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. Blood
    This move is both redundant and counterproductive because it weakens one of the screenplay’s central conceits — the way Bettany’s guilt is shared and experienced by other characters.
  2. The Great Beauty
    A lovely but rambling excursion through moneyed Rome, the film can’t have remotely the same impact as its predecessor, but it does offer a cornucopia of dazzling images—so many, frankly, that it becomes a bit exhausting, especially at nearly two and a half hours.
  3. Hey Bartender
    While incapable of comprehensively contextualizing the craze and only somewhat convincing in its portrait of the power of cocktails to reenergize the traditional local-dive scene, the documentary remains a succinct and lively tribute to the art of the drink—not to mention a handy compendium for those seeking a prime NYC joint to quench their thirst.
  4. Dallas Buyers Club
    There’s something undeniably affecting about that trajectory, which allows McConaughey to turn his character into an empathetic figure — one whose prejudice fades as his fighting spirit intensifies — without sacrificing his rapscallion spirit. He’s the same loudmouthed macho braggart at the end of the movie than he was at the beginning, but now he’s a loudmouthed macho braggart with purpose.
  5. 100 Bloody Acres
    At its best, though not often enough, 100 Bloody Acres is as mercurial as its central character, breezily offbeat one moment, spattered in gonzo gore the next. It’s as if the filmmakers ground the bits of other movies fine enough that it made a rich foundation for their own.
  6. Into the Woods
    Even if this Into The Woods lacks the exhilaration of the best movie musicals, it does capture the show’s emotional intimacy—no small task in a field that favors razzle dazzle.
  7. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
    Alexander is a watchable, affable, pretty good, well-done kids’ movie buoyed by a humorous script and talented cast.
  8. Spider-Man: Homecoming
    Much of the film’s infectiously youthful spirit comes courtesy of its star. At 21, Tom Holland is only a hair younger than Toby Maguire was when he first donned the tights.
  9. Broken
    Doggedly manipulative and yet consistently affecting, Broken piles on the miserablism to almost unbearable effect.
  10. Pusher II: With Blood On My Hands
    Pusher II works best when it's dwelling on the disconnect between Mikkelsen's lurid imagination and his disappointing reality, though it starts to fade when it becomes about the strained relationships of fathers and sons.
  11. Our Nixon
    The results are akin to seeing the Nixon presidency through the eyes of his top aides; it’s as much a portrait of innocence lost as a behind-closed-doors exposé.
  12. Enough Said
    Sharp as the dialogue is, it’s hard to imagine any of this working as well without the late, great Gandolfini.
  13. Our Children
    Though Lafosse’s handling of the actors is pitch-perfect, his sense of structure is more problematic. The decision to start the movie at the end and then jump back several years undercuts the drama.
  14. Dom Hemingway
    Dom Hemingway is often ghoulishly funny, with Law, who put on weight for the role and plays up his receding hairline, turning in a larger-than-life performance unlike any he’s given before.
  15. A Teacher
    By continually deferring dramatic tension, the filmmaker puts more weight on the movie’s closing scenes — which are abrupt but true to life — than they can handle.
  16. Sparrows Dance
    There are times when the slight, small Sparrows Dance pushes too hard, both visually and narratively: a blinking red light outside Ireland’s window provides overly fussy on-off lighting during two long scenes, and the movie’s flairs of serious conflict are less deft than its offhand moments of connection. There are enough of said moments, though, to sustain its sweetly hesitant romance.
  17. 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.
  18. Drew: The Man Behind the Poster
    Erik Sharkey’s documentary is far less adventurous than Struzan’s own creations, using a straightforward chronological structure and talking-head format to pay tribute to Struzan’s legendary output.
  19. The Last Time I Saw Macao
    As a ruminative travelogue-cum-dissertation, Rodrigues and Guerra Da Mata’s film is often haunting, and its portentous and mournful atmospherics ultimately help compensate for the nagging impression that it’s a work almost too personal for an outside viewer to fully penetrate.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    American Made Movie
    There’s enough here to merit a watch. One of the movie’s more unexpected pleasures is Alexander Falk’s handsome digital cinematography, which goes far beyond the call of duty for a micro-budget documentary.
