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 Day After
    A lazy shoulder shrug of a movie that never bothers to work out who its characters are, what they want, or why their ostensible problems should be of interest to anyone else.
  2. Tiny Furniture
    Tiny Furniture offers a 21st-century, East Coast spin on "The Graduate," but with comedy-writer-ish dialogue and a mannered style that never fully gels.
  3. The Sheep Detectives
    Jokes may fall flat, and the movie might get a bit treacly, but The Sheep Detectives‘ big heart is never in question.
  4. Mostly Martha
    Becomes precisely the sort of film its elements demand. As tearful goodbyes and joyful montage sequences set to lite-jazz saxophoning take over, "neatly winsome" trumps "messy drama" yet again.
  5. Walk the Line
    Ends up being another one of those life-of-an-entertainer films that reduces an artist to his most embarrassing moments.
  6. When Marnie Was There
    As a children’s movie, it’s uncommonly sensitive and complicated, rooted in relationships rather than dazzling action. But adults may notice its simple poetry turning, after a while, to suds.
  7. Pusher III: I'm the Angel of Death
    The gut-churningly nasty Pusher III practically justifies the whole series, as it digs deep into the angst of a drug kingpin—a junkie himself—nagged by a thousand little business details and taunted by all the young, carefree libertines he sees enjoying themselves at his drug dens.
  8. 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.
  9. Terri
    deWitt's script is much better than anything Jacobs has worked on before, with a story that gets richer as it goes.
  10. Dormant Beauty
    Though the movie eschews facile sloganeering, few of its characters or narrative threads are able to develop beyond their function as metaphors.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nas: Time Is Illmatic
    One9 applies enough emotion and visual flourishes to steer clear of hacky Behind The Music territory.
  12. Match Point
    Just when the seemingly endless scenes of Johansson's nagging threaten to sink Match Point for good, the movie becomes the thriller that early reports promised.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
    The movie is so unrelievedly pessimistic that only the most dedicated misanthrope could love it. But there’s something oddly bracing—noble, even—about a Hollywood picture that’s willing to say, without even a hint of soft-pedaling, that life isn’t worth living, and that it’s squalid, unfair, and disappointing.
  14. Still Alice
    Though shot in the stolidly inconspicuous style of a low-rated cable drama, Still Alice is rarely anything short of compelling, in part because its sense of progression and scale offers such a distinctively unsentimental take on the terminal-countdown tearjerker.
  15. Late Night with the Devil
    Late Night With The Devil achieves that rare feat of feeling like something we were never supposed to see. But once we’ve seen it, we can’t look away.
  16. Sound of Noise
    What binds the entertaining crime movie to its YouTube-ready musical interludes is the unspoken yearning of its two leads: he for the world of silence in which he'd rather live, and she for all the sounds that slip by every second, uncontrolled and unappreciated.
  17. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
    This handmade approach is a big part of the film’s DIY charm. It’s also a perfect match for the story, which seems to have been pulled, too, from the messy locker of teen-boy imagination.
  18. Manifesto
    Each of Blanchett’s characters exists in a complete environment, and Rosefeldt’s camera is keen to reveal the gags and treasures contained within each.
  19. 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.
  20. Surfwise
    How can a freethinking father mandate his ideals without violating them? Pray covers it all, and movingly so.
  21. Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    If modern art-lovers want to understand what the Jack Smith experience was like, Jordan's documentary may be their best chance.
  22. Step Into Liquid
    The astonishing visual poetry of Step Into Liquid's best surfing footage nearly compensates for the mindless boosterism of Brown's constant narration and the often comically banal observations of the film's largely homogeneous master surfers.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mulan
    Though Disney's animation department does deserve credit for shaking up its formula and delving into relatively mature drama, the movie is flawed in numerous aggravating ways.
  24. Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    This is a fascinating, underreported piece of recent world history, but Patty Kim and Chris Sheridan's documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story doesn't do it full justice.
  25. Despicable Me
    Until the "creep + orphans = happy family" formula starts demanding abrupt, unconvincing character mutations, Despicable Me is a giddy joy.
  26. The Silence
    From moment to moment, The Silence can feel a bit pokey, as it divides its attention among a host of characters and never builds up much urgency about the fate of the second victim, whose body hasn’t been found.
