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 Good Girl
    Skillfully sketches the parameters of its small-town existence but never quite fleshes out the inhabitants of those parameters. Without the well-considered humor and strongly defined characters of "Chuck," only a good cast stands between Girl and some familiar stereotypes.
  2. Intolerable Cruelty
    The Coens engineer a funny, entertaining battle of the sexes here, but the preponderance of indelible male characters and less memorable female roles render it something of a mismatch.
  3. Intimate Strangers
    The film insightfully probes into the things that are said and the intense feelings that are merely implied, buzzing at a low level just beneath the surface.
  4. Tropic Thunder
    Maybe Stiller just seems stilted because he's the only one here who isn't playing to the rafters.
  5. Disgrace
    After a compelling opening act and some shocking late-film developments, the film feels disengaged from the action at hand and the issues raised.
  6. The Tracker
    Gulpilil, a solid cast, and gorgeous scenery keep The Tracker watchable, but they can't mask the fact that as an adventure, it's sluggish, and as a film about racism, it's often reductive and clumsy.
  7. Koch
    Neil Barsky's Koch doesn't try to do anything radical as a piece of filmmaking, but Barsky - a former newspaper reporter - covers Koch's story magnificently as a journalist.
  8. Good Will Hunting
    Van Sant's direction is surprisingly static and conventional, which doesn't help this earnest, underwhelming misfire.
  9. This Is Martin Bonner
    It’s a brief wisp of a movie, but one that’s not easy to shake.
  10. Spider-Man: No Way Home
    Suffice to say, No Way Home hits its hoot-and-holler beats about as skillfully as Endgame did. There are moments here that will probably inspire comparable choruses of applause; by opening a wormhole into the multiverse of past Spider-Man movies, Marvel and Sony have made something like an all-purpose Spider-Man sequel, shrewdly designed to hit a whole range of nostalgia centers.
  11. Ralph Breaks the Internet
    Like a lot of memes, Ralph Breaks The Internet appears proud both of its clear place within a system and its ability to stand outside and poke fun at that system.
  12. Battle for Brooklyn
    Most viewers should find the documentary Battle For Brooklyn gripping and provocative, no matter their opinions about eminent domain, historic preservation, or public dollars going to support private development.
  13. Mozart's Sister
    What's missing from Mozart's Sister, though, is the kind of fervor that made "Amadeus" so memorable.
  14. October Sky
    Offers a strange mix of sentimentality and social criticism, sometimes mixing the two to awkward effect.
  15. Red Eye
    If constructing a thriller could be likened to building a house, then Wes Craven's Red Eye is a perfect piece of architecture: It's clean-lined and soundly structured, without a foot of wasted space or any materials left unused.
  16. Trumbo
    Trumbo sexes up Trumbo's already dramatic story with a massive infusion of star power.
  17. Eight Men Out
    Detailed and memorable, with attention given to the many personalities and agendas involved, but while it finds sympathy for the men who feel pushed to cheat for money, it offers just as much sympathy for the fans who love the sport, and can’t figure out why their beloved players would betray them.
  18. Proxima
    Yet in striving to carve out a distinctly feminine experience within the male-dominated profession, the filmmaker loses sight of the person inside the space suit, falling back on the family/career dilemma in a way that feels archaic and, for the most part, less than insightful.
  19. Nocturama
    The film is a masterstroke of synthesis; whatever it borrows, it makes its own.
  20. Men Go to Battle
    A big part of the appeal of Men Go To Battle lies in its poky sense of humor, which recalls regional filmmaking gems like "The Whole Shootin’ Match" in the early going.
  21. Travelers and Magicians
    Unsurprising tribute to the sweetness of rural dwellers.
  22. Crossing the Line
    It's an enormous scoop for a Western filmmaker, but a potentially compromising one, too. How much can a filmmaker challenge the dubious elements of Dresnok's story? At what point can the film be considered an unwitting propaganda tool for an oppressive, totalitarian system?
  23. Wildcat
    Wildcat may have a tiny fraction of Avatar’s budget, and the bad guys—loggers, mostly—remain off-camera. But at heart, it has the same appeal. Get back to nature, put others first, be as good to your family as you can, but let them go their own way.
  24. Dolls
    Kitano's gentle side reigns in Dolls, a gorgeous meditation on love and devotion, but the film's hypnotic tone and beautifully formalized color scheme makes it unlike anything he's done to date.
  25. When Two Worlds Collide
    When Two Worlds Collide employs a variety of styles and approaches to construct a single gripping narrative.
  26. Tangled
    The story should be a standard mismatched-couple-falls-in-love tale, but the script and the sprightly directing give the story plenty of snap and humor, and the animation is so luminously beautiful that even a falling-in-love sequence cribbed in part from The Little Mermaid is overwhelmingly magical.