  21. Night Moves
    There’s a certain muddled ambivalence to the movie; one gets the impression that Reichardt is more interested in these people than their ideas, but she never quite cracks Josh, who’s much more impenetrably aloof than the beleaguered travelers of "Meek’s Cutoff", her masterpiece. Night Moves is a portrait of outsiders that leaves its audience on the outside.
  22. Ass Backwards
    Although some of the road-trip clichés are unavoidable, Ass Backwards overcomes the obvious beats with clever, occasionally dark jokes that reveal the sharpness of its stars’ writing.
  23. The Summit
    The proceedings somewhat sidestep the issues of risk and responsibility—including the raised, but never fully tackled, question of whether others should have gone back to try to save their fellow, trapped compatriots—that seem most in need of investigation.
  24. Stonehearst Asylum
    The presence of Kingsley — as well as all the ornate cabinetry and shadowy atmosphere — might suggest "Shutter Island," but the real referent appears to be Tod Browning’s "Freaks," with its complicated mixture of fear and sympathy.
  25. Mr. Nobody
    As philosophy, Mr. Nobody seems sillier than it is profound. But in a parallel reality, more movies would have this degree of insane ambition.
  26. Stranger by the Lake
    As withholding as it may be in terms of narrative, Stranger places rare faith in the viewer’s visual sense. Guiraudie presents his widescreen long takes with little inflection, conjuring suspense simply from the sounds of crackling leaves and other hallmarks of the natural (or is it au naturel?) realm.
  27. Joe
    For two hours or so, he becomes a magnetic actor again, the same vibrant presence who wowed audiences with his work in "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Adaptation." He is, in these rare instances, just plain good.
  28. Life of Crime
    Thing is, though, for anyone familiar with the Tarantino film, this less remarkable picture will totally seem like a prequel, peering back as it does on younger versions of characters audiences got to know in "Jackie Brown."
  29. Philomena
    Still, that doesn’t detract too much from what Philomena manages to accomplish: a sober consideration of how ideals relate to institutions — whether they’re religions or political parties — anchored by two well-rounded, funny lead performances.
  30. Abuse of Weakness
    Writer-director Catherine Breillat who adapted the film from her own roman à clef, seems content to let the story stand on its own two feet, as if it were something that she’d invented from whole cloth rather than experienced. It’s a laudable approach, in theory, but it backfires a bit in this particular instance, because what occurs is so psychologically inexplicable that Breillat’s alter ego comes across as terminally foolish.
  31. The Armstrong Lie
    Those who want to see Armstrong sweat may leave disappointed. Calm and seemingly well rehearsed in interviews, Armstrong shrugs off years of public statements without ever seeming truly remorseful.
  32. Zero Charisma
    That it never quite sinks into caricature is thanks to the imposing presence in the lead. Refusing to fish for sympathy, even as his character circles the drain, Eidson delivers a complex, bravely off-putting performance.
  33. The Square
    There’s a sense in which The Square feels incomplete, like the first part of a much longer effort. It’s hard to blame Noujaim for presenting it to the public now, but the decision to do so is primarily political, not artistic.
  34. In the Heart of the Sea
    Even though In The Heart Of The Sea’s framing device often feels like it was written by someone who’d never read a word of Melville, its visual style makes for a bold approximation of his allusive prose.
  35. Spinning Plates
    As separate snapshots of three fascinating businesses, it’s vivid and engaging.
  36. Beyond Outrage
    Of all the great actor/directors, Kitano has probably come the closest to creating a style that parallels his approach to acting.
  37. Live by Night
    The smoothness of the movie’s individual sequences bumps up against narrative raggedness, as Affleck labors to compress a sprawling, novel-ready narrative.
