The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,419 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 2.5 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
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  1. The Reason I Jump
    It’s a blatantly didactic film, yet its focus on advocacy feels justified given the misconceptions that continue to dominate society’s understanding of the autism community.
  2. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    This kitschy, weirdo movie has such a bizarre clarity of vision about what it wants to do that a few biffed jokes are almost part of its charm, like its sketch-comedy accents and intentional defiance of logic.
  3. Dead Pigs
    Although the film still sparkles, a trimmed-down version focused solely on the Wangs might have had the explosive power of a hand grenade. But the story isn’t the main attraction here. The real star of the movie is Yan, whose carnivalesque sensibilities emerge fully formed in this, her first feature.
  4. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    If Showalter resists a cartoon takedown of Tammy Faye Bakker, he also hasn’t made a very deep look at her life, either.
  5. CODA
    The climactic emotional beats are telegraphed almost from the beginning, but they still hit hard, effectively leaving viewers who can suspend their disbelief feeling uplifted and dewy-eyed.
  6. Mass
    The cast carries the film; Dowd, as Linda, is especially terrific. Yet the feeling that one is watching a latter-day teleplay is hard to shake: The unvisual, periodically clumsy direction never finds a way around the confined space or the ugly lighting. One can applaud Kranz’s restraint.
  7. Scum
    A straightforward prison flick, basically, honoring all of the genre’s many conventions, from the sadistic screws to the wars between rival cell blocks to the innocent who gets brutally gang-raped.
  8. The Sparks Brothers
    If you’ve never heard of Sparks, the good news is that you’re the perfect viewer for Edgar Wright’s documentary The Sparks Brothers, a two-hours-plus sales pitch for why they’re worth your time.
  9. Strawberry Mansion
    There’s a lot to appreciate about Strawberry Mansion as an aesthetic object, a flight of imagination, and a sci-fi vision.
  10. Together Together
    It’s an ode to the way that even impermanent relationships can be profoundly meaningful.
  11. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
    The director has done the original Gremlins one better: Instead of a film with a subversive streak, he's made a puckish act of subversion with a streak of film.
  12. Army of the Dead
    In a way, this B-movie on an A budget gets closer to the values of George Romero, the godfather of zombie cinema, than Snyder’s actual, hyper-adrenalized remake of Romero’s masterpiece.
  13. Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal
    What becomes clear in this film—if it wasn’t obvious already—is that sometimes the ways in which the rich and powerful thrive have nothing to do with merit. Sometimes they just buy access to people like Singer, who are good at selling their customers a story they can tell.
  14. Language Lessons
    Luckily, Morales and Duplass have the chemistry and the acting chops to carry this unexpectedly moving film.
  15. Lucky
    If you know someone who doesn’t quite grasp the emotional terrorism behind concepts like gaslighting and victim-blaming, sit them down with Lucky.
  16. Violation
    Violation is not a movie one can casually recommend, and even aficionados of the horror genre may find it off-putting in its extreme violence or its grandiose self-seriousness. Perhaps the best way to think of this film is as a ritual, a transgressive act of dark magic that manifests all the slimy, sinister creatures crawling along the underside of more straightforward revenge narratives. You can’t banish a demon without conjuring it first.
  17. The Inheritance
    Every object, many of them clearly worn by use, feels hand chosen; every shade of color feels handpicked; every piece of furniture or fabric feels specific to that room. Asili’s controlled design doesn’t render The Inheritance sterile. Instead, it swells with free-wheeling creativity and Black pride.
  18. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
    Hamaguchi’s deliberate disruptions of narrative flow are not crude storytelling gestures so much as attempts to create epiphanic moments out of time, where the rift between imagination and reality ceases to exist—at least until the wheel of fortune turns round once more.
  19. She's So Lovely
    At once grittily realistic and hopelessly romantic, She's So Lovely walks a fine line between artiness and pretension, and to its credit, it seldom falters.
  20. Moffie
    At its worst, Hermanus’ forceful direction can land with this sort of thudding literality. But befitting its harrowing subject of young men hammered into rigid conformity, Moffie leaves a lasting mark all the same.
  21. Swan Song
    Swan Song can be clumsy and sentimental at times, but that’s sometimes the cost of earnestness.
  22. The Fallout
    With a firm handle on tone, Park skirts the pitfalls of bad taste one might expect from a film that uses mass violence as a narrative device for a coming-of-age plot.
