The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,419 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
    The script makes all of Bridget’s returning relationships feel wonderfully lived-in, and the film is all the stronger for it.
  4. Trap
    On one level, Shyamalan feels more comfortable than ever; Trap may cook more purely and entertainingly than anything in his last decade of self-styled pop hits. But it also suggests that there are discordant notes that he can’t, and probably shouldn’t, ever get out of his system.
  5. Nickel Boys
    Ross’ formal dedication sometimes stands in the way of story and emotion, prioritizing visuals over earned moments of expressive, swelling feelings. And so this critic did wonder if Nickel Boys should have dialed up its narrative ambitions from time to time, stepping just a bit away from its creative non-fiction temperaments.
  6. The Apprentice
    The performances are stellar, the pacing both restrained and engaging, the realization of Cohn and Trump’s world is top notch, and the dynamic between the two is as captivating as any.
  7. Caught by the Tides
    It goes without saying that much of it will feel familiar to those already well-versed in the Jia filmography: there’s a yearning, a search, and, finally, a return.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Grand Tour
    Gomes picks apart an imagined past by experiencing its present, at the same time sharply unpacking the screwball comedy by separating the running man and the pursuing woman.
  9. Universal Language
    To further dig into Rankin’s blending of the goofily left-field and the openly earnest, the message persisting through the dry punchlines is that to care for your neighbor, to care for all the oddities of home, is to care for yourself.
  10. Look Into My Eyes
    All of the psychics are sensitive, artistic, outcasted people, who are more empathetic to the feelings of others than the average person might be. It makes their readings a space not just for potential supernatural experience, but one in which someone who is vulnerable and emotionally in need is being heard by someone who’s willing to receive them.
  11. To a Land Unknown
    In its quiet reflection on the limited choices of those backed into a corner, the drama elegantly conveys how a people’s continued persecution not only starves, shoots, and bombs individuals, but erodes the solidarity of their whole.
  12. Smile 2
    Yes, the varying quality of performances from the supporting cast and the film’s slightly bloated 127-minute runtime might leave cheeks straining. But the film finds dark humor in taking these desperate feelings of unease and feeding them to a kaleidoscopic creature of pain and viscera.
  13. Heretic
    Divisiveness aside, and despite a few stumbles in pacing as it pivots from cool premise to interesting conclusion, Heretic is a wonderfully effective, chilling thriller from two of the best genre storytellers currently in the game.
  14. Never Let Go
    As recent horror offerings disproportionately lean toward disappointing remakes and tepid commentary on our modern way of life, it’s refreshing to encounter genre fare that is equal parts original and entertaining.
  15. I Know Where I'm Going!
    The film isn't as deep or ambitious as some of the Powell-Pressburger films that followed, but it's still a delightful love story, blessed with attractive leads, lovely locations, and witty dialogue.
  16. 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.
  17. Bookworm
    If you go into Bookworm expecting more of the same chills and thrills from Timpson and his collaborators, you may be put off by this far more accessible tale. Yet, peering closer, you can see reflections of the same rich emotional and character beats that have always been lingering within the more sordid genre trappings of Timpson’s previous work.
  18. 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.
  19. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
    Sonic The Hedgehog 3 lets its animated heroes shine. There’s less “live” in this impressively blended live-action movie, which is not a detriment.
  20. 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.
  21. Hard Truths
    It’s a boldly uncompromising work that strips some of the more cheerful elements to the bone. Yet despite this, there’s still a sense of warmth, of optimism, of quiet humor that shows how this deft storyteller can still surprise and enthrall, incorporating another exceptional ensemble willing and able to do the work to bring his lines to life.
  22. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    Just as warm-hearted, bouncy, goofy, and unassumingly sharp as ever, the film makes the case that no matter how close Wallace and his out-of-time village get to our digitized reality, long-suffering Gromit will be there to provide grounding glares—and remind us to take a moment to pet your dog.
  23. V/H/S/Beyond
    While other V/H/S installments have sometimes been scattershot, united by format and time period more than anything else, V/H/S/Beyond holds together almost perfectly as a thematic exploration of the things lurking just beyond our understanding.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Harvest
    Harvest is a film about capitalism, at first quietly and then like a blunt object to the skull. Simmering beneath that ultimate disruption, though, is a sense of communal collapse that is already creeping under everything.
  25. Juror #2
    To all appearances, it’s a solid, unpretentious piece of work, but like some of Eastwood’s more ambitious classics, it centers its murky moral contradictions without contriving a way to resolve them.
  26. Warfare
    Warfare is impressive, efficiently tense filmmaking.
  27. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    It’s a neat surprise that DaCosta extracts more dark humor from the series than Boyle himself.
  28. Architecton
    Architecton acknowledges that everything we do is fleeting. There’s meaning in that. But it also posits that putting thought and respect into our temporary, tiny changes to Earth—laying fertile foundations that can roll with the punches that will always come—has a higher virtue.