  38. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    What Abrams has done is strip Star Wars down to its core components, rearranging the stuff people liked about the original trilogy and getting rid of what they hated about the rest.
  39. Spy
    Spy, similarly, doesn’t exactly send up James Bond or Jason Bourne espionage thrillers, but it places McCarthy in the middle of the action while subverting the traditionally male domination of that arena.
  40. Paddington
    If the film seems head-and-shoulders above the average effects-driven family-matinee flick, it’s because it never gives the impression that it’s trying to be anything more (or less) than good-natured and fun to watch.
  41. The Punk Singer
    A little more distance could have been beneficial, but The Punk Singer is enlightening regardless.
  42. Nuclear Nation
    Tangents involving government committees and the nuclear energy lobby only serve to scatter the already-diffuse narrative, as do numerous intertitles relaying facts about nuclear power in Japan or indicating the passage of seasons; they seem like leftovers from a longer film.
  43. 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.
  44. Enemies Closer
    Enemies Closer finds Hyams senior and his screenwriters, Eric and James Bromberg, channeling Lynch and Mark Frost’s TV series "Twin Peaks," mixing bizarro characterizations and woodland intrigue with wholesome national imagery.
  45. Veronica Mars
    For the most part, Veronica Mars plays like a very solid episode of the series, the kind unlikely to rank among fan favorites. It could, however, serve as fine fuel for a sequel, one that wouldn’t find Veronica resisting — for half of her time on screen — the urge to do what she does best. Keep your hearts (and wallets) open, marshmallows.
  46. Big Bad Wolves
    Believe it or not, some of this mayhem—muscularly orchestrated by directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, who made 2010’s "Rabies" — does provoke laughter.
  47. Nymphomaniac: Volume II
    Taken as a whole, with volumes one and two in concert, Nymphomaniac looks like nothing less than a career overview, touring each era of the director’s development.
  48. All the Light in the Sky
    Large-scale anxieties about the future of the environment mingle with the characters’ small-scale anxieties about the present. The effect of this interplay will probably vary from viewer to viewer. As with Swanberg’s production methods, a lot depends on what you bring to the movie.
  49. Wrong Cops
    Wrong Cops does what underground movies used to do: It gives the viewer the sense that what they’re watching is thoroughly wrong in terms of both behavior and style. What’s missing is the transgressive kick, the sense that a real boundary has been crossed.
  50. Journey to the West
    Showcases Chow at his weirdest and most entertaining.
  51. Grand Piano
    For all its virtuosic showboating, the film belongs as much to its screenwriter, Damien Chazelle, as it does to its director, Eugenio Mira.
  52. Step Up: All In
    It’s the rare movie that knows its limitations, but also understands how to use form to best convey its strengths, pulling together countless complicated dance scenes in which the relationships between teams and characters come through more clearly than they could through dialogue.
  53. Everest
    Part IMAX nature documentary and part Hollywood disaster movie, it does an effective job of conveying what it’s like to climb the mountain, the hours and days spent acclimating on practice hikes, and the punishing physical effects that accompany each subsequent change of altitude.
  54. Nightcrawler
    Nightcrawler is a portrait of an amoral opportunist who stumbles upon his horrible calling, and the film’s chief pleasure is watching Gyllenhaal portray what it might be like if Rushmore’s Max Fischer grew up to become Chuck Tatum, the unscrupulous reporter played by Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder’s scabrous Ace In The Hole. It’s adolescent solipsism gone grotesquely rancid.
  55. God Help the Girl
    God Help The Girl is, in other words, a spotty movie — sometimes silly, sometimes dead serious. It is, however, nobly spotty — inconsistent in a way contemporary productions rarely are, its shortcomings the result of an excess of creative energy, rather than a lack thereof.
  56. The Interview
    The North Korea scenes are often very funny, with many of the jokes coming at the expense of the fish-out-of-water visitors.
  57. Knight of Cups
    Malick’s tricks may be aging, but every world still looks new through his eyes.
