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. 4 Days in France
    What makes 4 Days In France special, though, is that it’s far more expansive than its basic premise would suggest.
  2. Into the Wild
    There's a bittersweet quality to McCandless' story that Penn captures intuitively.
  3. Miss Juneteenth
    At its heart, Miss Juneteenth is about the relationship between a mother and her daughter, which Peoples brings to the screen with a subtlety that’s very true to life.
  4. The Party
    The shining star of this little community is Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), who’s put together an intimate gathering of friends to celebrate her recent promotion to Shadow Minister for Health.
  5. A Scanner Darkly
    Which makes it all the more frustrating that the film doesn't quite work, and that it drags from episode to episode--some are brilliant, most merely intriguing--with little momentum.
  6. Cropsey
    Cropsey is compelling as a meditation on how we use stories to explain the inconceivable, and how if no story is handy, we take the available clues and make one up.
  7. The Great Man
    It’s shockingly humorless and glacially slow for a film featuring a bendy boy genius, an invisible woman, a human torch, and a talking pile of stones.
  8. The House of the Devil
    If nothing else, Ti West’s retro “Satan rules!” thriller The House Of The Devil gets the look and tone of early-’80s horror schlock exactly right.
  9. The Dinner Game
    Adapted from a long-running stage play, The Dinner Game has been refined to peak comic efficiency, with every misunderstanding and hare-brained scheme neatly cascading into bigger and bigger catastrophes.
  10. The Iron Claw
    The chemistry between the brothers is palpable, creating emotional heft behind each victory and defeat.
  11. Red Cliff
    The film is both traditional and modern: austere in its engagement with history, and insistent in its showy action beats.
  12. Rust and Bone
    Both actors are tremendous - especially Schoenaerts.
  13. Eye in the Sky
    Like Brian De Palma’s underrated "Redacted," this is a film that doesn’t want to be easily pegged, either in terms of its politics or generic allegiances. Such ambiguity is a virtue, but for all his technical facility, Hood doesn’t really have the finesse of a great, fearless satirist.
  14. Frantz
    Beer and Niney do solid work, but their sensitive efforts can’t quite breathe life into a story that no longer seems terribly relevant.
  15. Val
    If you’re already a fan of Kilmer’s work, there’s clear value in watching him pal around as a young man on the brink of stardom or rehearse as Jim Morrison for The Doors. But for everyone else, Val can sometimes feel like an uncomplicated victory lap.
  16. The Fight
    Snappily edited, with a visual style reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s modular design, The Fight tells viewers of a certain political perspective what they want to hear (that Trump is bad).
  17. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    Drifting through time and space without firmly situating the viewer, Iwai's elliptical style requires patience, but also a willingness to be carried along by its gorgeous, dreamy lyricism.
  18. Wordplay
    The film's subjects are almost uniformly likable, self-deprecating, funny, and hyper-verbal, and their peculiar passion for crosswords and the sense of genial camaraderie among buffs proves surprisingly infectious.
  19. Cheech and Chong's Last Movie
    The tension between Cheech & Chong is a tale as old as time. But their overwhelming respect and love for each other make Last Movie an amiable tour through an unlikely and historic career, arriving at an even more unlikely send-off.
  20. Like Father, Like Son
    Like Father, Like Son has the overall depth and tenor of a Lifetime movie. Kore-Eda can do much better.
  21. Filmworker
    Matthew Modine — who wrote about Vitali repeatedly in his published diaries of the hellish production of "Full Metal Jacket" and is also interviewed in Filmworker — echoes what seems to be a common sentiment about Vitali: that the guy is a friendly mystery, either a glutton for punishment or a saint.
  22. Fair Play
    What Fair Play gets most right, though, is its headlong dive into the messy complications and charged ambiguity of navigating romance in a fast-changing world. The result is an enjoyably caustic, character-driven drama that connects on multiple levels.
  23. She Will
    It’s the film’s mercurial nature, its hazy dreamlike logic, that makes it so extraordinary.
  24. Queen of Katwe
    In some ways, the more novel element is the film’s depiction of chess, which in Katwe is a popular sport on the level of football. And while that might seem unlikely, it’s accurate, at least in the wake of Mutesi’s success.
  25. Werewolf
    Werewolf unmistakably announces McKenzie as a potentially significant new voice, gifted enough to make well-trod ground seem newly landscaped.
  26. Pop Aye
    Pop Aye is a standard, if well-made, indie road trip dramedy. But, you know, with an elephant.
  27. Time
    Time could almost be written off as misogynistic, except that it's so specific about its rage. It's almost as though Kim was so fed up with having the same argument with his girlfriend, all he could do was make a movie.