  27. Donald Cried
    The film’s gradual shift from broad yuk-fest toward something closer to indie drama (while still striving to be funny) isn’t wholly successful; it’s difficult to achieve the catharsis of, say, Kelly Reichardt’s "Old Joy" when you start out like "Napoleon Dynamite." But at least Avedisian tried.
  28. The Incredible Jessica James
    To be fair, it’s difficult not to be outshone by Jessica Williams, whose star has been continually on the rise since her debut on The Daily Show in 2012. It’s interesting, then, that this irrepressible personality would have her first starring film role project be as low-key as The Incredible Jessica James, especially since it seems to have been written just for her.
  29. VFW
    Soaked in neon and coated with a thick layer of 16mm film grain, it’s a visceral throwback to the gritty action fare that lined video store shelves in the early ’80s as grindhouses gave way to the VHS boom—coincidentally, also the era that made VFW’s core cast famous.
  30. The Year of the Everlasting Storm
    There are no outright disasters and two superlative shorts, one of which may well turn out to be this year’s single greatest cinematic achievement. Even if the rest are mostly forgettable, that batting average still qualifies as success in this notoriously erratic mini-genre.
  31. Eileen
    Oldroyd has crafted a strange and mysterious thriller with Eileen. It’s not entirely satisfying, however it’s also never less than imaginatively conceived and utterly beguiling.
  32. The Shrouds
    Cassel and Kruger shine, but the rest of the performances feel either staid or over-the-top. Some of the story comes across as pretentious, and some of the pacing is disjointed and inelegant.
  33. Great World of Sound
    Great World Of Sound is painfully specific about the music-scouting grind.
  34. The Kill Team
    War is hell, in other words, and punishing these soldiers—and Winfield in particular—for doing what they were taught to do is wrong.
  35. The Double Hour
    Pretty to look at, making good use of the scenery in and around Turin; if nothing else, the runaway plot keeps the movie unpredictable.
  36. 12
    Rarely has the voyeuristic appeal of sitting on a jury been so cleverly expressed.
  37. The Invisible Man
    Moss also strengthens the notion that this is a monster movie unusually interested in looking past the toxic-male machinations of its famous character and toward the lasting horrors left in his wake. In other words, the stuff that previous movies, and real life, have sometimes tried to turn invisible.
  38. The Batman
    Still, the film sustains its seductive atmosphere—its hushed pop-noir cool—even as the story fizzles into a string of reveals and a curiously perfunctory climax.
  39. The Ice Storm
    A harsh (though slightly toned down from Moody's book), deeply moving, emotionally rich and intelligent film about the difficulty of rebelling against social restrictions--and the inescapable consequences of such attempts when they do succeed--The Ice Storm should not be missed.
  40. Arctic
    If the bare-minimum characterizations at first feel like a refreshing alternative to the most modern survival film (think everything from 127 Hours to The Shallows), they eventually betray a movie that maybe—just maybe—doesn’t have a lot of ideas about where to go past the first act. Like its protagonist, it trudges toward an unknown destination out of obligation.
  41. Real Genius
    Martha Coolidge's bright, whimsical Real Genius can credit part of its substantial and richly deserved cult following to the fact that nothing has changed: Raunchy, lowbrow teen comedies are forever in vogue, and SDI is still an impossible, money-sucking political mirage.
  42. Undefeated
    It's common for coaches to take roles as father figures on a high-school and college level, but Undefeated gets into how that dynamic works on both ends, as Courtney seeks to salve the pain of his family history.
  43. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    Save for the thrilling opening sequence, there's not much to remember about the film beyond Staunton (Vera Drake), who masks her bottomless malevolence behind a pasted-on patrician smile.
  44. Fed Up
    Like most mediocre documentaries these days, Fed Up alternates between regurgitated facts (often presented in snazzy animated interludes), talking-head interviews, and a “human angle” involving a few regular folks who are struggling with the problem in question.
  45. Smashed
    In spite of the out-of-place pregnancy subplot, Smashed is a film of pummeling intensity and bruised emotions.
  46. Paradise Now
    While "War Within" takes a deeper, more personal look at its protagonist, Paradise Now is a more ambitious film that better contextualizes its central characters and their politics.
  47. 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.
