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. Pavements
    It all threatens to resemble a hat on a hat, possibly worn by a snake eating its own tail. Yet Perry isn’t really going for a trippy hall-of-mirrors approach, even when he cuts together multiple performances of songs so that Pavements past, present, and fake-ass trade verses on their catalog of ’90s non-hits.
  2. Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
    Think of Not Quite Hollywood as a vividly illustrated catalogue of astonishing smut.
  3. Obvious Child
    In turning a 23-minute story into an 83-minute one, Robespierre sometimes struggles to occupy her running time.
  4. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    What should be a momentous occasion instead gets anonymously processed through the Doc-U-Matic, with exhilarating live material cut into a sloppy assemblage of interviews, archival footage, and awkward reenactments.
  5. Tim's Vermeer
    This is all fascinating for art-history buffs, and while a documentary is the ideal vehicle for illustrating Jenison’s process, Tim’s Vermeer plays more like an extended PBS special than it does a movie.
  6. Charley Varrick
    A low-key, tough little thriller punctuated by casual bursts of brutality and deadpan humor, Charley Varrick is informed by a quiet professionalism that suits a movie about feds and criminals doing their jobs, whether that means laundering money, making fake passports, or robbing banks.
  7. Chevalier
    With all the bromances and buddy comedies out there, it’s valuable to encounter a film that treats male friendship like the battle of egos it sadly sometimes becomes.
  8. Reality
    His outrageous, self-destructive journey lands him in a place just as ironic as Rupert Pupkin’s in "The King Of Comedy," but it’s haunting and mysterious, too, reflecting the dream that consumes his life.
  9. The Loneliest Planet
    The film feels as beautifully calibrated as a great piece of short fiction, only with visual accents and emphases filling in for the prose. It's a relationship movie where the most important exchanges remain unspoken.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Nil by Mouth
    Shot through a bleary haze of cigarette smoke, alcohol, and hard drugs, Nil By Mouth is the cinematic equivalent of Oldman's old acting style, a return to form by absentia.
  11. The Secret of NIMH
    Bluth's directorial debut (co-produced, co-written, and co-designed by Pomeroy and Goldman) has its clunky side, particularly in its bafflingly outré alterations to the plot of a beloved children's classic. But the animation was, as Bluth and company had promised, a spectacular return to old-school craftsmanship.
  12. King Richard
    The movie keeps enough of Richard’s messy past off screen to feel like a hagiography with a few concessions, rather than a true warts-and-all portrait.
  13. Shirley
    Mocked by her peers, mistreated by her husband, and burdened by mental illness, Jackson lived with the psychic evils that lurk in her writing. But for Decker, what’s important about Shirley’s misery is how she used it to fuel her work.
  14. mother!
    It’s almost unbelievable that something this narratively arty is being released as a mainstream horror movie, but the filmmaking ranks as some of Aronofsky’s most skillful.
  15. Black Souls
    For long stretches, it doesn’t appear to be a genre movie at all, which unfortunately means that certain tropes stick out more conspicuously when they do arrive — a minor flaw that only slightly detracts from the overall quality of the production.
  16. Trees Lounge
    Ubiquitous screen presence Steve Buscemi makes an impressive writing/directing debut in this depiction of small-town alcoholism.
  17. Howard
    Even for those outside of the Disney musical demographic, Howard is a moving portrait of an artist taken too soon during an era tragically marked by those kind of losses.
  18. What We Do in the Shadows
    The result is more often amusing than gut-busting, but it doesn’t wear out its welcome, and that’s fairly impressive in itself.
  19. 10 Cloverfield Lane
    There’s a fine, nerve-jangling little psychological thriller here. Pity it couldn’t have been allowed to just be that.
  20. Kirikou and the Wild Beasts
    Ocelot's 2005 semi-sequel, Kirikou And The Wild Beast, retains the gorgeously detailed visuals and that hilarious tonal bluntness, but loses much of the compelling mystery, and the urgency of life-and-death situations.
