The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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  1. Mother of George
    Mother Of George is rarely boring to look at, but it might still have been better served by a starker, less showy aesthetic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Informant
    Meanwhile, there’s a potentially fascinating theme imbedded in Darby’s story that goes largely unexplored: the idea that modern protest is little more than theater, and that the participants on both sides are just actors playing roles.
  3. The Last Time I Saw Macao
    As a ruminative travelogue-cum-dissertation, Rodrigues and Guerra Da Mata’s film is often haunting, and its portentous and mournful atmospherics ultimately help compensate for the nagging impression that it’s a work almost too personal for an outside viewer to fully penetrate.
  4. And While We Were Here
    A committed Bosworth gives herself over to the role. Yet, there’s ultimately no real role for her to play.
  5. Riddick
    In an era of high-falutin’ tentpole sci-fi, there’s something to be said for a filmmaker still devoted to crafting plain old genre pleasures.
  6. Salinger
    When Salinger succeeds, it’s in spite of Salerno’s heavy hand and because of the implicit intrigue of J.D. Salinger’s life story. For a director who clearly reveres his subject’s work, he doesn’t grasp how the flashy, eardrum-busting pomp and circumstance of his film is exactly the kind of thing Salinger abhorred.
  7. Red Obsession
    Steeped in centuries of custom and dependent on the ever-fickle relationship between soil, weather, and human craftsmanship, the work is likened by Francis Ford Coppola to a “miracle,” and one that tells a story about the time, place, and circumstances that gave each vintage its birth.
  8. Good Ol' Freda
    The impression left is that of a movie bending over backward to not let its subject tell her life story.
  9. Populaire
    A candy-coated French throwback to the Hollywood rom-coms of the ’50s — especially the ones starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day — Populaire is old-fashioned in more than just its pastel color scheme.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Winnie Mandela
    Poor Hudson tries to live up to both the character and the clothes, but she isn’t anywhere near assertive enough a screen presence; whenever she’s supposed to be rallying a crowd or shouting down her oppressors she looks painfully aware of her own inadequacy.
  11. Adore
    The setup promises more intrigue than the film ultimately delivers.
  12. A Teacher
    By continually deferring dramatic tension, the filmmaker puts more weight on the movie’s closing scenes — which are abrupt but true to life — than they can handle.
  13. Hell Baby
    Functions exactly like a sketch movie, using its meager, essentially irrelevant plot as a clothesline upon which to string a series of self-contained bits. At least half of the bits are pretty damn funny, though, and that’s arguably all that matters.
  14. Touchy Feely
    Without an improvisational buffer, in which actors feel their way naturally and uncertainly from moment to moment, Shelton’s scenario feels as painfully contrived as it is.
  15. La Maison de la Radio
    Aside from the Tour De France segments (the only scenes in the movie to be shot entirely handheld), La Maison lacks the warmth that’s characterized Philibert’s best work. Eventually, the film begins to resemble a cross between a radio station’s webcast and a security-camera feed.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    American Made Movie
    There’s enough here to merit a watch. One of the movie’s more unexpected pleasures is Alexander Falk’s handsome digital cinematography, which goes far beyond the call of duty for a micro-budget documentary.
  17. I Declare War
    The problem, mainly, is that Lapeyre’s kids are stock types: runts, bullies, toadies, a girl with a big crush. In essence, they are kids’-movie tropes pretending to be war-movie tropes — one layer of generic material being used to cover another.
  18. Our Nixon
    The results are akin to seeing the Nixon presidency through the eyes of his top aides; it’s as much a portrait of innocence lost as a behind-closed-doors exposé.
  19. Afternoon Delight
    Alas, the film, which had at worst seemed unfocused (not a cardinal sin for a comedy), takes a bizarrely reactionary turn in the homestretch, undermining all of the goodwill Hahn had accumulated up to that point and turning her character into detestable yuppie scum.
