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. The House
    The pace is hectic, but the jokes just aren't there.
  2. Once Upon a Time in Venice
    Stylistically, Once Upon A Time In Venice is mostly indistinguishable from a middling TV pilot that never made it to series.
  3. Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween
    A sequel so wholly anodyne that it doesn’t even deserve its exclamation point.
  4. The Only Living Boy in New York
    Marc Webb’s new movie, in contrast, uses the song for its title, the name of an in-movie manuscript, and as a late-breaking song cue that doesn’t drop the needle so much as clunk it down with turgid inevitability.
  5. 9/11
    It’s the film equivalent of a guy loudly demanding the attention of everyone in a subway car, then refusing to even issue a compellingly strange rant.
  6. Howard the Duck
    Howard The Duck has several jokes, really, they're all just desperately unfunny.
  7. I Can Only Imagine
    This is an interesting idea, executed with a reductive, tin-eared understanding of what constitutes art to go along with a faith-based movie’s reductive, tin-eared understanding of what constitutes entertainment.
  8. A Question of Faith
    The plot’s mechanics in tying the families together are often clumsy and contorted, in ways that are strange without being particularly interesting.
  9. The Crow
    Rupert Sanders’ The Crow emerges from its 15-year development hell not as the version of this reboot that finally clicked, but as a film that seems to have once been nine films, all hastily cobbled into something resembling a story, all of its edges smoothed off until it’s flat, flimsy, and dull.
  10. Life Itself
    A vapid exercise in narrative kitsch that spans two languages and multiple decades and love stories.
  11. A.X.L.
    Something worse than bad. It’s utterly forgettable.
  12. Barney's Great Adventure
    Barney's Great Adventure will bore adults to tears.
  13. Forever Mine
    Forever Mine explores many of Schrader's pet themes—obsession, revenge, jealousy, betrayal, guilt—but they've seldom felt as empty, shallow, or ridiculous.
  14. King of Thieves
    Unlike "Gotti," King Of Thieves doesn’t have one iconic actor burning through decades’ worth of goodwill. It has six.
  15. Hellraiser: Deader
    Hellraiser: Deader starts off okay—But that’s just Stockholm syndrome.
  16. Chopping Mall
    Looking cheap, rushed, and often apathetically thrown together, except for the lovingly shot scenes involving gratuitous nudity or sudden violence
  17. Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo
    A baffling passion project whose cruelly protracted runtime is eclipsed only by the monumentally tedious way it fills it.
  18. Tank Girl
    Sure Tank Girl has a lot of energy but then so does a Pixie Stix-addled eleven-year-old screaming in your ear about the intricacies of Pokemon for hours at a time during a cross-country road trip. That doesn't mean either ordeal should be experienced by any reasonable human except perhaps as a form of torture.
  19. Shanghai Surprise
    Limply, tardily trying to cash in on the success of the Indiana Jones movies.
  20. Endings, Beginnings
    A complete dud.
  21. The Fanatic
    Mostly, the action, while bloodier than one might expect, is as goofy and dim-witted as the dialogue.
  22. A Rainy Day in New York
    This is a bad movie, with maybe two good jokes and some of Allen’s clunkiest direction.
  23. Arctic Dogs
    There’s really not much to recommend about this film: the animation lacks texture, the score is overwrought, the plotting is scattershot, and the character design is uninspired.
  24. Body of Evidence
    Evidence tries to one-up Basic Instinct through the sheer quantity and length of its sex scenes, but it backfires.
  25. Striptease
    I don't know that Striptease could ever have been anything more than second-rate Elmore Leonard, but Moore's dour lead performance sabotages the film from the get-go.
  26. Under the Cherry Moon
    There are elementary school playgrounds with substantially higher levels of verbal wit and intellectual discourse than Under The Cherry Room.
  27. The Forever Purge
    In The Forever Purge, we’re told a story that a battered nation has heard a lot—a sermon of immigration and class warfare that’s too heavy-handed to say anything its prospective audience hasn’t been told on countless social media feeds over the last few years.
  28. Graffiti Bridge
    It's a struggle with quasi-profound ramifications that crystallizes Prince's long-standing obsession with sin and salvation, sex and Godliness, the hungers of the body and the demands of the spirit. Or, at least, it should be. Instead it plays like a cartoon parody of Prince's soft-headed spiritual concerns.
  29. Stardust
    As played by actor-musician Johnny Flynn, the Halloween-costume Bowie we meet in Stardust is a miserable, charmless wannabe. Which is to say that the film fails where a single photo of this most chameleonic of music legends would succeed: It makes Bowie boring.