  21. A Dangerous Method
    Spielrein's name is less familiar than the others, but the film suggests she deserves to be more than a footnote in the history of psychoanalysis.
  22. Rabbit Hole
    Rabbit Hole is a tremendously sad movie, but it's also the furthest thing from a miserablist wallow.
  23. The Last Days of Disco
    Stillman's arch, clever dialogue is as strong as ever, and he conveys in every frame a genuine affection for his characters, however insipid their actions may be at times. These gifts make it easy to forgive Stillman's tendency to let his story meander, especially in Disco's second half.
  24. Holler
    The specificity and authenticity of its setting are the biggest thing Holler has going for it, given that indie drama is rife with variations on this type of social realist coming-of-age tale. The gloomy mood also tamps down thriller elements that appear late in the story, which leaves little but despair for the audience to chew on.
  25. 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.
  26. American Gangster
    Only Washington stands out; he's charming, intense, and charismatic as ever.
  27. Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her
    García apparently prefers ambiguity, implying all sorts of heavy backstory for each of his leads but leaving the details vague, and he lets his actresses carry the baggage in their performances alone.
  28. Mud
    Mud unfortunately begins to develop a sour aftertaste in the handful of minor subplots.
  29. Nightcrawler
    Nightcrawler is a portrait of an amoral opportunist who stumbles upon his horrible calling, and the film’s chief pleasure is watching Gyllenhaal portray what it might be like if Rushmore’s Max Fischer grew up to become Chuck Tatum, the unscrupulous reporter played by Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder’s scabrous Ace In The Hole. It’s adolescent solipsism gone grotesquely rancid.
  30. The Woman King
    Prince-Bythewood, whose Beyond The Lights is one of the most overlooked movies of the last decade, has created a vision of historical Africa that has truly never been seen in a mainstream American movie. For that alone, she deserves a crown.
  31. 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?
  32. Asteroid City
    Because of the structure of the film—the story within the story—none of them feel urgent or especially resonant. There are moments of brilliance both from the performers and from the writing. But they never cohere together into a complete story.
  33. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    How To Blow Up A Pipeline plays like a taut thriller that tells an unusual story. Its strength lies in making a topical issue palatable and highly watchable.
  34. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
    Like too many franchise installments, Catching Fire builds to more of an ellipsis than a period, teasing the next chapter instead of providing closure. But isn’t that true of "The Empire Strikes Back" as well? At least casual fans will only have to wait a year, not three, to see what happens next in this galaxy not so far away.
  35. Submarine
    Submarine is the film "Youth In Revolt" should have been, an achingly sad yet ribald account of a hyper-verbal oddball's ascent/descent into manhood.
  36. Marguerite
    A well-appointed period piece that nonetheless has no time for Midnight In Paris-style nostalgia.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Nouvelle Vague
    The filmmaker’s adoration for the people on-screen is never in doubt, but as consistently pleasant as his Godardian homage may be, it has limited use as an evocation or understanding of the late master’s work.
  38. Superbad
    A funny, boozy, ramshackle party.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Tales of Hoffmann
    This is art everyone can live for. And The Tales of Hoffmann makes it possible to live completely, gloriously within it.
  40. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
    While the film doesn't dig deep, or hit particularly hard, it neatly achieves its modest goals: presenting a real-life heroine in real-life terms. A film this fictionalized rarely feels this much like fact.
  41. Into the Inferno
    As fun as Herzog’s highly imitable voice can be, this particular film arguably works best when he remains quiet and simply stares at the fiery void.
  42. The Truth
    It’s good to see Kore-eda try to stretch himself a little, and The Truth demonstrates that his talent can survive on foreign soil. But there’s not as much powerful emotional veracity to it as one might hope.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pearl
    Unlike X’s dusty fun, a melancholy atmosphere looms over the carnage, all underscored by West’s fascination with the tragic ends that come from building future hopes upon the shakiest present realities. If only more horror movies dared to dream as big with such emotionally charged results.
