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. Rocket Science
    Rocket Science doesn't go too far into Todd Solondz-style mockery, either; though painful to witness at times, Thompson's determination to face his fears--not just of speaking, but of girls, too--is heartbreakingly noble and courageous.
  2. Stardust
    The film's merry, enthusiastic tone--set largely by Robert De Niro, playing a giddy transvestite sky-pirate to the hilt--is hard to beat.
  3. The Signal
    The gimmicky yet strangely moving new fright flick The Signal distinguishes itself not through originality, but by smartly integrating just about every popular trend afflicting contemporary horror films.
  4. Hannah Takes the Stairs
    Doesn't rise to the level of Bujalski's breakthrough feature "Mutual Appreciation," mainly because Swanberg doesn't have Bujalski's eye.
  5. The Nanny Diaries
    The film belongs to Linney, whose caustic putdowns and status-seeking veneer barely hides her genuine hurt over her husband's philandering and her distant relationship to her own child. No doubt her diaries would be more compelling than the nanny's.
  6. Ladrón que roba a ladrón
    Entertaining, casually satirical crowd-pleaser.
  7. Eastern Promises
    An engaging thriller done in the Cronenberg style is still worth anyone's time. And this one boasts memorable turns from Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Vincent Cassel.
  8. In the Valley of Elah
    Where "Crash" relentlessly pushed every conflict to a fever pitch, Elah takes its cues from Tommy Lee Jones' low-simmering lead performance.
  9. King of California
    With Douglas, the film's shambling charms slowly catch hold, thanks mainly to his personal magnetism.
  10. For the Bible Tells Me So
    Bible doesn't take itself too seriously, and boasts a disarming undercurrent of gleeful prankishness.
  11. Kurt Cobain About a Son
    About A Son may not let in anybody who doesn't already have one foot in Nirvana's doorway, but those people are invited in fully, to experience the contradictions and preoccupations of a man whose music defined his era.
  12. Dan in Real Life
    Novelist-turned-writer/director Peter Hedges follows up his "Pieces Of April" debut with a comedy that's at once overstuffed and surprisingly subtle.
  13. Terror's Advocate
    If nothing else, Terror's Advocate offers a useful summary of the last half-century of global politics, and how changing public perceptions can make goats out of heroes.
  14. We Own the Night
    Whatever the case, We Own The Night plays like a masterpiece because it skillfully appropriates actual masterpieces, not because it earns the label on its own merits.
  15. Smiley Face
    It's a fittingly loose, shambling little nothing of a comedy that's occasionally inspired, but at least a draft or two short of its potential. Still, it's a pleasure to watch Faris--a gifted, likeable comedian who tends to be the best element of many terrible movies.
  16. Elegy
    As an acting showcase that builds to some unexpectedly moving moments, Elegy has much to recommend it. Had Coixet found better ways to connect those moments, she might have REALLY had something to rival what Roth does on the page.
  17. I Am Legend
    While I Am Legend is reasonably absorbing, it can be difficult to focus on the film that actually made it to the screen, instead of the many versions that didn't.
  18. The Water Horse
    Few kid films manage to assemble this much ambition alongside this much sincere, sweet emotion.
  19. Steep
    Enthusiasts and neophytes alike should be able to join together in gasping at the sight of people plunging down vertical walls of ice, taking their lives into their own hands for a brief, lion-lifed adrenaline charge.
  20. The Business of Being Born
    More propaganda than cinema, and at an hour and a half, its exhaustiveness diminishes its impact. But Epstein anchors the film nicely with her own pregnancy, which occurs while the documentary is in production and comes to an unexpected conclusion before shooting ends.
  21. Caramel
    At its best, Caramel boasts a quietly engaging slice-of-slice casualness.
  22. Praying with Lior
    Intimate, moving documentary.
  23. Definitely, Maybe
    Put simply, the film excels most at not being awful.
  24. Chicago 10
    Chicago 10 is a lot of fun, but it could stand to take its subjects a little more seriously, if only because they themselves are so frequently goofy that mocking them is complete overkill.
  25. Married Life
    To a degree, the dynamic between Brosnan and Cooper resembles Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy's relationship from "In The Company Of Men."