  30. The Man from Toronto
    For a character-driven “mistaken identity” comedy that lives or dies based on the humorous interactions between two A-list leads, its lousy script barely constitutes life support.
  31. Psychomagic, A Healing Art
    Historically, of course, making no earthly sense hasn’t been a major impediment in Jodorowsky’s work. In this instance, he commits a sin graver than charlatanism by just being boring.
  32. Above Suspicion
    For all the star’s efforts, though, Above Suspicion will mostly just appeal to the crowd that found Hillbilly Elegy compelling. Everyone else will be left wishing they could see Khaleesi fly high and free again.
  33. The Binge
    Even the occasional funny line grows wearying, because nothing in this movie happens for any real reason. The details that labor to appear random, the big slapstick plot turns, and the predetermined character arcs are all equally meaningless, unchecked byproducts of filmmakers emptying their joke files with Superbad playing on a loop in the background.
  34. Songbird
    It becomes clear early on that, despite its cheap thriller trappings, the film is headed only in the blandest direction, basically a love story of the kind traditionally told in commercials for tech companies and phones.
  35. Cherry
    This is a film with nothing new to say about love, war, trauma, addiction, crime, or America. It blows through these topics on a bender of hyper-stylization, indifferently twisting its true story into the shape of other, better movies.
  36. Vanguard
    The move from practical stuns to a discount VFX simulacrum (no real cars appear to have been wrecked in any of these chase scenes) has not flattered Tong’s amateurish direction.
  37. Mortal Kombat
    This is supposed to be a world of fighters with bizarre outfits and combat abilities, but a lot of the time, the viewer will just find themselves staring at a screen that’s mostly rocks.
  38. Godspell
    Maybe the broad gestures, colorful costumes, and exaggerated acting worked in the theater. As a movie, it's actively, fascinatingly terrible, with a vision of Christ more likely to instill in viewers a fear of traveling bands of loony street performers than a desire to embrace the Holy Spirit.
  39. He's All That
    There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a teen rom-com centered on social media popularity and influencer culture—even one that doesn’t necessarily see those things as evil. But He’s All That offers nothing beyond buzzwords, empty platitudes, and sponcon.
  40. The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard
    What the set pieces have in common with everything else in this dunderheaded, insultingly mechanical franchise hopeful is the overwhelming feeling that everyone involved said “good enough” at every turn. It’s savvy only in the way it lowers the standards for this kind of thing, assuring that any future sequels that give half an ass instead of barely a quarter of one will prompt more enthusiasm, or at least relief.
  41. Separation
    The film’s lone value may be setting up the perfect answer to that “improve a movie with one letter” challenge: Add an indefinite article to the front of its title, and you’re left with one of the great films of the new millennium—and, incidentally, a much more unnerving portrait of a marriage on the rocks.
  42. The Car
    It is, in short, sub-par as demon-possessed-car movies go, even if watching Brolin attempt to act horrified at the sight of a classic automobile makes it almost worthwhile.
  43. Bullet Train
    Leitch’s talky, violent hit man movie, with Brad Pitt at the center of an over-cranked ensemble cast, reminds us why Hollywood has all but abandoned attempts to copy the successes of Tarantino and Ritchie. This film is not just bloated, tedious, dim-witted, and glib, it’s also redundant.
  44. After We Fell
    Even as young adult softcore, After We Fell is limp. Though the series switched over to an R rating starting with its previous installment, the repetitive sex scenes set to moody pop songs are lacking in anything resembling genuine heat, even as new series director Castille Landon tries to spice things up by adding hot tubs, phone sex, and gym equipment into the mix.
  45. Silent Night
    For a film written and nearly finished before the pandemic (with some reshoots in late 2020), Silent Night practically bleats for relevancy.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The People We Hate at the Wedding
    This slog of a film will have you checking your watch, wishing for an open bar, and begging for the sparkler sendoff.
  47. Blacklight
    Blacklight cuts corners everywhere.
  48. Ray Donovan: The Movie
    This is perfunctory storytelling, a rather artless and dull 100 minutes that does nothing but check off a few predictable narrative boxes.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Firestarter
    The best thing that can be said about this new iteration of Firestarter is that it at least gave us a new score by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies. The rest feels like a waste of a talented cast and crew that somehow, against all odds, makes the 1984 film seem like a staggering achievement in the realm of King adaptations.
  50. Prey for the Devil
    The most frustrating thing about Prey For The Devil is that there seems to be a good movie somewhere in this patchwork of themes and pastiches.
