret-agent genre provides the dumb fun its predecessor should have dished out.
  52. Just a Kiss
    The film's moralistic streak leaves a sour taste, especially because its battle of the sexes is so wildly off-balance.
  53. Up and Down
    Sags into a dreary, humorless family melodrama.
  54. Doctor Detroit
    Like Boat Trip, another guilty pleasure of mine, Doctor Detroit is so transcendently stupid, gimmicky, and shameless that it almost becomes a smart meta-parody of stupid, gimmicky, shameless high-concept '80s comedies.
  55. We Were Soldiers
    Leaves all the real risks to the young warriors at Ia Drang and collects easy dividends on their bravery. In the end, it honors them by paying tribute to itself.
  56. Tying the Knot
    Tying The Knot's central point remains insistently stated. It would be hard for anyone to watch it and still think of the demand for same-sex marriage as a mere passing fancy.
  57. Frida
    Save for two spectacularly impressionistic sequences, Taymor brings little of that imagination to Frida, a turgid and conventional biopic that skips through the major incidents in Kahlo's life without giving them any special resonance, or even much visual panache.
  58. Reno: Rebel Without a Pause
    For a comedian who thrives on spontaneity, the heart of Reno's act seems conspicuously canned.
  59. Permanent Midnight
    The framing device, which has Stiller recounting his tale to a fellow recovering addict (Maria Bello) over the course of a weekend sex session, stops Permanent Midnight dead in its tracks every time it pops up, but Stiller alone is almost enough reason to check out the film.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Know What You Did Last Summer
    The characters are never really more than stereotypes (the brain, the beauty, the dreamer, the jock), but as the body count begins to mount, you feel their terror build.
  61. The Hunted
    Aided by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, Friedkin works economically, lending the film the mark of a master craftsman, albeit of the coldly efficient variety. The terseness and surplus of technical skill make The Hunted surprisingly engaging.
  62. Mad Love
    At heart it's a randy, oversexed soap opera in period garb.
  63. Cuba: Island of Music
    As one man's vacation video, it's outstanding, but as a documentary, it lacks verve, stylistically or journalistically.
  64. The Game
    It's a stylish, cleverly plotted, perpetually unpredictable film with another electric (albeit brief) performance from Penn. So why is it so unaffecting?
  65. After Midnight
    As a story, it never develops beyond the routine. Still, the aesthetic philosophizing works as a framework for daring visual experiments.
  66. Lords of Dogtown
    It's no surprise that when it ultimately tries to pluck at the heartstrings, it rings hollow. The film lives and dies by speed.
  67. Touch
    Touch never quite catches the satiric fire its subject seems to warrant. It's pleasant, disarming, and likable, but never quite miraculous.
  68. Scream 2
    When the suspense setpieces do come, many of them are staged with considerably less imagination—with cheap jolts underscored by an intrusive score—than would be expected from director Wes Craven.
  69. Laurel Canyon
    Occasionally, the film invites a more dynamic touch than the careful slowness Cholodenko carries over from "High Art." But that same care gives the movie a seductive quality that would have been lost in a more hurried approach.
  70. Pretty Persuasion
    In a star-making performance, Evan Rachel Wood stars as essentially a younger version of Nicole Kidman's media-age femme fatale from "To Die For," an aspiring 15-year-old actress who hides a sharp, calculating mind behind a façade of vapid, chattering self-absorption.
  71. Tupac: Resurrection
    Doesn't pretend to be objective, and the film derives much of its power from the way it invites audiences to look at the rapper's life and times through his own soulful, animated eyes. It doesn't always succeed, and there are times when it feels terribly strained.
  72. Moon 44
    Generic but enjoyable with some nifty low-budget effects work.
  73. The Ring Two
    It's passably gripping and occasionally lively.
  74. The Corporation
    Without a unifying authorial voice to tie it together, the film often feels shapeless and rambling, brought together by little more than free-ranging contempt for capitalism's excesses.
  75. Chaos
    In the end, Chaos is as compelling as it is confounding, and it's compelling in large part because of the confusion it stirs.
  76. Sex and Lucia
    Medem turns screenwriting into a feng shui exercise, shifting story elements like pieces of furniture around a room, as if the best films are the ones that end up facing southeast.
  77. Ju-on: The Grudge
    Both too obvious and needlessly complicated, Ju-On juggles several non-chronological chapters based on different characters, ensuring that none of the corpses-to-be make much of an impression.