  23. The Beta Test
    Cummings and McCabe zero in on an angle they do understand—the death scream of the untouchably powerful man—and can make fun of with precision.
  24. Stowaway
    The film is strongest when simply exploring the terrible notion of triage among the healthy, with everyone involved fully aware of which individual will be deemed the most expendable.
  25. This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
    There are longueurs where Mosese’s approach shows its limits, as the film’s rhythms go from stately to stultifying. More often, though, Mosese manages to fuse his film’s stylistic tensions with Mantoa’s struggles of expression, her efforts to carry on in both word and deed.
  26. The Skin Game
    Alfred Hitchcock's early films run the gamut from not-bad to dreary, but they're mainly remarkable for how Hitchcockian they are.
  27. The Columnist
    Overall, this is a sophisticated take on over-the-top material, arch but not quite Serial Mom-style campy.
  28. Plan B
    Though this particular trip hits a few creative speed bumps along the way, it’s buoyed by great comedic specificity and two (hopefully) star-making performances.
  29. Downton Abbey: A New Era
    Downtonians will likely feel all too happy to visit this cast of characters again, and here Fellowes reminds us how we got so invested in their lives in the first place.
  30. Old
    The film has flashes of clumsiness that should be familiar to those who have stepped before into the Twilight Zone of its maker’s imagination. But Old is also, in its most intense moments, one of his most genuinely disturbing visions: a horror movie about that most universal of horrors, inescapable mortality.
  31. Gunpowder Milkshake
    Gunpowder Milkshake comes alive in its darkly comic action sequences, which prioritize creativity as much as brutality, with an uncommon focus on props, locations, and wide compositions.
  32. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
    In the tradition of Britain’s class comedies, what makes Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris comes down to the difference between, say, your average fashion designer and someone like Dior: with a pattern, anyone can make clothes—but in Manville’s hands, she stitches together something magical.
  33. The Northman
    At least from an ambition standpoint, Eggers’ devotion pays off in heaps. The Northman offers a lot to enjoy in what is a lot of movie. It features both see-it-to-believe-it “fuck yeah!” gruesomeness in its 10th Century tale and the kind of historical and mythical attention to detail to be expected from Eggers
  34. Where the Crawdads Sing
    Newman’s film gets enough right to be just as solid as a summer cinematic distraction as Owens’ book was as beachside literature. The atmosphere and beauty of the Carolina marshes are masterfully captured, and it bears repeating that Daisy Edgar-Jones is a magnetic leading presence, investing Kya with equal parts relatability and spiny distance for a character that seems to have leapt from the page, whole and vivid.
  35. The Novice
    The filmmaker, who also co-edited The Novice, depicts Alex’s freshman year in quick-cutting, frenetic, anxiety-ridden fashion, with composer Alex Weston’s string-heavy score properly ratcheting up the tension and Fuhrman gamely acting like a harried but dedicated ball of nerves.
  36. Accepted
    Accepted ultimately arrives at a conclusion about the harmfulness of the “model minority” narrative without necessarily deploying the exact term, as it highlights the fact that these inspirational stories about marginalized people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps are often used to allow systemic inequities to fester.
  37. Fast Company
    Fast Company is an example of Cronenberg taking one step back from his idiosyncrasies, and spending 90 minutes reveling in one of his passions.
  38. 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.
  39. Lamb
    This intimate, four-character film has its own quiet rhythms, compatible with yet distinct from any perceived A24 house style. It’s a hybrid of unnerving, dread-based horror and genuine domestic drama. Are they naturally so different, anyway?
  40. Titane
    There are a lot of wild twists and turns in this movie, but underneath there’s a constant: the agony of being trapped inside of a human body, and the itchy, restless desire to transcend it.
  41. Paris, 13th District
    Unfolding at a relaxed pace and richly enhanced by DP Paul Guilhaume’s silky black and white images, Paris, 13th District is a candid, intimate, and authentic examination of the obstacles that keep young urbanites from connecting.
  42. Electric Dreams
    For all the liberties it takes with what the computers of that era could really do, Electric Dreams offers a portrait of our relationship to technology that’s fairly prescient—while still being silly in that early-’80s Radio Shack kind of way, of course.