  44. Paris, 13th District
    Unfolding at a relaxed pace and richly enhanced by DP Paul Guilhaume’s silky black and white images, Paris, 13th District is a candid, intimate, and authentic examination of the obstacles that keep young urbanites from connecting.
  45. The Manchurian Candidate
    Shockingly, he's (Jonathan Demme) pulled it off, replicating the original's tricky feat of investing a paranoid plot with timeliness, psychological complexity, sociopolitical acumen, and almost frightening conviction.
  46. Dead Man's Burden
    It plays like the kind of movie you’d stumble onto watching TCM late at night and get sucked into against your will, amazed that something you’d never heard of, with no purchase in film history, could be this absorbing.
  47. Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
    Basically, Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? amounts to two men having a mellow discussion about the nature of ideas; it’s formally limited, yet wide-ranging in its material and ambitions. Call it a case of cognitive dissonance.
  48. Happy Valley
    Happy Valley’s interviews with figures directly related to the case—Paterno’s widow and sons; Sandusky’s adopted stepson, who suddenly declared himself another of Sandusky’s victims toward the end of the trial, after having previously denied having been abused—shed no light on the subject whatsoever, coming across like an obligatory waste of time.
  49. The Lovers
    Azazel Jacobs’ The Lovers is set in the sort of unremarkable, average, suburban America that is rarely depicted in American movies in anything but a negative light, usually as a place where dreams go to die. So one of the unexpected virtues of this small, thoughtful film is how it resists treating these surroundings as soul-crushing or as a symbol of the failure of middle-class mores.
  50. Hokum
    Hokum is the latest fruit of McCarthy’s chameleonic gifts, and his best film yet.
  51. The Love That Remains
    The resulting drama might have been exasperating for its surface passivity if Pálmason’s faith in his actors and other regular collaborators, as well as his knack for composition (he’s also the movie’s cinematographer), didn’t pay off so regularly and so viscerally.
  52. Greenberg
    Bittersweet and beautifully realized, harsh but humane, Greenberg is a self-consciously small film that nevertheless leaves an indelible mark.
  53. The Mend
    Desplechin’s pictures can be as maddening as they are exhilarating, and the same is true of The Mend, which sometimes seems in danger of over dosing on its own stylistic flourishes. Nonetheless, it’s a hugely promising introduction to a director who’s just getting started.
  54. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    Tattoo is as much mood piece as mystery, and the mood is almost always disturbing.
  55. Five Star
    There’s just not enough meat on these bones, and what meat there is has been thoroughly chewed over. Authentic casting doesn’t guarantee anything.
  56. The Fire Inside
    In an era where the mid-budget movie has mostly disappeared, The Fire Inside’s modest, thoughtful reworking of the sports drama formula can feel refreshing.
  57. Stuff and Dough
    There's no question of the mood Puiu means to capture, the sullen anomie of a rootless generation, but too often, he's just spinning his wheels.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
    The cumulative effect of Operation Homecoming is to bring to light the soldiers' collective experiences and the enduring nightmares they suffer in our place.
  59. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
    Generations of readers have found The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe to be a gripping adventure that reaches well beyond its religious underpinnings, and this robust version respects both aspects and finds the same winning balance of excitement and meaning.
  60. Once Upon a Time in America
    A film of fatally flawed heroes, oversized passions, nation-building, and, inevitably, violence, America follows its characters from childhood to old age by way of the kind of grand-scale filmmaking that wouldn't be seen again until Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York. [2014 re-release]
  61. Kids for Cash
    What May is really after, in other words, is a glimpse at a post-Columbine America, where punishments don’t always fit crimes, cures are often worse than diseases, and the courts are frequently being used as a catchall solution to very normal discipline problems.
