The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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  1. Affliction
    Schrader has always been better as a writer and a critic than as a dramatist, which is why his most successful work has either been published in film journals or directed by Martin Scorsese. His flat, awkward staging diminishes some good performances -- particularly those of Nolte and a welcome Sissy Spacek.
  2. Hustlers
    Plenty of crime capers end ruefully, but few feel this potently bittersweet.
  3. Let the Sunshine In
    Perhaps it’s best to approach Let The Sunshine In as a talky palate-cleanser before Denis’ next big genre experiment, the forthcoming sci-fi movie "High Life." In space, one hopes, nobody can hear you blather.
  4. Life of Pi
    The larger messages about spirituality often seem forced, and it's more compelling to focus on Lee's visceral cinematic experience than on the larger, fuzzier messages Martel's story conveys about humanity's connection with God.
  5. Let Me In
    Let Me In is a beautiful redundancy.
  6. Fences
    Washington gives a magnetic, layered performance, backed by a largely superb cast, most of whom reprise their roles from the Broadway revival of Wilson’s classic. But the film itself is eluded by the epic qualities of the original text, which play directly to the captive space of the theater.
  7. Chats perchés
    The Case Of The Grinning Cat is a sequel of sorts to Marker's epic three-hour 1977 documentary on the decline of the left, "A Grin Without A Cat"--though this new work is both shorter and more playful.
  8. Kimi
    When this film is over, viewers with voice-activated smart TVs are liable to look around for the long-dormant physical remote.
  9. The Witness
    Perhaps because any real closure is impossible at this point, The Witness eventually embraces its own inconclusiveness, like some documentary cousin to "Zodiac."
  10. 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.
  11. Miss Bala
    Miss Bala toes a delicate line between exploitation movie and movie about exploitation, but that's part of what gives the film its charge - this isn't some flaccid docudrama about how the cartels are poisoning the country, it's a lively, white-knuckle thriller where any such proselytizing is reduced to implication.
  12. Conclave
    A gradually swelling, deeply intellectual, and unexpectedly fun political thriller, Berger’s twisty film takes the audience behind the notoriously secretive closed doors of the Catholic Church for one of its most private processes: the election of a new pontiff.
  13. Mother
    Again as with Bong's earlier films, Mother is a genre exercise that honors convention, yet weaves around it whenever possible. Bong carefully turns Mother into a classic gumshoe tale, with red herrings, interrogations, and moments of sublime suspense.
  14. Keep the Lights On
    Keep The Lights On feels less like a memoir than a collage made from diary scraps, evocative but not prescriptive.
  15. Fill the Void
    Burshtein shoots in extreme shallow focus, framing her actors against a sometimes-blinding blanket of white fuzz. It’s a decision that, coupled with Yitzhak Azulay’s stirring, chant-driven score, lends each conversation a near religious aura.
  16. Hermia & Helena
    Part of the charm of Hermia & Helena is in the way it freely and randomly plays with form, employing luxuriantly slow dissolves, unexpected snatches of superimposed text, and even a black-and-white film-within-the-film.
  17. Another Round
    Another Round doesn’t quite come across like a cautionary tale, and that’s because Vinterberg takes a refreshingly, well, sober stance on the entwined pleasures and pitfalls of drinking. He’s made the rare movie about getting shitfaced that’s somehow neither a wallow in the gutter nor a fantasy of life without hangovers.
  18. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    Temple introduces viewers to Strummer the punster, Strummer the womanizer, and Strummer the poseur, whom his mates could only really talk to when no one else was around.
  19. Bitterbrush
    Bitterbrush director Emelie Mahdavian allows you to tag along with two range riders, listen in on intimate conversations, and bask in spectacular and sometimes unforgiving nature as you observe their way of life.
  20. Shiva Baby
    The style of humor in Shiva Baby can best be described as “sex-positive cringe,” in which the secondhand embarrassment comes less from the sexual situations themselves than our heroine’s collision with polite, conservative society.
  21. Searching for Sugar Man
    Though unabashedly manipulative in its storytelling and structure, Searching For Sugar Man ultimately earns its happy ending and buzzy, crowd-pleasing populist appeal by alchemizing trembling inner-city pain into transcendent international beauty.
  22. Sing Street
    John Carney’s peppy flashback musical Sing Street is to his earlier "Once" what a glossy major-label debut is to a scrappier first album: Both have their pleasures, but the former can’t help but look a little artificial when compared to the latter.
