The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,412 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 2.5 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: 5,570 out of 10412
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10412
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10412
10412 movie reviews
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  1. Ella McCay
    It all adds up to a movie that isn’t screwy enough to be a screwball comedy nor deep enough to be a dramedy.
  2. Dust Bunny
    Toning down the blood-drenched viscera of Hannibal while channeling the morbid yet whimsical stylings of Pushing Daisies, Fuller’s inaugural film effort is completely in tune with his previous narrative interests, though this time filtered through the gaze of a precocious child.
  3. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    The film is even less than the sum of its genre trappings.
  4. 100 Nights of Hero
    If 100 Nights Of Hero is a critique of the misogynistic societies that cultivated these fairy tales, it is also an intentional embrace of the mythologies—however misguided they may seem—that have prompted women of all walks of life to test the limits of what they can get away with.
  5. The Chronology of Water
    Stewart applies an admirably experimental vision to her adaptation, but she can’t translate whatever power she may have found in Yuknavitch’s text to the screen.
  6. Five Nights at Freddy's 2
    Its entire third act is just expectation for a third movie that hopefully never comes. It is a bare minimum branding experiment, a dumb thing designed to be recognized with the hope that enjoyment will simply follow.
  7. La Grazia
    La Grazia salutes simple, humble decency, and writer-director Paolo Sorrentino follows the example of his protagonist, largely avoiding the usual array of visual flourishes that have marked his previous collaborations with Servillo. The result is a decidedly reflective film that’s among the director’s most affecting.
  8. Oh. What. Fun.
    Beyond its desperate gestures towards better movies and its countless regifted plot points, Oh. What. Fun. does end up looking a lot like a familiar Christmas fixture: a garbage bag full of torn wrapping paper.
  9. Marty Supreme
    The miracle of Chalamet’s performance is that as brazen, indecent, and dishonest as Marty is, he makes a temporarily convincing case for himself as a thwarted athlete, rather than a crook with an athletic fixation.
  10. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
    More quaintly focused than the exuberant previous film, though with no shortage of eccentric characters or longwinded side stories, Wake Up Dead Man agreeably seeks answers both existential and earthly.
  11. Hamnet
    In traditional terms, it could simply be described as a tearjerker. Like Buckley’s performance, though, it’s richer than that, a cross between an out-of-body experience and a full-body sob. Some will likely resist it on those grounds, understandably. But, again, framing our reactions with the feelings of others is rarely a good idea, and despite its moments of faltering, Hamnet hits like an emotional wrecking ball—devastating as it clears its path.
  12. Eternity
    By sidestepping the sharper, tougher questions about matters of the heart, the film still plays it too safe. Freyne may love all three characters, but what he doesn’t do is make his audience care deeply enough about which of them will get their happy ending—and which one won’t.
  13. Zootopia 2
    Rather than push animation forward, Zootopia 2 is content to be just another colorful kids’ movie about cute, funny animals in a big, frenetic world.
  14. The Great Escaper
    A compelling piece of straightforward true-crime that makes the most of its throwback form.
  15. Sisu: Road to Revenge
    There are moments when the sequel nearly overdoes it, when Helander’s thirst for blood threatens to overpower the film. Yet, in its simplicity, it finds a steady rhythm that quickens gradually, peaks, and resets. It isn’t profound or enlightening, but for 89 minutes, it rides the fury road confidently, flipping tanks and unleashing hell along the way.
  16. Wicked: For Good
    The intimate highlights are too few and far between in this distended adaptation.
  17. Rental Family
    Fraser walks through this aggressively sappy drama with the aura of simple goodness that has served him well. But such concentrated radiance starts to feel like a denial of the painful reality Rental Family ignores. The movie wants to give you a hug, but you may be tempted to slap it across the face.
  18. Left-Handed Girl
    There’s something impersonal about Left-Handed Girl, like a greeting card written by a close friend with their non-dominant hand. Select words and phrases are legible, but the overall wobbliness has the entire sentiment feeling a bit fuzzy.
  19. Come See Me in the Good Light
    Learning about Gibson’s ‘roid rage from their treatment, and Falley’s acceptance of it, is a more moving example of their care for one another than much of what the film finds in their shared profession.
