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 Motorcycle Diaries
    Handsomely shot by Brazilian director Walter Salles and beautifully played by the two leads, The Motorcycle Diaries would amount to little more than a minor, softly politically conscious coming-of-age story, if not for its historical context.
  2. The Wolfpack
    The Wolfpack is perhaps too reluctant to pursue lines of inquiry; what starts as a nonfiction mood piece grows frustratingly opaque as the brothers begin to venture out into the real world, meet girls, and get jobs.
  3. Infinite Football
    This is rich material, sharply developed. It’s also touchingly optimistic about man’s capacity for incremental change.
  4. Little Children
    Decades removed from his dreamy Kelly in the "Bad News Bears" movies, Haley pulls off the remarkable feat of bringing childlike vulnerability to his character while still suggesting ungodly menace.
  5. Morris from America
    Speaking of style and confidence, Morris From America constitutes a huge leap forward in both for writer-director Chad Hartigan, whose last feature, "This Is Martin Bonner," was about as minimal as American cinema gets.
  6. 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.
  7. Another Road Home
    Unforgettably documents the kind of journey that leads not to easy answers, but rather to an even thornier knot of questions.
  8. The Boxer
    Through quietly fiery performances by Day-Lewis and Watson, as well as novel-like depth and complexity, The Boxer not only avoids these pitfalls but emerges as a thoroughly engrossing movie.
  9. Together
    The profound depth of feeling generated by Brie and Franco in the midst of this genre film, one perhaps unattainable if they weren’t also married in real life, gives Together a real shot as the greatest romance of the year.
  10. By the Grace of God
    Mostly, though, this very empathetic project suffers from an inability to offer anything beyond what one would expect from its synopsis.
  11. Rich Hill
    The movie exists mainly as an act of social advocacy, showing how one portion of the population lives and offering a sobering rebuke to pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps rhetoric.
  12. Martin Eden
    Yet without dumbing down its message, Marcello’s sweeping Künstlerroman has all the pleasurable characteristics of a simmering romance and a poignant tragedy, too.
  13. Captain America: Civil War
    That Civil War doesn’t collapse under the weight of its various moving parts, that it manages to be the most serious entry yet in this franchise of franchises without sacrificing much in the way of valuable comic relief, is a testament to the creative mojo of directors Joe and Anthony Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.
  14. Nina Forever
    Despite these uneven moments, the film still serves as a dark and morbid fable about the poor choices people can make in their efforts to prove that they are how they see themselves.
  15. 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.
  16. Cusp
    In walking the line between asking empathy for these girls and also using them as a sort of cautionary tale, Cusp fails to offer more than a somewhat surface-level understanding of toxic masculinity.
  17. Super Dark Times
    Did the super dark times need to arrive at all? If the scenes of shit-kicking naturalism feel authentic, the thriller that replaces them — a kind of junior "A Simple Plan" — relies too heavily on unconvincing psychology.
  18. Middle of Nowhere
    The power of Middle Of Nowhere is cumulative, conveyed in sustained tone and deepening character rather than bravura sequences or explosive confrontations.
  19. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Evans has as distinctive an American voice as Mark Twain or Vin Scully, and the directors wisely let him do the talking.
  20. The Full Monty
    A winning mix of humor and poignant character examination, and a satisfying film.
  21. Roger Dodger
    Flags as it heads toward a moralistic ending, complete with a couple of contrived (albeit charged) sexual encounters, but it's heartening that it soars as long as it does.
  22. The Deserted Station
    Deserted Station plays out like a dream, but Raisian moves comfortably between fantasy and nightmare, real and surreal.
  23. Kitchen Stories
    Seems too subtle at times and too obvious at others, but Hamer strings together pieces of conversation and layers of voyeurism (everybody in the movie is watching somebody) into a moving study of the perils of presumption.
  24. The Square
    The occasional missteps (some overly precious symbolism, the grimy DV look) rarely get in the way of the film’s many winces, gasps, and breathless, cringing anticipation.
  25. Les amitiés maléfiques
    Up to the last five minutes, Poison Friends stays true to that heady, idealistic-to-a-fault world of academia.
  26. Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
    Although the documentary is a brisk 74 minutes, filmmaker Elizabeth Carroll seems to so fully capture Kennedy’s unfiltered personality that Nothing Fancy becomes not just a portrayal of a world-famous authority on how various communities within Mexico farm, prepare, and eat their traditional dishes, but also a commentary on how we view or judge places through their food. Kennedy has complaints, and Nothing Fancy lets her air them.
