The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 A Life Less Ordinary
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. Tales of Halloween
    Anthology films are known for being inconsistent, and after the wild mood swings of recent horror anthologies like the "V/H/S" and "ABCs Of Death" movies, it’s a relief to report that despite consisting of 10 segments directed by 11 people, Tales Of Halloween is remarkably cohesive.
  2. In Search of a Midnight Kiss
    Even when Midnight Kiss is sputtering, viewers can tune the dialogue out and just watch the scenery in one of the most "there"-y L.A. movies ever made.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Professional
    Few action films can claim such complexities without conceding the bang-bang stuff that brings in the big money.
  4. Shortbus
    Developed by Mitchell and the actors, the characters don't always seem consistent from moment to moment, but a sharp sense of humor and comfortable performances by a committed and--it must be said--remarkably limber cast help smooth over the rough edges.
  5. The Grey
    Neeson brings gravitas to the table, acting as a legitimizing counterweight to the overwrought dialogue and flesh-tearing lupine hysteria. But in a scenario this persistently ludicrous, he can only do so much.
  6. Mifune: The Last Samurai
    Mifune: The Last Samurai is less a comprehensive overview of the actor’s life than it is an analysis of what that life meant.
  7. The History of Sound
    From its opening moments, The History Of Sound feels like it’s going to be something grand. It’s this feeling that makes the warbling result that much more disappointing, a song soon to be forgotten.
  8. Fast Food Nation
    Less a movie than a political act, Fast Food Nation aims to disseminate its counter-propaganda to the widest possible audience, which is the only plausible reason why the book has been shoehorned into a narrative instead of a documentary.
  9. The Bad Guys
    Like the Despicable Me series, The Bad Guys may find ever-diminishing returns once the villain protagonists no longer qualify as despicable or bad. For now, at least, that mixed morality is not just part of the fun, but the primary selling point.
  10. District 13: Ultimatum
    More of the same, only more. Yet here, “more” means a more needlessly convoluted plot, a more cartoonish parade of ethnic stereotypes, and more leaden political metaphor than viewers can digest.
  11. Michael
    It's a chilling film about the routine business of unspeakable acts.
  12. The Salvation
    The Salvation never come across as a pastiche; the world of the spaghetti Western — that desertscape where filthy gunmen leer into frame and life is punctuated by sadism — doesn’t need winks or references to be appreciated, and Levring doesn’t offer any.
  13. Synchronic
    Synchronic does allow its symbolism to grow relatively organically, but in terms of character arc and parting message, this film is far more conventional than those that have come before. And a little something is lost in these broader strokes, particularly because they seem to have been self-imposed.
  14. The Tin Drum
    Schlöndorff's Tin Drum, like most adaptations of great literature, serves mostly as a fascinating but superficial gloss on material that just doesn’t lend itself well to visual storytelling.
  15. Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    Dora And The Lost City Of Gold, like that Nancy Drew movie, isn’t really for teenagers, any more than High School Musical is; it’s for tweenage-and-younger kids who look toward the high-school horizon with a combination of aspirational awe and chilling fear.
  16. Tokyo!
    The entries aren't equally strong, of course, but each comes from a sharp outsider's perspective, approaching Tokyo as a strange, mysterious organism that infects the populace.
  17. Anna and the Apocalypse
    Unfortunately, the film, written by Alan McDonald from a short by the late Viner Ryan McHenry, at times comes closer to a facsimile than a parody. When McPhail does hit the high notes, however, he really hits them.
  18. Official Secrets
    Things perk up when Fiennes belatedly appears, and while this isn’t one of the performances he’ll be remembered for, by any means, he delivers a fine moment of utter disgust at the government’s naked corruption in the film’s very last scene. Ending on that note feels right.
  19. 16 Blocks
    Richard Wenk's familiar screenplay laboriously establishes Willis as an exhausted, limping shell of a man rotting internally from decades of alcoholism and self-hatred. Yet whenever the film requires it, Willis magically morphs into a super-cop with the lightning-fast reflexes of an 18-year-old Navy SEAL.
  20. Caterina va in città
    Teghil is a winning lead.
  21. 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.
  22. Sex Is Comedy
    When she (Breillat) succeeds, as she does in "Fat Girl" and in the final minutes of Sex Is Comedy, the impact can be overwhelming for filmmaker and audience alike.
