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. In Your Dreams
    In Your Dreams has all the excitement of a low-anxiety, day-in-the-life nightmare stirred up by a case of the Sunday scaries. And, like those mundane nightmares, as soon as the film is over, you’re left momentarily wondering if it actually happened in the first place.
  2. The Isle
    At once predatory and vulnerable, Jung has a primitive intensity that speaks louder than words, carrying an enigmatic and often maddeningly elusive film that's short on dialogue, rational behavior, and narrative logic.
  3. This One's for the Ladies
    Gene Graham’s humanizing, scrappy, documentary portrait of the black men and women of exotic dancing offers more than mere titillation.
  4. Conviction
    Conviction is like "Erin Brockovich" meets "Rudy."
  5. Hammett
    At a certain point, Hammett gets unreasonably convoluted, but since its hero seems just as hopelessly confused by what develops, it's easy to just soak in the rich atmosphere, courtesy of Coppola's ace production designer Dean Tavoularis and a terrific John Barry score.
  6. Song Sung Blue
    Like a Diamond song, Song Sung Blue is a little corny and a touch overly familiar. But when it finds its wavelength, the good times never seemed so good.
  7. Dreams
    The abusive push-pull between America and Mexico, the conflict between the exotic fantasy of a Latin lover and its xenophobic underbelly, crashes into two people too ill-defined to function as anything more than symbols.
  8. The Kids Grow Up
    By experiencing Block's films, we aren't merely witnessing his neurosis, we're abetting and validating it.
  9. Brick Lane
    Brick Lane comes far too late to be groundbreaking, and tries to do too much to be fully coherent, but its talent for avoiding obvious choices on all fronts, narratively and stylistically, make it worth a look.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    10 Years
    10 Years does nothing noteworthy, but it does it well, thanks to its ensemble cast.
  11. Avatar: Fire and Ash
    Fire And Ash is terrific entertainment that occasionally gives the impression of well-appointed vamping; it’s almost enough to wonder if all the meticulous writer’s-room blueprinting of two-to-four Avatar sequels might have done as much harm as good. Viewers who just long for more time in Pandora are in luck: Cameron may not see a way out himself.
  12. Willard
    It only takes rat trainers and CGI artists to create swarms of vermin, but it takes a twisted kind of genius to treat them as equals.
  13. The Faculty
    Fine lowbrow entertainment, a fast, funny pastiche of science-fiction, horror, and teen-movie archetypes that is, aside from the original Scream, perhaps the most entertaining, fully realized film of the current postmodern horror/sci-fi cycle.
  14. The Count of Monte Cristo
    While fleeting moments from Pearce and Luis Guzmán (as Caviezel's loyal servant) suggest the film might have been even more fun had they been allowed to loosen up a bit, the finished product still offers little cause for complaint.
  15. At War
    Ultimately, At War isn’t able to offer much more than gradual escalation of intensity. Even before the war is over, it’s hard not to withdraw.
  16. Reign Over Me
    At its heart a simple story about friendship and loss, carried over with enough genuine feeling to excuse its uncertain footing.
  17. Triple Frontier
    Triple Frontier becomes a fascinating sustained exercise in absurdist triage, as one mishap after another forces the men to decide whether they’re prepared to throw away obscene amounts of money in order to save their skins.
  18. The Secret Life of Pets
    As it progresses, The Secret Life Of Pets starts to overreach dramatically, and loses some of its charm in the process.
  19. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
    All of McKay’s movies improve on repeat viewings, as they become familiar and meme worthy. If Anchorman 2 seems hit-and-miss now, there’s a significant chance that it will get funnier over the long haul.
  20. The Jerk
    Sweet, lighthearted, occasionally hilarious.
  21. Heart Eyes
    Even when its characters do get earnest, Heart Eyes has its tongue so far in its cheek that these moments of vulnerability are also viewed from an ironic distance. Instead of feeling for these characters, we’re waiting for the bloody punchline—which will come, and will be funny in a deliciously morbid kind of way. There’s nothing to hold on to, and certainly nothing to be afraid of.
