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. Satanic Panic
    It’s campy, it’s gory, it’s a little bit titillating, and it features one of those novelty performances from famous actors that tend to bring a lot of press to otherwise under-the-radar productions.
  2. Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!
    Spurlock’s documentary turns out to be the exact thing it is meant to expose: an unfulfilling product passed off as something that’s good for you.
  3. It: Chapter Two
    The film isn’t an abject failure by any means; it has some funny jokes, a couple of really good performances, impressive creature and set design, and pleasing cinematography. But when it comes down to it, It Chapter Two just isn’t all that scary.
  4. Chained for Life
    A meta-commentary on filmmaking in general and cinematic conceptions of beauty in specific, the film is clearly enamored with its own cleverness—which isn’t to say that it’s not clever, just that a more clear-headed film could have distilled its ideas better, and been more satisfying as a result.
  5. The Fanatic
    Mostly, the action, while bloodier than one might expect, is as goofy and dim-witted as the dialogue.
  6. The Load
    As intelligently crafted as the film is, Glavonić’s directorial strategies do end up limiting the film’s observational power.
  7. Official Secrets
    Things perk up when Fiennes belatedly appears, and while this isn’t one of the performances he’ll be remembered for, by any means, he delivers a fine moment of utter disgust at the government’s naked corruption in the film’s very last scene. Ending on that note feels right.
  8. Don't Let Go
    What keeps Don’t Let Go watchable is, ironically, its predictability: the cop-movie clichés, the shootouts, the mishandled evidence, the bargain-bin twists.
  9. Jawline
    Mandelup does, however, treat both the internet personalities and the fans beholden to them with great respect.
  10. Angel Has Fallen
    Given the awfulness of its predecessor, which was this publication’s pick for the worst film of 2016, a sequel that’s merely pedestrian represents a dramatic improvement.
  11. Give Me Liberty
    Mikhanovsky and Austen even allow for genuine budding romance to filter through the struggle, with love operating as a balm for beleaguered souls.
  12. Jacob's Ladder
    This Jacob’s Ladder isn’t likely to build much of a fanbase over the next 30 years. It’ll be lucky if anyone remembers it for 30 minutes.
  13. Vita & Virginia
    Once Sackville-West gets bored with Woolf and starts seeing another woman, garden-variety jealousy takes over. Not quite as fascinating as the story of a man who inexplicably metamorphoses into a woman and doesn’t age for 300 years.
  14. Brittany Runs A Marathon
    Brittany Runs A Marathon winds up feeling like a story told by an outsider who’s empathetic toward, but not fully immersed in, a specific lived experience.
  15. American Factory
    By telling their stories, entertainingly and persuasively, Bognar and Reichert make the case that they all deserve better.
  16. Ready or Not
    The charitable reading is that Ready Or Not understands how moneyed entitlement knows no gender — that the only way to break the arbitrary yet destructive grasp of the super-rich is to chop it off, or possibly light it on fire. So no, not a subtle movie. But a fairly satisfying one.
  17. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    To his credit, it probably would have been easy to turn this particular book into a quasi-satirical parade of withering takedowns. Turning it into a flavorless, center-less journey of self-discovery was likely a lot more work. That doesn’t make it any easier to watch.
  18. Good Boys
    Yet as with "Booksmart," the summer’s earlier riff on that Apatovian classic, there are times when Good Boys feels a little too nice to actually be uproarious. In more ways than one, it’s the training wheels for a better comedy — a slightly edgier and funnier one.
  19. Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    If Brügger shares the doubts of Williams and other Hammarskjöld conspiracy theorists about Operation Celeste (in all likelihood a hoax, though not a Soviet one), he doesn’t let them get in the way of a good story. As for the latest official U.N. inquiry, its report is due sometime this year. But then, can you really trust it?
  20. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?
    Minervini is not at his most provocative in What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire? That’s a good thing.
