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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    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waking Ned Devine
    This slight movie gets by on its grungy charm, if not its class.
  2. Millennium Actress
    Animated in much the same style as "Perfect Blue," but with greater depth and a more elaborate sense of playfulness, Millennium Actress is a visual feast, but also a mental gymnastics routine.
  3. The Red Violin
    As pleasant stimulation for the eye and ear, it's two hours of sumptuousness, but anyone looking for more won't find it here.
  4. City by the Sea
    Calls on De Niro to drum up the sort of emotional intensity that's been allowed to atrophy of late. City By The Sea isn't always worthy of him, but it makes enough demands to bring out his best.
  5. A Decade Under the Influence
    For neophyte cinephiles, A Decade Under The Influence should serve as a lively primer on a seminal film era, but its reverent tone is antithetical to the rule-breaking spirit it celebrates.
  6. Full Frontal
    The fact that Full Frontal comes together so well removes any doubt that anyone other than a master filmmaker is pulling the strings.
  7. Cuba feliz
    The spontaneity of the music itself is unquestionable and captivating. Like Saudade Do Futuro, Cuba Feliz is somewhat unsatisfying, leaving too many questions unanswered in its stream-of-consciousness wanderings. But it also preserves ephemeral art that might otherwise be lost.
  8. An Amazing Couple
    It's rare for a comedy to be as fully worked-out and exquisitely timed as An Amazing Couple; just don't expect to warm to it.
  9. Porn Theater
    When Porn Theatre stays in the darkness, its minute observations about grindhouse culture are hypnotic in their accumulating detail.
  10. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    Sharply drawn and well-acted.
  11. 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.
  12. Our Father
    Abouna starkly defines the masculine and feminine influence in raising children, and what happens when they're not so complementary.
  13. E-Dreams
    The story told by e-dreams is inherently compelling, full of dark humor drawn from a deep well of hubris and historical irony, but the film would be a lot sharper had the filmmakers not fallen under Park's charismatic cyber-spell.
  14. Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
    An absorbing and meticulous piece of reportage.
  15. Rana's Wedding
    Agreeably soft at heart, a fun and progressive entertainment that above all wants to give love a wide berth, no matter what imposing obstacles have to be cleared from the aisle first.
  16. Welcome to Collinwood
    A low-key charmer that balances half a dozen winning performances, Welcome To Collinwood's momentum occasionally stalls, and it doesn't always produce laughs.
  17. 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.
  18. Human Nature
    Nature lacks a little of Malkovich's freshness, but that's just about all it lacks.
  19. Under the City's Skin
    At times, Bani Etemad succeeds only too well at capturing the confusing rush of Adineh's family life--the film presents more subplots than it can follow thoroughly, until its final act snaps all that's come before into sharp focus.
  20. Demonlover
    May be Assayas' airiest work to date, an intriguing trifle that leaves its considerable pleasures to lounge around on the surface.
  21. Unknown Pleasures
    Much like his overrated 2000 opus "Platform," Unknown Pleasures spends more energy fussing over the backdrop than on the poor souls languishing in the fore, who have little to do but wander aimlessly and symbolically as life passes them by.
  22. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Less a fantasy than a somber, enveloping mood piece, which is a large part of what makes it so strangely, irrationally compelling.
  23. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    T3, while far from a classic, is an overachieving, mercenary sequel that's short on thrills, but surprisingly long on laughs and surprises.
  24. Knock Off
    Essentially just an above-average Hong Kong action movie, but as such, it's still far better than just about anything else Van Damme has done.
  25. The Flower of Evil
    For all its aloof indirectness, The Flower Of Evil wants little more than to sling another arrow at the bourgeoisie, something Chabrol has done with greater flair on many other occasions.
  26. 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.
  27. The Cuckoo
    Though it gets far too cute, The Cuckoo settles into the snappy rhythms of a promising sitcom pilot, at least until Rogozhkin decides to get serious.
  28. The Core
    With the exception of Hilary Swank, whose earnestness spoils the fun, a stellar cast seems in on the joke.
  29. Italian for Beginners
    Sweet-natured and likable to a fault, the film studiously avoids confronting the darker themes of death and religion that bubble up from its story, no matter how central they are to the characters' lives.