  20. Sirât
    The idea of being confronted with temptation and trepidation in the desert is reminiscent of a classic Biblical encounter between Jesus and Satan. Laxe offers a much-too-literal takeaway during the film’s final moments, a sour comedown after some truly breathtaking shots of adrenaline. But as the cliché advises, it’s the journey Sirāt takes us on that truly merits appreciation.
  21. The Carpenter's Son
    It takes dedication to make a dull movie where Nicolas Cage plays Joseph and Jesus gets into a fistfight with Satan, but The Carpenter’s Son sets to its task with devotion, if little else.
  22. Playdate
    When people complain about the death of mainstream comedies, it’s bottomfeeding films like Playdate that are the genre’s executioner. No energy, no wit, just a tasteless and tacky sequence of events that barely manages to clear the bar for what’s still considered a movie.
  23. Now You See Me: Now You Don't
    As with the previous films, there are as many ludicrous plot holes as there are genuinely surprising twists, and little of what happens in the story would hold up to any kind of scrutiny. (Why are these stage magicians so well-trained in hand-to-hand combat?) But that’s part of the fun too.
  24. The Running Man
    [Wright] continues to prove more adept at tightly weaving his thematic concerns into genre-friendly comedy. Making a muscular, fun-enough adaptation of The Running Man is at once beneath him and beyond him.
  25. In Your Dreams
    In Your Dreams has all the excitement of a low-anxiety, day-in-the-life nightmare stirred up by a case of the Sunday scaries. And, like those mundane nightmares, as soon as the film is over, you’re left momentarily wondering if it actually happened in the first place.
  26. Peter Hujar's Day
    The little things, the random asides and minor revelations, are just as powerful as the star-studded namedrops during this extensive conversation.
  27. Train Dreams
    Train Dreams, at just 95 minutes before credits, is as efficient, accessible, and poignant as a good short story.
  28. Nuremberg
    Vanderbilt’s film slowly, confidently morphs into something beyond a cautionary tale and more like a klaxon blaring through the cinema.
  29. Predator: Badlands
    Dan Trachtenberg's latest Predator movie is a safe, frictionless, lore-centric franchise expansion.
  30. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
    Little Amélie submerges itself in fantastical ecstasy and melancholy with a magic all its own.
  31. Coexistence, My Ass!
    Filmmaker Amber Fares assembles a ton of footage into a thorough portrait of a disillusioned activist-comedian, though that portrait and the one-woman show it revolves around are themselves limited messengers of a worthwhile call to action.
  32. Ballad of a Small Player
    Berger’s skill with middlebrow crowdpleasers succumbs to empty spectacle; he can still frame a bluntly powerful shot, and he knocks off a few nice Ocean’s Eleven images, but most are just blunt.
  33. Hedda
    Simply put, there is nothing polite about Hedda—adultery, drug use, and suicide are all integral to the story—but the grit beneath the opulent glamour of this estate is what makes spending an extended evening within its walls so exciting.
  34. Regretting You
    The best that can be said about the film is that The Fault In Our Stars director Josh Boone, well-versed with the teen weepy, sometimes approaches the schlock with a bit of self-deflating slyness—something more attuned to the audience’s eyerolls and the cast’s barely-hidden smirks than to the serious source material.
  35. Bugonia
    Lacking distinctive social commentary, meaningful character development, or a salient environmental angle, the update feels all but incapable of speaking to the moment.
  36. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
    The remake features riveting tension, assured performances, and hallmarks of an exciting new director’s narrative fascinations, all while the politics of its central dynamic continue to cry out for examination.
  37. Urchin
    Despite his confident and unfussy direction, Dickinson owes most of Urchin‘s success to his lead actor, Frank Dillane.
  38. The Perfect Neighbor
    The documentary’s damning look at stand-your-ground laws and the ineffectiveness of police even when they’re doing everything “right” (because the body-cam footage that makes up this film wouldn’t exist if they thought they were doing something “wrong”) is awful and thorough, avoiding cliché through a devotion to fisheye footage. Its upsetting, explicit-bordering-on-exploitative access drives its points into the pit of your stomach.
  39. The Twits
    The Twits is exactly what one might imagine a Netflix Dahl adaptation to be: Diluted, simplistic animation, as cloying and feckless and smoothed over as anything from the last decade of Illumination films.
  40. Black Phone 2
    A handsome follow-up that both seizes the predecessor’s sense of heartbreak (albeit at a lesser degree) and dials up its chills by transposing them onto an icy, blood-soaked youth camp in the Rocky Mountains.
