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. Faces of Death
    It’s a straightforward slasher with a tech-savvy twist, ironically not outlandish enough to stand out from the formerly forbidden footage filling our feeds every single day.
  2. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
    By the time it reaches an action-packed finale that's choreographed like an ancient Keystone Kops short, Kit Kittredge has cornered the market on bland.
  3. This Christmas
    "Christmas" won't wow anyone with its audacity or originality, but it's bound to make plenty of people happy with its slick, crowd-pleasing familiarity.
  4. Laggies
    Shelton, who used to make scrappy, wholly improvised indie gabfests, continues to sand down the rough edges of her style, so that each new movie feels a little less distinct — and a lot less transgressive — than the one before it.
  5. By Design
    It’s a pointedly strange experience, sometimes annoyingly so and sometimes unexpectedly crushing, but all enjoyably kooky depending on your tolerance for this kind of thing.
  6. The Rip
    Despite the story bloat, Carnahan spins a tight web for the first two-thirds of his movie.
  7. Another Thin Man
    For the first time, the formula feels strained, due to excessive baby/dog humor and not enough Powell/Loy interaction.
  8. The Devil Wears Prada 2
    While there’s no recapturing the delightful surprise of the first, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is still a treat for fans of the original.
  9. SubUrbia
    This adaptation of Eric Bogosian's 1994 play-- which revolves around several post-high-school drifters hanging around a convenience store while awaiting the return of their rock-star classmate -- doesn't hold up to Linklater's previous work, and the problem is Bogosian's script.
  10. Free Fire
    Fun, often funny, but about as disposable as an empty clip. We already have a Guy Ritchie. We don’t need another one.
  11. Keanu
    The film is a one-joke comedy, but the joke is decent, and it helps that the actors know how to deliver it.
  12. Zero Charisma
    That it never quite sinks into caricature is thanks to the imposing presence in the lead. Refusing to fish for sympathy, even as his character circles the drain, Eidson delivers a complex, bravely off-putting performance.
  13. In the Earth
    In The Earth feeds the indiscriminate appetites of gorehounds and bong-rippers alike. Everyone else may find it as ghastly boring as the violence is just plain ghastly.
  14. Beau Is Afraid
    The movie starts with the volume cranked to 10, then never takes a breath. At three hours it is unbearable. Yes, this is meant to be a “bad trip” of a movie, taking you inside the experience of someone undergoing a crisis, but there’s a limit. And then it’s revealed that this grown man has mommy issues. For that you made me sit through all this noise?
  15. A Haunting in Venice
    With mystical elements and a foray into gothic storytelling, A Haunting In Venice could have been much more intriguing. Instead, Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green do not vary much from what they delivered in the other two movies.
  16. Megamind
    There's nothing wrong with animation aimed at adults, but this may be the first kids' movie that throws fewer bones to its supposed intended viewers than to their parents.
  17. The Signal
    The gimmicky yet strangely moving new fright flick The Signal distinguishes itself not through originality, but by smartly integrating just about every popular trend afflicting contemporary horror films.
  18. Burn After Reading
    This feels like a second-shelf Coen comedy, particularly when compared to their no-less-shaggy "The Big Lebowski."
  19. 12 Hour Shift
    The material is edgy and at times outrageously gory and chaotic, but Bettis gives Mandy an exhausted, fed-up quality that keeps the movie on track, even (or maybe especially) when she’s pissed off about having to do everything herself.
  20. Invincible
    Sure, the unlikely ascendance of 30-year-old Vince Papale from working-class suds-pumper to Philadelphia Eagles benchwarmer is a victory for the little guy, but it's still more of a personal victory, and that's what makes it touching.
  21. The Matrix Resurrections
    Where Resurrections really disappoints is in the staging of the action. The Hong Kong-influenced long shots that made The Matrix so revolutionary are all but absent, replaced by rapid cuts that render the fight choreography less legible than in previous installments.
  22. Shutter Island
    There’s a purpose to all this madness--though to talk about the primary reason the film succeeds would be giving the game away--but it should be appreciated first as a vivid, waking nightmare.
  23. This Girl's Life
    Marquis herself rarely comes off as less than fascinating, in spite of her cheaply titillating material.
  24. Amigo
    Ultimately, Amigo is as much about Iraq and Afghanistan as it is about a century-old chapter of history - and it's as much about human nature as it is about either era.
  25. Keyhole
    Keyhole's flashes of actual B-movie coherence are enough to make longtime Maddin-watchers wonder if he could've played this material straighter, with more of a plot and fewer reveries.