  58. Song to Song
    The quartet of actors lends Song To Song somewhat more focus, but it still finds ways to sprawl.
  59. 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.
  60. Clouds of Sils Maria
    Binoche and Stewart inhabit their characters’ complicated friendship, whether they’re doing the nuts-and-bolts, behind-the-scenes business of managing a career or getting drunk at a small casino.
  61. They Came Together
    Seeing clichés mimicked this skillfully is plenty hilarious.
  62. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
    While Swartz almost certainly would not have been sentenced to 50 years in prison, a system that tries to scare harmless do-gooders into submission does America no credit. In this case, it succeeded all too horribly well.
  63. Frank
    Frank is never more endearing than when Fassbender has a mic to his mouth, spitting out the hilariously batshit lyrics of his “most likeable song ever,” or literally singing the praises of his cohorts during an affecting showstopper.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Finding Fela!
    What makes Finding Fela! just as poignant is the fact that Kuti, while still listened to and appreciated by millions, is not as ubiquitous a cultural institution as Davis or Brown. Gibney doesn’t fully, forcefully make the case in Kuti’s favor — but he does take a big step in the right direction, all while sketching a vivid, evocative portrait.
  65. Calvary
    Some of Calvary is uncomfortably bleak... But writer-director John Michael McDonagh—brother of the English playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh (In Bruges)—has an ear for wry humor, providing his characters with a steady supply of acerbic wit.
  66. Run & Jump
    Forte’s strength in playing awkward characters works to his advantage.
  67. 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.
  68. 12 O'Clock Boys
    At just 75 minutes, the movie doesn’t wear out its welcome, though its shapelessness can be frustrating; it ends abruptly, on a moment that could be interpreted as a triumph or as a profound loss, and it doesn’t seem to care much what one concludes.
  69. Charlie Victor Romeo
    Whatever reservations it prompts, the film is innovative, original, and queasily effective.
  70. Obvious Child
    In turning a 23-minute story into an 83-minute one, Robespierre sometimes struggles to occupy her running time.
  71. The Fault in Our Stars
    Good movies are made out of great books all the time, and to fault Fault for not living up to its inspiration isn’t much more fair than dismissing the novel on the grounds that it sounds, superficially, like "Love Story" for millennials. As with infinities, some successes are just bigger than others.
  72. The Rover
    At heart, The Rover is something of a buddy road movie, albeit one almost completely devoid of humor.
  73. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    Director Chiemi Karasawa is on her best footing when she deals with Stritch not as a Broadway icon and occasional film and TV star, but rather as a woman approaching 90 and holding on thanks to lack of filtering and an indomitable will to perform.
  74. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    Underneath the expressive voice work, songs, in-jokes, and nonsense cameos, there is some thematic resonance to Lego Movie 2, not fully tapped.
  75. The Conjuring 2
    When The Conjuring 2 focuses its efforts on scaring the audience, it succeeds, wildly. And why wouldn’t it? Wan’s got his horror technique locked down at this point. It’s the parts where it wanders away from the basics of creating and releasing tension that prevent it from outdoing its predecessor.
  76. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
    It’s dazzling, but also excessive; by the end, even those consistently wowed by the directorial showmanship may find themselves feeling that less would have been more.
  77. The Retrieval
    Despite its meager budget, The Retrieval is characterized by its authenticity. The dialogue and attitudes are persuasive in creating both a consistent psychology and a sense of the historical past, without ever lapsing into a flowery 19th century-ness.
  78. Harmontown
    The documentary Harmontown falls over itself to balance his dark and light sides, with talking heads testifying both to his rare comedic voice and his impossible-to-deal-with irascibility.
  79. The Peanuts Movie
    While it’s more technically elaborate treatment than the characters have ever received, it’s also gentler and more eye-pleasing than any of Blue Sky’s other features. It‘s also a neat extension of Schulz’s style—though, granted, no one needs to see Pig-Pen’s permanent cloud of filth rendered more vividly.