  20. The Lifeguard
    Like its lead character, The Lifeguard is stuck in a rut. After establishing Bell’s frustration within the first five minutes, the movie continually reiterates it.
  21. Passion
    Passion, De Palma’s latest film, will irritate the faithful for about an hour, then thrill them as the master abruptly springs to life and starts carving up screen space with his usual reckless precision.
  22. One Direction: This Is Us
    Mostly, however, This Is Us counts on the musicians to supply the personality—a strategy that makes it feel more like an anonymous mash note than a warts-and-all glimpse behind the curtain. Then again, what warts?
  23. Getaway
    For the most part, Getaway lacks tension and violence. Strobe cuts rob the stunts of any sense of motion; twisting metal, seen in half-second snippets, becomes abstracted texture. While it’s possible to appreciate this stuff on an individual level, it doesn’t quite add up to an action-movie whole.
  24. Closed Circuit
    Closed Circuit may be little more than a high-minded, shrewdly topical gloss on a shopworn genre, but its cynicism is bracing.
  25. Una Noche
    Throughout, Una Noche’s details — an old man singing as he staggers down the street, young boys wasting away their days playfully leaping into the water — feel authentic.
  26. Sparrows Dance
    There are times when the slight, small Sparrows Dance pushes too hard, both visually and narratively: a blinking red light outside Ireland’s window provides overly fussy on-off lighting during two long scenes, and the movie’s flairs of serious conflict are less deft than its offhand moments of connection. There are enough of said moments, though, to sustain its sweetly hesitant romance.
  27. Thérèse
    A second-act forest fire proves a handy metaphor for Tautou’s slowly burning rage at confinement. Yet while it seems thematically apt, it’s also wholly out of place in this static, emotionless saga, which is defined less by zealous feeling than by a dull, decorous air of respectability.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    Scenic Route
    Digital projection has made it easier than ever to get no-budget movies onto theater screens. That might sound wonderfully egalitarian, but it mostly just leads to more shoulda-gone-straight-to-DVD clunkers like Scenic Route.
  29. Paradise: Faith
    A powerful final scene reveals that Seidl knew exactly where he was going. But the journey is stultifyingly static, repeating the same basic information over and over with only negligible variations.
  30. Short Term 12
    At its best, the film conveys a wealth of compelling details that only an insider, or at least someone who’s done extensive and thorough research, would think worthy of singling out.
  31. Drinking Buddies
    The entire film unfolds in a recognizable register of ominous hesitation; the results are a bit schematic but nevertheless hit on something real.
  32. The Grandmaster
    At the end of the day, the pesky imperative to convey information is still a driving force; more than anything Wong has ever made, the movie chokes on exposition, its more poetic concerns stifled by its surfeit of plot.
  33. 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.
  34. The World's End
    Easily one of the year’s best comedies, the movie thrives off the chemistry between its leads, with Pegg painting a very funny portrait of emotional paralysis and Frost demonstrating a heretofore unseen talent for intimidation.
  35. Devil's Pass
    Here’s the trouble: Devil’s Pass isn’t actually about the Dyatlov Pass Incident. It’s about five blandly good-looking American kids who decide to make a documentary about the Dyatlov Pass Incident but subsequently disappear in the same area, leaving behind — sigh — their camera equipment.
  36. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
    Borrowing every single component of its complicated plot from other sources, The Mortal Instruments is hodgepodge claptrap, but there’s a faint flicker of fun in its introducing-the-world passages.
  37. Paranoia
    The film works only, if at all, as an unofficial Air Force One reunion, with Ford stopping just short of bellowing “Get off my jock!” during a pair of gritted-teeth encounters with Oldman. Some pleasures never go out of fashion.
  38. Drew: The Man Behind the Poster
    Erik Sharkey’s documentary is far less adventurous than Struzan’s own creations, using a straightforward chronological structure and talking-head format to pay tribute to Struzan’s legendary output.