  43. Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters
    The documentary combines interviews with original company members and archival footage with vérité-style training scenes from a college dance troupe’s reinterpretation of the piece. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait of an artist that simultaneously taps into the personal and political dimensions that inform the creation of art.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Clockwatchers
    The film's message, that it's impossible to trust in an environment that does not reward loyalty, is as dark as the message sent by the far more acidic In The Company Of Men. Though Clockwatchers doesn't feature the flashy language of that brutal film, it still reveals a similarly astute assessment of modern inter-office politics and workplace alienation.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Eel
    Pointless conflict aside, The Eel is a thoughtful film, oddly touching despite its quirks.
  46. 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.
  47. Encanto
    For all its compelling individual elements, Encanto doesn’t quite manage to weave them together into something greater than the sum of its parts—which is especially frustrating given that the idea of communal support is a driving ethos of the film.
  48. Jane by Charlotte
    Whether or not the film necessarily works as a narrative feature, Gainsbourg manages to peer inside her mother’s life and lifestyle with an honesty that should make audiences nervous and envious at the same time, seeking answers we may want from our parents but are afraid of enough to be reluctant to ask.
  49. Drive My Car
    Drive My Car effectively captures the double-edged nature of storytelling as a means of both processing and deflecting emotions; Uncle Vanya can be used to work through pain or to postpone it. Hamaguchi clearly recognizes film’s similar power.
  50. Homeroom
    While Homeroom is far more contained in length and scope than a Frederick Wiseman opus, the way editors Rebecca Adorno and Kristina Motwani construct a narrative from a seemingly free-flowing assembly produces a similarly immersive viewing experience, as if one was wandering the school shrouded in an invisibility cloak.
  51. Official Competition
    Consistently amusing, if about a reel too long, it’s a tightly controlled, low-boil send-up of the acting process.
  52. Sheep Without a Shepherd
    When Sheep Without A Shepherd goes big, it goes really big, both in terms of melodrama and directorial flair. Chen is delightfully wicked as the morally compromised chief of a corrupt and abusive police department, however, and the plot is engrossing enough to forgive the movie’s excesses.
  53. Limbo
    The weaknesses in Sayles' story and his occasional bouts with didacticism are far outweighed by the film's exceptional intimacy and humanity.
  54. Hellbender
    If there’s a lesson to be taken from Hellbender, it’s this: Underestimate the small and unassuming at your own peril—whether that be the character of Izzy, the film’s real-life creators, or the movie itself.
  55. Night Teeth
    First-time screenwriter Brent Dillon’s script excels at the little details of social structure, human and vampire, that distinguish Night Teeth from other politically minded genre picks.
  56. Hypnotic
    Hypnotic isn’t just refreshingly straightforward for Rodriguez, but for Ben Affleck too.
  57. Cyrano
    A musical with numbers written by The National was a terrific idea, and so was Dinklage as Cyrano. Just not at the same time.
  58. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
    The result is a movie likely to appeal as much to anyone who enjoys pop-scored animal hijinks on TikTok as to anyone who actually remembers the books.
  59. A Night of Knowing Nothing
    Because of Kapadia’s collage-like approach, A Night Of Knowing Nothing occasionally feels loose and shapeless. But there is a discernible trajectory here.
  60. The Forgiven
    Discrimination, exoticization, willful ignorance, poorly disguised disdain for local customs—you name it, these vacationing Westerners have it.
  61. Bitterbrush
    Bitterbrush director Emelie Mahdavian allows you to tag along with two range riders, listen in on intimate conversations, and bask in spectacular and sometimes unforgiving nature as you observe their way of life.
  62. The Girl and the Spider
    It pays off in a work of gorgeous stylistic precision where cautious glances and wistful anecdotes melt together to form a melancholy arthouse jewel about the tearing down of one woman’s identity.
  63. Mayor Pete
    Moss spends the better part of a year just trying to get his subject to betray some raw emotion, even going so far as to have Chasten pose interview questions at one point. It’s not as if Buttigieg stonewalls the camera, either. He’s just not, at heart, a very demonstrative guy.
  64. Real Men
    A film becomes a comfort-food favorite because it moves along briskly, has a few solid gags, and maintains a distinct yet uniformly agreeable tone throughout. And the more memorably high-concept its plot, the better. Real Men falls squarely within this category.
  65. Dune: Part Two
    As blockbuster movies go, Dune: Part Two is a thrilling ride that totally earns its two-and-a-half-hour running time. The filmmakers add much-needed heft to their display of virtuoso filmmaking by adding serious real-life themes.