  30. Le divorce
    One minor element in Le Divorce, the sale of a disputed and possibly valuable painting that once belonged to Watts' family, welcomes scene-stealing bits by Bebe Neuwirth and Stephen Fry as appraisers with clashing motives.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Man in the Iron Mask
    A mish-mash of accents (buffoonish Depardieu's French, somber Irons' British, and DiCaprio and Malkovich carrying the same voices they use for every project) are vaguely unsettling, and there seems to be too little swashbuckling for characters who are synonymous with the term.
  32. The Weather Underground
    Serves as a fascinating window into an era of radical dissent that now seems centuries past.
  33. Living Out Loud
    LaGravenese lets real-life messiness keep it off a straight track, coming up with an unexpected and touching portrait of platonic friendship.
  34. S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine
    A harrowing, unblinking look at the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime that by some accounts killed off more than a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.
  35. With All Deliberate Speed
    At once inspirational and deeply depressing, With All Deliberate Speed, directed by "Hoop Dreams" producer Peter Gilbert, is too candid and forthright about the current state of race relations to allow for the sort of cheery, unambiguous uplift favored by civil-rights documentaries.
  36. Divan
    Divan overcomes its stylistic clichés only because Gluck's story is rich, and because it comes to a knockout finish.
  37. How to Deal
    There's a surprising intelligence and gravity working beneath its bubbly surface, informed by an unusual degree of empathy for its adolescent audience and a rare willingness to confront the darker regions of youth experience.
  38. The Grey Zone
    The atmosphere makes a deeper impression than the drama, which might represent a failing on Nelson's part, but could it be avoided? His film portrays the pinholes of light in a place of otherwise unrelenting darkness.
  39. By Hook or by Crook
    The lurching plot goes off the rails about two-thirds of the way through, when Dodge's instability and her mother-quest supersede the mild criminal hijinks, but the film's acting is consistently exciting and unselfconscious.
  40. Club Dread
    With "Super Troopers" and Club Dread, Broken Lizard has cranked out two genuinely funny movies in a row.
  41. The Faculty
    Fine lowbrow entertainment, a fast, funny pastiche of science-fiction, horror, and teen-movie archetypes that is, aside from the original Scream, perhaps the most entertaining, fully realized film of the current postmodern horror/sci-fi cycle.
  42. The Ignorant Fairies
    His Secret Life's languid pace and general aimlessness keep getting in the way.
  43. The Dinner Game
    Adapted from a long-running stage play, The Dinner Game has been refined to peak comic efficiency, with every misunderstanding and hare-brained scheme neatly cascading into bigger and bigger catastrophes.
  44. Ronin
    Here's a strangely flawed and strangely satisfying movie.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trekkies
    It's always nice to see real people, however eccentric, enjoying their lives; if Star Trek has anything to do with that, more power to them.
  46. The Isle
    At once predatory and vulnerable, Jung has a primitive intensity that speaks louder than words, carrying an enigmatic and often maddeningly elusive film that's short on dialogue, rational behavior, and narrative logic.
  47. Love the Hard Way
    Brody's Oscar victory and newfound star power might have secured Love The Hard Way its theatrical release, but his depth and charisma are what make the film haunting and surprisingly resonant.
  48. Dirty Pretty Things
    Frears has directed a surprisingly sturdy hybrid of thriller and social melodrama, even if the thrills turn ludicrous and the social critique grows a little pat.
  49. Teacher's Pet
    Impatient adult escorts ought to appreciate the brevity, and their kids should find plenty of good-natured diversion in the film's generally charming story.
  50. The Newton Boys
    The Newton Boys is Linklater's most conventional film and, despite its numerous flaws, it's not bad.
  51. Bolivia
    Caetano's blunt, deterministic ending underlines the point too neatly, but in dignifying an outcast whose life is treated as anonymous and disposable, he puts a human face on a national tragedy.
  52. Borstal Boy
    Shows an unusual degree of generosity toward all its characters, and its tenderness yields some affecting moments, even if they don't ring entirely true.
  53. One True Thing
    It's a film whose virtues--particularly its rare, intelligent portrayal of the relationship between two generations of women--outweigh its faults.
  54. The X Files
    It's a smart, exciting, involving film that's true to its source, which is all it really needs to be.