  22. El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
    There's nothing particularly distinctive or engaging about Wetzel's fly-on-the-wall style, which feels like second-hand Frederick Wiseman. But for hardcore foodies, El Bulli offers a clear, unvarnished look at the master at work.
  23. The Yes Men Are Revolting
    In a way, their continued ability to prank government agencies and the media speaks to how little they’ve achieved over the years, which becomes this third film’s subject.
  24. Babylon
    Babylon mostly operates in a structure of set pieces, thoroughly earning its not-a-minute-too-long runtime—a whopping 189 minutes—and it’s packed to the gills with stunning craftsmanship.
  25. Skincare
    It’s a film about the costs of selling your own superficiality to the world only ends up just as superficial.
  26. The Bluff
    Indeed, The Bluff is a rollicking good time despite the fact (or maybe because of the fact) that the line between thrilling and ridiculous has never felt more razor thin than it does here.
  27. Cool It
    Here's a man who's doing to environmental science what the Atkins Diet did to weight loss, and Timoner isn't looking for anyone to call his conclusions into question? Nonsense.
  28. Daniel Isn't Real
    Mortimer builds Daniel Isn’t Real to a conclusion that, in concept, should be both tragic and terrifying. Here, it just feels perfunctory.
  29. Oculus
    The derivative evil-mirror potboiler Oculus doesn’t exactly shatter the clichés of the genre, but it does distort them in a couple of interesting ways, beginning with a creative reversal of the usual vengeful-spirit plot.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Kings of Summer
    The Kings Of Summer doesn’t take itself seriously; short of having the actors break character, it’ll do anything for a laugh. It leans heavily on interminable improv scenes and interminable montages edited from improv scenes. In other words, much of it plays like the outtakes reel that would be shown at the wrap party of a better, more tightly structured film.
  31. To Be or Not to Be
    An extraordinarily faithful—though schmaltzy and ultimately pointless— 1983 remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 farce.
  32. Broken English
    Given the gift of Posey at the peak of her powers, Cassavetes squanders her star in low-key, go-nowhere conversations, shot without flair and drained of any improvisatory energy.
  33. Peter Pan & Wendy
    Not unlike other studios’ Peter Pan interpretations, like Steven Spielberg’s Hook, P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan, Joe Wright’s Pan, and Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy, Lowery’s version does just enough to make it his own. However, with no real laughs, no genuine thrills, and no memorable scenes, its legacy will soon be forgotten.
  34. The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
    The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things wouldn’t fall anywhere near the bottom of a time-loop power ranking—it’s a divertingly fizzy bit of PG-13 puppy love. But its characters are basically stick figures of unblemished youth, pretty virtuous from the very start, and so their astrophysical dilemma never accumulates any dramatic or comedic urgency.
  35. Unknown Pleasures
    Much like his overrated 2000 opus "Platform," Unknown Pleasures spends more energy fussing over the backdrop than on the poor souls languishing in the fore, who have little to do but wander aimlessly and symbolically as life passes them by.
  36. Matchstick Men
    A combination of criminal smoothness and overloaded neuroses, Cage pulls off the lead role better than any actor imaginable.
  37. White Oleander
    White Oleander goes through the paces with a little more dignity than usual, which is a mark of either director Peter Kosminsky's refusal to overplay the melodrama, or his inability to wring it for all it's worth.
  38. I'll Sing for You
    Director Jacques Sarasin lazily relies on a talking-heads/archival-footage approach to tell Traoré's story, doing little to put it in context and assuming a lot more knowledge of Malian history than most viewers possess.
  39. 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.
  40. The Bubble
    Real love is often as complicated and painful as Middle Eastern politics, and Fox might have been better off acknowledging that, rather than making his characters such vague, sweet, safe ciphers.