  29. Sorry, Baby
    Its fragmented literary structure and Victor’s captivating lead turn cohere theme, form, and content, melding the elliptical episodes into a canny representation of memory.
  30. Rebuilding
    The importance of community for survival is a dominant theme in Rebuilding, and the bonds explored in the film feel authentically human as opposed to cloyingly optimistic.
  31. 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.
  32. The Things You Kill
    Impotence and violence, two terrifying poles of threatened masculinity, rage throughout The Things You Kill, while its women more readily accept uncomfortable complexities.
  33. The Rule of Jenny Pen
    The Rule Of Jenny Pen‘s willingness to constantly challenge its audience with shadows and hints rather than some kind of outright horror mythos is one of its great strengths, and Rush embodies that with intense, compelling control.
  34. Take Out
    The movie took a long time to get distribution, but there's no expiration date on filmmaking this strong.
  35. Miracle Mile
    Miracle Mile is uniquely weird, and one imagines that audiences who caught it in the theater (among the few who did, anyway) walked out feeling shaken by its ending, even in a world where the Doomsday Clock had safely clicked back.
  36. We Bury the Dead
    For those looking to delve into more philosophical horror, We Bury The Dead is a thoughtful trek into the unknown.
  37. Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
    Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted does stray into some dark areas—death, anxiety attacks, suicidal ideaton—but the spirit of the documentary (and the music) is overwhelmingly joyful.
  38. Here Comes Mr. Jordan
    Originally released at a time of national anxiety—four months before Pearl Harbor—the comic fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan positively radiates reassurement, in the form of a beatific and perpetually amused Claude Rains.
    • 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.
  40. 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.
  41. 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.
  42. The Bride!
    Gyllenhaal never tones down the brutality, ripping us through bloody tongues, heads, and bodies—in cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s fit of gorgeously captured violence—until the frenzied finish
  43. Predator: Killer of Killers
    There’s little to no fat to be found in this film; it’s a lean, mean action-thriller that threads the needle between speculative storytelling and brutal sci-fi carnage.
  44. 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.
  45. Pillion
    Pillion is a film about self-knowledge, and about asserting one’s needs and boundaries without shame.
  46. My Father's Shadow
    As the memory fades into history, My Father’s Shadow blurs into documentary footage, which then blurs with wishful thinking. It’s formally ambitious for such a contained film, but grants this small-scale story the well-considered gravity of something held close to the heart.
  47. 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.
  48. Boys Go to Jupiter
    It’s a hilarious and touching adventure, made all the more so by its unique and enchanting animation.
  49. 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.
  50. 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.
  51. 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.
  52. 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.
  53. 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.
  54. Erupcja
    Pete Ohs’ best film yet.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cover-Up
    At a time like this, Cover-Up is a vital reminder that demanding a better world is possible, straight from the people who have done the critical work required to confront America’s darkest forces.
  56. 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.
  57. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
    Little Amélie submerges itself in fantastical ecstasy and melancholy with a magic all its own.
  58. 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.
  59. Hokum
    Hokum is the latest fruit of McCarthy’s chameleonic gifts, and his best film yet.
  60. Redux Redux
    By keeping their movie grounded in street-level pursuits and raucous shootouts, the McManus brothers situate the multiverse concept in a believable reality that doesn’t require a subreddit to detangle. Redux Redux jumps swiftly and elegantly, finding timelines worth visiting again and again.
  61. Remarkably Bright Creatures
    While Remarkably Bright Creatures may repel those with little patience for stories of fate, those who enjoyed the book—or those who enjoy character pieces as catharsis—will find this a worthwhile adaptation.
  62. Nobody Knows
    Loosely structured around four seasons, Nobody Knows unfolds in a long series of episodes that slowly progress from lightly comic to bracingly sad as the situation deteriorates.
  63. The Best of Youth
    A big, family-style Italian dinner, catered to the broadest tastes, yet satisfying all the same.
  64. Pride & Prejudice
    Most importantly, the director, script, and cast (rounded out by Judi Dench and well-placed imports Donald Sutherland and Jena Malone) all recognize that Austen is about much more than pretty costumes and knowing looks.
  65. The Devil's Rejects
    Zombie fills The Devil's Rejects with thrilling setpieces, pays homage to his inspirations without outright ripping them off (most of the time), brings back some cult-movie icons (hello, Mary Woronov and E.G. Daily), and works in some profanely clever dialogue.
  66. Turtles Can Fly
    Turtles Can Fly creates a haunting reminder that collateral damage can't always be measured in casualty rates, and that it goes on long after the news cameras have left the scene.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Life Is Beautiful
    The concept is not so much nihilistic as it is realistic, and the fact that Benigni has made such fine distinctions so powerfully clear is amazing and moving.
  68. Brokeback Mountain
    It allows Lee to draw out a theme that's been present in his films from the start: the notion that repressed passion does no one any good. In Brokeback Mountain, it turns vibrant men ghostly.
  69. Million Dollar Baby
    Though conventional in many respects, it feels like no other boxing film ever made, due largely to Eastwood's unmistakable presence on both sides of the camera.