  23. Unfaithful
    Trashy enough to envelop its sex scenes in aerobicized glamour (a Lyne trademark), so the fact that it takes itself so seriously almost counts as a daring move.
  24. Under Our Skin
    Well-produced and engaging, but it’s also anecdotal and conspiratorial, and damnably non-confrontational.
  25. Mr. Nobody
    As philosophy, Mr. Nobody seems sillier than it is profound. But in a parallel reality, more movies would have this degree of insane ambition.
  26. Monsters
    Gareth Edwards' low-budget science-fiction film Monsters is both a testament to what the latest technologies allow filmmakers to do, and-on the downside-a testament to the enduring importance of a good script.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Creator
    The Creator is likely to stand as the most impressive and immersive sci-fi movie of the year.
  28. Good Kill
    The trouble begins when this gaunt, intelligent star is charged with embodying someone lacking in levity, someone burdened with excessive malaise. His deadly seriousness can be deadly dull.
  29. Babies
    If anything, blame the kids: They’re all adorable, roly-poly delights, but the first year of life has its natural limitations.
  30. What's Up, Tiger Lily?
    Projects like this are invariably hit-or-miss, and Tiger Lily misses more often than it hits. Flashes of Allen's wit surface occasionally, particularly during bits in which he appears as himself, but they're few and far between, and generally drowned out by silly voices, a surprising amount of awkward silence, and pacing that makes the film seem much longer than its 80 padded minutes.
  31. Return
    Return is unusually attuned to its protagonist's alienation, which is especially painful because its source isn't some horrendous event she witnessed, but the hundreds of annoying aspects of everyday life.
  32. Hard Target
    It’s a sturdy bridge between two markedly different filmmaking cultures.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Imperialists Are Still Alive!
    The film is ultimately more interesting than engaging; Durra doesn't yet have a grasp of the simultaneous warmth and needle-sharp satirical sense that infuse Stillman's films.
  34. Dai si gin
    The movie is one of To's typically tangled meditations on the smearing of good and evil, in moments where instinct overcomes morality. And ultimately, To cares less about the motivations of opposing forces than about the spectacular collisions they produce.
  35. They All Laughed
    For all its delightful performances, savvy location shooting, and breezy charm, They All Laughed is ultimately something of a tantalizing tease, all flirtation and no consummation.
  36. Waydowntown
    Occasionally resembling an episode of Seinfeld taken to the big screen, waydowntown shares that show's ability to mine mundane details for humor, and its Tomorrowland-gone-awry setting provides plenty of raw material.
  37. Wendigo
    A skillfully acted and psychologically well-crafted but ultimately disappointing thriller.
  38. Out of Time
    The two of them (Washington/Mendez) together, playing police-procedural dodgeball, make for a good movie. Too bad there are other people on the team, and that the pre-game show runs so long.
  39. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    It's clever enough, but it's mostly a contrivance to hide the fact that there's nothing interesting about the story itself.
  40. 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.
  41. Drumline
    Essentially "Bring It On" minus the effervescence, star power, energy, and brisk pace -- in other words, everything that made it bearable.
  42. Chaos
    In the end, Chaos is as compelling as it is confounding, and it's compelling in large part because of the confusion it stirs.
  43. A Perfect Getaway
    Even if you know what’s coming, it’s a neat bit of meta-thriller filmmaking, as much about the mechanics of storytelling as a reasonably satisfying example of it.
  44. Love Crime
    A corporate crime thriller that explores the relationships of women in power, but while Corneau delivers a slick, well-acted piece with a surprising mid-movie twist, Love Crime is too thin and too on-point to deliver the jolt he and co-screenwriter Nathalie Carter most likely intended.
  45. Native Son
    The early stretch of the movie is its strongest, as Johnson lays out the bric-a-brac of Bigger’s life, which involves a good deal of code-switching, and carefully tweaks the novel’s key relationships, updating the condescension of his employer’s rich-kid daughter, Mary (Margaret Qualley), to a new era of white guilt and microaggressions.
  46. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    Walk Hard offers a quantity of laughs that few comedies could match, yet it's likely to leave viewers vaguely unsatisfied, particularly when the closing minutes completely run out of steam. That's the danger of spoofs: You're only as good as your last laugh.