  62. Straw Dogs
    Though studio interference and his own personal demons hampered his later work, Straw Dogs shows a master in control of his effects, which made an artist of Peckinpah's sensibility an especially dangerous man.
  63. Encanto
    For all its compelling individual elements, Encanto doesn’t quite manage to weave them together into something greater than the sum of its parts—which is especially frustrating given that the idea of communal support is a driving ethos of the film.
  64. Yourself and Yours
    Viewers who cherish ambiguity will have no trouble finding plenty of it here, as Hong never explicitly tips his hand regarding this woman’s disputed identity.
  65. The Bad Kids
    Directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (best-known for their Terry Gilliam behind-the-scenes docs Lost In La Mancha and The Hamster Factor) have made The Bad Kids in the “fly on the wall” mold of Frederick Wiseman, crossed with the “year-in-the-life” storytelling of Hoop Dreams. The structure of Black Rock itself is one of their biggest narrative assets.
  66. The Hit
    The script by Peter Prince occasionally errs too much on the side of opacity, but the few revelations that do come are deftly handled. It’s a meditation on death, and in the end, it belongs to Hurt.
  67. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
    More essay than documentary—and by no means a monster movie--Jessica Oreck’s Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo takes a closer look at the Japanese obsession with insect-collecting, and considers it as a partial explanation of the country’s national character.
  68. Farewell Amor
    The film’s final moments suggest a benign American domesticity that its preceding scenes purposefully interrogate. But before that jarring ending, Farewell Amor is clever and unpredictable, using familiar tropes about assimilation to arrange demonstrations of honesty, regret, and love for its characters.
  69. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
    In a sense, what we’re watching is a classic con-artist movie, built around someone who plies his shady trade not for money but esteem—the feeling that he matters, that his name carries weight.
  70. Pistol Opera
    If Pistol Opera turns out to be Suzuki's swan song, instead of just an anticlimactic comeback, no one can claim he didn't go out on his own stubborn terms.
  71. OT: Our Town
    It's the most obvious point that actually rings truest: that Wilder's sketchy vision of life, love, and death is as funny and moving as it ever was.
  72. Mistress America
    This new-new Baumbach isn’t necessarily better than the old-new Baumbach; "Young" felt meatier, with a stronger sense of who its neurotic New Yorkers were. But that film didn’t have Gerwig, bringing warmth, wit, and loopy star power to a character — a human bulldozer of incorrigible extroversion — as fictional as the Big Apple you see only on the big screen.
  73. The Hottest August
    While it never feels completely defeatist, her film offers scattered snapshots of an uncertain society in its dog days.
  74. OBEX
    This blend of genres, aesthetics, realities, and virtual realities doesn’t all add up—or adds up a bit too neatly, as the script makes Conor’s hazy backstory unmistakably clear—but OBEX is still endearingly contained, passionately executed, and impressively unique.
  75. Young@Heart
    There's a wealth of great material here, especially a shattering performance of Coldplay's "Fix You" by a soulful mountain of a man named Fred Knittle.
  76. Rango
    Ignoring the weak storyline entirely, Rango is a joyously weird experience.
  77. Patience (After Sebald)
    Patience reveals through images and tone as well as through the interviews how Sebald yearned for restorative meaning in the places he toured, only to end up lost in thought.
  78. Border
    Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes Border. A thematically rich and deeply strange blend of romantic drama, magical-realist fantasy, and crime thriller, Sweden’s official entry to this year’s Academy Awards splits the difference between the highbrow cringe comedy of "Toni Erdmann" and the lowbrow cop fantasy "Bright."
  79. Emily the Criminal
    Here Plaza sacrifices her signature irreverence for a bone-deep frustration that feels all too relatable, even ordinary, resulting in the most true-to-life performance of her career.