  27. Mayor
    If Mayor succeeds at conveying some of the awkward cringe comedy of running a community under occupation, it also captures the dread.
  28. Graceland
    It’s a dark, grim, suffocating story that only missteps by overplaying its hand, making the larger message about prostitution increasingly overt.
  29. Whitney
    Whitney herself remains a figure of some mystery, her rise and fall refracting the hopes and anxieties of the people around her, with a tragic echo in the death of her daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, in 2015.
  30. Catch Me If You Can
    Part of Spielberg's skill as a filmmaker comes in choosing the right collaborators. Janusz Kaminski's gorgeous cinematography, Michael Kahn's graceful editing, Jeff Nathanson's clever script, and John Williams' score all work well in unison, but the film's masterstroke is the casting of Walken as DiCaprio's utterly decent father.
  31. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    For better or worse, X-Men: Days Of Future Past is the first Marvel movie to truly embrace comics-style storytelling.
  32. Land of Mine
    The cheesiest thing about it is the punny English-language title with which it’s been saddled. Otherwise, Land Of Mine is tough and admirably grim, turning a harrowing history lesson into a study in how the battles of wartime don’t always cease with the ceasefire.
  33. Thoroughbreds
    Thoroughbreds...has been made with diabolical craft and intelligence, the kind that marks Finley as a major new American talent. But it’s no empty exercise, no mere calling card. The style all comes in service of the central relationship and the superb performances that bring it to bewitching life.
  34. The Bob's Burgers Movie
    The Bob’s Burgers Movie can’t functionally change too much about the characters’ inside the animated snow globe that is its serialized namesake, so instead it picks them up, plays with them, and then puts them back like you would a Kuchi Kopi or Horselain.
  35. Bring Her Back
    Like a punk band turning four chords into pure angst, Bring Her Back turns familiar trauma-based horror into a traumatic experience. To sit through Bring Her Back is to endure it.
  36. Silent Movie
    When American films were addressing social turmoil like never before, Brooks used his clout to turn back the clock by combining silly sight gags, show-biz satire, silence, and celebrity cameos in 1976's aptly named, ingratiatingly goofy Silent Movie.
  37. Treeless Mountain
    At times, Treeless Mountain almost feels like a fairy tale--but without the magic.
  38. The LEGO Batman Movie
    If The Lego Movie was a delightful tribute to the multifaceted experiences of playing with Legos, this movie is like one of the licensed sets that inspired it: Less essential, more market-driven, and still irresistible for certain kids, fans, and nerds.
  39. Kate Plays Christine
    There’s an emotional dimension to Kate Plays Christine—an empathy linking an actor to the human headline she’s dressing up as—that’s nearly abstracted into oblivion by the film’s neurotic self-examination.
  40. A Prairie Home Companion
    Altman and Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is fittingly both a celebration and a winning example of the joys of collaboration.
  41. Mid-August Lunch
    It’s a trifle, but a trifle that sticks.
  42. Afterimage
    Afterimage suffers from a clunky script and an overdetermined formal palette.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Funny or Die Presents: Donald Trump's the Art of the Deal: The Movie
    Like the real Trump, [Depp] delivers a bizarrely magnetic performance, and that magnetism is enough to hold the whole enterprise together, even as the intentional incompetence of the film-within-the-film threatens to sink the final act.
  44. House
    Watching this film is like jamming fistfuls of delicious candy into your mouth for 90 minutes. It’s a rush chasing a rush.
    • The A.V. Club
  45. Microbe and Gasoline
    Cutesy title notwithstanding, Microbe And Gasoline stands as one of director Michel Gondry’s most restrained works.
  46. Must Read After My Death
    The relentless negativity in Must Read After My Death can become overwhelming at times, but it's undeniably mesmerizing.
  47. Baadasssss!
    A vibrant, funny, fully realized slice of oft-overlooked cultural, show-business, and black history. It's better than the film whose genesis it chronicles, though inherently doomed to be nowhere near as important.
  48. Trainwreck
    Unlike many comic vehicles and just as many big-city romances, it’s a real, and ultimately rewarding, piece of work. A big-studio romantic comedy infused with actual human feeling is just as rare an accomplishment as the perfect comedy sketch.
  49. Secret Ballot
    Pleasing low-key comedy.
  50. The Believer
    If nothing else, The Believer trusts that faith can not only withstand a little skepticism, but also gather strength and meaning from it.
  51. About a Boy
    Few scenarios are more cliched than the curmudgeonly father-figure who takes in the precocious imp -- irritation in the first two acts, love in the third -- but Hornby infuses it with warmth and honesty, not to mention his obvious gift for wry observation.
  52. In This World
    Has a message, which it effectively conveys by succeeding first as an affecting film. Winterbottom's actors give a human face to current events as they proceed along their grim road-movie toward a destination that may not even want them. They may be statistics, too, but their stories stick in the mind.
  53. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
    Guerrilla still holds up as social history, primarily because its description of seething frustration in a divided America has become spookily relevant.
  54. Emily
    Mackey’s Emily is a young woman who lives the life she writes about, daringly, perhaps knowing time is short.
  55. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    It thoroughly eviscerates the MPAA and makes a solid case that the culture has paid the price for its censorious practices. His (Dick's) attacks are the equivalent of shooting ducks in a barrel, but these ducks had it coming.
  56. Origin
    For those who choose to take this riveting journey of discovery, they’ll find this picture gets them to a place of inspiring enlightenment and keeps them in that mindset far beyond the end credits scroll.
  57. 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.
  58. Bastard Out of Carolina
    Anjelica Huston's directorial debut employs an impressive cast, and at times showcases a promising sense of style. But Bastard Out Of Carolina seems hollow at its center, due largely to the fact that Anne Meredith's screenplay doesn't make very good use of its source material.
  59. Point Blank
    The actors' charisma is a draw, but mostly, the movie relies on Pavlovian reaction to the genre: The audience has its designated place as surely as any element in Cavayé's relentless machine.
  60. Billy the Kid
    If the film has a significant flaw, it's that Venditti never explains in the film how she found Billy, or why she's interested in him. Billy The Kid often plays more like an extended home movie than something intentional and artful.
  61. Jar City
    Eventually, some mysteries become clear, but Kormákur's attempts to be crafty are too often clumsy, and the movie's unmotivated time leaps are close to a cheat.
  62. Whisper of the Heart
    Studio Ghibli productions have always been adept at making the fantastic seem real, but with Whisper Of The Heart, Kondo and Miyazaki focus so intensely on the everyday that they make the real seem fantastic.
  63. Blast of Silence
    Working with a miniscule budget, Baron creates charged compositions out of found locations and makes a virtue out of the film's cheapness.
  64. Coexistence, My Ass!
    Filmmaker Amber Fares assembles a ton of footage into a thorough portrait of a disillusioned activist-comedian, though that portrait and the one-woman show it revolves around are themselves limited messengers of a worthwhile call to action.
  65. A House of Dynamite
    Despite some white-knuckle moments, Dynamite slackens with each runthrough of its perma-climactic 15 minutes. In the world of global catastrophes, Bigelow increasingly resembles an unwitting tourist, just like the rest of us.
  66. Okja
    If Bong, the South Korean writer-director behind The Host, Memories Of Murder, and Snowpiercer, never squares the film’s satirical means with its sentimental ends, he at least throws the weight of his considerable filmmaking talent behind both.
  67. Omar
    Knotty and tense for most of its running time, Omar becomes muddled in its closing minutes, conflating personal and political treachery.
  68. Solo
    Solo is most intriguing when its romantic rivalry takes center stage.
  69. Manhunter
    Mann takes all the instincts he learned as a Miami Vice producer and trims them of their excesses, and the result is an unsettling thriller whose detached style perfectly complements its psychological intensity.
  70. Lucky
    If you know someone who doesn’t quite grasp the emotional terrorism behind concepts like gaslighting and victim-blaming, sit them down with Lucky.
  71. Titane
    There are a lot of wild twists and turns in this movie, but underneath there’s a constant: the agony of being trapped inside of a human body, and the itchy, restless desire to transcend it.
  72. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    The M:I films remain blessedly, unfashionably self-contained: They’re stand-alone popcorn entertainments that can be watched in any order, with only the thinnest of connecting continuity between them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Frozen
    In its simple pleasures, it’s every bit as enjoyable as "Winnie The Pooh," with a strong and valuable moral undercurrent to boot.
  74. They Died with Their Boots On
    As history, it's mostly bunk. Flynn's Custer is a heroic, high-spirited, Indian-respecting dunderhead prone to plunging into battle without thought and winning the day in spite of overwhelming odds (until, of course, the odds catch up with him). Dramatically, however, it's much more interesting.
  75. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
    It's a black-and-white shocker, a crazed psycho-melodrama, a pitch-black show-biz satire, a warped meditation on the traumatizing effects of child stardom, and a gothic tale of familial dysfunction as its dysfunctioniest.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hatching
    Hatching is an efficiently told fable, the moral of which is multilayered, making the ending a puzzling emotional experience that both begs for resolution and feels like a confident choice for a first time filmmaker.
  77. Shot in the Heart
    There's a tight, urgent, and timely film hidden inside Shot In The Heart, but it's not always worth forging through all the gratuitous bells and whistles to find it.
  78. On the Run
    A taut, diamond-cut piece of storytelling.
  79. S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine
    A harrowing, unblinking look at the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime that by some accounts killed off more than a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.
  80. True History of the Kelly Gang
    It’s refreshing to discover that True History has an actual perspective on the events of Ned’s formative years.
  81. Life, Animated
    On the list of Disney-related 2016 releases about child-rearing and handicaps, this one goes just above "Finding Dory." What it lacks in wacky hijinks, it makes up in hard truths.
  82. Waitress
    It's an imperfect film, but it's the kind of imperfect film of which it would be nice to have seen Shelly make more.
  83. Prodigal Sons
    Prodigal Sons comes packed with multiple hooks. Aside from the sex-change angle, the movie takes a turn when Marc---whom Reed’s parents adopted before she was born--learns that he’s the biological son of Rebecca Welles, and the grandchild of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.
  84. The Skeleton Twins
    What saves the movie is its actors: Exploiting audience’s memories of their previous collaborations, Hader and Wiig really do seem related. And both actors handle the balance between drama and comedy with aplomb.
  85. Mandibles
    If you seek something that coalesces in a satisfying way, this ain’t the auteur for you. If you long to be caught off guard, take a seat.
  86. Oklahoma City
    Oklahoma City has little to offer any viewer already familiar with the basics of these three events, each of which gets fairly superficial treatment here.
  87. Terribly Happy
    This is a smart, melancholy crime picture, which takes its cues from the title of the perverse old standard Christensen plays on her stereo at night: “You Always Hurt The One You Love.”
  88. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
    The documentary seems a little structureless and unfocused at times, as Akers moves from dramatic moment to dramatic moment, not always taking care to connect them.
  89. The Bridesmaid
    The Bridesmaid goes slack at times, as it follows multiple Magimel family subplots, but as always, Chabrol stages everything with an elegant economy, moving the camera in short bursts that direct the eye but don't distract. Still, the movie would fail completely if not for the dynamic between the two leads.
  90. They Cloned Tyrone
    At first glance, They Cloned Tyrone is a silly satire of early ’70s blaxploitation flicks like Super Fly or Willie Dynamite that adds what writer-director Juel Taylor and writer Tony Rettenmaier call a “... dash of Scooby Doo.” Fortunately, the filmmakers here have something more in mind.
  91. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
    A feature-length tribute to great directors with no direction of its own, his second feature is the kind of self-consciously quirky, slapdash movie that still leaves a viewer eager to find out what its director will do next.
  92. The Rabbi's Cat
    While the scenes don't always fit together thematically or tonally, each one is its own polished gem.
  93. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon
    Ultimately, what makes Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead valuable is the sense it provides of how savage and uncompromising the National Lampoon was in its heyday.
  94. The Woodmans
    Intentionally or unintentionally, there's a degree of accusation to The Woodmans that's discomfiting, almost as if Willis is indicting Francesca's parents for being so self-involved-even though they're just answering his questions as honestly as they can.
  95. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
    78/52 is at its best in cinema studies mode, examining specific compositional and editing choices made by Hitchcock and his collaborators.
  96. I Kill Giants
    Beyond the characterization of its complex anti-heroine, though, I Kill Giants doesn’t stray too far from an established collection of story beats, stretched thin over a slightly too-long 106-minute run time.
  97. Slut in a Good Way
    Lorain’s film ultimately doesn’t go especially deep in detailing its romantic relationships, its friendships, or any overarching storyline. But Slut In A Good Way is more than the sum of its entanglements; the actors and the camera work so well together that it feels, at times, like a musical.
  98. Sicko
    The problem with Sicko--one endemic to Moore documentaries in general--is that it never confronts any challenges to its position, which can make it seem like the crudest sort of agitprop.
  99. Monster
    In her feature-film debut, writer-director Patty Jenkins combines the gritty, claustrophobic neo-realism of "Dahmer" with the unlikely gutter romanticism of "Boys Don't Cry," creating a haunting portrait of how a person can feel so desperate and hopeless that murdering for a few crumpled bills and maybe a beat-up car can begin to seem like a reasonable option.
  100. The Lady and the Duke
    In the lively exchanges between the titular duo and the technical innovation that links the past to the present, The Lady And The Duke brings the period to life with surprising immediacy.
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