  48. Swimming
    Siegel is almost too tasteful, nearly to the point where his coming-of-age story loses color and purpose. But he finds a mesmerizing presence in Ambrose, a terrific young actress who carries the film without a second of showiness.
  49. Manito
    Eason's twist of fate and too-sudden ending seems as rooted in Washington Heights as the music that pours from the neighborhood's car windows, the smoke that billows from its late-night eateries, and the stoic resignation inscribed on its inhabitants' faces.
  50. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    The lack of a splashy style puts the tales of the rescued and their rescuers properly at the center, but whether viewers connect will depend in part on how saturated they are with Holocaust lore.
  51. Marion Bridge
    If von Carolsfeld had worked more surprises into her style and presentation, Marion Bridge wouldn't live down to its genre stereotype so readily.
  52. Tyrel
    Tyrel is essentially Microaggressions: The Movie.
  53. Doin' It in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC
    Mostly, however, Doin’ It In The Park thrives simply via its myriad sights of nobodies juking and dunking their way past opponents, exuding an authentic for-love-of-the-game competitiveness that’s as infectious as it is intense.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waking Ned Devine
    This slight movie gets by on its grungy charm, if not its class.
  55. 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.
  56. The Boss of It All
    The Boss Of It All, though clever as a piece of genre deconstruction, isn't terribly funny.
  57. Bleak Moments
    The ability to find performers who never seem for a moment to be performing is also here, giving Bleak Moments, like all of Leigh's films, an almost voyeuristic feel.
  58. 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.
  59. Mogul Mowgli
    Ahmed can’t sand over all of the flaws through sheer charisma. But with him at center, the movie is always watchable, even in its imperfections.
  60. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    The moral to Clash's story? It's surprisingly easy being red.
  61. Thirst Street
    Burdge holds the picture together, playing a character who walks a fine line between being sympathetically damaged and terrifyingly loony.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monument Ave.
    Though too short to earn any real sympathy for the characters, and too slow to generate any excitement, Monument Ave. is moderately haunting and occasionally affecting.
  63. The Imitation Game
    The Imitation Game is at its best when it focuses on the collision between cryptography and proto-programming. (No individual can truly be said to have invented the computer, but Turing comes close.)
  64. 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.
  65. London Road
    As pop sociology, London Road doesn’t delve terribly deep, repeating the same simple observations (principally: people are self-interested) over and over. As a nearly avant-garde musical, however, it’s a constant grin-conjuring marvel.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    There's really no bad performance by the great English actress Judi Dench, but this romanticized Victorian historical drama treads close.
  67. To the Limit
    To The Limit is full of a lot of talk about "risk" and "dreams" and "making the impossible possible," and Danquart's stabs at making this an inspirational tale can be a little exhausting.
  68. Leap Year
    Never to be confused for the rom-com starring Amy Adams - though that would be the mother of all video-store mix-ups - Leap Year lets actions speak louder than words, and the actions here are shockingly explicit.
  69. The Water Horse
    Few kid films manage to assemble this much ambition alongside this much sincere, sweet emotion.
  70. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    It’s worth seeing just for its object lesson in how shifts in perspective can radically alter the tenor and meaning of material that might otherwise come across as pompously silly.
  71. 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.
  72. Man Push Cart
    Quietly heartbreaking.
  73. Tadpole
    Though sloppily structured and sometimes dangerously flimsy (not to mention truncated at a mere 78 minutes), Tadpole has an unforced charm that compensates for the absence of more traditional cinematic virtues.
  74. All the Real Girls
    Deschanel and Schneider--who both give rich, funny performances--and everyone around them have inner lives that don't always translate into words. When they speak, it's usually in dialogue halfway between poetry and inarticulate fumbling.
  75. Time of the Wolf
    At its best, the film sustains the heightened tension of great science fiction, dropping in on a frightening new world that's just this side of familiar.
  76. The Raid 2
    The Raid 2 takes a substantially different tack from that of its 2011 predecessor, adding a convoluted plot and only intermittently attending to the sort of acrobatic ass-kicking for which the original became a global smash.
  77. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    Shang-Chi’s hero is on a journey to become himself, but the movie is lost inside of the machine.