  41. Is This Thing On?
    Is This Thing On? might come to its healing from an appropriately modest place, but there’s still a bit of actorly grandiosity under its skin.
  42. Good Fortune
    Unfortunately, the sharp point of view and creative risk-taking present in Ansari’s acclaimed series Master Of None (co-created with Alan Yang) are nowhere to be seen in this pedestrian comedy full of convoluted plot points.
  43. The Woman in Cabin 10
    This is Hitchcock lite, with a great leading lady and a story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It may not be the kind of film that lingers after it’s done, but for a good trip, rather than a long trip, it’s worth climbing aboard.
  44. Father Mother Sister Brother
    Father Mother Sister Brother depicts with earnest melancholy the things taken for granted in life that don’t become real until after death, but its stiffness keeps it from being a work of true emotional significance.
  45. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is a slog, confused about the artist at its heart and stuck on unconvincing ideas about his art.
  46. Roofman
    It’s a star vehicle for Tatum and Dunst that can’t put all of its faith in the healing power of charisma and chemistry.
  47. TRON: Ares
    The result is a pretty dumb movie with beautiful visual effects, cleanly shot action, and a kickass soundtrack. Wouldn’t it be great if the future of blockbusters was only this bleak?
  48. Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5
    The oppression is coming from all angles, but the unifying factor of these methods is that they have all already been described by author George Orwell. In the cutting documentary Orwell: 2+2=5, director Raoul Peck adds all these attacks up, expressing his contemporary horror using Orwell as his voice.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jay Kelly
    Every moment of Jay Kelly lives between the textual (the internal conflict of the fictional actor) and the metatextual (what the story tells us about the real creative forces behind the film).
  50. Sentimental Value
    Sentimental Value successfully synthesizes metaphor and nuanced character drama to convey the way suffering ripples outward—even if it’s hard to shake the feeling that, like its protagonist, it should let us in a little deeper.
  51. Anemone
    While it wades in its mysteries and mythologies a bit too long, Anemone ends up being a poignant, promising project about the stains of war on the soul—in this case, the Irish Civil War—and the tendency for one to self-destruct in the aftermath of ruthless service, regardless of where one’s sense of duty or regret lies.
  52. The Smashing Machine
    Safdie splits the difference, striving to replicate the gritty, in-the-moment documentary feel of the source movie he clearly admires, and coat it in the triple-A Hollywood sheen befitting this kind of serious star vehicle.
  53. Play Dirty
    A potentially interesting-if-imperfect mash-up of contrasting sensibilities (Stark vs. Black) turns out to be just another one of the curiously fake-looking blockbusters that emerge every now and then from streaming’s abyssal money pit and immediately disappear from the public consciousness.
  54. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
    Byrne excels at evoking pain and exhaustion, but also selfish ambivalence, and the kind of frazzled mother character she played in the Insidious franchise is put to far better use by Bronstein.
  55. Dead of Winter
    Much like its locale, Dead Of Winter is a sparse but engrossing thriller, one that excels because of the nuanced work of its cast and Kirk’s focus on Barb’s grief amid the chaos.
  56. Steve
    Though Steve is a capable conduit for the myriad familiar dramas of juvenile delinquent storytelling, there’s just not enough time in the day (or the film’s wishy-washy 24-hours-in-hell structure) to give anything the attention it deserves.
  57. After the Hunt
    After The Hunt does eventually add up to something greater than its flood of but-what-about details.
  58. V/H/S/Halloween
    It’s the playful entries in V/H/S/Halloween that hit like a sugar rush. This edition is hardly nightmare-inducing, but it’s still as broadly enjoyable as a crisp October night.
  59. A House of Dynamite
    Despite some white-knuckle moments, Dynamite slackens with each runthrough of its perma-climactic 15 minutes. In the world of global catastrophes, Bigelow increasingly resembles an unwitting tourist, just like the rest of us.
  60. Eleanor the Great
    This tonally tricky comedy-drama tackles aging, loss, the Holocaust, Jewishness, and the difficulty of determining the truth in a fake-news world. But Johansson’s well-meaning film couldn’t be more aggravating, and its biggest problem is its insistence that we find Eleanor so damn endearing, no matter what.