  23. Keane
    Throughout Keane, there's an unnerving feeling that Lewis is capable of anything, from harming himself to assaulting anyone around him.
  24. Brawl in Cell Block 99
    Equally remarkable and counterintuitive is Vaughn’s performance. He pulls a Bruce Willis here, shaving his head and substituting intimidating stillness for his trademark motormouthed hyperactivity. The transformation suits him surprisingly well.
  25. The Law in These Parts
    But while the facts cherry-picked by Alexandrowicz won't surprise anyone who's paid even the slightest attention to what's been going on in the Middle East for the last four decades, the direct inquiries into who should be classified as a "soldier" and who a "terrorist" is still bracing (and relevant to more than just the Israelis).
  26. Official Competition
    Consistently amusing, if about a reel too long, it’s a tightly controlled, low-boil send-up of the acting process.
  27. Manufactured Landscapes
    What's left off the table is a meaningful examination of environmental artists' responsibility to the environment they depict, and the question of whether all truly great art leaves behind a little toxic waste of its own.
  28. Zodiac
    Zodiac is the rare serial-killer movie in which the psychosis stems as much from the pursuers (and the filmmaker) as the pursued.
  29. Brand Upon the Brain!
    Coming after the inspired trifecta of "Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary," "Cowards Bend The Knee," and "The Saddest Music In The World," Brand feels a little like boilerplate Maddin rather than a fresh burst of inspiration.
  30. Priscilla
    Unafraid of shattering rose-tinted glasses, Coppola’s film is fierce in its subtlety, relying on Spaeney’s breathtaking performance and the inherent tragedy of Priscilla’s story to deliver a film that’s equal parts beautiful and heartbreaking.
  31. The Innocents
    Childhood is hard, and childhood grudges run harder. The Innocents pulls no punches in turning that fact into horror.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Run Lola Run
    May be all Eurotrash flash, but it's not often that a film packs this much visceral punch.
  33. All In: The Fight for Democracy
    Frankly, All In would be better if it were less expansive. A more straightforward bio-doc about Abrams, with extended digressions about the larger history behind her voting rights activism, might’ve been more powerful.
  34. Black Swan
    A florid, often lurid, completely enthralling film held in place by a disarming Portman, who rarely leaves the frame.
  35. The Painter and the Thief
    Twists and turns shape the narrative, but not always to Ree’s benefit; he responds by scrambling his film’s chronology in ways that threaten to rupture any sense of trust between director and viewer. Questions that one might ordinarily have dismissed instead take hold and fester. Just how real is any of this?
  36. Black Bear
    Black Bear is the movie that proves, beyond any lingering doubt, that Aubrey Plaza has much more to offer than the best eye-roll in the business. Maybe that was clear already.
  37. Our Children
    Though Lafosse’s handling of the actors is pitch-perfect, his sense of structure is more problematic. The decision to start the movie at the end and then jump back several years undercuts the drama.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hilary and Jackie
    An astoundingly moving and elegiac meditation on life, love, music, and the bonds of blood.
  39. i'm thinking of ending things
    By the end of this strange movie — possibly his most uncompromising and discombobulating, which is really saying something — we have no guarantee that the world it depicts exists outside of someone’s head. The question may just be whose?
  40. 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.
  41. Lady and the Tramp
    As in all things, Lady And The Tramp is far more interested in raising complicated questions than in providing easy answers.
  42. Indignation
    This is a bleak film, one whose undercurrent of morbidity stems any romanticization of the past. That ominousness can at times be suffocating, as the action barrels toward a conclusion it insists on foreshadowing. Light summer fare this is not.
  43. Oki's Movie
    As always with Hong's films, Oki's Movie goes through stretches where it seems aimless and self-indulgent, followed by stretches where it's sharp, funny, and poetic.
  44. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
    The film ends so beautifully that it's easy to forgive the dead passages that preceded it and hope it carries over into his next movie.
  45. Enough Said
    Sharp as the dialogue is, it’s hard to imagine any of this working as well without the late, great Gandolfini.