  41. Dust to Glory
    Brown probably captures enough to satisfy hardcore enthusiasts, but everyone else might end up wondering why he ignored the glory for the dust.
  42. The Sense of an Ending
    The entire movie consists of this same delayed-gratification tactic, as significant events from Tony’s past are first teased and then revealed a bit at a time, via numerous flashbacks. A little of that sort of thing can be invigorating. Push it too far, however, and it starts to feel like a pointless game of narrative Keep Away.
  43. Bicycling With Molière
    High culture this decidedly isn’t. Mostly, it’s just a vehicle for two terrific actors to snipe at each other and poke some mild fun at their own profession.
  44. Dog
    As a whole, Dog is credible as a small-scale drama with some moments of light, puppyish comedy, from the man and the mutt. Like Clooney before him, Tatum hasn’t quite made his own Soderbergh movie. He has, however, made a surprisingly good one.
  45. Freeway
    Freeway is full of nice touches—such as making the villain a psychologist— that play off the expectations of a familiar story. While also working as a conventional thriller, its many twists on the fairy tale make it work on an almost subliminal level.
  46. Spoiler Alert
    When the film lets its guard down—namely, whenever Aldridge gets to deploy his charm as Kit or manages to let Field echo a weathered kind of Steel Magnolias screen presence—the film sings. Yet its attempts to distance itself from the very genre of a film it so clearly is (there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time I left my screening) end up shortchanging its impact.
  47. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    Compare any of this to the grinding series of vicious gags from, say, pretty much any Ben Stiller movie post-Flirting With Disaster, and Fast Times starts looking like a tame jokefest even grandma can enjoy. There's no crotch damage, no humorously dead animals, no pie-fucking, and no menstrual-blood-on-the-pants jokes, either. At its most graphic, it's got a little good-natured pot humor...It's just pure, lighthearted, relatively respectful fun. With boobs.
  48. Star Maps
    Star Maps rather transparently equates prostitution with show business; both exploit the impoverished and do no favors to minorities. It's a valid equation, but once the point is made, Star Maps has no place to go.
  49. Iluzija
    Ristovski wants the plight of a bullied moppet to serve as a sweeping metaphor for Macedonian struggle, but his miserablist excesses have the effect of converting realism into a graphic cartoon.
  50. Ladrón que roba a ladrón
    Entertaining, casually satirical crowd-pleaser.
  51. Quitting
    Because Quitting admits its basic falsehood up front, the film is never emotionally affecting, but Jia's participation in this confrontation of his past shows remarkable courage and honesty, especially when his behavior doesn't inspire much sympathy.
  52. Frida
    Save for two spectacularly impressionistic sequences, Taymor brings little of that imagination to Frida, a turgid and conventional biopic that skips through the major incidents in Kahlo's life without giving them any special resonance, or even much visual panache.
  53. Taking Sides
    Taking Sides is really no less simplistic than "Sunshine," but its predecessor succeeded because of its length and scope. Taking Sides stays rooted in one place and one discussion, and never gets anywhere.
  54. Magic Mike XXL
    Magic Mike XXL is a piece of arm candy, as shallow as a mud puddle and just as bright. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to hang out with.
  55. Fear Street Part Two: 1978
    The kills come and go with a perfunctory swiftness that suggests a condescension to the material, not a genuine affection for it. That’s why the gore feels like scant reward: There’s plenty of blood but no heart put into pumping it.
  56. Sorry/Not Sorry
    Sorry/Not Sorry functions more aptly as a recap of a situation most people who would seek out the doc already know about.
  57. Black Phone 2
    A handsome follow-up that both seizes the predecessor’s sense of heartbreak (albeit at a lesser degree) and dials up its chills by transposing them onto an icy, blood-soaked youth camp in the Rocky Mountains.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Anastasia
    You can set your watch to the musical cues, and the songs themselves are forgettable at best, insipid at worst.
  59. In the Pit
    Rulfo's simple strategy of sticking close to his subjects and allowing them to wax philosophical about their lives and labors pays off.