  26. State 194
    As a primer, however, the film does the job, albeit less thoroughly and with more needless digressions than would even a lengthy magazine article on the subject.
  27. Love at First Fight
    Even when it’s slowing down, Fight shows beguiling confidence in both its filmmaking and its characters—enough to make its smallest romantic moments feel significant.
  28. Bubble
    It's almost condescending, as though Soderbergh were challenging himself to make Middle America interesting. And yet the movie IS interesting, almost in spite of itself.
  29. ATL
    Ultimately, the film could stand to be more inconsequential, because whenever anything happens to move the story along, it immediately loses its laid-back Southern charm.
  30. The Lost Boys
    Corey Haim plus Corey Feldman plus Joel Schumacher doesn't seem like a foolproof formula for a good movie, but when the three oft-maligned figures united for 1987's horror-comedy The Lost Boys, the result was briskly entertaining.
  31. Thanksgiving
    Packed with memorable kills, knowing winks, and a playful slasher whodunit plot, Thanksgiving is a horror feast worth sitting through, even if it never exactly pushes beyond the bounds of its central hook.
  32. Youth in Revolt
    Arteta’s well-intentioned film version feels simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked.
  33. Love and Monsters
    Give Love And Monsters credit: If nothing else, it does at least come up with a new (albeit ludicrous) twist on the killer-asteroid premise that once fueled two dumb disaster movies in the same year.
  34. Art & Copy
    The film is essentially a skillful advertising-industry infomercial that speaks its subject’s slick aesthetic language.
  35. Stander
    The always-interesting Jane, a volatile and unpredictable character actor, fits the bill.
  36. Stinking Heaven
    Like many of Joe Swanberg’s recent efforts, Stinking Heaven plays like a potentially strong idea for a movie that never quite takes shape, which is the problem with “writing” a movie while the camera rolls.
  37. Julia
    In tone and plot, Julia often resembles an extended episode of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"--except that Swinton's character is never NOT bad.
  38. After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United
    There’s a great story to be told here, but After The Cup feels more like an outline than a finished draft
  39. 11/8/16
    Perhaps when history has had its way with this era, it will be enlightening to re-experience U.S. presidential election night, 2016. But all 11/8/16 does from this near distance is confirm a recent memory and reinforce some safe assumptions.
  40. Hotel Mumbai
    If the thought of seeing a lot of people get murdered with automatic weapons at close range makes you queasy right now, Hotel Mumbai is not a film you want to go anywhere near. Few slasher movies have such a high, graphic body count.
  41. Anything's Possible
    Anything’s Possible may be flawed for what it fails to fully develop around the edges of its story, but the central relationship that holds the film together is so compelling that the rest hardly matters.
  42. Severance
    Severance still seems a few rewrites away from living up to its potential, but it's remarkable how much just a modicum of wit can spice up the standard backwoods slice-and-dice. Scaring people with a horror film is easy; entertaining them takes a little skill.
  43. The Young Karl Marx
    From its lifelessly anachronistic English dialogue to its Masterpiece Theatre lighting and production design, The Young Karl Marx tries to filter radical thought through the pace and aesthetics of a middlebrow drama.
  44. V for Vendetta
    Mostly, it's content to remain a compelling, visually striking political mystery with some big ideas woven into it--subversive notions about integrity, liberty, and political change.
  45. The Spiderwick Chronicles
    Anyone looking for handsomely presented, kid-friendly thrills need look no further.
  46. Oh, Hi!
    Oh, Hi! is an ambitious, thought-provoking look at modern romance that starts with the terror of weekend getaways before dissecting the gender stereotypes that keep people from finding their happily-ever-after.
  47. Bleak Street
    Neither Ripstein nor his wife and regular screenwriter, Paz Alicia Garciadiego, succeed in unearthing (or inventing) anything of more than sensational interest from this tragedy.
  48. The Same River Twice
    Moss offers few startling revelations, but gently gets at the truth of his subjects' lives by playing the past against the present.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Simon & the Oaks
    Ponderous and heavy with its own importance, Simon And The Oaks is the kind of film that's made for awards - it nabbed 13 nominations in Sweden's equivalent of the Oscars last year.
  50. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    Ultimately, it's an absence of personality that does the film in. The creatures remain beautifully designed and Narnia still looks like a colorful, inviting place, but it feels as lifeless as the fantastical anyworlds found on glittery unicorn posters.
