The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Do Revenge
    While there are major missteps, overall its bright, spirited attitude and attractive, propulsive gusto power a delightfully wicked journey.
  2. Occupation: Dreamland
    A powerful documentary about a squad of Army grunts patrolling the Iraqi city of Fallujah in late 2004.
  3. Mountainhead
    A wry smackdown of four insanely rich bros hanging out at a gaudy estate in the Utah mountains, the movie generates a decent amount of laughs, but it’s best when Armstrong puts satire aside for rage, seething at the tech kingpins destroying our society to increase their profits.
  4. Mission: Impossible III
    Yes, it's fundamentally business as usual, but it's the best kind of business as usual, and it finds everyone working in top form. Abrams imports and enlarges "Alias'" smooth, stylish, yet remarkably visceral approach to action, and the actors pack a satisfying amount of drama into the moments between action scenes.
  5. Mystery Men
    The characters are funny and the cast's characterizations right on, but the movie repeatedly lets them down.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
    The masculine posturing between the two men and uncomfortable sexual tension between Akin and Sarah move the story along nicely, but the editorial techniques that made "Butter’s" loosey-goosey narrative work so well undermine Thou Wast Mild.
  7. Soylent Green
    Though the mystery has been spoiled somewhat by an over-revealed twist ending, Soylent Green still succeeds thanks to director Richard Fleischer's sure command of one of the grimmest and most sadly plausible dystopias put to film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Puzzle
    Though the film reaches a seemingly artificial either/or scenario with regard to the competitive puzzling, its conclusion is pleasing and not at all pat, a portrait of a woman who's learned she deserves to keep some things for herself.
  9. Steve
    Though Steve is a capable conduit for the myriad familiar dramas of juvenile delinquent storytelling, there’s just not enough time in the day (or the film’s wishy-washy 24-hours-in-hell structure) to give anything the attention it deserves.
  10. Robot Stories
    Disappointing.
  11. Suspended Time
    Though Assayas is best known for his incisive cultural commentary, the subdued regimes and musings in Suspended Time are just as enthralling in their own quiet way.
  12. Deadpool 2
    Though bringing in a bona fide action-cheese aesthete like David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, John Wick) to direct counts as a minor coup, Deadpool 2’s attempts to fight superhero fatigue with self-awareness and meta shock value can become exhausting. Indulgent and uneven, but in spots gruesomely funny, the new film badly lacks the basic momentum of the original’s formulaic plot.
  13. The Way Back
    Between the known metatext and Affleck’s bone-deep commitment, this moving central performance largely purges the film of its high potential for the maudlin.
  14. Puzzle
    It’s hard to fault Puzzle for going in a more rigorous, serious-minded direction... until it trudges in that direction with such repetition. Turtletaub and his screenwriters lay the borderline-anachronistic details of their heroine’s oppressive life on so thick that the movie starts to sag.
  15. I Care a Lot
    The film is arguably too long, with a mushy middle section that slows the momentum of its savage first third. But Pike’s performance remains sharp as her character’s blonde bob throughout, and the pleasures of watching her and Dinklage face off are significant.
  16. The Infiltrator
    Director Brad Furman (Runner Runner, The Lincoln Lawyer) can’t mount a coherent scene even in a Scorsese-aping Steadicam long take, but with this ersatz sting flick, he’s made something so amateurish and baffling that it comes around to being memorable.
  17. Pitch Perfect
    Theoretically, the "Bring It On" model can be applied to any remotely performative art. All it takes is a certain level of sass, some eye-catching performance showcases, and a plot where a talented outsider livens up a moribund group with some fresh ideas. Pitch Perfect slaps that stencil onto college a cappella singing groups, with a smattering of success.
  18. Mary Poppins Returns
    It’s less heartwarming than heart-microwaving.
  19. The Idol
    There’s a fascinating story here, but the movie never gets out of its own way long enough to tell it.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dog Man
    Dog Man is a sugar rush.
  21. Hard Goodbyes: My Father
    Panayotopoulou's background in photography shows in the way she lets her chiaroscuro lighting mirror her characters' emotions. It also shows in the still-life quality that Hard Goodbyes never quite gets beyond.
  22. The Fairy
    For the most part, it's too dry and quirky to connect. Still, those gags are something.
  23. Félix And Meira
    Félix & Meira eventually proves to have more in common with "Fill The Void," and with Burshtein’s effort to depict Orthodox Judaism as more than just a women’s prison, than it had appeared.
  24. Starve Acre
    Aiming for authenticity, Kokotajlo finds supernatural power and dramatic weight in the genre’s rustic simplicity.
  25. No Impact Man: The Documentary
    The value of No Impact Man, a compelling and suitably exasperating documentary about one family’s attempt to not harm the environment for a year, is that it forces viewers to reflect on their own casual consumption and waste.