  78. Luca
    The generous read on Luca is that it has the sweet simplicity of a fairy tale, something that tired kids and the exhausted parents reading to them could follow even while on the verge of slumber. Less euphemistically, this is an exceptionally mild addition to the Pixar canon, pleasant but nearly as shallow as a bathtub.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Prey
    Trachtenberg strips the Predator franchise back down to its core elements—the ruthlessness of this alien species and the ingenuity of humanity when confronted with nearly impossible odds. In concentrating on character and location, he backs off of the world-changing repercussions of the franchise’s immediate predecessors, creating an involving and tense character-driven experience whose strengths rely on narrative simplicity and a compelling lead in Midthunder.
  80. Everyone Else
    It isn't pretty to witness, but the pain of it smarts.
  81. Seconds
    Seconds is certainly a flawed film, and it's easy to see why it flopped during its initial release: It's a relentlessly depressing, claustrophobic movie that offers no sense of catharsis whatsoever. Nevertheless, it's strangely touching, and as a portrayal of identity and alienation in suburban America, it's about a hundred times as creepy and sincere as David Lynch's thematically similar Lost Highway.
  82. Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
    Director Craig McCall approaches Cardiff with something approaching awe, though his subject views his accomplishments with the good-natured humility befitting a proper English gentleman.
  83. Lenny Cooke
    The question of why Cooke’s career never materialized hangs over the movie, but is never answered. What emerges instead is a portrait of a talented teenager being readied — by coaches, basketball camps, and the media — for a future that doesn’t arrive.
  84. Searching
    As a thriller, Searching is both ruthlessly absorbing in the moment and relatively disposable as soon as it ends, sliding itself gracefully into the desktop recycling bin.
  85. La Moustache
    La Moustache recalls the "everyday suspense" films of Roman Polanski and the existential woe of Michelangelo Antonioni, but it isn't as strange or penetrating as the former, or as artfully shot as the latter.
  86. The Menu
    Mylod’s stew saves its most mouth-watering plate for the last. That’s why it’s fiendishly delightful.
  87. Holes
    An ambitious undertaking, but not a successful one: It unfolds with the studied determination of a grade-school book report.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cookie's Fortune
    Cookie's Fortune, for all its faults, is a welcome respite. In the uneven hands of Altman, you're better off with a flawed bit of fluff than an outright atrocity.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    One Lucky Elephant
    One Lucky Elephant would make an affecting pairing with James Marsh's upcoming "Project Nim," another film about an animal treated like a human until its essential wildness made that impossible.
  90. Jerichow
    The movie ends abruptly, setting up an epilogue that viewers will have to provide for themselves. Jerichow's sparseness, tiny cast, and minimal plot can make the film seem a little elusive, but there’s a certain elegance to Petzold's concision, too. He shows all he wants us to see.
  91. Catch the Fair One
    Although Wladyka foregrounds the movie’s razor-sharp edge—there’s a torture scene midway through that’s especially shocking—there’s a political undercurrent to the story, as well as an emotional one, that give Catch The Fair One uncommon resonance.
  92. Thank You for Smoking
    Much like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters), first-time director Jason Reitman has a broad, anything-goes comedic sensibility that allows silly gags and incidental humor to sneak in alongside the satirical barbs.
  93. 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.
  94. Pete's Dragon
    Looking for poetry in a live-action family film is usually about as futile as hunting for dragons in your backyard; the vast majority of them wager on the indiscriminate tastes of kids and their dutiful chaperons. But Pete’s Dragon has poetry in spades.
  95. My Brother the Devil
    Director Sally El Hosaini, who also wrote the screenplay, proves better at introducing dilemmas for her characters than at resolving them.
  96. Prevenge
    A wryly misanthropic slasher comedy about a woman whose fetus commands her to kill.
  97. Ema
    Under the weight of Larraín’s visual style, the emptiness at the center of Ema’s character nearly collapses the film, before a gobsmacking ending reveals her true motivations.
  98. Divines
    Divines, written and directed by French-Moroccan filmmaker Houda Benyamina, rivals "Girlhood" as a portrait of combustible banlieue femininity, emanating raw energy and scrappy good humor even as it builds to an unexpectedly tragic and horrifying finale.
  99. The Long Walk
    Despite the stamping of hundreds of feet, The Long Walk smolders with the blunt power of a burned flag.
  100. Factotum
    In a medium generally about action and momentum, Factotum is largely concerned with inaction and inertia.
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