  51. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    It may be the only official Star Wars feature that seems concerned exclusively with delivering a no-frills good time. Unfortunately, the film’s idea of a good time includes neither dynamite banter nor particularly memorable action scenes.
  52. 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.
  53. Iron Man 3
    Here, it’s hard not to wish Downey were sparring with his costumed comrades again, instead of trading barbs with the far-less-colorful cast members — old and new — of this busy, sporadically diverting sequel.
  54. Alien: Resurrection
    Perfectly in keeping with a series that began by simply putting a monster on a spaceship, then gave itself the creative freedom to explore what that monster and that spaceship really meant. [Quadrilogy]
  55. Hollywoodland
    Like Affleck's performance, Hollywoodland has its affecting moments. But generally it feels like an HBO original movie, where respectable but uninspired execution mars a fascinating subject and great cast.
  56. Backcountry
    Without effective characterization to drive the moments in between, the spectacle of humans painfully, extensively, gratuitously suffering for their arrogance is more sadistic than thrilling.
  57. Hell Hole
    When the guts and goop start flying, however, there’s no denying that the Adams Family have cooked up another bloody good time, even if the overarching mood doesn’t feel as consciously constructed.
  58. 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.
  59. 42
    The Jackie Robinson biopic 42 operates in a box inside of a box—and not the batter’s box, either, because that would imply it has some freedom to swing away. It’s thoroughly embalmed in the glossy lacquer of conventional baseball movies, and limited further by trying to deal with the horrors of racism in that context.
  60. Disturbia
    Once the plot finally kicks into gear, director D.J. Caruso (Taking Lives) effectively cranks up the tension.
  61. California Solo
    California Solo doesn't have much story. All of the details above are established in the first five minutes, then the movie becomes a character sketch, carried by its wealth of detail and a fantastic Carlyle performance.
  62. The Good House
    Weaver is so forceful and present she can plow through the movie’s flaws until we fail to notice them. For a film about denial, that sounds about right.
  63. Jackie Brown
    The most exciting thing about Jackie Brown is the director's seamless transition to a less flashy, revealing style; it's well-suited to the more character-oriented focus of the film... an assured, accomplished, and very good film.
  64. Kabluey
    While the film's social-satire elements are flat and overly familiar, its dry absurdity is unmistakably Lynchian.
  65. Beneath the Harvest Sky
    Like "Winter’s Bone" and "Frozen River," the movie attempts to re-mystify a handful of old tropes—the tragic snitch, crime as a family business—by placing them in unfamiliar terrain.
  66. Totally Killer
    Totally Killer is a film full of great talent, great moments, and an infectious sense of fun, which means that even when it doesn’t quite work, it’s an entertaining balance of slasher tropes and time travel adventure.
  67. When the Sea Rises
    It's content enough just to drink in the regional flavor, appreciate the carefree heartiness of the locals, and allows these two eccentrics to have some good times before the carriage turns into a pumpkin. The film treads lightly, but leaves little impression.
  68. Piglet's Big Movie
    Though it's tough to find much fault with a film so sweet, Piglet's Big Movie never lives up to its title.
  69. Twins of Evil
    Twins Of Evil, like the best of Hammer, is about entering a world of castles, creatures, and torch-wielding mobs, all a little darker and more colorful than expected.
  70. Godzilla
    This Godzilla doesn’t tap into deeper cultural anxieties the way its 60-year-old ancestor did. Nor does it engender much dramatic investment in its hero... Yet as pure popcorn entertainment, Godzilla delivers plenty of goosebumps.
  71. Love for Sale
    A tough-minded story about how to define self-worth.
  72. Jesus Camp
    Why do Ewing and Grady feel the need to tip their hand by underscoring it all with creepy ambient music or by using Air America host Mike Papantonio as a Greek Chorus expressing the voice of reason?
  73. Wristcutters: A Love Story
    For a film about suicide, Wristcutters is agreeably loopy and game. Dukic is bitterly funny rather than maudlin, and his carefully plotted grunge chic, in addition to being cheap, lends the film a great deal of Jim Jarmusch grime to go with its unmistakable Jim Jarmusch quirk.
  74. Cherry Blossoms
    There's something a little shallow about contrasting ungrateful German kids with their respectful Japanese counterparts and presuming the cultural differences are so cut-and-dried.
  75. Willow Creek
    Goldthwait is just having too much fun with his bantering couple and the eccentric, guitar-playing Bigfoot fanatics they encounter; the climax feels like an afterthought, the obligatory mayhem he had to provide as justification for making a shaggy romantic comedy about the cult of Sasquatch.