  61. Deathstalker
    With Deathstalker, Kostanski attempts to bring his loose, gleeful style to the sword and sorcery genre, and mostly succeeds, giving us another midnight movie essential.
  62. All of You
    As with so many great onscreen romances, it’s not that All Of You is doing something that’s never been done before, just that it’s doing it really well, with a great pair of actors at its center.
  63. Predators
    In forcing a viewer’s roiling, complex feelings inward, Predators is also asking audiences to sit with cruelty, and ponder how contributive, even in a small way, they might have been—as well as just how deep their own personal reservoir of compassion might be.
  64. Swiped
    James is a compelling leading presence for the saga, capturing both Whitney’s youthful effervescence and the gripping fear that begins to take over her life. That the film can depict the emotional abuse Whitney experiences while still keeping an eye on the misogyny she herself perpetuates is an impressive tightrope. And James’ charisma helps carry the story through its occasional script stumble or on-the-nose moment.
  65. Him
    As the final moments of Him unfold, there’s an attempt to drastically course-correct. . . But it’s a desperate Hail Mary after a poorly played game, without a hope of bailing out the team behind it.
  66. The Lost Bus
    Without that grandeur—that Hollywood-sheen take on storybook resilience—the film’s uneven application of sad-sack strife might extinguish McConaughey’s guiding performance. But Greengrass’ throwback disaster-movie efforts, plus a healthy fury induced by our harmful ecological footprint, keeps feeding this fire.
  67. One Battle After Another
    DiCaprio is so terrific, and Infiniti such a charismatic find, that viewers may find themselves wishing the cast, both principal and supporting (which also includes Regina Hall and Alana Haim), had room in this 162-minute movie to bounce off of each other with a little more frequency.
  68. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
    Is A Big Bold Beautiful Journey a piece of wannabe creativity with a yawning hollowness at its center, or an A-list romance with some welcome aesthetic sensitivity? Like the outcome of a first date, it will ultimately be determined by chemistry.
  69. The Secret Agent
    By delicately weaving the veracity of archive, the reverie induced by celluloid, and the inevitability of corruption into its narrative, The Secret Agent becomes a career-spanning treatise that cozily situates itself amid the staggering cinematic epics that Mendonça pays respect to.
  70. Sacrifice
    Void of righteousness, indignation, or even straight-up nihilism, Sacrifice won’t cause even the most malleable of worldviews to waver.
  71. The Long Walk
    Despite the stamping of hundreds of feet, The Long Walk smolders with the blunt power of a burned flag.
  72. It Was Just an Accident
    By narrativizing the collective mistreatment of political dissidents—both those he personally forged bonds with and the countless others persecuted by the Iranian state—the fearless filmmaker crafts his most radical condemnation of the forces that have long attempted to silence him.
  73. Frankenstein
    Del Toro’s love for the grotesque and the abject is sincere and passionate, and there are scenes in Frankenstein that play like thesis statements for the director’s entire career.
  74. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
    Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is so affable, so good-natured, so modest—just so gosh-darned charming—that it’s difficult not to crack at least a little bit of a smile while watching it.
  75. Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)
    Part procedural, part granular portrait of an increasingly silenced demographic, Nuestra Tierra asserts the global scale of Indigenous persecution from its opening shot.
  76. No Other Choice
    No Other Choice ends up a laudable mixed bag, a lot of morbid fun with committed performances and beautiful composition that meanders long enough that its rage peters out.
  77. Erupcja
    Pete Ohs’ best film yet.
  78. Twinless
    As its characters make bad choices, some foolish, some perverse, and some truly Machiavellian, Twinless sticks with the absurd emotional catastrophe that follows. That dedication to the mess it’s made is often captivating, even when the film’s intentional line-blurring between comedy, romance, and gaslighting thriller never reaches the heights of its twin-centric sources of inspiration, like Brian De Palma.
  79. The Conjuring: Last Rites
    The Conjuring: Last Rites solidifies The Conjuring franchise as the Fast & Furious of horror movies: A conservative, Christian, family-oriented, spin-off and sequel-laden series of adventures that lose the plot and reinvest in the audience’s affection for its familiar beats and cornball leads.
  80. The Baltimorons
    The greatest success of The Baltimorons, aside from how effortlessly funny it is, lies in its focused thematic weight, wrapped up in its setting.