  21. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
    Uncaged improves on the first film only with its ending: This one boasts a modestly effective twist rather than a truly moronic one. Encouraging, but not nearly enough to justify a third trip down this 47-meter well.
  22. The Amazing Johnathan Documentary
    Like The Amazing Johnathan’s act, it’s a funny, trippy, lively bit of sleight of hand that can often make you feel like you’re seeing something extraordinary, even if it’s just some prankster f**king with you.
  23. Aquarela
    Aquarela is first and foremost a spectacle. When the Apocalyptica music is cranked up high, and the screen’s awash in dazzlingly sharp, hypnotically swirling images of cresting waves, viewers could certainly take a moment to contemplate the importance of water to our global ecosystem. Or they could just drink it in.
  24. Blinded by the Light
    A cheerful, cheesy coming-of-age story that evokes the earnest films of the era in which it’s set, Blinded By The Light is not one for the schmaltz-averse. Yet as with Chadha’s "Bend It Like Beckham" and "Bride & Prejudice," there’s some appreciably meaty stuff beneath its toe-tapping, crowd-pleasing surface.
  25. The Angry Birds Movie 2
    The Angry Birds Movie 2 is the very definition of empty-calorie cinema—bright and shiny and satisfying enough for a few fleeting moments until it’s balled up and thrown in the trash. It’s also fast-paced, interesting to look at, and notably less irritating than the original, which is all you can really ask of a film like this one.
  26. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    As gross and spooky and, yes, occasionally frightening as these terror tactics get, they never quite cross over into the deep end of truly grownup horror. That’s intentional, and a key to the film’s fun: It gets away with everything it can on a PG-13 leash, smuggling some real scares to the under-18 crowd.
  27. The Kitchen
    While the film boasts a refreshing premise — mob wives taking over their husbands’ territory when the men land themselves in jail — what lingers afterwards is the stale taste of its lukewarm execution.
  28. After the Wedding
    Though technically a film, with all of its corresponding qualities, After The Wedding primarily exists as an actor’s showcase for its main quartet.
  29. One Child Nation
    As wide-ranging in scope as it is horrifying in its particulars, the film does the necessary work of illuminating, for a large audience, a dark chapter of Chinese history.
  30. The Peanut Butter Falcon
    Gottsagen is too lively to be completely pinned down by feel-good clichés, and his unpredictability brings out the best in LaBeouf. As in most buddy pictures, so long as the chemistry works, all else is forgivable.
  31. Brian Banks
    This is a movie that seems utterly convinced that it’s saying something profound, but proves difficult to actually parse.
  32. The Art of Racing in the Rain
    The Art Of Racing In The Rain will play well for those who consider their pets to be full-fledged family members, but otherwise this dog’s journey lacks a purpose or any sense of artistry.
  33. Madness in the Method
    Most of the time, Mewes’ follows in the later-period footsteps of his friend Smith, steering a what-the-hell production that’s less entertaining than the two buddies just talking.
  34. Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    Dora And The Lost City Of Gold, like that Nancy Drew movie, isn’t really for teenagers, any more than High School Musical is; it’s for tweenage-and-younger kids who look toward the high-school horizon with a combination of aspirational awe and chilling fear.
  35. Luce
    It’s a remarkable, chilling performance: from Harrison, certainly, but also from his character, playing code-switching mind games with his teacher.
  36. Them That Follow
    Perhaps that’s why, despite some skillful scene-setting and committed supporting performances, Them That Follow is lifeless enough that small inconsistencies in accents, costuming, and set dressing appear more significant than they would in a more, well, thrilling thriller.
  37. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    Yes, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is extremely silly. For its first 30 or so minutes, it also manages to be fun.
  38. 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.
  39. La Flor
    Some petals are admittedly prettier or more fragrant than others (and the film has serious stem problems), but there’s forbidding beauty in the sheer ambition itself.
  40. Tel Aviv on Fire
    Despite its loaded premise, Tel Aviv On Fire rarely sparks more than mild amusement.