  80. From Nowhere
    From Nowhere, a measured but fundamentally sorrowful drama about three undocumented teens applying for asylum, receives an ideally timed release this week, almost a year after its SXSW premiere. Back then, with Clinton an apparent shoo-in, the film was merely perceived as excellent. Today it also seems urgent.
  81. Frank
    Frank is never more endearing than when Fassbender has a mic to his mouth, spitting out the hilariously batshit lyrics of his “most likeable song ever,” or literally singing the praises of his cohorts during an affecting showstopper.
  82. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
    Set at the intersection of post-Vietnam paranoia and the myopic introspection that became hippiedom's most lasting cultural contribution, the Philip Kaufman-directed Invasion alternates social commentary with impeccably crafted scares. As much an echo of Don Siegel's 1956 original as a remake, it does little to change a formula that worked fine the first time around.
  83. The Kindergarten Teacher
    It’s just a shame that the edge-of-your-seat suspense negates The Kindergarten Teacher’s preceding psychological power.
  84. The Art of the Steal
    A damning example of justice bending toward those who can most afford to buy it.
  85. Tokyo Godfathers
    No amount of shoehorned-in razzle-dazzle can keep this forced fable from feeling like a shadow of Kon's early work.
  86. The Naked Gun
    That stupid-smart mix of clunkers, wordplay, old-school set-ups, prop humor, and left-field ideas that the writers just couldn’t stop laughing at doesn’t inherently make for a comedy classic—especially as a late plot escalation draws attention to the dull sheen shining over much of the film—but it does prove how effective these films’ formula can be when followed properly.
  87. Bodied
    Simultaneously entertaining, overwhelming, compelling, and grating, Bodied raises its hand and talks until words mean nothing and everything.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sleepless Night
    Given how much it's in motion, Sleepless Night doesn't have much time for character development, but Sisley is a memorable antihero whose toughness barely masks his growing desperation and exhaustion, as his bleeding knife wound serves as the film's version of a countdown clock.
  89. The Load
    As intelligently crafted as the film is, Glavonić’s directorial strategies do end up limiting the film’s observational power.
  90. Fear and Trembling
    A feverishly compelling film that doesn't force-feed its ideals to its audience.
  91. Ruben Brandt, Collector
    What’s so grand about Ruben Brandt isn’t its story or the characters, which are both abstractions. It’s the animation—the detailed artwork, so dense that it warrants repeat viewings.
  92. Power Trip
    To its enormous credit, doesn't cast the conflict as cut-and-dried exploitation. It presents something altogether more complex--too complex, unfortunately, for an 85-minute documentary to elucidate perfectly.
  93. Man on the Train
    Though an assured and diverting piece of filmmaking, Man On The Train sags from complacency, rarely breaking its neat construction to animate the friendship with any real warmth and life.
  94. Blaze
    Blaze feels like a true passion project, an engine running on Hawke’s endless supply of enthusiasm for his subject.
  95. Down by Law
    Jarmusch's superb Down By Law can be described as many things–a minimalist fairytale, a modern twist on '30s prison dramas, an existential comedy–but it's memorable first and foremost as a richly textured look at old New Orleans and the enchanted bayou surrounding it.
  96. Anton Chekhov's The Duel
    It's a pleasure simply to linger in the characters' company, or at least to watch them from just far enough away to observe them without being judged in return.
  97. Boy A
    For all Crowley's reliance on quiet naturalism, Boy A ultimately steals a page from film noir, showing how guilt and constant hounding can turn any ex-con into the desperate animal everyone presumes him to be.
  98. The Punk Singer
    A little more distance could have been beneficial, but The Punk Singer is enlightening regardless.
  99. Capernaum
    Capernaum brims with compassion for the downtrodden, and that will likely be enough for many viewers (as it clearly was for the Cannes jury). But the film amounts to a series of easy emotional lay-ups, devoid of any psychological nuance or challenging inflection.
  100. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
    It’s a fascinating story, it doesn’t always make for a fascinating documentary.
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