  66. Playground
    Playground smartly complicates the situation by showing how Nora juggles her desperate concern for her brother with a fear that his plummeting social stock might drag her into the same boat. It’s hard to watch, but Wandel doesn’t blink.
  67. Dog
    As a whole, Dog is credible as a small-scale drama with some moments of light, puppyish comedy, from the man and the mutt. Like Clooney before him, Tatum hasn’t quite made his own Soderbergh movie. He has, however, made a surprisingly good one.
  68. The Outfit
    Filled with twists and reversals that, for the most part, are motivated by character not plot, The Outfit is a nifty little period thriller that provides a showcase role for the always-amazing Mark Rylance.
  69. Let's Scare Jessica to Death
    It's a classic B-movie move of making much out of little, and while Let's Scare Jessica To Death isn't quite a top-rank B-movie classic, it at least offers further proof that all the teen-idol stars and CGI effects—or a logical plot, for that matter—mean nothing if they don't make you scared to turn out the lights.
  70. Where the Boys Are
    Aside from a few unfunny comic setpieces, Where The Boys Are is generally entertaining, thanks to vivid location footage and a likable cast.
  71. The Lost City
    The Lost City is a big studio release playing in theaters, and for any kind of “date night,” it is a solid base hit. But should you find yourself on an airplane a few months from now and this is a viewing option, that’s when it becomes a home run. It’s not a knock to admit we all desire comforting movies in uncomfortable situations.
  72. Kimi
    When this film is over, viewers with voice-activated smart TVs are liable to look around for the long-dormant physical remote.
  73. You Won't Be Alone
    Stolevski ably balances art-house and horror tones to a degree that fans of both will appreciate, but like the film’s pointedly empathetic point of view, his emphasis on each helps fans of one style understand and appreciate the other.
  74. Bigbug
    Subtlety has never been one of Jeunet’s tools, and the comedy in Bigbug is enjoyably over-the-top, occasionally a bit too mannered, and often laugh-out-loud funny.
  75. The Pink Cloud
    Gerbase, making an impressive feature debut, proves herself a sensitive observer of human nature. The Pink Cloud joins a tradition of sci-fi films like Her that are less interested in their futuristic concepts than how they might affect people.
  76. 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.
  77. Emergency
    It’s easy to imagine Williams taking this story and crafting either a boisterously funny, obstacle-filled mad dash to the hospital or an indignant, op-ed baiting thesis on post-George Floyd America. Instead, he turns down the heat and blends the two, creating a buddy comedy of errors shot through with an ever-darkening undercurrent of racial commentary.
  78. Call Jane
    Call Jane is a feminist work told with straight-arrow purpose. It assumes that the slightest melodrama would devalue the sacrifices these women made and the community they created. If that’s a miscalculation, the movie is still effective and enlightening—and a worthy companion to 2022’s The Janes, an excellent nonfiction documentary on this remarkable cooperative.
  79. Downfall: The Case Against Boeing
    Downfall is effectively enraging—especially in its middle section, where the picture really packs the most punch.
  80. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    At its most powerful, Adamma Ebo’s film is an empathetic indictment of a culture that has evolved—and perhaps mutated— from intercommunity support toward the asphyxiating glorification of gaudy figureheads.
  81. Hustle
    While not a total slam dunk, Hustle plays admirably with a lot of passion, artistry, and intelligence.
  82. Father of the Bride
    It’s surely a crowded canvas. But Alazraki and Lopez joyously melt all the ingredients into a hearty hotpot of generational clash, cultural conflict, patriarchal one-upmanship and domestic chaos, allowing the uniqueness of both the Cuban and Mexican cultures to shine through in their Latinx tapestry, rendered through production designer Kim Jennings’ sumptuous sets.
  83. The Innocents
    Childhood is hard, and childhood grudges run harder. The Innocents pulls no punches in turning that fact into horror.
  84. Bodies Bodies Bodies
    Reijn, whose last directing effort was Instinct, the Netherland’s 2019 Best International Feature Film Oscar submission, directs with a loose, improvisational energy. If she keeps too loose a grip on the reigns, occasionally letting scenes meander, there’s another surprise or biting line of dialogue to get things back on track. While there’s plenty of blood and nasty kills, Reijn is not here to provide a true horror film experience.