  46. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
    Still is a solid reminder of why Fox is a magnetic camera presence and why he continues to be beloved, both as an actor and an activist for Parkinson’s research. As rote as many celebrity navel-gazing documentaries have become, it’s refreshing to see a film that can still find the strengths of the format.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Different Man
    A Different Man prioritizes laughs over proselytizing. There is inherent humor in the absurdity of the situation—which takes a momentary detour near sci-fi territory during Edward’s transformation—but Schimberg wrings laughs out of deftly staged awkwardness (though, thankfully, not cringe).
  48. 28 Weeks Later
    Under Fresnadillo's assured direction, 28 Weeks Later blurs the line between genre entertainment and a photojournalist's shots of the next urban catastrophe.
  49. Paul McCartney: Man on the Run
    On the whole, Man on the Run is a visually and technically creative documentary that successfully contextualizes McCartney’s decade of metamorphosis as a person and musician via his second band, Wings.
  50. The Age of Shadows
    Like "I Saw The Devil," The Age Of Shadows is a cat-and-mouse scenario that thwarts and subverts audience expectations.
  51. Les Misérables
    While I admired the one-day-in-David-Ayer-hell energy of the movie, I also found it bombastic and contrived. It’s the police drama as police baton.
    • The A.V. Club
      • Posted May 20, 2019
  52. Insomnia
    Nolan reverses the emphasis -- no surprise from the director of a plot-driven film like "Memento" -- but achieves the same end, bringing Hollywood noir under the harsh glare of permanent daylight.
  53. Kajillionaire
    The chemistry between Rodriguez and Wood is undeniable, and Rodriguez’s more naturalistic performance balances out her costar’s affected shuffling and deep, gravely monotone. Wood’s performance is sensitive, but it’s also silly at times.
  54. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
    Though Phantom Of The Cinematheque is fascinating throughout, Richard squanders a chance to recreate one of those long Parisian nights where Langlois held court for his fellow movie buffs.
  55. Control
    The story of Control's creation is the story of great potential, squandered. Joy Division fans should be able to relate.
  56. My Flesh and Blood
    Mostly content to observe with wary admiration, the film doesn't offer any answers, and life robs the story of any sort of resolution, leaving only footage of one remarkable example of charity in action.
  57. Private Property
    Like many French films of its kind, Private Property remains content to simply observe a situation without tidying up the narrative, which in this case leaves some big questions unanswered. But Lafosse knows that problems that beg for a resolution sometimes don't get one.
  58. Long Strange Trip
    The brilliance of Long Strange Trip is that Bar-Lev allows for multiple interpretations.
  59. Top Gun: Maverick
    Joe Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) matches his well-established architectural precision with suitably nostalgic but never pandering emotionality, while Cruise commands the screen in a performance that leverages his multimillion-dollar star wattage to brighten the entire film.
  60. BlackBerry
    It’s true that an operatic presentation of ruination or consequences wouldn’t fit BlackBerry. But it does feel like the movie misses the chance for some stick-the-landing moments related to the fates of its chief characters. That said, Johnson’s entertaining time capsule does still capture, in its unfussy way, one immutable truth: good times aren’t meant to last forever.
  61. Starting Out in the Evening
    Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."
  62. 3 Faces
    Panahi has frequently blurred the line between cinema and reality; here, he builds the search for that line into the work itself, even flirting, playfully, with a self-critique.
  63. Oddity
    It’s got great tension, great characters, and great jump scares, and it cements Mc Carthy’s place as a major new voice in horror.
  64. Lifeboat
    The roots of reality TV can be found here, but unlike most reality TV, Hitchcock shows a genuine (though characteristically distant) interest in people.
  65. Head-On
    A romantic comedy with jagged edges, Fatih Akin's exhilarating Head-On paves the road to love through miles of prickly thatch.
  66. Airplane!
    The hits outnumber the misses well enough in Airplane!, especially in the first half, when the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team (writer-directors David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker) are layering jokes in the foreground and background. There are parodies of popular favorites like Jaws and Saturday Night Fever, wacky stock footage on back-screen projection, slapstick violence against various religious solicitors, and plenty of silly wordplay.
  67. Lightning in a Bottle
    When Lightning In A Bottle steps back and simply lets the old-timers ply their trade, the result is consistently riveting.
  68. Warfare
    Warfare is impressive, efficiently tense filmmaking.
  69. Beware of Mr. Baker
    Beware Of Mr. Baker is the life story of a man who's led one hell of a fascinating life.
  70. Castle in the Sky
    On the lighthearted end of the Miyazaki spectrum, but it features more dashing adventure.