  28. A Field in England
    It’s the period itself that’s front and center here — not in the usual sense of historical accuracy, but as a sort of theater of the bizarre that allows Wheatley and his wife, screenwriter Amy Jump, to indulge in dementia.
  29. I'm Not There.
    An ingenious, maddening film inspired by the "many lives of Bob Dylan."
  30. Inside Out 2
    You want to connect to these characters on a deeper level, but it never really lets you get fully invested in them.
  31. The Proposition
    The sketchily symbolic characters and flat plot just frame an atmosphere of sticky heat and Biblical reckoning.
  32. The Son's Room
    In the end, it's that reserve that makes it work. Keeping his distance, the director lets viewers see in full the moments in which grief turns the world into a narrow, never-ending tunnel.
  33. Derrida
    As the film takes shape, the form and the subject develop a fascinating symbiosis, with Derrida cast as an active participant in the deconstruction of his own documentary.
  34. The Bourne Supremacy
    Goes through its airport-thriller paces with dazzling kinetics and style.
  35. You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo
    Côté and Henriquez err in pressing their case too hard on occasion, especially when they cut to reaction shots of Khadr supporters watching footage of his agony; there's a line between providing context and manipulating the audience that they don't care to acknowledge. Then again, subtlety isn't likely the goal: You Don't Like The Truth beats the drum, and beats it loudly.
  36. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    In three short scenes, this otherwise linear film unexpectedly slips loose from time, portraying a joyous moment, a tragic revelation, and then a long, slow scene that holds both in the balance, letting viewers tip the scale in whichever direction their hearts incline. It's an effect that could only happen in cinema, and it's made all the more stunning by its appearance in a film taken from a by-all-logic-unfilmable book.
  37. Hill of Freedom
    It may not be the heftiest or most penetrating entry in the Hong oeuvre, but it’s one of the funniest and probably the most accessible.
  38. Robin and Marian
    Robin And Marian would merely be an exercise in theory if the actors didn't make it breathe. Their scenes together a combination of easy humor and wistful grace notes, Connery and Hepburn find an easy rapport, playing something between legendary lovers and an old married couple.
  39. The Fall Guy
    Even with the action and stunt work operating at full throttle, what really makes The Fall Guy work is the partnership between Gosling and Blunt.
  40. Creed III
    Creed III captures the spectacle and ceremony of boxing, providing the audience with an entertaining thrill ride. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, owing much to its predecessors in the Rocky and Creed series in story structure and character development.
  41. Wicked
    Wicked makes the old Wizard Of Oz look even more like a vivid original, while the newer movie unfolding in front of us looks like a faded memory.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Khodorkovsky
    It's unlikely to enflame American audiences with less of a stake in Russia's political goings-on, but works as a persuasive portrait of a politically toxic situation. As one of Khodorkovsky's advocates admits to the camera, even capitalists are entitled to human rights.
  43. The Biggest Little Farm
    The Biggest Little Farm has many valuable points to make about the connection between how our food is grown and eco-friendly living, but style betrays substance so often here that the message gets lost in the shuffle. Unless that message is simply We Bought A Farm!
  44. Laurence Anyways
    For once in a Dolan film, an actor upstages the camera moves. That’s a promising precedent, as well as a hint that artistic adulthood won’t spoil this hotdogging prodigy.
  45. Sollers Point
    Sollers Point is easy to admire, abstractly and on principle. But you may still leave wondering if a little melodrama, a little bullshit, might have been preferable.
  46. Pillow Talk
    It’s the perfect first-date movie: It’s flirty and romantic and a little bit saucy, but it leaves viewers with just a peck on the cheek at the end of the night.
  47. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
    As for what all of this represents, Small Enough To Jail doesn’t draw any conclusions that its many interviewees aren’t willing to voice themselves.
  48. Hounds of Love
    Hounds Of Love is a remarkable achievement in that it does exactly what it sets out to do, and what it sets out to do is traumatize the hell out of you. You just might not want to watch it twice.
  49. A Most Wanted Man
    What resonates, in this smart but minor procedural, isn’t the harsh vision of a post-9/11 world, but the unglamorous depiction of governmental grunt work.
  50. Spaceship Earth
    Spaceship Earth mostly skims over both the findings and the failings, and neglects a lot of the logistics—understandable omissions for a two-hour documentary more interested, perhaps, in the social ramifications of those two years behind glass. Not that it totally illuminates that aspect either.
  51. Arbitrage
    Between Gere matching wits with a police detective played by Tim Roth, and Gere having to explain himself to the steely Sarandon, Arbitrage is never dull.
  52. Somersault
    Watching the Australian coming-of-age film Somersault is a little like watching a fluffy white bunny hop through a minefield, one tiny spring away from becoming tonight's rabbit stew.