  41. Tigers Are Not Afraid
    The Tigers’ rooftop hideout is like something out of Hook, and the film moves along at a brisk, Spielbergian clip; however, the combination of dark themes mixed with whimsical fantasy strikes a tone more similar to Guillermo del Toro’s early work.
  42. The Mountain
    The movie itself sometimes feels a bit lobotomized. But never when Goldblum is on screen. He plays Freeman as a deluded fraud, horrifying but a little funny, too, in that stuttering, seductive Goldblum way.
  43. Mike Wallace Is Here
    To be blunt—which Wallace, who died in 2012, always was—Mike Wallace Is Here is fascinating but scattered, and never quite decides what its target should be.
  44. Skin
    This kind of hamfisted manipulation seems par for the course in a movie that’s eager to lob as much as it can as its central problems. The theme of change is purely cosmetic: The characters are intractable, and they all offer different versions of the same pathology.
  45. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    It’s an elegy for a certain age of American pop-culture that may really be about the writer-director grappling with his own inevitable obsolescence.
  46. Honeyland
    Though Honeyland is also about what it’s about; in addition to underscoring another inconvenient truth with planetary stakes, the film offers tender, patient portraiture to a woman wholly dedicated to her calling. The melding of the political with the personal has seldom involved so many stingers to the face.
  47. The Great Hack
    There’s no satisfying end point to this movie (which premiered at Sundance as a 135-minute work in progress; over 20 minutes have since been trimmed), which reaches its alarmist conclusion quite early on and then functions more as a frustratingly sporadic video diary.
  48. I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
    At its core, Barbarians is about the failure of communication. (The subplot about Mariana’s affair is more important than it seems.) This places it into a long tradition of modernist responses to fascism that stretches back to Eugène Ionesco—though one still can’t shake the feeling that Jude is more interested in pointing out obvious ironies than in anything else.
  49. At War
    Ultimately, At War isn’t able to offer much more than gradual escalation of intensity. Even before the war is over, it’s hard not to withdraw.
  50. David Crosby: Remember My Name
    Remember My Name still works magnificently as a tragicomic character sketch.
  51. A Faithful Man
    Running just 75 minutes and seemingly loath to move beyond superficial feints at both comedy and melodrama, A Faithful Man, by comparison, barely qualifies as a trifle.
  52. Luz
    In a cinematic landscape where retro throwbacks are predictably bundled around the same small set of nostalgia-friendly filmmakers (we all love Carpenter, but come on), it’s positively invigorating to see a loving tribute to a director’s influences that’s also aggressively avant-garde.
  53. Crawl
    If any one thing holds back this modest, skillfully made potboiler from true B-movie glory, it’s the human drama.
  54. Point Blank
    This one feels one-size-fits-all—which is to say, it isn’t especially tailored to either of its stars. It just sort of hangs on them, getting more and more tattered as it goes along.
  55. The Lion King
    Ultimately, only Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, as slacker sidekicks Timon and Pumbaa, make much of an impression; their funny, possibly ad-libbed banter feels both fresh and true to the spirit of the characters—the perfect remake recipe. Just don’t look too hard at their character designs. They’re realistic, hideously.
  56. Oh Mercy!
    The only real gravitas comes from the reliably excellent Zem, here doing minor wonders with the clichéd role of the good-hearted, unwaveringly calm human lie detector.
  57. Darlin'
    As it is, it’s another jarring mismatch in a film full of them. The core issue seems to be indecision over whether this is all supposed to be camp or not.
  58. Sword of Trust
    It’s a pleasure to see Shelton in her element again, guiding actors to places that feel unexpected yet authentic. Maron is an ideal match for her sensibility, and they make terrific scene partners, too. May this be the start of something special.
  59. Ray & Liz
    What’s crucial is that although Ray & Liz certainly moves like a memory play, the director has chosen to recreate events that he himself could not have experienced.
  60. The Art of Self-Defense
    In a movie that often observes male dysfunction with some ironic distance, Eisenberg brings the satire closer to the bone.