  76. Killer Joe
    This is not some nostalgia-soaked throwback to the noir of old, but a rude, shit-kicking thriller that co-opts - and merrily defiles - a classic like "Double Indemnity." Whatever its shortcomings, at least they're never failures of nerve.
  77. Lord of War
    Lord Of War charges bravely and relentlessly into volatile territory, and it's hard to leave unscarred by the experience.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Man
    Jarmusch's trademark quiet irony, affinity for the outcast and oddball, and moonscape visuals suit the Western genre well.
  79. 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.
  80. Bitter Moon
    Widely reviled a decade ago, Bitter Moon now plays as a visionary bridging of Brian De Palma's cinematic perversity and Takashi Miike's literal perversity, in addition to being another uncompromising Polanski study of the ways people torture each other.
  81. Kon-Tiki
    Kon-Tiki, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s modern dramatization, while well-acted and smartly filmed, rarely musters any actual sense of excitement.
  82. The German Doctor
    Nestled within the movie’s overtly schematic design are strong performances—namely, newcomer Bado—and a few details about German-Argentinean life which are, frankly, more interesting than the question of Helmut’s past.
  83. Love, Brooklyn
    It ends up like every other three-person romantic dramedy ends up, but at least Love, Brooklyn boasts competent players going through its motions.
  84. American Dharma
    What made this particular project so toxic? Simple: American Dharma is a fundamentally cordial conversation with Steve Bannon.
  85. Black Sheep
    The gold standard for the modern monster movie remains "Tremors," which combines genuine thrills with clever plot twists and distinctive characters. By contrast, Black Sheep has a bunch of one-note living jokes running around willy-nilly while being chased by killer sheep.
  86. Medicine for Melancholy
    Medicine For Melancholy offers a personal spin on the "walking around a city" genre.
  87. Begin Again
    True to its title, Begin Again periodically restarts itself, nestling flashbacks within flashbacks; it’s an unnecessarily complicated structure for what is, frankly, little more than a corny, overstuffed, “let’s put on a show” musical.
  88. The Year of the Yao
    With their fawning documentary Year Of The Yao, directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo unreflectively buy into the spin on charismatic 7'6" basketball center Yao Ming, but on a certain level, who can blame them?
  89. The Dying Gaul
    Lucas' beautiful script and a trio of first-rate performances carry the material with an intermittently breathtaking urgency.
  90. Shopgirl
    "Hilary And Jackie" director Anand Tucker establishes and maintains an appropriately delicate tone, apart from the presence of cartoonish, jarring man-eater Bridgette Wilson, who seems to have wandered in from a much cruder comedy.
  91. Catch a Fire
    The problem with Tim Robbins' dreadful turn as a South African "anti-terrorist" official in Catch A Fire--and it was also a problem with his sniveling Bill Gates impersonation in "Antitrust"--is that he can't hide his distaste for his own character.
  92. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    The visual effects and fast and furious quips combine for that rarest of releases: one that both parents and kids can enjoy (just like the show), leaving viewers of any age hoping that the next SpongeBob movie isn’t an entire decade off.
  93. Ocean's Thirteen
    The pleasure here, as before, comes from watching skilled professionals team up for a job well done.
  94. 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.
  95. Spiral
    Higuchinsky turns the screen into another giant vortex, drawing the characters and the audience deeper into a dark, captivating spell.
  96. What Alice Found
    In the end, the camper-lot prostitution serves as trapping for a weirdly touching coming-of-age film that leaves its heroine sadder but wiser.
  97. Amulet
    Amulet elevates these themes of repentance and sin through deft editing, strong performances, and a chilling score. It’s an evocative, confident debut, recalling the metaphorical horror of Jennifer Kent’s "The Babadook" or Babak Anvari’s "Under The Shadow," even as it announces the arrival of a singular new voice.
  98. Newlyweeds
    At times, it’s surprisingly compelling, thanks to King’s surefooted direction of actors and well-honed formal sense; while the movie’s execution never quite makes up for its conception, it does elevate it above, well, just being the sort of movie that would be called Newlyweeds.
  99. The Duchess
    Thoroughly populist and middlebrow, full of all the high wigs, thick powder, perfect diction, and straightforward dialogue that define bodice-ripping prestige pictures about silently suffering souls.
  100. The Source Family
    Watching the movie is like riffling through an author’s index cards: It’s all detail and no big picture.
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