  55. The Prince of Egypt
    Rendering in high drama the story of Moses one moment and then underscoring that drama with songs filled with banal "you-can-make-it-if-you-really-try" cliches moves from the sublime to the ridiculous so quickly, you could get the bends.
  56. The Mudge Boy
    An auspicious debut for writer-director Michael Burke, the film makes a superb actor's showcase for Hirsch as well as Guiry.
  57. What Dreams May Come
    Despite its numerous missteps and miscalculations, What Dreams May Come is often a powerful, affecting piece of filmmaking.
  58. In the Mirror of Maya Deren
    Kudlácek rounds up a who's-who of experimental filmmakers, Haitian artists, dance choreographers, archivists, and programmers, all of whom reflect intelligently (though dryly) on Deren's importance in underground cinema.
  59. Girlhood
    Garbus knows how to catch people at their most open, as they define their own types and simultaneously transcend them.
  60. Grazia's Island
    The film's generous spirit, disarming mixture of beauty and brutality, and gentle, insistent sweep make it easy to surrender to it anyway.
  61. xXx
    Diesel clearly has fun playing a character so bullish that his skin seems to be made of leather, and he's self-conscious enough to pull it off even after the film surrenders to formula.
  62. Shattered Glass
    Shattered Glass simply sinks its teeth into a juicy story, never better than when Sarsgaard methodically paints the sniveling Christensen into a corner.
  63. The Truth About Charlie
    Though indisputably a thriller, Charlie abandons itself to little cinematic rhapsodies, self-reflexive asides, and montages of Paris locations cued to a soundtrack of cool French pop, all of which often seems more vital than the main order of business.
  64. Star Trek: Insurrection
    In just about every way, Insurrection seems as if everyone involved is still stuck in the weekly grind of turning out the series, but the results don't disappoint too terribly.
  65. Knafayim Shvurot
    Broken Wings doesn't stray far from the common melodrama in its setup and resolutions, but Bergman's uncommon sensitivity makes the film feel specific, intimate, and utterly plausible at every turn.
  66. 8 Women
    Intoxicates and overwhelms at the same time, giving off so much pleasure in a small space that the effect can be suffocating.
  67. Miracle
    Once these players strap on their skates and take to the ice, it's hard to suppress that lump in the throat.
  68. Seabiscuit
    Though the results are a matter of record, the uplift is nevertheless intoxicating, even enough to compensate for a film that routinely substitutes corny iconography for real imagination and vision.
  69. Mayor of the Sunset Strip
    Through Bingenheimer, the film not only gets the last word on the peculiar allure of celebrity, but also captures a fascinating shadow history of West Coast rock, which owes no small part of its livelihood to Bingenheimer's influence as a tastemaker.
  70. Daughters of the Sun
    Never quite finds the rhythm of a great film, and it scores no points for subtlety by including a subplot about a horse breaking free of its master, but Shahriar displays a real gift for conveying Taghani's plight in all its grimness.
  71. In This World
    Has a message, which it effectively conveys by succeeding first as an affecting film. Winterbottom's actors give a human face to current events as they proceed along their grim road-movie toward a destination that may not even want them. They may be statistics, too, but their stories stick in the mind.
  72. Spellbound
    Can't help but be deeply engrossing, as it taps into a highly charged atmosphere that one parent dubs "a different form of child abuse."
  73. High Art
    Though High Art has more than a few awkward touches--all the male characters take up less than one dimension, for example--it's otherwise a nicely underplayed, memorable, beautifully filmed movie.
  74. Secretary
    There's something appealing about an unapologetic love story set in an office that's only a few clicks off from looking like a fetish dungeon, and Spader and Gyllenhaal make sure that the romance, kinks and all, carries the day.
  75. Holy Man
    A pleasant piece of commercial filmmaking, but as a satirical comedy, it's devoid of laughs and insight.
  76. The Komediant
    The Komediant's most deeply moving aspect lies in its misty memories of the glory years of the Yiddish theater, when an ethnic group rallied against its attempted decimation by forming allegiances and openly celebrating its culture.
  77. Owning Mahowny
    Another actor might not have been able to carry the film, given such a creepily monomaniacal character, but Hoffman lets the humanity soak through, registering split seconds of panic when he's on the verge of getting caught, then just as quickly creating and working a new plan.