  47. Unlocking the Cage
    In short, this is yet another doc that would make a first-rate book or lengthy article, gaining almost nothing from its chosen medium apart from (maybe) greater exposure. There’s no legitimate taxonomic reason for this material to be designated a film.
  48. The Guilty
    For most of its brisk 90 minutes, The Guilty is just Gyllenhaal, in tight close-up, constructing a movie out of sweat and tears alone: a glorified radio play of a thriller whose thrills are generated almost entirely through his reactions.
  49. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    It’s rare to see family animated films as purely focused on fun as this one.
  50. Z
    Z’s greatest virtue is in the delivery of its frights, which hit like a slap in the face despite falling into the general category of “jump scares.”
  51. Hold the Dark
    If Hold The Dark lacks the sheer razor-wire tension of Saulnier’s earlier crime-horror corkers, it still knows how to make the carnage count—to force us to experience, on a gut level, every casualty.
  52. My Cousin Rachel
    It might not be a visual buffet on the order of Guillermo Del Toro’s "Crimson Peak," but sometimes a more modest meal will do.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    As its title suggests, Satan grapples with the existence and nature of evil in the world, but it's hard to take such weighty matters seriously when they're explored with all the subtlety and grace of an anti-abortion pamphlet.
  54. The Lincoln Lawyer
    It's agreeably mediocre, a cinematic paperback novel transformed into the kind of fare folks mindlessly consume on planes and forget about before touching down.
  55. Young & Beautiful
    It’s remarkably assured and subtle work, worthy of comparison to Catherine Deneuve’s brilliantly blank turn in Buñuel’s film.
  56. Wild Style
    The story of a much-admired graffiti artist who is tempted by the possibility of mainstream success, Wild Style is extremely clumsy as a drama, with awkward dialogue and even more awkward acting. However, as a showcase for many aspects of the incredible outpouring of creativity that took place in New York during the late '70s and early '80s, it can't be beat.
  57. Piece By Piece
    Rather than blazing a new trail for Lego cartoons, this may be the first one to feel like it’s adhering too closely to its instruction booklet.
  58. The Merchant of Venice
    When the halves of the film collide in the courtroom climax, it looks like a misbegotten pilot for Law & Order: Usury Victims Unit.
  59. Nyad
    If, at the end of the day, Nyad feels like a well-oiled crowd-pleasing sports drama with a heartwarming (if slightly insidious) message about never giving up, that doesn’t blunt its impact.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets
    As a filmic love letter to Sheffield, the resulting doc is full of small delights for serious Pulp fans.
  61. Kingdom of Heaven
    Massoud plays Saladin magnetically, and his arrival only illustrates how many opportunities Kingdom misses. Another, better movie would have made him the focus.
  62. Ash
    True to its inspirations, Ash offers up a formal mix between traditional sci-fi filmmaking and frequent first-person segments (either through pseudo-body cam footage or more explicitly video game-like bouts of point-of-view panic) that gives the familiarity a bit more energy than your average knock-off.
  63. A Common Thread
    Ultimately heads into a standard mismatched-buddy drama that would nestle nicely into a Hallmark movie of the week.
  64. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
    Though Silverman's edginess never quite crosses into social consequence, she's a brilliant craftswoman on stage, blessed with crack timing and an ability to massage each line to maximum effect.
  65. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    The more Electrical Life conforms to what one would expect of a Louis Wain biography, the less idiosyncratically compelling it becomes. An entirely fictional story loosely inspired by the man and his wife, but beholden to nothing, might have been genuinely electrifying.
  66. Chronicles
    It's daring and it's different.
  67. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Not every moment works, particularly in the draggy middle section, but the spirit of the thing still carries it along.
  68. Home Alone
    Even though Macaulay Culkin's alternately muggy and inexpressive lead performance hasn't worn well, the supporting turns by Catherine O'Hara and John Candy are especially crackerjack, as is John Williams' buoyantly cartoony score.
  69. A Cat in Paris
    It's stylish, pretty fun, but not the kind of ambitious effort that should make the world sit up and take notice.
  70. Denial
    Intentionally or not, Denial is perfectly timed to a season of insane conspiracy theories and feelings-based readings of facts.