  53. Blue Beard
    As with Breillat’s 2007 period piece "The Last Mistress," Bluebeard is subdued and unadorned, almost plain.
  54. The Princess and the Frog
    Disney’s triumphant return to hand-drawn 2-D animation still holds an awful lot of familiar, comfort-food charm.
  55. The Alchemist Cookbook
    It’s difficult to imagine what a script for all of this would even look like. Whatever The Alchemist Cookbook has to express, it expresses through scenes that feel as though someone were dared to do something while a camera rolled, in the near-extinct tradition of the transgressive underground movie.
  56. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    It functions reasonably well as a straightforward, agonized melodrama, but it’s first and foremost a master class—co-taught by famed cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (Goodfellas, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Quiz Show), who got his start with Fassbinder—in the dynamic visual use of a constricted space, and proof that a tiny budget is no excuse.
  57. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
    Hacke is in almost every shot, taking in the performances and sometimes singing and dancing along, inviting the audience to share in the joy of discovery.
  58. The Two Escobars
    Finds connections deeply embedded in a soccer culture fueled by the country's thieving cocaine trade.
  59. Araya
    As a piece of documentary filmmaking though, Araya is more noteworthy for what it reveals about a changing artform than for what it has to say about its subjects.
  60. The World to Come
    Their attraction seems more intellectual than physical, which keeps the film’s romantic energy at a lukewarm simmer throughout.
  61. ABC Africa
    Beyond giving a human face to Uganda's crises, Kiarostami attempts to capture the actual place, a swirl of contradictions as vibrant and beautiful as it is troubled.
  62. The Execution of Wanda Jean
    Minimizes music and effects, relying on artful, informative screen titles to explain the action and letting the action explain the rest.
  63. Cuban Rafters
    Balseros doesn't fully measure up to Michael Apted's work because of the dingy quality of its video-to-film transfer, as well as flaws inherent to a project that started as one type of documentary and ended up as another--namely, that the filmmakers didn't ask enough of the right questions in the first two installments to make the third fully connect.
  64. School Life
    Maybe it won’t exist in Ireland much longer either, so it’s a good thing that School Life manages to capture its weird, wonderful world.
  65. Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
    It’s curious that The Fake Case works best as a dark comedy, with one particularly memorable scene finding Ai sneaking up on a couple of newlyweds as they have their wedding photos taken and snapping a few of his own.
  66. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    The Killing Of A Sacred Deer doesn’t have as sharp an allegorical edge as his best work — it’s no Dogtooth in that respect — but it does find the director honing his command of unnerving atmosphere to a razor point, enhanced by a camera that glides menacingly down hospital corridors and gazes from above with the severity of a merciless god.
  67. Wind River
    Driven by another of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ murmuring folk soundtracks, Wind River turns out to be the weakest of Sheridan’s loose trilogy — the one with the thinnest characterizations and the toughest time disguising its subtext as plainspoken townsfolk rapport.
  68. Free Angela & All Political Prisoners
    In spite of its attention-grabbing opening and provocative title, Free Angela And All Political Prisoners is less a work of agitprop than straightforward history, intriguing but never unsettling.
  69. One, Two, Three
    Although crafting a comedy about such world-altering topics was bound to be difficult, a master like Wilder could pull it off.
  70. Futura
    Self-reflexiveness is no guarantee of value in a documentary, and Futura works perfectly well as cinematic reportage. Still, the film does at times feel slack and arbitrary—a bit like a census that no one could argue is unimportant but which nonetheless has the feel of a box-ticking exercise.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Air
    For a few scenes, Air feels like a gently satirical movie about corporate skullduggery. But it’s really a sports picture, where outcomes are determined by dedication, and a purity of purpose no one else can match. Damon’s Sonny is the scrappy and unlikely contender, whose love of the game gives him heart.
  72. Marnie
    It's a must for those already enthralled by Rear Window, Vertigo, and the like, but a bit of a slog for anyone else.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Spider-Man
    Spider-Man brings the beloved comic-book character to the screen with both angst and action undamaged by the move.
  74. The Wings of the Dove
    The Wings Of The Dove is thought-provoking in a full and lasting sense; it'll stay with you long after its dubious final scene.
  75. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
    Though Parabellum delivers at least a couple of action scenes that rank with the best of the series...there’s a certain fatigue to its two biggest set pieces, both of which pit Wick and his allies against unending waves of faceless henchmen. Wick is unstoppable. Do the movies know where to stop?
  76. The Raid: Redemption
    Gareth Evans' Indonesian martial-arts throwback The Raid: Redemption has a look and feel that resembles the best of '80s cult action movies: half John Carpenter, half John Woo.