  26. Flight of the Red Balloon
    Flight was commissioned by producers overseas, and it feels similarly, impeccably slight.
  27. My Blueberry Nights
    Wong's visions of a New York café, a Memphis bar, and a Vegas casino--not to mention the swaths of beautiful country in the Southwest--have that enveloping quality that make his films so persistently seductive. The natives should feel flattered.
  28. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
    Segel has always played more a serial monogamist than a horndog, and his earnest, self-deprecating screen persona graces the film's crudest moments with a kind of innocence.
  29. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
    The big payoff, of course, is Neil Patrick Harris reprising his role as "Neil Patrick Harris."
  30. Up the Yangtze
    Goes from sleepily hypnotic to riveting over the course of 90 minutes.
  31. Battle for Haditha
    Unsubtle but gripping.
  32. A Jihad for Love
    Even though the message that people should have the right to love whomever they want is hardy groundbreaking, Parvez captures some interesting conversations about what it means to be gay and Muslim.
  33. Encounters at the End of the World
    A sort of distracted, freewheeling form of inquiry and observation drives Encounters At The End Of The World, a loosely constructed documentary that seems to have been made on a whim.
  34. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
    It's more Thompson-for-beginners than an exhaustive inquiry, but as introductions go, it's thorough and thoughtful.
  35. Kabluey
    While the film's social-satire elements are flat and overly familiar, its dry absurdity is unmistakably Lynchian.
  36. Felon
    Felon's dialogue is overheated and some of its plot twists are preposterous, yet it's still white-knuckle tense, and held together by dozens of small, well-observed moments.
  37. 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.
  38. Quantum of Solace
    It's dark and exciting, but with little breathing room.
  39. Red
    Red's dialogue is a bit blunt, its characters are too broadly outlined, and the situation verges on the ludicrous at times, especially in the way these dumb kids keep committing terrible crimes without leaving any evidence. But the movie isn't meant to be an exercise in realism.
  40. Trouble the Water
    Trouble The Water is infuriating in its depiction of helpless Americans getting left behind, and uplifting in the way it shows the Roberts putting their lives together, but it's also frustrating, because it lacks some focus.
  41. I.O.U.S.A.
    Though the filmmaking is playful at times, the film is essentially 90 percent message, 10 percent movie.
  42. Traitor
    Without its mesmerizing lead performance, Traitor easily could have devolved into direct-to-DVD fodder.
  43. Flow: For Love of Water
    Skips right past depressing on its way to apocalyptic.
  44. Phoebe in Wonderland
    There's too much "problem, solution" to Phoebe, although the movie's anxieties are believable enough to earns the moments of uplift. The film may be too concerned with being a crowd-pleaser, but it least it makes the crowd suffer a little along the way.
  45. Battle in Seattle
    It's the next best thing to being there, in that it's likely to make shuddering viewers intensely glad that they weren't.
  46. Ghost Town
    Though the plot contrives to throw Gervais and Leoni together and then pull them apart, the two leads stay consistently in sync through it all, laughing at each other's jokes and generally sharing the kind of normal adult communication that's often missing from movies about people falling in love.
  47. Igor
    While the stitches holding together the plot are clearly visible, Igor breathes some enjoyable life into its stolen grab-bag of gimmicks.
  48. Flash of Genius
    It's a smart movie for grownups, an increasingly rare commodity.
  49. Body of Lies
    It's not like the screens are so flooded with decent movies that we couldn't use another, particularly a timely, clear-eyed thriller about the Middle East and the role of the U.S. therein.
  50. City of Ember
    Ember is seldom riveting, but it's consistently compelling, and its uncompromising literal and metaphorical darkness renders its climax enormously satisfying.
  51. Frontrunners
    What makes the movie fascinating is the particulars of the campaigns.
  52. Fear(s) of the Dark
    These stories are frightening, but they contain few shocks or flinches; they're deeper and more psychological, more about adult anxiety than pure terror.
  53. Changeling
    Eastwood creates a tone that's at once stately and unsettling, allowing a lot of breathing room for Jolie's sad, unyielding performance. She anchors a film that needs an anchor the further it goes along.