  71. Heel
    Heel wants to have its cake and eat it too, to present this darkly comic absurdity while dipping back into reality only when it suits the film.
  72. The Other Son
    The Other Son's setup is too contrived, carried along by conversations that are either confrontational or artificially elusive.
  73. The Way Home
    It's telling that this slice of milquetoast is the first to get picked up by a major studio boutique. Put in the most euphemistic terms possible, the film's banal premise contains "universal themes," meaning that its sentimental clichés translate readily to all continents and cultures.
  74. Dahmer
    Uses the serial killer's life as the starting point for a hypnotic examination of the farthest reaches of loneliness and alienation.
  75. The Blonds
    Grapples with tough subject matter, and earns a little leeway in its approach.
  76. Out of the Furnace
    Sometimes resembling a cross between "Winter’s Bone" and "Warrior" — but without the stylized language of the former or the male-weepie conviction of the latter — Out Of The Furnace gets by on the commitment of its cast.
  77. Cheap Thrills
    Even if Cheap Thrills isn’t always plausible, though, it’s still a fair amount of twisted fun, thanks mostly to a surprisingly, effectively low-key turn by Koechner as the game’s emcee.
  78. Buster's Mal Heart
    Buster’s Mal Heart is indie sci-fi at its most abstract, taking elements of more populist, influential films like "Fight Club" and "The Matrix" and filtering them through philosophical exchanges and coolly stylized compositions to produce something that’s somehow simultaneously more weighty and more slight.
  79. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
    Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant offers marginal entertainment value. It’s a film that seems afraid to offer any ideas about its setting and characters beyond the minimum.
  80. Pitch Perfect 2
    It’s at once an encore, a postscript, and a fresh start.
  81. 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.
  82. 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.
  83. 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.
  84. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    The film’s appeal, predicated on its rare close-up look at a working Bishop Of Rome, will be limited primarily to the faithful; those hoping for a candid portrait of the man beneath the cassock will be sorely disappointed.
  85. 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.
  86. The Game
    It's a stylish, cleverly plotted, perpetually unpredictable film with another electric (albeit brief) performance from Penn. So why is it so unaffecting?
  87. Piercing
    After a briefly discombobulating fake-out twist, Piercing can’t seem to figure out how to advance or complicate its sick-joke premise.
  88. 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.
  89. A Coffee In Berlin
    This understated indie deepens its portrait of growing up by suggesting, ultimately, that anyone who thinks wasting time is a reasonable course of action needs to wake up.
  90. Dear Frankie
    On its own terms, Dear Frankie works much better than it really has any right to. Auerbach tells a small, contrived story, but gives it the weight of life.
  91. Violeta Went to Heaven
    Gavilán’s performance bears out Parra’s advice to “hate mathematics and embrace chaos,” and falls between private and public, assurance and self-doubt.
  92. A State of Mind
    Beautifully shot and crisply edited to emphasize the Mass Games' pageantry, but amid the synchronized blocks of performers, Gordon singles out the cranky coaches and giggling schoolgirls, subtly emphasizing how the individual endures even when she's trying hard not to.
  93. Atomic Blonde
    This can be pretty fun, but also tiring in stretches; Leitch’s fetishistic interest in clothes, scar tissue, furniture, and different shades of mood lighting and lens flare gives some of the action-less portions of Atomic Blonde a glazed-over, narcotic pace.
  94. I'm Your Woman
    Hart’s isn’t the first movie to reframe the tough-guy crime movie from a woman’s perspective; in fact, the concept has become something of a theme over the past couple of years, producing both great films and ones that are, well, not so great. I’m Your Woman sails right down the middle.
  95. How She Move
    The film's good intentions gradually get lost in a sea of overwrought contrivances, stock characters, awkward cameos from B- and C-listers (R&B singer Keyshia Cole and not-so-funnyman DeRay Davis) and warmed-over family issues.
  96. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    Gregory’s wife, Cindy Kleine, is a skilled filmmaker, but she’s no Louis Malle, and her documentary Andre Gregory: Before And After Dinner is nowhere near as elegant as "My Dinner With Andre" or "Vanya On 42nd Street." Mainly, the movie lacks focus.
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