  39. Kick-Ass 2
    Even with its edges sanded down, Kick-Ass 2 is unmistakably Millaresque — a juvenile comedy of excess, in which skewering adolescent power fantasies looks an awful lot like indulging in them.
  40. 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.
  41. Jobs
    For (nearly) every yin of Ashton Kutcher’s Steve Jobs flashing a moment of brilliance, there’s a yang of someone saying he’s changed or is his own worst enemy. The unwritten, but understood, full title of Joshua Michael Stern’s film is "Jobs: Brilliant Asshole."
  42. Ain't Them Bodies Saints
    Lowery, it can’t be denied, has Malick’s moves down pat. It’s the Malick touch that eludes him.
  43. Austenland
    In Austenland, her directorial debut, Hess adapts a 2007 beach book into another broad comedy of caricature. It’s a truly half-assed satire, one whose senseless sensibility seems less informed by the best of English literature than the worst of Saturday Night Live.
  44. Cutie and the Boxer
    Unfortunately, Cutie And The Boxer feels the need to contextualize — and possibly valorize — the Shinoharas as artists, which detracts from its portrayal of them as a couple.
  45. You Will Be My Son
    With this basic conflict established early on, You Will Be My Son endlessly spins its wheels, offering up scene after scene of Deutsch screwing up, or just plain existing, and Arestrup tossing deeply disgusted glances in his direction.
  46. The Patience Stone
    There’s only so much anyone can do with a conceit that amounts to a movie-length speech delivered to a coma patient.
  47. Off Label
    Hypocrisy aside, Off Label’s biggest problem is that, for a movie that features a lot of people talking about a lot of things, it doesn’t have a lot to say; its scatterbrained, switching-between-browser-tabs structure guarantees that no idea gets developed very far.
  48. Blood
    This move is both redundant and counterproductive because it weakens one of the screenplay’s central conceits — the way Bettany’s guilt is shared and experienced by other characters.
  49. I Give It a Year
    That Mazer succeeds in playing this for laughs — however sporadic — rather than as a kitchen-sink downer is an achievement in itself.
  50. Lovelace
    Seyfried expertly balances the girl-next-door star power that made the real Lovelace an unlikely casting choice with a more subtle strain of fear; Sarsgaard is as terrifying and hiss-worthy as he’s been since "Boys Don’t Cry."
  51. In a World...
    The movie actually does feature a world — the insular voiceover world — and whenever it strays, it falters.
  52. Prince Avalanche
    By going back to nature — and to his indie roots — the director of "George Washington" has reconnected with his poetic side. The Malick comparisons seem appropriate again.
  53. Planes
    Perhaps one of the two already-in-the-works Planes sequels will crack one of these unholy machines open. That’d be about the only reason to return to this nose-diving franchise.
  54. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    Here and there, some of this starts to feel a little less like homework and more like fun. Though part one used up many of the good monsters—like Medusa and the hydra—part two is a fleeter entertainment, free of origin-story requirements.
  55. We're the Millers
    Loud and annoying? Occasionally. Funny? Sometimes. Likely to be noticed by filmgoers six months from now? Not really.
  56. Elysium
    With Elysium, the director proves that he still has one hand on the X-Box controller; maybe he should give the allegories a rest already and just get back in the game.
  57. Rising from Ashes
    Too bad, then, that Team Rwanda’s inspiring rise to prominence and eventual course triumphs are so thinly sketched that the film leaves the audience wanting more, in the most frustrating way possible.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    When Comedy Went to School
    Not all styles of humor stand the test of time, and the documentary When Comedy Went To School, about the Borscht Belt stand-ups who worked the Catskills during the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, helplessly drives the point home.
  59. Drift
    The mediocre ones, like the new Australian drama Drift, squeeze surfing scenes into conventional narratives, presuming that, because surfing looks exciting, any story related to surfing is inherently interesting.
  60. The Artist and the Model
    A wholly fictional tale, and while it has a few lovely, tender moments, there’s a definite feeling of “been there, drawn that.”
  61. Our Children
    Though Lafosse’s handling of the actors is pitch-perfect, his sense of structure is more problematic. The decision to start the movie at the end and then jump back several years undercuts the drama.
  62. Breakup at a Wedding
    Any rooting interest in the central lovers evaporates, as both seem so terminally stupid that the thought of them potentially having children together is frightening. Maybe their divorce proceedings will be hilarious.
  63. Europa Report
    As directed by Ecuadorian filmmaker Sebastián Cordero (Chronicles, Rage), Europa Report manages a few striking and intense sequences — most notably, a fatal drift into the endless vacuum of nothingness, filmed from the perspective of the disappearing spaceman.
  64. The Canyons
    In The Canyons, there’s no pleasure — only power struggles disguised as sex.
  65. The Spectacular Now
    If Ponsoldt can step beyond the 12 steps, he might make something truly spectacular.
  66. 2 Guns
    As in "Contraband," Kormákur offers a hint of a political statement, in this case about the inherent potential for corruption whenever competing government agencies are operating in international territory. But it doesn’t quite make it. On almost every level, 2 Guns is content to be as flavorless and forgettable as its title.
  67. Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers
    Coupled with a failure to comprehensively detail tactical patterns or the processes of transporting or fencing stolen goods, Smash & Grab’s inability to truly get underneath the surface of its subjects renders it merely a compelling true-life tale in need of better telling.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    The Smurfs 2
    The film undermines its rudimentary plot points at every turn with base humor.
  69. Frankenstein's Army
    Frankenstein’s Army is a ludicrous World War II horror flick bogged down by its found-footage gimmick, which is compromised and contradicted so often that it becomes a distraction.
  70. Stranded
    Stranded is unmistakably bad, but somewhat enjoyable, especially for viewers who have a soft spot for the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" favorite "Space Mutiny."
  71. Breaking the Girls
    Literalizing "Strangers On A Train’s" gay subtext might theoretically have been interesting, but Breaking The Girls’ LGBT angle, like everything else about it, seems pandering rather than heartfelt — a “contemporary rethinking” of material that was once sturdy enough not to require a pseudo-sleazy hard sell.
  72. Drug War
    Drug War brings to mind Soderbergh’s recent "Side Effects", a film defined by similar changes in perspective and genre. However, while "Side Effects" is best at its midpoint, before the viewer has really figured out what kind of movie it is, Drug War becomes both weightier and more playful with each transition, building to a harrowing finale.
  73. Blue Jasmine
    Unlikely as it may seem, though, Blue Jasmine finds Allen charting bona fide new territory.
  74. The To Do List
    The film’s as clumsy yet earnest as a nervous first-timer, groping gracelessly in the dark for ecstasy and meaning.
  75. The Time Being
    After all the ponderous heavy breathing, it has nothing more profound to say than “artists should not neglect their families in pursuit of excellence.” Which might not ring so false if Bentley didn’t constantly look on the brink of devouring his family alive.
  76. The Wolverine
    Now here’s a comic-book movie. In a summer that’s delivered one overstuffed Phase Two sequel and a bloated reboot designed to establish a whole new universe of interconnected franchises, The Wolverine has a self-contained efficiency that’s hard to resist.
  77. R.I.P.D.
    Nothing short of wiping their memories with a real-life neuralizer is going to convince moviegoers that the supernatural buddy-cop comedy R.I.P.D. is anything more than a thinly disguised "Men In Black" ripoff.
  78. Girl Most Likely
    The blame belongs most plainly with Michelle Morgan’s script, which requires this gifted comedian to play straight woman to a supporting carnival of Indiewood types.
  79. The Conjuring
    As an exercise in classical scare tactics, delivered through an escalating series of primo setpieces, The Conjuring is often supremely effective.
  80. RED 2
    Like its predecessor, it’s a one-joke movie; the difference is that this time around, the joke is better.
  81. Only God Forgives
    The results are sometimes striking, in pure visual terms, but rarely engaging; even as a brutish saga of underworld retribution, the film fails to get the heart pounding.
  82. The Act of Killing
    By tackling one man’s sense of right and wrong (or lack thereof), Oppenheimer is ultimately tackling human nature.
  83. Blackfish
    Blackfish’s strongest argument against the existence of parks like SeaWorld is how much more gorgeous orcas look in the open ocean than leaping about an oversized swimming pool. And the audience won’t get soaking wet watching them frolic in movies, either.
  84. Broken
    Doggedly manipulative and yet consistently affecting, Broken piles on the miserablism to almost unbearable effect.
  85. Grabbers
    Once the battle is joined in earnest, what began as sharp-edged parody starts to feel more like a cheap imitation, even if it’s still shot through with a few priceless zingers. The tough thing about genre hybrids is that they have to fulfill both genres, and Grabbers only nails one of them.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    Evidence
    There have been a lot of shoddy found-footage flicks over the past few years, but maybe none quite so shoddy as this.
  87. My Little Pony: Equestria Girls
    My Little Pony: Equestria Girls continues the appeal of Friendship Is Magic, as the heartening lessons of Ponyville—on friendship, leadership, morality, etc.—transcend its equine-dominated world.
  88. 100 Bloody Acres
    At its best, though not often enough, 100 Bloody Acres is as mercurial as its central character, breezily offbeat one moment, spattered in gonzo gore the next. It’s as if the filmmakers ground the bits of other movies fine enough that it made a rich foundation for their own.
  89. Viola
    It’s a pleasant, negligible wisp of a movie, notable mostly for what it suggests of its director’s potential.
  90. Computer Chess
    What’s more, it’s fun, generating pleasure not from canned jokes or clichéd plot twists but simply from a sense of unhindered freedom.
  91. Dealin' with Idiots
    Jeff Garlin’s second directorial feature, Dealin’ With Idiots, is a largely improvised ensemble piece about a comedian who decides that his son’s Little League team would make an interesting subject for a movie. It doesn’t.
  92. Turbo
    For all its chronic familiarity, the movie has its minor pleasures, many of them visual. Though at this point it's basically a given that a new studio-animated movie will look good, Turbo often looks downright exceptional.
  93. Grown Ups 2
    Largely free of Sandler’s usual schmaltz and lame romance, it’s pure plotless, grotesque high jinks, bizarre and inept in a way that’s fascinating without ever being all that funny.
  94. Killing Season
    With casting this unconvincing, no one is watching to get a lesson in the horrors of war.
  95. Fruitvale Station
    Putting a human face on a public tragedy that already had a human face, Fruitvale Station plays like an uncomplicated eulogy, with little more to say on its subject than “what a shame this bad thing happened.”
  96. The Hunt
    None of the complexity of that initial interaction between teacher and lovestruck little girl carries over into the town’s reaction, which closely resembles that of the villagers in "Frankenstein." It’s like watching a deer run from shotguns for two hours — it evokes some sympathy, but that’s about all.
  97. V/H/S/2
    In nearly every respect, V/H/S/2 improves on its predecessor. Free of poky mumble-horror filler, it offers four fruitful variations on the original’s best chapter.
  98. Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus
    For a moment, Crystal Fairy looks like it’s going to be a real fish-in-a-barrel satire, its rifles aimed at two very easy targets. But once a coked-out Cera invites Hoffmann on his road trip, a voyage he hopes will culminate with the consumption of a psychotropic cactus, the film gains a ramshackle quality that’s difficult to resist.
  99. Still Mine
    Cromwell delivers his defiantly gruff dialogue with amusing relish, while still grounding his protagonist’s actions in desperation and desolation. And his nostalgic conversations with Bujold while the two lay in bed have a naturalness that almost overshadows the creakiness of the surrounding material.
  100. The Hot Flashes
    Early in The Hot Flashes, Brooke Shields is seen reading Menopause For Dummies, and it doesn’t take long to realize that’s precisely what you’re watching.
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