  54. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    The film is clumsily unfunny at times--particularly when Smith makes tone-deaf efforts at gay-and black-themed comedy--and it's occasionally gross just for the sake of being gross.
  55. Pray the Devil Back to Hell
    Overly conventional as a documentary, but it's inspiring as a rebuttal to the declining state of the world at large. It's encouraging to know that the endurance of institutions like marriage and family could hold the key to keeping civilization intact.
  56. Repo! The Genetic Opera
    Piles on the glam-rock spectacle and coal-black comedy at such a brusque pace that it often seems in danger of rattling off the rails entirely.
  57. A Christmas Tale
    It's the definition of a film meant to be admired more than loved, but Desplechin's fierce intelligence and uncompromising sense of character come through, as does some of the sharp wit and stylistic flourishes left over from his last film, 2004's "Kings And Queen."
  58. Special
    Special recalls a minor-key "Donnie Darko," but its vision is much more limited, and it sinks into Indiewood cliché whenever it reaches for profundity.
  59. Timecrimes
    Yet while it isn't that hard to stay a step or two ahead of Timecrimes, the movie is still a nifty little genre piece, an old-fashioned science-fiction mind-game with a healthy dollop of "Oh, the irony."
  60. Adam Resurrected
    In a stunning lead performance, Goldblum stars as a brilliant, apolitical jester.
  61. What Doesn't Kill You
    Goodman doesn't allow even a hint of postmodernism or self-consciousness to creep into What Doesn't Kill You, and though the movie's various heists and shootouts are gripping, they aren't especially kinetic or stylish.
  62. Nothing But the Truth
    Mostly, Nothing But The Truth operates a lot like Billy Ray's "Shattered Glass" and "Breach," offering up the sort of no-nonsense, meat-and-potatoes docudrama that's in short supply these days.
  63. Inkheart
    The story itself is so charmingly dense, fractious, and complicated that it frequently leaves the obvious good-guy-fights-bad-guy groove, and noses toward Terry Gilliam-esque randomness and ebullience.
  64. Medicine for Melancholy
    Medicine For Melancholy offers a personal spin on the "walking around a city" genre.
  65. Push
    Superhero fans will likely be into Push just for the cool-factor of watching embattled heroes and villains in tense war of wits, wills, and skills. That broader audience is less likely to come along for the ride.
  66. Everlasting Moments
    Heiskanen plays her layers beautifully, alternately revealing a talented artist stymied by poverty and marital problems, and a woman fiercely devoted to family first.
  67. Tokyo!
    The entries aren't equally strong, of course, but each comes from a sharp outsider's perspective, approaching Tokyo as a strange, mysterious organism that infects the populace.
  68. American Swing
    American Swing could use the flair of similar portraits of disco-era debauchery like "Boogie Nights" or "Inside Deep Throat," but it’s even-handed in capturing the operation’s ambition and hubris. Just don’t bring an appetite.
  69. The Song of Sparrows
    It's easier to find enjoyment in Sparrows on a moment-by-moment basis than to swallow its message whole, but that method squares just fine with Majidi's aesthetic, in which tiny, quiet joys are the best kind.
  70. 17 Again
    Director Burr Steers (Igby Goes Down) doesn't always have a firm handle on what is and isn't appropriate; the film makes a few sharp detours into misogyny, and the level of smuttiness is surprisingly high, which may be a function of Efron wanting to grow away from his core audience too fast.
  71. Battle for Terra
    On one level, it's a down-market Star Wars-inspired shoot-'em-up for kiddies; on another, it's a radical alien invasion story where the HUMANS are the aliens.
  72. Next Day Air
    A very pleasant surprise, Next Day Air is the rare crime comedy that does justice to both sides of the equation.
  73. Rudo y Cursi
    Carlos Cuaron's otherwise terrific new comedy Rudo Y Cursi barely survives its third-act "Goodfellas" descent into seedy coke-and-crime drama.
  74. Tetro
    It's the product of a great dreamer and aesthete, rather than an authentic emotional experience--a gorgeous, crystalline bauble that really catches the light.
  75. $9.99
    Keret’s alternately sweet and bitter sense of humor comes through clearly in $9.99, via warm voicework by vets like Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia.