  77. Sonatine
    Like the character he plays, Kitano directs the film in a style that alternates between tenderness and brutality, making it a relentlessly tense suspense film one minute and a gentle character study the next. Either half would make Sonatine worth seeing. But taken together as the story of a man who regains his soul but whose face remains permeated with the knowledge of its inevitable loss, it becomes an artful gangster film, Yakuza poetry, and essential viewing.
  78. The Cave of the Yellow Dog
    Writer-director Davaa allows the drama to emerge organically out of the characters, the beautifully captured setting, and the conflict between the past and the present.
  79. Sorry Angel
    The film has some lovely beats, and good chemistry between its leads.
  80. Karl Marx City
    Karl Marx City is at heart a psychological family drama—the story of a tightly knit household that outlived an oppressive society, only to find itself faced with a doubt about the past that amounts to an existential quandary.
  81. Blazing Saddles
    No comic trope, however musty or studded with whiskers, is off limits, including bad puns, physical shtick, pie fights, goofy names and accents, song-and-dance numbers, Jewish Indians, or just having a bunch of cowpokes farting around the campfire. Some of the jokes drop like lead, but the film's anarchic spirit carries a lot of excitement, because Brooks' anything-goes philosophy means that no comedic possibilities go unconsidered.
  82. Sunset Song
    Stultifying in spots, the period drama Sunset Song marks an unexpected misstep for Terence Davies, the eccentric filmmaker whose movies evoke limbo states of memory and repressed feeling using a very British vocabulary of drab spaces.
  83. The Memory of a Killer
    Initially, the film comes off as a poor man's "Memento," but it gradually becomes apparent that it's only really interested in its protagonist's Alzheimer's as a cheap plot point to be manipulated or discarded as the filmmakers see fit.
  84. Supernova
    Macqueen approaches the messy reality of letting go with measured sorrow, unrestrained tenderness, and even moments of joy.
  85. Dust Bunny
    Toning down the blood-drenched viscera of Hannibal while channeling the morbid yet whimsical stylings of Pushing Daisies, Fuller’s inaugural film effort is completely in tune with his previous narrative interests, though this time filtered through the gaze of a precocious child.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Beyond the Lights
    This is feel-good populist entertainment at heart.
  87. The Matrix
    The Wachowskis do it so playfully well, keeping The Matrix's potentially confusing plot intelligible, intelligent, and suspenseful, that it doesn't matter.
  88. Lucy and Desi
    Anyone looking for a clear, concise explanation of how these two unlikely impresarios dominated American pop culture in the mid-20th century will find it here, supported by copious archival material and heartfelt testimony from the couple’s family, friends, and fans.
  89. The Impossible
    Like "The Orphanage," The Impossible confirms that Bayona is a major talent, with a skill for constructing sequences that build tension as masterfully as Steven Spielberg did in his '70s heyday.
  90. After the Life
    Doesn't function nearly as well as a standalone piece, mainly because it's stuck with the thankless task of mopping up after the other two.
  91. Big Animal
    Shooting in dreamy black and white, Stuhr finds quiet poetry in shots of his character wandering the countryside with his new friend, and deadpan comedy in scenes of the camel patiently watching his new owners eat dinner, his head filling a window frame as he waits for scraps.
  92. Last Life in the Universe
    It's hard to know what's really happening in the movie versus what's merely running through the characters' heads, and the poignant final shot muddies the picture even more, raising the question of just when (or if) the story jumps from real to imaginary.
  93. I'm Not Scared
    Cinematographer Italo Petriccione gives the film a dramatic look, but that never compensates for the lack of actual drama; when so much of the conflict concerns Cristiano's reluctance to betray his father, it might have helped to spend more time on exploring that relationship than on capturing what light looks like when it pours in from a cellar door.
  94. Super Size Me
    Spurlock's film proves yet again that the phrase "crowd-pleasing documentary" doesn't have to be an oxymoron.
  95. Woman on the Beach
    Woman On The Beach is a stripped-down, witty explication of how we all get stymied by the impulses and options inherent in the simple act of living.
  96. Heading South
    Heading South's gender politics keep the movie from being too simple, since these women's self-indulgence can be read as a kind of unfettered (and even laudable) feminism, instead of just unintentional racism.
  97. Le Week-End
    The end of Le Week-End reveals it to be the thoroughly ordinary melodrama a description suggests — a portrait of former ’60s fire-starters who are perfectly happy to settle for embers.
  98. Exiled
    Nothing about Exiled is as resonant as To's best work, but it's a clever homage to Sam Peckinpah, right down to the clouds of bloody mist that fill the barroom as To's anti-heroes make their last stand.
  99. High Art
    Though High Art has more than a few awkward touches--all the male characters take up less than one dimension, for example--it's otherwise a nicely underplayed, memorable, beautifully filmed movie.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Daytrippers
    Comic-ensemble performance at its darkest.
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