  61. The Farewell
    From a distance, The Farewell can look scattered, a series of ambling vignettes on the tradition-rooted quirks of modern China and the nature of families divided by culture and space. But there are some bright moments of truth, bittersweetly illuminating the grey spaces we create in our expressions of love.
  62. Stuber
    The demands of action and comedy, however, are apparently much too great a weight for this action-comedy to Lyft.
  63. Spider-Man: Far from Home
    In another self-reflexive move, Far From Home transfers the real dilemma back to the filmmakers: The character comedy is great fun, and the action spectacle often feels like their responsible burden.
  64. Maiden
    Director Alex Holmes and editor Katie Bryer cannily draw out the story beneath the story, allowing it to bob along in the wake of Edwards’ tale.
  65. The Plagiarists
    Ultimately, it’s the awkwardness that they’re prodding. The Plagiarists isn’t asking why one person would tell a lie, but why another would be so bothered by it — an ambitious line of inquiry for which the film provides more references than concrete answers.
  66. Ophelia
    They’ve created not a bold revision but a bland empowerment tale, devoid of everything that makes Hamlet great.
  67. Annabelle Comes Home
    For the most part, it works. True, the haunted objects are silly at times, but unlike The Nun, Annabelle Comes Home is only funny when it’s supposed to be. And it’s enjoyable because of its clockwork efficiency, not in spite of it.
  68. Yesterday
    Yesterday, Boyle’s new Beatles-centric dramedy, comes closer than he’s ever dared before — which makes this likable, hummable movie particularly disappointing when it fails to ignite the pop fireworks of his best work.
  69. Euphoria
    The film exhibits almost nothing that resembles recognizable human behavior.
  70. Anna
    Think of it as a downmarket Atomic Blonde (a film that does Besson’s established shtick with a lot more panache and less ick) or Red Sparrow without the surface-level professionalism; what’s clear is that Besson doesn’t want anyone to think about Anna very hard.
  71. Midsommar
    Aster, it can’t be denied, possesses an almost supernatural command of dread. He knows how to hold a shot just long enough to create pinpricks of discomfort, to disorient with an abrupt cutaway, to drop stomachs with the godlike perch and glare of his camera.
  72. Child's Play
    As an enchanted talisman housing a depraved mind, Chucky was born one-of-a-kind. As nothing more than a glitching machine, he lacks the sniggling spirit that made him special. He’s been mass-produced.
  73. Wild Rose
    As a show-business fairytale, Wild Rose is pretty standard. But as a character study, it’s something special. That’s due largely to Buckley’s star-making performance as Rose-Lynn.
  74. Nightmare Cinema
    Now, Garris’ unflagging enthusiasm for uplifting his fellow creators has found a new manifestation: Nightmare Cinema, a sort of sideways revival of the Masters Of Horror franchise.
  75. The Command
    It doesn’t help that The Command looks phony right from the outset, being an English-language film involving virtually no actual Russians.
  76. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
    Frequently, Morrison punctuates her points and her recollections with a warm chuckle, expressing the same embrace of life’s fullness that informs even her bleakest stories.
  77. The Edge of Democracy
    The documentary’s scope is so vast, and its subject so dense, that it ends up skimping on details that a lengthy written article would likely lay out more clearly.
  78. Murder Mystery
    The mystery itself is rote and, despite its jokey foreshadowing and its constant winks to the audience, never smart enough to really work as a genre parody. Instead, the movie just breezes along on the strength of Aniston and Sandler’s easygoing rapport.
  79. Toy Story 4
    The basic pleasures of this fourth installment may be at once more hectic and more shopworn, but the film preserves, at least, the pathology of its series: that anxiety about finding meaning and your own place on the shelf.
  80. Shaft
    Among all the cardinal sins of moviemaking it commits (up to and including reusing an iconic needle drop from a Martin Scorsese movie), the worst is this: It makes Shaft look uncool.
  81. Our Time
    However truthful or invented Our Time may be, its dynamic is tiresomely petty and small, resisting Reygadas’ occasional efforts at expressionism. It plays like therapy.
  82. American Woman
    At its best, though, American Woman brings to mind "Erin Brockovich" or "20th Century Women" or "Gloria Bell": films about how the constraints of gender, class, and age push down upon a woman in myriad ways. And Miller finally gets the chance to demonstrate what she can do as a proper protagonist, breaking away from the stereotypes she’s too often played.
  83. Men in Black: International
    Director F. Gary Gray, while experienced in both action and comedy, also struggles to keep the film’s picaresque plot on track.
  84. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
    Ultimately, the copious, unmanipulated (one hopes!) footage of Dylan himself is what will endure.
  85. Plus One
    Plus One isn’t much more than consistently amusing and sweetly romantic, but in the right hands, those qualities can still feel like a lot.
  86. I Am Mother
    So many truly disturbing revelations pile up in the final half hour or so that processing the relevant information leaves little time for raw emotion. Swank’s nameless character, in particular, remains a pencil sketch. Still, there’s no question that Sputore can direct a movie.
  87. This One's for the Ladies
    Gene Graham’s humanizing, scrappy, documentary portrait of the black men and women of exotic dancing offers more than mere titillation.
  88. Pavarotti
    Ron Howard’s documentary Pavarotti is content to bask in his glow; despite the broad array of home movies, family photos, interviews, TV outtakes, and concert recordings at its disposal, it never feels intimate with Pavarotti the person.
  89. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
    The Last Black Man plays like a poetic portrait, part tender ode and part cartography of lived experience, bringing a nuanced and hard-earned perspective to the screen.
  90. Dark Phoenix
    There’s just little here that the X-Men series hasn’t shown audiences before.
  91. Late Night
    Late Night is admirably eager to address the messy problems of the comedy world, but it ultimately can’t stop cleaning up after itself.
  92. Always Be My Maybe
    Rom-coms have the tricky task of straddling the “rom” and the “com” part, with a lot of star-steered vehicles leaning toward the former. Always Be My Maybe thankfully focuses on the latter; there are a lot of laughs packed into its friendship-becomes-something-more story.
  93. Yomeddine
    There’s a lovely chemistry between Gamal, who Shawky met at Egypt’s Abu Zaabal Leper Colony, and Abdelhafiz. Both first-time actors, they capture the dynamic of two people pushed away from society who genuinely grow to feel love for each other.
  94. The Fall of the American Empire
    Eventually, both characters and narrative start to feel like an elaborate pretext for what’s really, at heart, a documentary about the various ways that wealthy corporations avoid paying taxes, combined with an earnest public-service message about helping the homeless. Those are admirable goals, but springing them on viewers via an entertaining bait-and-switch risks inspiring disappointment, or even provoking resentment.
  95. Ma
    Spencer provides her character the kind of human dimension only a performer of her caliber could muster.
  96. Too Late to Die Young
    For better and worse (mostly better), Too Late To Die Young is a mood movie, situated on an emotional precipice.
  97. Domino
    Domino is, for large stretches, just ludicrous—and atypically boring. It’s a sad sight to see from a filmmaker who, once upon a time, excelled at drawing a viewer into the thrill of seeing a sequence come together, with all the pieces falling into place. In Domino, one finds only the pieces.
  98. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
    You can’t just have two hours of kaiju slapping each other around like a gargantuan WWE highlights reel.
  99. The Secret Life of Pets 2
    Actual kids will probably enjoy The Secret Life Of Pets 2, just as they probably enjoy whatever mini-movies Illumination churns out to supplement its hyper-successful home-entertainment releases. But they might also start to sense just how mini this sequel feels, and start fidgeting after 15 or 20 minutes.
  100. The Traitor
    There’s just no real perspective on Buscetta, which separates this brisk but uninvolving history lesson from the truly great mob movies. I was a little bored with it, too, honestly.
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