  26. You're Next
    Written by Simon Barrett, another purveyor of micro-budget carnage, You’re Next boasts a sometimes-uneasy blend of comedy and horror.
  27. When We Leave
    When We Leave is a film without villains. Instead, it features a set of circumstances that inevitably and needlessly spin out of control.
  28. The Toxic Avenger
    The Toxic Avenger is an imperfect but no less vital lifeblood transfusion for the cheapo horror-comedy: a cartoon-carnage splash-a-thon, and an eco-conscious call to clean out the profiteers poisoning us and our planet.
  29. Hope Springs
    Taylor and Frankel go too broad when they try for comic relief - and the on-the-nose soundtrack is borderline criminal - but Hope Springs handles marriage and advanced-age sexuality with a refreshing, down-to-earth candor. In today's Hollywood, that counts as radical.
  30. Catfish
    Catfish is absolutely riveting, and even nerve-wracking as Joost and the Schulmans get progressively closer to learning more about their "friends."
  31. I Am Legend
    While I Am Legend is reasonably absorbing, it can be difficult to focus on the film that actually made it to the screen, instead of the many versions that didn't.
  32. 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.
  33. 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.
  34. Tying the Knot
    Tying The Knot's central point remains insistently stated. It would be hard for anyone to watch it and still think of the demand for same-sex marriage as a mere passing fancy.
  35. Coffee and Cigarettes
    As the film goes along, themes and even lines of dialogue resurface, and Jarmusch's comic sensibilities grow more assured.
  36. The Missouri Breaks
    Missouri Breaks begins as a ramshackle comedy and ends as a dour tragedy about the death of the old west with Brando serving as its singularly warped Angel of Death.
  37. Les Misérables
    August's Les Misérables is the sort of film for which such faint-praise terms as "handsome" and "not bad" were invented. It's all of the above, and at times a bit better, but ultimately an experience akin to flipping through Cliffs Notes and a book of French paintings at the same time.
  38. The Future of Food
    Garcia's far-more-info-than-tainment style seems a little staid, but Future Of Food's clear, intelligent journalism and rich cinematography help take the edges off the immense brick of data Garcia lobs through the window of America's biotech industry.
  39. The Wild Blue Yonder
    The Wild Blue Yonder has a small message to deliver about the importance of ecological conservation, but mostly, it's an excuse to cut together mesmerizing undersea and outer-space photography while a hypnotic soundtrack drones on.
  40. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants
    The fourth theatrical feature film in the SpongeBob SquarePants oeuvre—The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants—doesn’t give audiences a memorable outing, much less a best day ever. It’s a big downgrade, and a huge disappointment for long-time fans of the subversive and unapologetically silly character.
  41. The Wedding Song
    It takes more than just the ominous tread of Nazi boots to infuse gravitas into this well-intentioned but dreary look at the female mind and body during wartime.
  42. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
    It has undeniable weaknesses: an underwritten protagonist, a generic villain, a shortage of interesting personalities. (No knock against the large cast, which is mostly very good, but underused.) But in many other respects, it is a better film than last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens: leaner, darker, with a distinct visual style and an actual ending that feels like a denial of blockbuster expectations simply because it shows basic narrative integrity.
  43. Summer of 85
    In the end, Summer Of 85 is about the idea of romance more than it is an actual romance, and on that level it succeeds almost too well, leaving one wishing for something more substantial.
  44. A United Kingdom
    The movie falls short of delivering a memorable experience of its own. Outside of confirming its stars’ presence, A United Kingdom is more valuable as history than filmmaking.
  45. Last Night in Soho
    Let’s just say that Last Night In Soho is giallo in at least one big respect: Like many of those films, it starts off with a strong concept, then crumbles when it’s time to move beyond striking imagery and get down to the more functional aspects of storytelling.
  46. Buried
    Buried is as much about dropped calls, getting sent to voicemail, and being openly lied to by our institutions as it about being buried alive by terrorists.
  47. White Girl
    Ultimately, Wood doesn’t have much time to treat the romance between Leah and Blue with any more depth than the characters. It’s a shame. Her final shot would have real power in a richer, more perceptive film.
  48. Married Life
    To a degree, the dynamic between Brosnan and Cooper resembles Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy's relationship from "In The Company Of Men."
  49. The Love We Make
    Mostly, though, the pleasure of The Love We Make comes from watching one of the most famous musicians in the world looking totally chill, whether he's rehearsing with his band or casually chatting with Bill Clinton.
  50. Camille Claudel 1915
    Whatever nuance the movie has, it owes to Binoche’s performance; despite the material and visual context, she’s able to convey a sense of contradiction and inner life.