  76. Chéri
    The film is a sumptuous, handsome portrait of a woman poised fearfully on the brink of decline, yet too proud to grab at rescue.
  77. I Sell the Dead
    The movie goes out on a high, but until then, it plays almost like the pilot for a TV series. But it would be a GOOD TV series.
  78. Earth Days
    Nearly a quarter of the way through Earth Days, the movie seems on-track to being just another tongue-clucking “Isn’t it a pity” doc, painted in broad strokes.
  79. Fifty Dead Men Walking
    What makes Fifty Dead Men work is the story’s sheer moral complexity, which dares viewers to sympathize with anyone onscreen for more than a few minutes at a time.
  80. Five Minutes of Heaven
    Hirschbiegel fails to discipline his English-speaking cast, allowing Nesbitt so much rein with his caffeinated performance that sympathies shift to Neeson’s comparatively sanguine murderer.
  81. Fame
    A film that’s largely a raw, uplifting love letter to creativity in every possible form.
  82. Ong Bak 2
    What sold the original Ong Bak was the action, not the story, and on an action level, Ong Bak 2 lives up to its title.
  83. The Exploding Girl
    There isn’t much to The Exploding Girl, but it’s blessedly compact, and owns its no-big-deal-ness.
  84. Easier with Practice
    Love stories don’t come much squirmier than this one, and Alvarez plays it with honesty, insight, and the awkwardness inherent in this blindest of blind dates.
  85. Mid-August Lunch
    It’s a trifle, but a trifle that sticks.
  86. The Tenant
    Though the result is too slow and curious, with a weak lead performance by the writer-director, The Tenant's tone of abstracted anxiety is distinctive, and its central message, that the obnoxious define the world for everyone else, provides another tile in Polanski's career mosaic of paranoia and power brokerage.
  87. Mysterious Object at Noon
    All of this free association falls under the wide umbrella of "experimental" cinema, meaning that the often flagging pace and incoherent stretches are balanced by sublime moments of inspiration.
  88. Romeo + Juliet
    For all the hubbub, the film succeeds in relating Shakespeare to modern times, thanks mainly to the use of energetic pop music and the gameness of the performers.
  89. Strictly Ballroom
    Luhrmann works aggressively for laughs early in the picture, playing up the gaudiness and piggishness of the old-guard dancers in camera angles as extreme and unflattering as a mid-'80s David Lee Roth video.
  90. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    What keeps Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! from being irredeemably offensive are Almodóvar’s efforts, however vague and tentative, to undermine his own thesis.
  91. Salt
    Salt's mechanical command of action is what makes it one of the most entertaining films of a summer thin on its once-abundant variety of cheap thrills.
  92. Get Him to the Greek
    Hill, dialing back on the pissy vulgarity of his supporting roles in "Knocked Up" and "Funny People," makes the perfect foil, as passive and impressionable as Brand is reckless and impulsive.
  93. State of Fear
    Builds to a key point about the consequences of democracies fighting terrorism by erasing its central tenets, but in doing so, it doesn't underplay the horrors wrought by Guzmán's organization.
  94. Drawing Restraint 9
    It's hard to shake the sense that there's less here than meets the eye, but what meets the eye burns with a rare intensity.
  95. Sisters in Law
    Almost as fascinating as the depiction of modern Cameroon law is the snapshot of how the 21st century has found its way into rural Africa. Cameroon has always been one of the more developed African nations, but the place where Sisters In Law takes place still consists mainly of tumbledown shacks strung together chaotically.
  96. Justice
    Because Justice is from the Wiseman school of documentaries, there's no narration and people don't share their thoughts with the camera, which means the movie can come off as a little hollow.
  97. Exit: The Right to Die
    In the wrenching final scene, the concept of "dying with dignity" becomes much more than just a catchphrase used to justify a controversial practice.
  98. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    Even though 2 Or 3 Things' central irony is blunt, Ludin's tone remains measured throughout, and never self-serving.
  99. In the Pit
    Rulfo's simple strategy of sticking close to his subjects and allowing them to wax philosophical about their lives and labors pays off.
  100. The Decomposition of the Soul
    Decomposition bears powerful, uncompromising witness to man's inhumanity to man, which is one of the most important things any documentary can do, though, it's also one of the most grueling.
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