  27. Edge of Tomorrow
    An entertaining, effects-driven black comedy, with shades of "Starship Troopers" in its depiction of warfare as a futuristic turkey shoot, the movie is distinguished more by how fluidly it handles its high-concept premise than where it takes it.
  28. Three
    To is one of the purest directors working today, and he flourishes within Three’s self-imposed limits, folding and reorienting the space of the hospital using privacy curtains, swinging doors, and a constantly moving camera — in the process producing a rollickingly entertaining movie.
  29. The Embalmer
    Both the actor and the character deserve a better movie, one that might have channeled the latter's desires into more than just a few rote genre thrills.
  30. Superstar in a Housedress
    Plays like a 90-minute wake, albeit a warm and humorous one.
  31. Wonderstruck
    For all of the time-warp elegance, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Haynes has authored more of an exercise than a movie: a lovingly assembled flashback pastiche whose emotional core remains oddly theoretical.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    An Affair to Remember
    The principals are in such fine form, underplaying against their stagy backdrops, and the tragic turn of the plot is so gripping, that the movie succeeds in spite of its white-elephant pedigree.
  33. Rapt
    While the back-and-forth between various parties grows tiresome through repetition, Rapt rallies with a lengthy epilogue in which the aftermath of Attal's ordeal proves more draining than the physical privation that preceded it.
  34. Hacksaw Ridge
    One might call this a refinement of Gibson’s fixations as a director: battles more terrifying than "Braveheart" and a portrayal of sacrificial lambhood that’s more compelling than "The Passion Of The Christ," in part because Doss, as much of an unwavering do-gooder as he might be, is an actual character with conflicts.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That Thing You Do!
    Hanks nicely lampoons the smug, stagnant, assembly-line attitude of the American pop-music establishment of the time, but it's clear that Hanks intends his Boomer-pleasing nostalgia to be strictly of the declawed variety.
  36. Welcome to New York
    This is a film set entirely in places where people aren’t meant to stay for very long, a world of continual transit and gratification, with no endpoint. Maybe it’s the world that money creates for itself.
  37. Deep Blue
    Deep Blue is a thrilling film, but not a thoughtful one; it'd be right at home on an IMAX screen, or possibly as the pretty, polished, and vaguely empty Successories poster it closely resembles.
  38. Le petit lieutenant
    In the end, the film belongs to Baye, a veteran French actress who handles the part with toughness and vulnerability without overselling either facet of her character.
  39. The Land of Steady Habits
    In the well-trod territory of fiction about rich men in self-induced emotional crises, the film stands as a worthy, if not exactly groundbreaking, addition.
  40. Without Limits
    Towne never strains for effect, justifiably confident that his polished staging and wry, sneaky wit will be enough to give resonance to Pre's life.
  41. From Up on Poppy Hill
    It’s all lovely and sweet, and while this story might’ve been just as engaging in live action, Miyazaki’s animation does clear away the extraneous detail, re-creating the world of 50 years ago and instilling it with the poignancy of a family snapshot.
  42. 22 Jump Street
    A comedy about sequels. Like its predecessor, the movie continually teeters on the edge of breaking through the fourth wall.
  43. Exit 8
    Exit 8 excels at capturing that isolation and disaffection in an elegant environmental ouroboros, though what it does once it establishes its atmosphere never matches that simple artistry.
  44. Black Death
    Black Death bears some similarities to a zombie movie in the way the plague inevitably overtakes the populace, and it also has one foot in the "creepy community" genre, alongside films like "The Wicker Man" and "Two Thousand Maniacs!"
  45. Erupcja
    Pete Ohs’ best film yet.
  46. We Are What We Are
    It plays less like a contemporary horror film than an increasingly gruesome drama, building to a climax — completely original to this version — where the movie’s core themes are expressed through grotesque imagery.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Young Adult
    Reitman lets the pop-culture references (oh hi, 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up") accessorize the story rather than guide it, and in its uncompromising treatment of a character who's troubled but also a stone-cold bitch, Young Adult offers compassion for rather than revenge on the "psycho prom queen" who has nothing left in life but a warped mix-tape from an ex who moved on long ago.
  48. Winnebago Man
    Steinbauer's eagerness to draw information--and, let's face it, exclusive new clips--out of his recalcitrant subject borders on exploitation at times, but the smart, cagey Rebney has an agenda of his own that Steinbauer can't entirely control or define. The documentary gives him a forum to be his funny, irreducible self, which is a luxury the accidentally famous are rarely afforded.
  49. Gemini
    As visually appealing as much of Gemini is, it wouldn’t work nearly so well without Lola Kirke playing Jill.
  50. Brad's Status
    With Brad’s Status, Mike White (best known for writing School Of Rock and creating Enlightened) has chosen an alternate route: Make the movie you want to, but sheepishly apologize for its existence — not via interviews or post-screening Q&As, but within the context of the film itself.
  51. Real Women Have Curves
    One of the not-so-nice qualities of Real Women Have Curves is that it occasionally is as preachy as its title suggests.
  52. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
    Broomfield's documentaries present life on the fringes as one long, sick joke. The joke still works, but in Life And Death Of A Serial Killer, it leaves a bitter aftertaste.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby
    The Man Nobody Knew is far better with matters of the public record than with matters of the home, which may sum up its subject better than any talking-head interview.
  54. Last Days Here
    The fact that Last Days Here cares more about Liebling's personal redemption than his professional triumph is ultimately a saving grace, a telling demonstration of the film's well-ordered priorities.
  55. How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy
    The ordinariness of this film—and the flatness of its video-shot images, relative to Blank’s beautiful-looking ’70s films — isn’t a significant drawback, given how eloquent Leacock can be.
  56. Road Games
    Stacy Keach engages in highway warfare in Road Games, an Australian thriller that drums up suspense from its assured plotting and direction, and generates humor from its star’s charismatic lead performance...Taut all the way through to its well-staged finale, it’s a superior genre import—and one that also features, in Quid’s silent travel partner Boswell, the finest big-screen performance ever by a dingo.
  57. A Quiet Place Part II
    At just 97 minutes (only a hair longer than the first Quiet Place), his sequel feels pared down to a fault, with no room to further flesh out this world or its occupants. As a piece of storytelling, it’s skimpy and vaguely unsatisfying. As a series of fight, flight, or bite-your-tongue set pieces, it delivers.
  58. River of Grass
    If one were to watch this jagged, restless movie with no knowledge of who made it, guessing that it sprung from the same mind that created "Old Joy" or "Meek’s Cutoff" would be impossible. Intuiting that this gifted novice filmmaker would go on to bigger and better things, however, would be child’s play.
  59. Mad Hot Ballroom
    Some of the strongest scenes are candid front-stoop sessions in which the kids swap gossip and float some hilariously pre-sexual theories on romance.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Only the Young
    Not much of real significance happens, which makes Only The Young feel a bit slight, even at a mere 70 minutes. At the same time, though, every hint of direct conflict threatens to break the spell, in part because the film's secret subject is adolescent self-consciousness.
  61. Bronson
    There are two Bronsons on display here: the impossible thug that we don’t dare release into polite society, and the guy we enjoy watching do his terrible thing. The man and the movie are both living, punching contradictions.
  62. National Anthem
    Though lushly lensed by cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi (Monica, Swallow), there isn’t much under the quietly glam veneer of National Anthem. Had Gilford hewed closer to the everyday folks that find freedom in queer rodeos, a more varied tapestry of this slice of subversive Americana would have shone through.
  63. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    Mara's Salander is the film's lifeblood, a shrewd yet vulnerable outsider whose resilience and pluck help Fincher elevate The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo above the standard procedural. But just barely.
  64. Searching for Ingmar Bergman
    Ultimately, the search here isn’t so much for Bergman as it is for a thesis and conclusion. Those who know nothing about the subject will learn a little. Those who know a lot will learn very little.
  65. Predator: Badlands
    Dan Trachtenberg's latest Predator movie is a safe, frictionless, lore-centric franchise expansion.
  66. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    As an act of storytelling, it’s curiously perfunctory, never rising to the level of effort and care put into creating its cornucopia of visual pleasures.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Swingers
    Swingers has something genuinely rare: a fine script and realistic characters.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Shadow Dancer
    If there’s a political edge to this story, it’s in the understanding — implicit from early on — that this is a situation with no satisfying solution; eventually, someone is going to have to die. To that end, director James Marsh, best known for his documentaries "Man On Wire" and "Project Nim," crafts an atmosphere of tenuous dread.
  69. Syndromes and a Century
    These moments, enjoyable and arcane, may not add up to a masterpiece. But they're uniquely Weerasethakul's.
  70. Horton Hears a Who!
    Just because the live-action Seusses have dialed down expectations doesn't mean that Horton shouldn't aspire to more than time-wasting mediocrity. There are precious childhoods at stake here.
  71. The Wonder
    Thanks to a typically mesmerizing leading turn from Florence Pugh, it’s a film that can hold up a mirror to believers and nonbelievers alike as the best stories of faith do.
  72. Emma.
    Anchoring it all is horror darling Anya Taylor-Joy, who makes for a particularly icy Emma.