  51. Godspell
    Maybe the broad gestures, colorful costumes, and exaggerated acting worked in the theater. As a movie, it's actively, fascinatingly terrible, with a vision of Christ more likely to instill in viewers a fear of traveling bands of loony street performers than a desire to embrace the Holy Spirit.
  52. Grace Is Gone
    Attempts to address grief frankly, gently, and without didacticism, and it largely succeeds.
  53. Spinning Plates
    As separate snapshots of three fascinating businesses, it’s vivid and engaging.
  54. Tigertail
    Where the film stands out from other dramas of its type is in its poignant exploration of the little-discussed emotional consequences of single-mindedly pursuing the American dream.
  55. Black Dynamite
    Sometimes feels like an all-time classic short film stretched to feature length, but it’s blissfully short, and it peaks at the end with a groovy cartoon during the closing credits.
  56. Bless Me, Ultima
    The movie is at its best when it’s at its smallest: when Ganalon quietly watches Colon coax a dying young man into vomiting up his “curse,” or when Ganalon is getting laughed out of his classroom because he has a burrito in his lunchbox instead of a sandwich.
  57. Body Snatchers
    Ferrara, a visual expressionist at heart, creates some really unsettling moments, though maybe the most impressive thing about the movie is that it manages to make what’s basically a happy ending seem soul-crushingly bleak.
  58. Philip Roth: Unmasked
    Though it might be unreasonable to expect Karel and Manera to succeed where others have failed, simply punting on the amount of autobiography in Roth’s novels seems like a cheat. Sticking to what’s on the page pays off, especially with regard to Roth’s undervalued late novels, but also means he has them just where he wants them.
  59. Paddington In Peru
    More of an awkward step down than a pratfall from grace, Paddington In Peru is messier than its forebears.
  60. Staying Vertical
    Staying Vertical is distinguished largely by its poker-faced playfulness. Bonnard is a wonderfully quizzical presence in the lead, expertly creating the impression of a person who has no idea what he wants but is nonetheless determined to get it.
  61. Birth of the Living Dead
    Birth briefly staggers to life when the topic of race comes up — not because that angle on Night hasn’t been covered ad nauseam, too, but simply because it seems to inspire the most provocative discussion.
  62. Lemming
    The film is much more intriguing in its dread-inducing opening half, when Moll's assured direction keeps suggesting that something horrible will be happening soon, then, when it does, that something even more horrifying may follow.
  63. Ismael's Ghosts
    Even coming from a filmmaker who walks a narrative line like a drunk driver tipsily failing to prove his sobriety, this is scattershot stuff—and maybe too much movie for one movie. Yet it’s been made with enough brio and confidence to drag a chaos-tolerant viewer along for the ride. You want to relent to its winding navigation as fully as the director himself has surrendered the wheel to his muse.
  64. Stars at Noon
    An occasionally seductive but muddled examination of a complex physical and emotional relationship.
  65. Before the Fall
    It's an emotionally chilly movie with a blank, inexpressive protagonist, but it gains cumulative force en route to a viscerally moving climax.
  66. Ouija: Origin of Evil
    Flanagan has a couple of solid genre films on his résumé already; at this point in his career, it would have been surprising if Origin Of Evil wasn’t better than Ouija. It is better, though, in every conceivable way, from casting to story to atmosphere.
  67. Lee Daniels' The Butler
    As history, The Butler’s parade of famous moments and figures is superficial to the point of trivialization, reducing years of turmoil to glib sound bites. But in its square, melodramatic way, the movie has a serious point to make.
  68. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    Sijie mostly adapts his own work dryly and literally—the footage of the Chinese mountainside is breathtaking, but it's the only thing in the film with much depth.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Life, Above All
    The ending, which offers a hint of relief, is unfiltered, frankly unbelievable melodrama, but something grimmer and more measured would be intolerable after everything that comes before.
  70. 11:14
    The best possible feeling that 11:14 could leave behind is that Marcks has pulled off something clever, but just bringing the puzzle pieces together isn't that impressive a feat. As "Memento" proves, it's the big picture that really counts.
  71. The Slaughter Rule
    Though some of Slaughter Rule's conclusions are overly tidy, the film's powerful meditation on masculinity gets much of its credibility and punch from the two leads, especially Morse, a reliable character actor who sinks his teeth into a role with heavy physical and psychological demands.
  72. Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
    As documentary moviemaking, though, Ellis and Mueller's work falls a little flat.
  73. Closer
    Dramatically leaps through time, covering months or sometimes years in the span of a single cut. The effect is jarring and exhilarating, but it also bucks the common idea that relationships deepen over time.
  74. The Decomposition of the Soul
    Decomposition bears powerful, uncompromising witness to man's inhumanity to man, which is one of the most important things any documentary can do, though, it's also one of the most grueling.