  85. The Aviary
    Writer-directors Chris Cullari and Jennifer Raite give us two unreliable narrators to follow on a similar, intertwined path to personal, earth-shattering discovery in The Aviary—and the results make for a visually striking, sonically spooky, and deeply unnerving picture.
  86. The Woman King
    Prince-Bythewood, whose Beyond The Lights is one of the most overlooked movies of the last decade, has created a vision of historical Africa that has truly never been seen in a mainstream American movie. For that alone, she deserves a crown.
  87. Till
    Wherever Chukwu places her camera, Deadwyler’s face makes us understand not just what Mamie is going through but rather the reality of what this country does to its Black citizens. It’s a performance of quiet strength and loud emotion, though Deadwyler is never loud or histrionic. She just simmers with profound pain.
  88. 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.
  89. Violent Night
    It’s a premise that’s just clever enough to work; although too many anachronistically cheery needle drops during gruesome fight sequences abound, there’s plenty to milk from the juxtaposition of family-friendly Christmas spirit and R-rated action and comedy.
  90. Captains Courageous
    On either end of Harvey’s adventure, Captains Courageous goes on a bit too long; the circumstances of his boarding-school transgressions are needlessly overcomplicated, and the emotional denouement is less than concise. But the seafaring section that makes up the majority of the film is well-crafted and gives way to surprising emotion.
  91. Suzume
    Suzume is Shinkai’s biggest and possibly most complex movie, and parts of it feel more personal due to the invocation of real history, but it’s also a bit overly concerned with its plot—to the point where it seems to take its central relationship for granted.
  92. Deadfall
    Compared to Deadfall, films The Wicker Man, Face/Off, and even Vampire’s Kiss look like Merchant-Ivory productions. It may be a crowded field at the top of Cage’s most entertaining performances, but this one deserves to stand above the fold, if for no other reason than that its general lack of public awareness means a retroactive popular appreciation is long overdue.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Super Mario Bros. Movie
    Ultimately, Nintendo fans are sure to find the second Mario film (unlike the first) well worth a trip to the cinema, and with a runtime of only 92 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. But to swipe a metaphor from the original NES Super Mario Bros. game, while the film may complete the level, it doesn’t quite nail the leap to the top of the flagpole.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Day Shift
    Suffice it to say that Day Shift is not exactly breaking new ground, but it’s a damn good time for a night at home on the couch: sometimes all you need is Jamie Foxx in a Hawaiian shirt and Snoop Dogg as a black cowboy, slaughtering hundreds of vampires with swords, shotguns, gatling guns, garlic grenades, and decapitating roundhouse kicks.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love in the Villa
    Admittedly, this film is to romantic comedies what Olive Garden is to Italian cuisine. But like a bowl of pasta the size of your head and unlimited breadsticks, sometimes copious portions of something completely straightforward manages to deliver exactly the experience you want.
  96. Persuasion
    Despite these modern constraints, Cracknell’s adaptation crackles with life. Especially with an effervescent actress and hunky actor delivering compelling performances—in Johnson’s case, sometimes directly to the camera—this funny, poignant and enrapturing film gives ingenious new power to some of the Jane Austen’s greatest hits.
  97. Aftersun
    Despite Wells’ confidence as a filmmaker, Aftersun still succumbs to the predictable traps of films about childhood memories. Every small incident is presented as a big momentous event. That may be true from a child’s perspective, yet it still makes this narrative feel more formulaic than organic. Consequently, few of these beats feel revelatory to the audience, even when they are affecting.
  98. God's Creatures
    Two powerful moments punctuate this film’s conclusion: one abrupt and unambiguous, one mournful and contemplative. Crowley’s story ultimately shifts to a perspective Hollywood stories don’t often empathize with, hinting at a breaking of cycles, a kind of triumph in the face of both man and nature’s adversity.
  99. Showing Up
    To say Showing Up centers on the moments in between Lizzy unwittingly caring for a broken pigeon and making sure she has enough pieces to show at the gallery is accurate. Yet, in true Reichardt fashion, the point is not the plot so much as the spaces in between what’s happening on screen.
  100. White Noise
    It’s always admirable when a filmmaker makes a bolder choice and expands their horizon. For Baumbach, such a venture leads to a familiar place; the nuances of family strife remain his artistic sweet spot.
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