  71. A Better Tomorrow
    Superlative action scenes, particularly a bloody guns-grenades-and-swords finale with a body count to rival the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, help wash away many of the flaws. Action for its own sake may not have been the film's intended point, but it'll do.
  72. A Bug's Life
    Smashing family entertainment: The whole thing is quick-witted, fast-paced, and loaded with clever sight gags and colorful, engaging supporting characters.
  73. The War Room
    It’s a fascinating time capsule, catching a new, empowered Democratic machine in its infancy.
  74. Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
    Not even Douglas Sirk or Lars von Trier would heap so much abuse on a heroine. And yet, on its own melodramatic, tear-jerking terms, Precious works.
  75. Funny Ha Ha
    Like a lot of scenes in Funny Ha Ha, the commonplace somehow seems invigoratingly original.
  76. Police Story (1985)
    Action geeks who rented Police Story on VHS back in the early ’90s could tell when the good parts were going to start, because that’s when the tracking would get fuzzy, from all the previous renters rewinding and re-watching the same scenes, over and over.
  77. Before I Forget
    It's hardly a rosy picture of what it's like to be gay and 60 in Paris. But it's an engrossing picture.
  78. Dìdi
    It’s not upsetting, nor is it overly invested in tricking tears out of us. It’s just so specifically observed that you’ll be hiding your head in your hands, ashamed that you were ever as foolish, cowardly, insolent, horny, and ridiculous as Chris (Izaac Wang) A.K.A. Wang Wang to his friends.
  79. Welcome to Leith
    A solid documentary feeling of “you are there” isn’t always a substitute for “…but here’s what happened when you left, and here’s what it all meant.”
  80. After Yang
    Despite the sci-fi trimmings—or, really, in perfect sync with them—the anxiety After Yang generates has the gentle, humming pervasiveness of real life. It’s trying its best to tell us about the world.
  81. Love, Antosha
    Though clearly an adoring tribute, Love, Antosha allows its subject a sort of complicated humanity that expands our understanding of him, largely by locating a tension between his zealous approach to acting and his increased disinterest in celebrity.
  82. Into Great Silence
    As a place to enter and meditate, Into Great Silence is imminently worthy, but as a documentary, it doesn't do enough to probe the meaning of the quotation Gröning returns to repeatedly: "Oh Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced."
  83. Gloria Bell
    The slimness of the plot—and its familiarity, if you’ve seen Lelio’s original film — also allows the viewer to focus on Gloria Bell’s true raison d’être: the one and only Julianne Moore.
  84. Monos
    Monos isn’t a social-issue tract, or just a lament for the beasts of no nation. It’s a fever dream of a war drama, caught halfway between realism and the hallucinatory intensity of an ancient fairy tale.
  85. Blue Jasmine
    Unlikely as it may seem, though, Blue Jasmine finds Allen charting bona fide new territory.
  86. The Innocents
    Like many historical dramas, unfortunately, this one depicts gripping events without bothering to craft a coherent viewpoint that lends them meaning.
  87. Junun
    Barely a feature at 54 minutes, it’s the closest Anderson has come to just kind of goofing around behind the camera — though, obviously, his version of goofing around is more dynamic than an ambitious effort from the average contemporary.
  88. It Comes at Night
    Maybe there’s something out there, or maybe there’s nothing at all. Most horror films presuppose that the former is the scarier of the two options, but It Comes At Night is more concerned with the seemingly bottomless depths of the unknown.
  89. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
    Ron Perlman returns as the film's loveable title character, a demon gone good who's tough on the outside but tender underneath, with a soft spot for kittens, candy, and babies.
  90. Please Give
    Some people might find it distasteful to make a movie about guilty rich folks who give themselves permission to splurge. Others will rightly appreciate the honesty.
  91. Painted Fire
    In the scope of things, Ohwon's story is a route into the larger story of an uncertain and tumultuous period in Korea, and it's here that Chi-hwa-seon loses its grip.
  92. How I Killed My Father
    Fontaine gives her film the tone of a psychological thriller, with the potential of violence always lurking beneath the surface.
  93. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
    It’s a sexually frank and intimate story told in a pleasingly mainstream manner that avoids greeting card clichés and empty “girl power” posturing.
  94. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Favors unforgettable images over in-depth storytelling, and prioritizing electrifying moments over narrative arcs.
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