  73. The Nomi Song
    Without coming out and saying it, The Nomi Song creates the sense that its subject might simply have been a few hundred years ahead of his time.
  74. Collapse
    There are many layers to the man and the movie, and it’s hard not to leave the theater shaken.
  75. Divan
    Divan overcomes its stylistic clichés only because Gluck's story is rich, and because it comes to a knockout finish.
  76. Next Stop Wonderland
    What's good about Next Stop Wonderland -- and nearly good enough to warrant recommendation -- has nothing to do with Anderson's sloppy, disjointed filmmaking, and everything to do with Hope Davis' far more disciplined and appealing lead performance.
  77. Macbeth
    We’re talking maximum sound and fury, and while no movie that stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard could signify nothing, this one doesn’t signify a whole lot.
  78. Bobby Sands: 66 Days
    The emotional reserve of 66 Days can make the film feel a little dry at times, given that it’s about something as visceral as a man starving himself to death. But Byrne does a fine job of juggling a lot of information.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Warrior
    For all its titular bravado, Warrior never lets the audience forget the economic and spiritual desperation driving its two main characters, who bleed for the screaming arena crowd in exchange for their shots at redemption, and offer a rare glimpse of soul in a type of film that usually isn't obliged to provide one.
  80. Far from the Madding Crowd
    To be fair, Far From The Madding Crowd isn’t the kind of novel that lends itself to adaptation; it was originally published as a monthly serial, and still reads that way.
  81. Sleepwalk with Me
    As charming as it is winningly modest, but it's so incredibly slight a stiff wind would knock it into a different hemisphere.
  82. Pleasantville
    To concentrate on the minor faults of a fable as beautiful and unusual as Pleasantville would be missing the point.
  83. Tales from the Gimli Hospital
    The filmmaker self-consciously borrows from dozens of sources, including radio dramas, Our Gang shorts, hygiene films, school plays, stag pictures, Universal horror, ethnographic documentaries, and the indie weirdness of John Waters and David Lynch.
  84. The Perfect Candidate
    There’s a dramatic neatness here more indicative of a parable or fairy tale than an intimate family drama. Add in a swelling, sports-movie score and The Perfect Candidate would sit comfortably on the shelf along other feel-good underdog stories. (Think Rudy, but with municipal elections and lots of oud.) Yet Al-Mansour and her able cast supply a richer texture than such a description might suggest.
  85. Separate Lies
    This material could easily have devolved into soap opera or romantic melodrama, but Wilkinson and Watson's superb, subtle performances lend it tremendous depth and gravity.
  86. No One Knows About Persian Cats
    The movie comes to life whenever Hamed Behdad appears.
  87. Where the Wild Things Are
    Spike Jonze has recently said in interviews that his chief goal ...was to try to capture the feeling of being 9. By that measure--by just about any measure, really--he succeeded wildly.
  88. Kékszakállú
    Solnicki has admitted in interviews that he more or less made the movie up as he went along, not knowing quite what he was after, and it shows. But he has a remarkable eye and boundless curiosity, and those two qualities are enough to sustain a brief yet restlessly inventive exploration like this one.
  89. Little Fish
    The lackluster Little Fish banks on the automatic pathos of its subject matter, unaware that such delicate material actually requires greater skill and finesse to pull off, now more than ever. Rather than imbuing this unintended commentary with a cathartic charge, its proximity to reality accentuates the air of inauthenticity.
  90. Run & Jump
    Forte’s strength in playing awkward characters works to his advantage.
  91. Animals
    It never pushes far enough into that territory to distinguish its beautiful losers from the many addiction-movie characters that precede them.
  92. Ingrid Goes West
    The biggest selling point of Ingrid Goes West is its screenplay, which is full of deadpan comic flourishes.
  93. RBG
    Breathlessly superficial, school-presentation-ish documentary.
  94. Roman de gare
    Roman De Gare's neatest trick is Pinon's performance, which draws out a hitherto unseen leading-man allure.
  95. Carnage
    Gleize establishes her multiple plotlines fairly cleanly, though once disentangled, the individual stories don't offer enough incident to be meaningful. They don't mean that much all put together, either, but Carnage is still highly watchable, thanks to Gleize's keen eye.
  96. WTC the First 24 Hours
    The mostly wordless film simply presents Ground Zero, the dust-covered surrounding areas, and the city's immediate rescue efforts. As a document, it's invaluable, and as a viewing experience, it's somewhat shocking.
  97. Carandiru
    Babenco's hard work is undercut by his squarely theatrical notion of realism: Specifically, how did the touring company for "West Side Story" wind up in such an awful spot?
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