  81. The Roses
    The leads are magnets, whether they’re surgically picking each other apart with the cruelty of Caligula or steaming up a seductive romance. Their remarkable rapport makes The Roses essential viewing, a must-watch rom-com.
  82. The Toxic Avenger
    The Toxic Avenger is an imperfect but no less vital lifeblood transfusion for the cheapo horror-comedy: a cartoon-carnage splash-a-thon, and an eco-conscious call to clean out the profiteers poisoning us and our planet.
  83. Caught Stealing
    It’s remarkable, then, how well Caught Stealing holds together as entertainment; as much as Aronofsky seems incapable of the modulation needed to make a crime caper, he’s also a big part of why this particular variation works anyway.
  84. Vice Is Broke
    For as much as Huang tries to go for a more freewheeling approach, treating his interviews like off-the-cuff conversations taking place in bars and restaurants, Vice Is Broke isn’t that intimate or revealing.
  85. Eenie Meanie
    Eenie Meanie largely coasts on clichés, every brief high point deflated by its worldview.
  86. The Thursday Murder Club
    If The Thursday Murder Club has a central flaw, it’s that it’s more affable than laugh-out-loud funny or especially clever. In that way, it winds up feeling more like an appetizer than a full meal. In fact, with such an appealing heroine and such an engaging yet underexplored world, you could easily imagine The Thursday Murder Club as a supersized pilot to an ongoing series where the gang solve a new crime each week.
  87. Devo
    The deceptively straightforward package actually benefits a band that enjoys coloring outside the lines. Devo allows Devo the space to be its idiosyncratic self, both in the present-day interviews and the wealth of archival footage. Devo’s reign may have been relatively short, but Smith gives the band the fond memorializing it deserves.
  88. Lurker
    Of course things get out of control—it’s not like the dark underbellies of music-world organizations haven’t always exceeded our worst expectations. The strength of Lurker, though, is when it’s operating as a slick, slimy social-engineering thriller that anyone could relate to.
  89. Splitsville
    The film climaxes with several spinning plates that crash in a delightful crescendo
  90. Eden
    Eden winds up yoking Howard’s more domesticated movies with his thwarted-adventure narratives. The suspense lies in whether certain characters will figure out whether they’re on a bold, one-off exploration or the cusp of a sustainable new life—and whether humanity on the whole is any good at telling them apart.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Relay
    Rather than discovering anything novel or liberating about the hostile, modern battleground of America, Relay‘s compelling set-up becomes overly dependent on typical rug-pulls and action beats.
  92. Ne Zha 2
    It’s not hard to understand why global audiences turned out in droves to see Ne Zha 2. Its boundlessly creative visuals, rich character design, all-enveloping sound, and imaginative scenarios are truly original. But that sensory onslaught—those endless fights with their own progressive stakes—comes at the expense of focus, character, and story.
  93. The Map That Leads to You
    While The Map That Leads To You looks great—much of it clearly shot on location in Spain during golden hour—it’s too staid and calm to reflect the throw-caution-to-the-wind passion of its two young protagonists. Rather than getting swept up in Heather and Jack’s courtship, the film keeps them at a distance, like a slow-motion car crash you can’t look away from.
  94. Suspended Time
    Though Assayas is best known for his incisive cultural commentary, the subdued regimes and musings in Suspended Time are just as enthralling in their own quiet way.
  95. Night Always Comes
    Prolific TV director Benjamin Caron‘s self-serious movie keeps digging itself into a hole, first with its narrative, then with its heroine’s increasingly lurid backstory, until, like that heroine, it can’t claw its way out.
  96. Fixed
    The film’s intermittent charms come thanks to some of the voice actors.
  97. Nobody 2
    Though the punches maintain their force in Nobody 2, the sole punchline they support has become a grating dad joke, one that you’ve heard so many times that it’s lost all meaning.
  98. By the Stream
    By The Stream continues to meld the auteur and his muse with its two central characters, employing several of Hong’s narrative and technical staples with an air of heightened self-reflection.
  99. Boys Go to Jupiter
    It’s a hilarious and touching adventure, made all the more so by its unique and enchanting animation.
  100. Weapons
    Weapons rudely disrupts the illusion of suburban safety with impish delight and a fully stocked horror arsenal. It also addresses some of the magical thinking that incomprehensible tragedy can inspire in people who would otherwise never engage in it.
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