  80. Manakamana
    Really, though, the film’s focus is on neither the destination nor the journey, but on the individuals planting themselves in front of the lens.
  81. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger
    Provides little in the way of comforting catharsis. That may be because Berlinger, a thorough and impassioned muckraker, has managed to find hints of injustice in the justice that was served.
  82. The Slumber Party Massacre
    What Slumber Party Massacre lacks in style, originality, and satire, it makes up in entertainment value. It’s blessedly unpretentious.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A People Uncounted
    Hopefully, A People Uncounted will inspire many more projects that illuminate the history and modern-day reality of the Roma, at least as a corrective to what’s been propagated through reality TV.
  84. A Monster Calls
    The craft of the film is undeniable. The artistry is subtler and perhaps harder to perceive. But it’s there, lurking in the dark, waiting to rise up when least expected.
    • 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.
  86. Mortdecai
    It’s exactly the sort of oddball trifle, like Hudson Hawk, that tends to attract the ire of baffled audiences and grumpy critics. It’s also the sort of oddball trifle that, like Hudson Hawk, will put certain aficionados of silliness in a pretty good mood.
  87. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
    Even when it’s trying one’s patience with throwaway gags or bits of over-the-top brutality, Why Don’t You Play In Hell? is a rather canny celebration of the very type of no-holds-barred cinema that it’s peddling.
  88. Ricki and the Flash
    Ricki And The Flash is a movie of things that may have been done better earlier — sometimes by Demme himself — but which are done all too rarely nowadays, which makes it feel both retro and refreshing.
  89. The Walk
    It’s when the walk portion of The Walk arrives that this unevenly scripted, fact-based thriller achieves its full potential. Even without the suspense of uncertainty, the sequence achieves a bated-breath intensity and wonder.
  90. Wild
    People tend to equate great acting with demonstrative emoting, but knowing when not to telegraph what a character is feeling is just as crucial. Sometimes, walking from point A to point Z — simply, without fuss — is all that’s required.
  91. The Wonders
    If the film fails to deliver wonders, it does offer substantial pleasures.
  92. Citizen Koch
    What ultimately helps Citizen Koch rise above the dozens of other movies like it is a focus not just on recent developments in American politics, but also on the bedrock of what has made this country such an enduringly great, astoundingly troubled experiment: one person, one vote.
  93. Winter Sleep
    Epics tend to get extra respect — bonus points for ambition, one might say — and while Ceylan’s film is a decidedly intimate example of the genre, it was clearly perceived, in advance, as an important work just by virtue of its sheer heft.
  94. Saint Laurent
    Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello’s anti-biopic on the fashion icon, is overlong and opaque, even boring in spots, but it contains long passages of real poetry.
  95. Wild Tales
    The filmmakers have cannily structured this crazed collection of shorts, using running time and general quality as organizational criteria. The best segments serve as bookends. The worst ones are buried in the middle.
  96. The Salvation
    The Salvation never come across as a pastiche; the world of the spaghetti Western — that desertscape where filthy gunmen leer into frame and life is punctuated by sadism — doesn’t need winks or references to be appreciated, and Levring doesn’t offer any.
  97. Coming Home
    It’s a less pointed and implicitly feminist work than such classics as "Raise The Red Lantern" and "The Story Of Qiu Ju" —one could even call it a shameless weepie. Still, it’s a welcome throwback to one of the most emotionally wrenching actor-director partnerships in film history.
  98. Sausage Party
    Rogen and Goldberg start with spoofery and work their way into something bolder and stranger; it’s as if playing in the Pixar sandbox, or a reasonable approximation thereof, can’t help but inspire creativity.
  99. Witching and Bitching
    Plenty of movies sympathize with outcasts, but only De La Iglesia’s sympathize with their ugliest feelings: envy, resentment, and self-loathing.
  100. Burning Bush
    On the whole, though, Burning Bush is an absorbing docudrama that maintains a gratifying equilibrium between hope and cynicism. You can fight City Hall. It just takes a while.
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