  51. Easter Sunday
    Easter Sunday, for all its faults, is still nominally watchable, but it’s a wasteland of unfocused potential.
  52. Ticket to Paradise
    It’s as if everyone made this movie about the joy of being on vacation—while also taking one.
  53. The Princess
    A yawningly simplistic and roundly inconsequential action movie, The Princess lacks, on a narrative level, the certitude and clarity of purpose of its title character.
  54. The Ravine
    The Ravine spends more than an hour telegraphing that this is a story about the perplexing feelings that arise from a close friend’s dark and sudden turn. Then it swiftly brushes aside those layers in favor of a mystically clean explanation, and the result is narratively dull, emotionally ungratifying, and intellectually insulting.
  55. Madame Web
    The film is often so hurried or so preoccupied with what’s to come that it ignores what’s happening in the moment.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Double Team
    Someone involved in the making of this movie is clearly insane; it should be just a standard buddy/action movie, but aside from lots of kickboxing and shooting and a big fight at the end, it doesn't follow any of the genre's chimp-simple conventions. It may be the worst Van Damme movie ever made.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Son
    Despite the shallow handling of truly important and nuanced subject matter, Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and a scene-stealing Vanessa Kirby go deep with their performances in ways that almost make The Son’s manipulative and predictable story worth sitting through—almost.
  58. The Lost Girls
    After watching, you may well wish that Peter Pan could be re-copyrighted to be kept out of the hands of anyone inclined to make this much of a mess of it.
  59. Unhuman
    If you’re a fan of Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, scribes of the later Saw sequels and the Feast trilogy, you know what to expect from them: gore, vomit, red filters, and maybe a half-clever plot twist. If you’re not a fan, it’s best to stay as far away as possible from Unhuman, a cheap-looking, awkwardly calibrated horror-comedy which only the team’s truest devotees could love.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    2 Days in the Valley
    A stupid movie that expects us to suspend our disbelief until it seems smart. Skip it and see some other movie that features two hired killers having a conversation in a car.
  61. The Island of Dr. Moreau
    As a sci-fi action movie, the latest Moreau is sub-schlock. As a thinly veiled post-colonial allegory, it's dangerously close to racism. Either way, it's one of the most ridiculous movies in a ridiculous summer.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Ghost and the Darkness
    Some might even say the movie's messages and themes are racist attempts to justify colonialism, but they're wrong; this forgettable movie doesn't have any messages, or anything else, at all.
    • The A.V. Club
  63. Meet Cute
    There aren’t any clever moments, just a parade of clichés you’ve seen in many other indie romances.
  64. Get Away If You Can
    One hopes the entire process made for great couples therapy, because watching it certainly doesn’t.
  65. Mindcage
    The end result is a movie whose chief entertainment value may come from taking an inventory of the different ways its various characters pronounce the name of its imprisoned, assistive madman.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Magazine Dreams
    Bynum scaffolds the film with a narrative about failure, not one about the challenges of navigating life on the spectrum. Killian’s cognitive differences are there to be exacerbated by the many problems the script piles on his shoulders, as if Bynum has a torture fetish and means to exercises it on his lead.
  67. Children of the Corn
    There’s no reason a movie with this premise couldn’t be better. Just not in these folks’ hands.
  68. Love Again
    This is after all a romantic comedy, not a romantic tragedy, though you might not realize it since it’s almost devoid of humor.
  69. A Good Person
    Asking the question “what makes a good person” might have been an intriguing idea. However, in trying to come up with an answer, A Good Person ends up presenting an overwrought narrative that’s full of cliches that do not resonate.
  70. The Beekeeper
    The Beekeeper feels stale and rather one-note.
  71. The Exorcist: Believer
    An exorcism movie may not need to be compelled by the power of Christ, but something about it still needs to be compelling, and slapping the name The Exorcist on a screenplay that reads like a brainstorming session is just not enough.
  72. Knox Goes Away
    Unfortunately, with limp, elongated scenes rendering them unexciting, the whole plot unfolds like a long afterthought the filmmakers had after the audience lost all interest.
  73. Poolman
    If you’re a Chris Pine super-fan looking to live inside the actor’s head for a little while, Poolman just might be for you. But if you’re pretty much anyone else—even someone looking for some so-bad-it’s-good fun—take a lesson from the walkouts and stay out of the splash zone.