  78. Benji: Off the Leash!
    It's clumsy, but also strangely refreshing. To children raised on "Spy Kids" and "SpongeBob SquarePants," it may look as primitive as a daguerreotype, but never underestimate the persuasive powers of a cute animal.
  79. The Greatest Game Ever Played
    As Ouimet, the always-terrific Shia LeBeouf is an oasis of depth in a film that otherwise can't pass up a sports-film cliché.
  80. Elizabethtown
    Only a truly great director can make a film of high artistic merit, filled with personality and memorable scenes, that's still a borderline disaster. (Think One From The Heart or 1941.) So the heartfelt and woefully miscalculated Elizabethtown may be the film that marks Cameron Crowe's arrival as a truly great director.
  81. Bride of Chucky
    Bride Of Chucky is pretty f.cking stupid, but it's also oddly effective in its sheer audaciousness and contempt for good taste. It probably won't win a lot of converts, but for Child's Play fans, horror geeks, and stoners, it should seem like manna from heaven.
  82. Tuck Everlasting
    Unfortunately, Russell paces the film as if trying to demonstrate what eternity feels like. When the plot begs to move forward, the film keeps lingering over friendly fawns and long walks through the forest.
  83. Me Without You
    Aided by raw, committed performances from her two leads, Goldbacher makes them tough company for themselves and anyone else around them, on or off the screen.
  84. Crash
    Haggis, who wrote the fine adapted screenplay for "Million Dollar Baby," embeds Crash's script so deeply in allegory that every revelation feels manipulative and programmatic, in spite of some terrific individual scenes and performances.
  85. Bubba Ho-tep
    Playing against rubber-faced type, cult icon Bruce Campbell grounds his Elvis in a wry, understated swagger that holds the film's wacky excesses in orbit and does more honor to the legend himself than a thousand Vegas lounge-show wannabes.
  86. Zathura: A Space Adventure
    Director Jon Favreau, who dipped profitably into family entertainment with 2003's "Elf," effectively recreates the illustrative universe of a good children's book, but he's stuck with a story that noisily grinds its gears.
  87. November
    Feels more like a clever student short that got out of hand than the Kafka-esque nightmare that director Greg Harrison (Groove) likely intended.
  88. Three Days of Rain
    Beautifully lit, with some inventive but unobtrusive framing, and the moody jazz score unifies the multiple storylines without overwhelming them. Yet while the movie never goes slack, it never really transcends its good intentions either.
  89. Moog
    Short and shapeless but nonetheless welcome documentary.
  90. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    It's as notable for what it isn't as for what it is, but in a field full of loud, obnoxious fare, its easygoing affability qualifies as a welcome change of pace.
  91. Heaven
    With Heaven, Tykwer completes his self-appointment as Kieslowski's heir apparent, but since he has always been a better filmmaker than a thinker, his ideas drift into the ether.
  92. Hidalgo
    Mortensen nicely underplays his role, offhandedly tossing off one-liners and making the script's sometimes purple dialogue sound a little less cheesy, but the rest of the film often lurches into hammy overdrive.
  93. P.S.
    While not dwelling on plot eventually gets P.S. in trouble during the slack finale, it gives Linney and Grace plenty of room to maneuver.
  94. In the Realms of the Unreal
    In the end, it all gets to be too stifling. The film looks amazing, and there may be no better way to adapt Darger's work to the screen. But Yu's decision to limit the comments on Darger's enduring appeal keeps the audience locked in his cramped room too long, without a window of context.
  95. Yours, Mine and Ours
    Pretty painless by kiddie movie standards.
  96. Intimate Stories
    Intimate Stories stays doggedly, purposefully minor, in part because director Carlos Sorin and screenwriter Pablo Solarz want to explore the casual interactions of people doing nothing.
  97. Marion Bridge
    If von Carolsfeld had worked more surprises into her style and presentation, Marion Bridge wouldn't live down to its genre stereotype so readily.
  98. Only the Strong Survive
    But while Only The Strong Survive is essential viewing for soul fans, as a documentary it never makes the needed connections among the artists, their music, and the lives they lead.
  99. The Big Bounce
    When the general pleasantness of the atmosphere and the cleverness of the screenplay don't carry the movie, Wilson does -- at least until a hurried, confounding finale that reveals its casualness as sloppiness.
  100. Kissing Jessica Stein
    Eventually Stein's habit of dodging its own issues grows frustrating.
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