  78. Spiral
    Higuchinsky turns the screen into another giant vortex, drawing the characters and the audience deeper into a dark, captivating spell.
  79. Bright Leaves
    Under his (McElwee's) watch, the possibilities of a documentary seem to expand by the minute, incorporating not only journalistic truths, but also personal insights and philosophy, unique regional textures, and unexposed pockets of humanity.
  80. Irreversible
    There are strong ideas at play in Noé's undeniably audacious and technically stunning second feature, which goes as far as any film can in revealing the breakdown of order and the deterioration of the rational mind.
  81. Cabin Fever
    A refreshingly old-fashioned splatter movie.
  82. The Acid House
    The Acid House comes across as a shadow of "Trainspotting," albeit a vibrant, noisy, frantic shadow.
  83. The Magdalene Sisters
    The film might have been more powerful, not to mention fair, if the nuns believed they were doing right; only on movie night, when McEwan sees herself in Ingrid Bergman in "The Bells Of St. Mary's," does Mullan grant her so much as the delusion of rectitude.
  84. Monsieur Ibrahim
    Adapting a novel by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, François Dupeyron uses handheld cameras and some jarring edits, but, prostitutes and all, this is storybook material: heartfelt, pleasant, cuddly, and a little too insubstantial to stick in the mind for long.
  85. Twentynine Palms
    For most of the way, the film is perceptive about the hot-and-cold volatility of wounded relationships, when couples are struggling to communicate yet familiar enough to exploit each other's weaknesses.
  86. The Human Stain
    Roth's novel was at heart a howl of rage against a corrupt, hypocritical, judgmental world, but Benton's austere adaptation--stunningly shot by the late Jean-Yves Escoffier--speaks largely in muted tones.
  87. The Good Thief
    Jordan invests attention in even the most throwaway moments and marginal characters, and his care makes the film a sustained, low-key pleasure.
  88. The Mask of Zorro
    The Mask Of Zorro is disarming for the same reasons, coasting on the charisma of its stars and a few exciting action setpieces.
  89. The Yes Men
    The Yes Men's brilliant lies unlock explosive satirical truths, but the film runs out of steam a bit toward the end.
  90. The Legend of Leigh Bowery
    In fact, the best an artist like Bowery can hope for is that he'll provide fodder for a documentary this solid.
  91. Sunshine State
    Unlike in similar past efforts, Sayles never finds a way to bring it all together. Individual moments of considerable impact alternate with stretches that go nowhere.
  92. Since Otar Left
    Julie Bertucelli spends part of the film letting her characters worry whether they've made the right choice, but mostly contents herself with capturing a place where hard choices have become unavoidable. Though her decision to pace the film to Gorintin's old-lady rhythms sometimes kills the dramatic momentum, in the end it's time well spent.
  93. The Five Obstructions
    The film is also valuable for raising awareness about Leth, whose work hasn't been as widely recognized as that of his European contemporaries, but who now makes an impressive case for his skills, five times over.
  94. 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.
  95. Shaolin Soccer
    The ridiculously entertaining Shaolin Soccer pulls out all the stops to make sure viewers stay happy.
  96. Vodka Lemon
    A dark-humored film about devastation, which makes Vodka Lemon's final rush into comedy in the truest sense all the more refreshing. Even in the wasteland, there might be humor other than the gallows kind.
  97. Barbershop
    Ice Cube serves as the film's solid moral center, with a dizzying variety of supporting characters in his orbit. A refreshingly class-conscious comedy-drama that refuses to talk down to its audience, Barbershop tackles serious issues.
  98. All or Nothing
    It's a hard-won comfort, found here over a bleak stretch of days, but All Or Nothing makes it look like the best life has to offer.
  99. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
    Despite a shaky start and the presence of questionable elements throughout, by the time it arrives at its finale -- which copies Return Of The Jedi's triple-climax structure -- The Phantom Menace has won its place alongside the original Star Wars trilogy.
  100. S1m0ne
    The best scenes play like "Frankenstein" revisited, with a comically bedraggled Pacino cast as the mad scientist trying to protect his runaway creation from a rabid public.
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