  74. Bob Marley: One Love
    Unfortunately director Reinaldo Marcus Green, along with his co-screenwriters Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers and Zach Baylin, waste this opportunity and Marley’s legacy with a rather limp story full of cliches and perplexing choices.
  75. The Deliverance
    The Deliverance is alternatingly dull and totally nuts. It is never scary, and only sometimes holds your attention.
  76. That Christmas
    Schmaltz-heavy and wishlist-thin, That Christmas offers very little and doesn’t even have the self-awareness to include the receipt.
  77. You're Cordially Invited
    You’re Cordially Invited is a rigorously unoriginal and uncreative film, in compliance with the flat mundanity of content that the streaming giants want their audiences to bask in.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Front Room
    It simply isn’t very scary.
  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. Elevation
    None of the actors do much with the uninspired material, but perhaps Baccarin is the most enjoyable to watch as she grumbles in monotone about how she wants to kill herself and handily espouses monster factoids from her diligent research as a former Caltech professor.
  81. Lilo & Stitch
    If repetition is the only goal, Lilo & Stitch paints by the numbers. But the Disney Channel Original aesthetic and a handful of wrongheaded decisions make this film just the latest in a string of soulless, cut-rate copies.
  82. Dear Santa
    If Christmas movies can’t be good, they can usually at least be pleasant distractions. Dear Santa is neither. It’s a regrettable film, one that wasn’t ever worth the wordplay that started it.
  83. Old Guy
    Old Guy, as is, is just a film about an old guy, free of complexity or nuance, coasting towards its formulaic conclusion.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Fight or Flight
    Hartnett is the one element that makes the whole thing bearable. Yet he still isn’t enough to make it enjoyable, at least in any sustained way.
  85. A Working Man
    The beats become terribly repetitive even when the fight choreography is at times satisfying, and the R-rating at least allows for some CGI blood spurts. But in spite of the dreary tedium, there are moments of genuine levity that shine through the gloom, be they intentional or not.
  86. The Accountant 2
    The sequel sticks Affleck and Jon Bernthal in a sitcom episode surrounded by a Sound Of Freedom-style macho fantasy—call it Gun Sheldon. It’s a terrible combination that buries the rapport of its leads in chaotic action, troubling worldviews, and increasingly generic plotting.
  87. Fear Street: Prom Queen
    Fear Street: Prom Queen doesn’t merely fall flat dramatically, but dashes any opportunity for visual intrigue in terms of cinematography, costume design, and, most vitally, its on-screen carnage.
  88. Everything's Going to Be Great
    Everything’s Going To Be Great tries to tackle ideas related to perceptions of success, acceptance, family, religion, love, homosexuality, and probably some other things thrown in there too. But there is no commitment to any of them.
  89. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
    This silly, simplistic sci-fi journey means to be thought-provoking, but the irony of its banality is more recoiling than provocative.
  90. Scream 7
    The resulting film is empty fan service, content with simply evoking appreciation for the characters that Williamson created 30 years ago instead of doing anything exciting with them.
  91. The Brave
    The Brave ultimately plays like the world’s most depressing remake of Joe Versus The Volcano, with all the joy and whimsy replaced by gloom and grime. It’s a morbid, maudlin oddity that starts off slowly and never finds its footing.
  92. Outcome
    The life lessons Reef learns aren’t meaningful, and the movie’s message about making amends is patronizing. In the end, it’s the audience that deserves an apology.
  93. Short Cut to Nirvana: Kumbh Mela
    Inept.
  94. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    The whole three-ring circus winds up in a church for a redemptive finale, but by then, Diary has committed too many sins for even the most generous soul to offer salvation.
  95. In My Country
    Any social good the film might do gets lost in a soupy morass of histrionics, clumsy storytelling, overripe dialogue, and rampant didacticism.
  96. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    Even as sequels to bad comedies go, Miss Congeniality 2 seems completely at a loss for fresh ideas.
  97. The Skeleton Key
    Wholly devoid of suspense or chills, The Skeleton Key simply bides its time until its big final plot twist, but the filmmakers don't seem to realize that a second-rate twist can't redeem a third-rate fright flick.
  98. Four Brothers
    Four Brothers regresses into gallows comedy, rampant misogyny, and one preposterous Hollywood action setpiece after another.
  99. Supercross
    Since the focus is on the track, the filmmakers aren't out to reinvent the wheel, but for such a simple piece of formula storytelling, they do a remarkably poor job of dotting I's and crossing T's.
  100. A Sound of Thunder
    A plodding, bloated, long-shelved adaptation/expansion of Ray Bradbury's classic short story about the dangers of time travel.
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