  70. Murderball
    Along the way, Murderball surpasses the typical who-will-win sports-film dynamic and becomes a fascinating and personal exploration of quadriplegia.
  71. Oldboy
    The result is a powerfully visceral experience that justifies itself almost entirely on surface chops, with striking color composition and a complex sound design that elevates the story to an operatic scale.
  72. A History of Violence
    Ed Harris and William Hurt deliver inspired turns as the villains.
  73. Capote
    Capote begins as a sprawling, vivacious comedy-drama in which Hoffman's Capote is only one of a number of fascinating characters, including Chris Cooper's upstanding, ramrod-straight lawman and Keener's tough, blunt assistant/sidekick/foil/author.
  74. Head-On
    A romantic comedy with jagged edges, Fatih Akin's exhilarating Head-On paves the road to love through miles of prickly thatch.
  75. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    The movie winds its way artfully from a straight animal study to something more profound. It's hard to shake the film's astonishing final thoughts and shots, as Bittner nervously contemplates parrot eggs while hawks circle overhead.
  76. Downfall
    Downfall's overstuffed melodrama juggles countless subplots and a small army of characters who manage to make an impression in spite of limited screen time.
  77. Steamboy
    Steamboy adds a touch of innocent wonder to the formula through Ray's eyes, resulting in Otomo's most human film to date, but humanity rarely seems to be among Otomo's priorities. His films seem far more concerned with the spectacle he manages like no one else in animation.
  78. Sin City
    Sin City draws on the cumulative history of both mediums, creating a pastiche that would have been technologically impossible even three years ago. Its creators invent a queasily intoxicating new world.
  79. Control
    Nimród Antal's terrific feature debut Kontroll takes some time to get up to speed--but once it's fully underway, it develops a heady momentum and a devastating impact.
  80. Kung Fu Hustle
    Its crowd-pleasing, action-packed brand of frenetic parody promises to spread Chow's mythos even further.
  81. Double Dare
    Given how well Micheli captures the personality and aspirations of two complicated professionals, it's too bad she never answers the key question: What makes one person a stuntwoman, and another a star?
  82. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    Handsomely produced and photographed, which alone distinguishes it from the guerrilla standards of its cut-rate peers, Enron succeeds most by simply making a complex situation graspable, a tall order when the perpetrators are masters of grand-scale deception.
  83. 3-Iron
    3-Iron gains its hypnotic power by observing these characters through a slight remove. With total command of his effects, Kim transforms an already peculiar romance into something as otherworldly as a ghost story.
  84. The Holy Girl
    Adjusting to Martel's style requires patience, but her indirection pays dividends, culminating in an unforgettable final shot that flies in the face of narrative expectations.
  85. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    The value of Shake Hands With The Devil is in Dallaire's detailed recollections of what he observed: the anatomy of a mass murder.
  86. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
    It may not have been what the producers had in mind, but they asked for a Paul Schrader movie, and that's exactly what he delivered.
  87. The Ninth Day
    It's important for the film to establish the concentration camp as a hell on earth from the start, but Schlöndorff has more in mind than creating another reminder of the inhumanity of fascism.
  88. The Fearless Freaks
    In the wonderful new rockumentary The Fearless Freaks, Flaming Lips fans describe the band's live performances in almost spiritual terms, and for once, their fervor seems wholly justified.
  89. The White Diamond
    Herzog also finds extraordinary beauty in what Dorrington is trying to accomplish: Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his boat, Dorrington wants to float around the natural world in a reverie, and when he finally does, he experiences a connection with Plage that's genuinely transcendent.
  90. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    Plays like an old-fashioned romantic comedy with updated hardware.
  91. Howl's Moving Castle
    Miyazaki's animated adaptation of Jones' book is a charming and thoroughly absorbing treat.
  92. 5x2
    Unlike "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind," which holds the memories of a doomed affair as precious, there's nothing bittersweet about Ozon's failed romance, but its problems are equally true.
  93. Me and You and Everyone We Know
    A quirkily funny, startlingly assured comedy-drama.
  94. My Summer of Love
    Pawlikowski's off-balance compositions and affection for odd close-ups suggest the influence of Wong Kar-Wai, but the film's low-key observational spirit owes as much to Mike Leigh.
  95. Land of the Dead
    The satire is headline-fresh, the action scenes keep pace with summer blockbusters, and no one shoots an evisceration with as much skill.
  96. Dallas 362
    From the combustible opening-credits sequence, Caan displays a whip-crack sense of timing, pace, and energy that's so rare for a first-time filmmaker that it's tempting to call him a savant.
  97. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    As tense and taut as any crime saga, but the stakes are more personal.
  98. Tropical Malady
    In light of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's young career, it's fitting that his beguiling, transfixing romantic fable Tropical Malady splits down the middle into two radically different halves.
  99. Bad News Bears
    Does nothing to justify its own existence other than be consistently funny from start to finish.
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