  75. Charlie Victor Romeo
    Whatever reservations it prompts, the film is innovative, original, and queasily effective.
  76. Foxes
    It’s not that great a movie, with a plodding pace that makes teenage wildlife look kind of dull, even as it wraps it in attractive packaging.
  77. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
    Mark Hamill nails every one liner the writers throw at him (I tried to get as many as I could in Stray Observations, but I’m sure I missed some), and his signature Joker laugh is used to chilling effect throughout the film.
  78. Ex-Husbands
    Is it “funny,” really? No. Is it searingly dramatic in a way that pulls at your heartstrings? No. And yet it possesses an undeniable authenticity, wrapping its arms around a truth most movies avoid: there’s no such thing as absolute certainty in life.
  79. In the Valley of Elah
    Where "Crash" relentlessly pushed every conflict to a fever pitch, Elah takes its cues from Tommy Lee Jones' low-simmering lead performance.
  80. The Debt
    Madden's dark, moody, complex exploration of guilt and identity taps into a rich vein of moral ambiguity, but the filmmakers should know that in the face of unspeakable Nazi evil, the romantic problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans.
  81. Black Christmas
    Much of the shtick used by Clark and screenwriter Roy Moore was later stolen both by countless hacks and at least one real artist (Halloween director John Carpenter), but few repeated Clark's most devious tactic, accompanying the violence with the sound of the killer's nerve-janglingly maniacal shouting.
  82. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
    The plot is only semi-comprehensible, but the nearly non-stop musical numbers-brilliant conflations of glam-rock and showtunes-and transgressive sexual energy keep things moving.
  83. Fishing Without Nets
    If nothing else, Fishing Without Nets looks good on a big screen, directed in the kind of slick, just-off-arthouse style that mandates every shot of a character walking be framed from behind.
  84. Better Than Something: Jay Reatard
    Better Than Something doesn't really try to resolve the mystery of how someone could be simultaneously so productive and destructive.
  85. 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.
  86. Mr. Malcolm's List
    It’s a pleasant enough diversion, that will likely be best remembered for colorblind casting done right.
  87. The Good Lie
    It’s a sappy, but occasionally sensitive, coming-to-America story that hits all of the familiar beats. It has one very big problem, though, and she’s played by Reese Witherspoon.
  88. Gay Sex in the 70s
    Lively, impassioned, well-structured documentary.
  89. The Fox and the Hound
    The middle scenes, where the foreground and background don't always integrate, and footage, voice talent, visual design, and characterizations are heavily recycled from earlier Disney movies, leave a queasy impression.
  90. The Great Debaters
    Too bad the story is all over the place. One second, it focuses on a love triangle between students; the next, it's about Washington's efforts to unionize the local farmers.
  91. The Bay
    The result is surprisingly satisfying, like "Jaws" for the YouTube/Skype era.
  92. The Other Side of the Street
    Montenegro's performance is typically multifaceted, displaying keen wit and a thick streak of self-doubt.
  93. Puss in Boots
    As a sheer visual experience, Puss In Boots makes a great theme-park ride, a thrill-a-minute feast for the eyes and the semicircular canals.
  94. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    The Bill & Ted movies derive much of their humor from the blending of extremely low and extremely high stakes. Face The Music kind of blows it on the former: For all the preaching about the importance of togetherness and unity, the film mostly keeps its fiftysomething stars and their kids apart. Which is a shame.
  95. The Seagull's Laughter
    A pleasantly inconsequential small-town quirkfest that's presumably more meaningful to native audiences.
  96. Being Julia
    It looks handsome but seems infected by the idea of playing different roles; a comedy in one scene, it adopts a mood of a high seriousness the next and clutters the stage with minor characters that contribute little. In the end, this inability to make up its mind does the film in.
  97. American Made
    American Made has such style and energy that its hasty patchwork of a narrative becomes a kind of charm unto itself, even when it means losing track of talented actors.
  98. Not Fade Away
    Chase deals with the mundane reality that squashes those dreams, but he doesn't downplay the dreams themselves, which he keeps honoring throughout Not Fade Away, right up to an audaciously abstract final scene that rivals the end of "The Sopranos" for sheer nerve.
  99. Hearts Beat Loud
    Hearts Beat Loud is smart, sincere, expertly performed (though Ted Danson, in a small role as Frank’s favorite bartender, gets little to do apart from echo Sam Malone), quietly progressive (Sam’s ethnicity and sexuality elicit no onscreen comment whatsoever), and just thoroughly… nice.
  100. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
    While Bening does a studied impression of Grahame’s supple body language, she uses a light touch when recreating her Betty Boop-esque voice, letting Grahame’s seductiveness ooze from her gorgeously refined pores.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »