The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,411 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: 5,570 out of 10411
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10411
  3. Negative: 1,106 out of 10411
10411 movie reviews
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  1. Handling the Undead
    There’s a genuine sense of lived-in sadness here, but it isn’t enough to elevate the proceedings into something special or compelling.
  2. Tuesday
    Tuesday is a tonal mess, flitting between horror, humor, absurdity, and at least one candidate for this year’s most gag-inducing visual as quickly as a parrot traversing the oceans to deliver death to all the world.
  3. Hit Man
    While Hit Man satiates as a slick, sexy comedy-noir that will actually get at-home viewers to engage with media outside of the dreaded algorithm, it’s worth hoping that Linklater’s forthcoming big swings are met with similar zeal.
  4. The Watchers
    The Watchers isn’t terrible: Shyamalan’s direction is legible, and the whole thing makes sense on a thematic level. (Maybe a little too much sense, actually.) But it lacks the creativity and confidence to go beyond “competent” and into “inspired”—probably because this one is just for practice.
  5. How to Rob a Bank
    Where visuals of certain events are unavailable, like Scurlock writing in his journal at night, fully colored and animated storyboards fill in the gaps. It’s an odd semi-glorification, even as How To Rob A Bank throws in a few token mentions of robbery survivors with PTSD at the end, and offers a sense that Scurlock fell into the Butch Cassidy trap of being so hooked on robberies he never knew when to quit.
  6. I Used to Be Funny
    While the writing is mostly good, none of these highs would have been nearly as high without Sennott, who makes a real bid for future dramatic roles here.
  7. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    Bad Boys: Ride Or Die has clearly glommed onto a more Fast & Furious sensibility in its middle age, albeit with hard-R violence and swears. It’s equally calculated and sweet (well, maybe somewhat more calculated) that Smith and Lawrence no longer assume they can get away with Bad Boys II-level nastiness.
  8. Flipside
    Flipside is Wilcha’s attempt to bring his life’s work full circle, a return to the personal self-reflection of The Target Shoots First, with the distance and hindsight that 25 years of life experiences will give you.
  9. Robot Dreams
    With Robot Dreams, Pablo Berger has crafted an aesthetically gentle but emotionally hardened New York City. Operating under the belief that there is little one can control in a city of that size, Berger allows his film to take flights of fancy that loop around back to companionship.
  10. Ezra
    While all of the grown-ups turn in admirable performances, the heart of the movie lies in a staggering debut from newcomer William A. Fitzgerald, a preteen diagnosed with autism and ADHD himself.
  11. Solo
    Solo is most intriguing when its romantic rivalry takes center stage.
  12. In a Violent Nature
    With In A Violent Nature, Nash crafts something entirely new; composed, near and real. But the film’s sense of tone and timing prove that he also intimately understands why audiences were always invested in these marathons of blood, gore, and guts.
  13. The Shrouds
    Cassel and Kruger shine, but the rest of the performances feel either staid or over-the-top. Some of the story comes across as pretentious, and some of the pacing is disjointed and inelegant.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Kinds of Kindness
    This ramping-up of darkness from episode to episode is largely what justifies Kinds Of Kindness’ triptych structure. It never feels like these evenly-timed stories would fare better in isolation; they build upon and complicate one another, gelling into something haunting that fits the touted “fable” description.
  15. Atlas
    Without a visionary director at the helm to make better use of its simplistic concept and with no infusion of camp to match its zanier facets, Atlas is a shrug.
  16. The Apprentice
    The performances are stellar, the pacing both restrained and engaging, the realization of Cohn and Trump’s world is top notch, and the dynamic between the two is as captivating as any.
  17. The Garfield Movie
    When brand perpetuation is as soulless and milquetoast as this, it seems unlikely that it will create any new fans at all.
  18. Oh, Canada
    Oh, Canada feels less a deep rumination at the last moments of an artist’s life, and more the confused ramblings of an irascible, self-important character surrounded by sycophants unable to stand up to his unreasonable demands.
  19. Thelma the Unicorn
    Somewhere, buried under all that paint and glitter, there’s a lesson to take away from Thelma The Unicorn, but it’s nothing new.
  20. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
    Almost every piece of Furiosa comes across visceral and real, which reminds you how special it is to get this kind of experience at the movies every once in a while.
  21. Megalopolis
    Megalopolis is a magical, meandering, maddening construction, one that demonstrates that the process of experimentation is in and of itself both deeply entwined with, as well as above, dualistic notions like success and failure.
  22. Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever
    Bornedal keeps his surprises out of sight and boredom out of mind, delivering shocking payoffs that supplement the dominant plotline about Martin’s everlasting demons.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Back to Black
    No film is “too soon” if it can excavate deeper truths or find a fresh angle on a familiar story. But Back To Black does neither.
  24. The Last Stop in Yuma County
    Galluppi’s premise has ingenious simplicity.
  25. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    It’s too agreeable, too dutiful to building a new series, and too reluctant to disrupt this new status quo even as it detonates its many explosive setpieces.
  26. Mother of the Bride
    Mark Waters’ Mother Of The Bride, a Thailand-set romp featuring Brooke Shields as the mother in question, is not so much a misfire as a blatant example of how a formula deployed with little to no charm ends up feeling bland—lifeless, even.
  27. Poolman
    If you’re a Chris Pine super-fan looking to live inside the actor’s head for a little while, Poolman just might be for you. But if you’re pretty much anyone else—even someone looking for some so-bad-it’s-good fun—take a lesson from the walkouts and stay out of the splash zone.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Prom Dates
    Not many modern comedies boast the ability to make you laugh more than cringe, but I’m more than happy to give Prom Dates that trophy.
  29. Tarot
    It’s trying to be everything at once, and ends up feeling flimsy, empty, and again, very, very frustrating.
  30. Unfrosted
    This Pop-Tart material has legs. Unfrosted is by no means a failure. But it’s also about as satisfying as a soggy bowl of cereal. Loaded with his famous friends, Unfrosted is fitfully funny, depending on who’s on screen.
  31. Evil Does Not Exist
    Hamaguchi presents an uncomplicated tale about contemporary issues—corporate greed, climate change—packed with so many complex narrative beats that it plays like a dense 19th century novel. It’s simple, but it explains life itself.
  32. The Beast
    The Beast is a monster of a movie, one that will sink its claws into you, then ask you to contemplate the wounds it leaves. It’s not an easy watch, but it is a deeply rewarding one that you’ll be thinking about for days.
  33. The Contestant
    Titley doesn’t mine for anything other than what’s already been explored elsewhere.
  34. Boy Kills World
    While the dialogue, world-building, and characters may be lackluster, there’s one thing that Boy Kills World can always be relied upon to deliver, and that’s violence.
  35. Humane
    It certainly makes good on its modest budget. Future historians, meanwhile, can more fully assess the noteworthiness of its narrative choices.
  36. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
    There’s no intentionality behind Ungentlemanly Warfare, no perspective or passion to drive what should be a gleefully schadenfreude-filled time at the movies. With the exception of a scene-stealing Danny Sapani, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a forgettable action vehicle ferrying a gaggle of uninspired rascals.
  37. Abigail
    Once intended as a remake of Dracula’s Daughter, Abigail evolved into its own thing, and fans of original horror ought to applaud. The former, honestly, isn’t all that great; the latter, figuratively and literally, dances rings around it.
  38. Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver
    Through this ambitious two-part series (which reportedly has three or possibly six more installments in the offing), Snyder has labored over his influences to the degree that watching it will be a riot for the devoted and feel like work for everyone else. Either way, Snyder’s passion remains his strength.
  39. Spy x Family Code: White
    While the film is friendly to newcomers, there’s no question that it’s the fans who will get the most out of it.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    Emmy-nominated screenplay writer Chuck Hayward (Dear White People, Ted Lesso) and director Wade Allain-Marcus (Grown-ish, Insecure) bring some impressive cultural and emotional nuances to the story.
  41. We Grown Now
    There’s artistry here in how a boy’s world is coming to a close, an elegy for what was and a welcome invitation to see what could yet be.
  42. Challengers
    Challengers remains an entertaining movie thanks to its complicated characters who are played by actors on their way to becoming sparkling screen stars.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Different Man
    A Different Man prioritizes laughs over proselytizing. There is inherent humor in the absurdity of the situation—which takes a momentary detour near sci-fi territory during Edward’s transformation—but Schimberg wrings laughs out of deftly staged awkwardness (though, thankfully, not cringe).
  44. Sasquatch Sunset
    Everything works best when it’s coming through the performance, not the edit. Often, the directors’ touch isn’t light enough, and their forced attempts at humor upset the film’s natural balance.
  45. The First Omen
    Forget what you think you know about horror prequels. The First Omen gets it, goes for the throat, and never lets go.
  46. Kim's Video
    A nonfiction work of swirling whimsy and rabbit-hole intrigue that eschews mere nostalgic appreciation in favor of a cockeyed hybrid approach that amuses and bemuses in equal measure.
  47. The Old Oak
    The Old Oak is a reminder that empathy isn’t merely about having the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes and consider their perspective, it’s recognizing that one’s personal struggles extend beyond one’s own family and other people that look exactly like you.
  48. The People's Joker
    On one level, it directly lampoons the artificial mechanisms by which big-budget blockbusters tell their stories, yet it also provides an avenue for deeply personal storytelling within the framework of our shared cultural mythology.
  49. La Chimera
    La Chimera is a formal delight that holds no shortage of surprises. It calls for further viewings, asking us to unearth the mysteries buried long ago.
  50. In the Land of Saints and Sinners
    This is the definition of a B movie; competent, easy to follow, and almost instantly forgettable.
  51. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    It may well be plenty for a fun enough ride at the theaters, but ultimately this is an exhausting trip into this increasingly unwieldy franchise.
  52. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2
    This is cinema at its most punk rock—a raucous, unpolished, cheap, sacred-cow shredding middle finger to the mainstream with just enough raw talent inside to keep it from being dismissable.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The American Society of Magical Negroes
    A fatal lack of consequence for the film’s world or characters prevents it from ever deepening its initial premise, or unifying the sum of its disparate parts.
  54. Immaculate
    Uneven and sometimes predictable though it is, it’s a film that knows how to push the buttons of its particular subgenre, and you get the sense that any number of stars might have been able to carry it in the right context. You also get the sense, from the very first moment she’s onscreen to the unforgettable final frame, that none of those other possible stars could have carried it quite as well as Sweeney.
  55. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    Overall, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire makes for a serviceable entry in this now four-decade-running franchise. No matter that, in tone and in structure, it all but replicates what’s worked in the past.
  56. Road House
    It doesn’t have much entertainment value. A by-the-book actioner that’s sunk by indifferent performances, muddled storylines, and stilted dialogue.
  57. Late Night with the Devil
    Late Night With The Devil achieves that rare feat of feeling like something we were never supposed to see. But once we’ve seen it, we can’t look away.
  58. Sleeping Dogs
    Crowe is quite capable of being compelling even when doing banal stuff—the highlight here is a variation on the “falling off the wagon” trope, as he captures the sheer delight of a guy who has literally forgotten how much he loves whiskey. The end point, like the movie’s, feels inevitable, but the journey there contains small joys.
  59. The Idea of You
    It’s a warm, approachable movie that you’ll get blissfully lost in.
  60. Civil War
    The film does not have easy answers, but rather than making it seem shallow, its lack of clear moral coding instead offers us something more primal and more powerful. It’s a film about the open-ended question of how much humanity we as a species have left in us, and that makes it a provocative, thrilling monster of a movie that will sear itself into your eyeballs.
  61. Snack Shack
    Even with the script’s problems, the film is kinetic, and as in Dinner In America, Rehmeier gets terrific performances from his cast.
  62. Knox Goes Away
    Unfortunately, with limp, elongated scenes rendering them unexciting, the whole plot unfolds like a long afterthought the filmmakers had after the audience lost all interest.
  63. The Fall Guy
    Even with the action and stunt work operating at full throttle, what really makes The Fall Guy work is the partnership between Gosling and Blunt.
  64. Arthur the King
    The film is named after the dog. The memoir upon which the film is based is about the transformative meeting with this dog. It seems clear that this should be a story about a dog! So it’s baffling to realize that the dog is almost an afterthought. Instead, it’s yet another star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg to unconvincingly sell himself as a likable everyman.
  65. Hundreds of Beavers
    Hundreds Of Beavers is one of the most distinctive movies you’ll see all year, and one made for midnight viewings if ever anything was.
  66. Love Lies Bleeding
    Full of striking visuals from cinematographer Ben Fordesman, a healthy dash of horror and sci-fi in the script, and a monumental performance from O’Brian, Loves Lies Bleeding is another surrealist sapphic gem from Rose Glass.
  67. I Saw the TV Glow
    I Saw The TV Glow is a remarkable portrait of pop-culture obsession—how it can unite us, change us, and ripple down through our entire lives in ways both uplifting and unsettling.
  68. Monkey Man
    Patel’s film may have found its greatest success in the way it seamlessly, powerfully translates the director’s pure, kinetic love of cinema into something bold, new, and unforgettable.
  69. Kung Fu Panda 4
    Instead of finding the perfect balance of humor as the other films did, jokes outweigh and occasionally undercut the few resounding sentiments on personal evolution.
  70. Ricky Stanicky
    In the wrestling ring, Cena used to wear a shirt which read “Rise Above Hate,” and indeed, he does so here. It would be better if he found a project where he didn’t have to.
  71. Spaceman
    While others may find in this visually arresting outer space drama a probing meditation on grief and marriage (not to mention human alienation writ-large), I never did warm up to this Colby Day-penned character study, finding it much too caught up in its own ambitions to make its emotional beats pay off.
  72. Problemista
    There’s no doubt that should Torres continue, Problemista will eventually look like a scrappy first album filled with promising primordial quirks. The film’s issues do not impede it from being a fleet-footed comedy filled with laugh-out-loud jokes.
  73. Drive-Away Dolls
    Cooke and Coen manage to make a movie whose only virtue is reminding people of other better films they liked decades ago. There is not enough substance nor laughs to make Drive-Away Dolls anything more than instantly forgotten.
  74. Dune: Part Two
    As blockbuster movies go, Dune: Part Two is a thrilling ride that totally earns its two-and-a-half-hour running time. The filmmakers add much-needed heft to their display of virtuoso filmmaking by adding serious real-life themes.
  75. Land of Bad
    If you can get through a rough first act, you’ll see both absurd military superheroics and the greatest grocery run ever.
  76. This Is Me…Now: A Love Story
    The result is a genuinely moving, absurdist autobiography of a dynamic persona in flux that’s as campy as it is charming, ridiculous as it is rapturous, preposterous as it is profound.
  77. Madame Web
    The film is often so hurried or so preoccupied with what’s to come that it ignores what’s happening in the moment.
  78. Perfect Days
    With Perfect Days, Wenders shows what an artist who has lived a full life can accomplish. There’s a sweet rhythm to the film that cherishes the small moments that might go unnoticed elsewhere.
  79. Bob Marley: One Love
    Unfortunately director Reinaldo Marcus Green, along with his co-screenwriters Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers and Zach Baylin, waste this opportunity and Marley’s legacy with a rather limp story full of cliches and perplexing choices.
  80. Lisa Frankenstein
    And that’s perhaps the most amazing thing about Lisa Frankenstein: its instant timelessness. Sure, it may be a pastiche, or a love letter to previous eras, or any other euphemism for cinematic recycling, but that doesn’t prevent it from being just as much a singular creation as any of its forebears, sidestepping derivative rehashing in favor of an original take on teen angst that isn’t bound by its homage.
  81. Fitting In
    Though not without its rough edges, McGlynn’s film is emotionally raw and willing to engage with the complexities and nuances of her situation, providing a fascinating look at the intersectionality of burgeoning womanhood, intersex identity, and messy sexuality that doesn’t adhere to rigid or widely acknowledged labels.
  82. Orion and the Dark
    Though Orion And The Dark appears to go through the motions of a family flick, it throws some serious curves en route to a loving yet emotionally devastating resolution.
  83. How to Have Sex
    Manning Walker proves herself a natural filmmaker, trusting that she doesn’t need to explain everything. As a storyteller she’s comfortable in the gray areas. As a director she’s able to coax wonderful performances and give them enough space to feel lived in.
  84. Argylle
    In trying to do both—in trying to play it straight and yet show the very absurd mechanics of what it means to do so—Argylle lands in a kind of exhausting limbo, forever stretching its premise to its breaking point only to snap it back up again.
  85. I.S.S.
    It stretches credulity, as well as our patience.
  86. Founders Day
    If you’re not a slasher nerd, don’t worry, this entertaining, wicked little movie can still win you over, even if it might take you a little longer to find its particular groove.
  87. The Book of Clarence
    As an homage to biblical epics of yesteryear, The Book Of Clarence doesn’t have enough grand drama or thrilling set pieces. As a spoof of such films, it loses its nerve and never goes for the full joke. And as a straightforward story of belief, it relies too much on familiar tropes. Thus it ends up being too little of this and that and not enough of its own.
  88. The Beekeeper
    The Beekeeper feels stale and rather one-note.
  89. Mean Girls
    The songs and the performances thereof have been packaged in such a way that they are now more accessible than ever, for an audience that mostly never got to see them performed as originally staged. Yet the film that inspired them has been reduced to a hollow shell in which to carry them, like so much plastic meant to be thrown away.
  90. Night Swim
    Despite some choppy waters in the back half, this is a fun, funny, often genuinely unnerving horror movie experience, one that might make you think twice about that first swim of the year when summer rolls around.
  91. Society of the Snow
    Society Of The Snow may be the best version of this saga told so far. Still, it feels incomplete and doesn’t dig deeper even as it hints at greater pathos beneath the surface.
  92. Ferrari
    The movie is often darkly funny as the characters lob barbs at each other. Nevertheless, the story feels a tad truncated in spots. An elongated run time would service the action and narrative a bit better—and, as Mann fans know, he does love releasing a good director’s cut.
  93. Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire
    While Snyder may do his best to invent a dark, gripping universe to engross viewers, Rebel Moon is a limp, soulless regurgitation of tropes stolen from much more formidable films.
  94. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
    This is a film that takes big swing after big swing, and leaves us filled up with spectacle, warmth, and a sense that the wait was probably worth it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Anyone But You
    The film is made as fun escapism, and it succeeds at that.
  96. All of Us Strangers
    Ultimately All Of Us Strangers says that only a lucky few get to free themselves to accept love and redemption. It’s a heartbreaking and sad notion, but when delivered with as much sensitivity and visual panache as Haigh does, it becomes cathartic.
  97. The Color Purple
    The Color Purple offers some entertaining moments, however the sum of it is much less than some of its standout parts. Bazawule clearly had a vision in adapting this story once more, and he’s aided by excellent work from cinematographer Dan Lausten and costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck, yet that vision never fully coheres.
  98. The Boys in the Boat
    You cheer on these boys but you’re not left with much once the credits roll and their story becomes but a wistful tale of a time gone by.
  99. The Zone of Interest
    As a piece of observational cinema that borrows from the very visual grammar of nonfiction films, The Zone Of Interest is an instant classic, a masterpiece whose every gorgeously framed shot aims to stun you into silence. And into forceful remembrance as well.
  100. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    It’s rare to see family animated films as purely focused on fun as this one.
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