  60. The Wretched
    A potboiler that doesn’t break any molds or reinvent any wheels. Still, there’s something to be said for setting modest goals and achieving them; if this really was some lost relic of the VHS era, it’d pass the blind rental test: There is a witch, and she’s as creepy as the box art would surely promise.
  61. The Soloist
    The result feels cluttered, overcooked, and underfelt.
  62. Ladies in Lavender.
    It's important to go in knowing the central secret of the movie: Nothing exciting is going to happen. Ever. Armed with that knowledge, viewers should be able to settle down and enjoy the extremely low-key, melancholy character study that plays out between a handful of excellent actors.
  63. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    When it comes to time-wasting memory games, crossword puzzles are more fun than this movie.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Urban Cowboy
    Unapologetically trashy, Urban Cowboy is a virtual pageant of high redneck style—there are lots of bootleg trousers, halter tops, shag haircuts, and feather-brimmed Stetsons—and Winger is fun as the unapologetically trashy gal who just wants to bag herself a real cowboy. Unfortunately, Urban Cowboy is dull one time too often to qualify as entertaining kitsch.
  65. John and the Hole
    John And The Hole comes on like a spooky portrait of budding teenage sociopathy, but it resists diagnostic shortcuts.
  66. The White Crow
    Unlike its subject, The White Crow is ultimately forgettable.
  67. Vice
    Apart from one initially funny (but ultimately over-extended) gag involving a fake credits sequence, the material is mostly glib and second-rate—and, when it comes down to it, about as dry, oversimplified, and under-dramatized as a class presentation.
  68. 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.
  69. Ocean's 8
    Ocean’s 8 could learn a thing or two about brevity and craft: It belabors the basic plot points Ocean’s 11 dispatched with a single cut or smirk, the result a hacky imitation of the series’ glitzy pizzazz.
  70. Sleeping Beauty
    Emily Browning gives a game performance as the unconscious sex object, but Leigh doesn't provide her with a lot to work with in terms of motivation, dimension, or any kind of rich interior life.
  71. Hideaway (Le refuge)
    Hideaway bottles up stormy feelings of grief, guilt, and desire so tightly that register only in a few sharp, impetuous bursts. The rest of the time, it's dull and inscrutable-a film of almost vaporous subtlety.
  72. The Weather Man
    The scenes between Cage and Caine are by far the film's most affecting. The two men don't seem to share the same gene pool, which only helps their dynamic.
  73. Dead for A Dollar
    Ultimately, Hill performs his duties like a man for hire in Dead For A Dollar, much like Max Borland is a man for hire down in Mexico.
  74. Respect
    Franklin’s real life was obviously rife with drama worthy of the big screen, but Wilson and TV-trained director Liesl Tommy take a comprehensive, arrhythmic approach that treats major life events like soapy episodes or grist for the pop-psych mill.
  75. Blackthorn
    Blackthorn could use more depth and less of a sense of weary inevitability, but it never lacks for the arid, vista-prone beauty of a classic Western, or for a sense of lived-in wear and tear that remains convincing even though it's more stylized than realistic.
  76. Traitor
    Without its mesmerizing lead performance, Traitor easily could have devolved into direct-to-DVD fodder.
  77. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    The filmmakers throw everything at the audience, literally and metaphorically, and the results are exhilarating rather than exhausting.
  78. The Backyard
    Remarkable for the intensity of the interviewees, who show a new kind of all-American gumption in the way they filter the mannerisms of low-rung celebrities through their own geeked-out, violent imaginations.
  79. Laurel Canyon
    Occasionally, the film invites a more dynamic touch than the careful slowness Cholodenko carries over from "High Art." But that same care gives the movie a seductive quality that would have been lost in a more hurried approach.
  80. Welcome to Collinwood
    A low-key charmer that balances half a dozen winning performances, Welcome To Collinwood's momentum occasionally stalls, and it doesn't always produce laughs.
  81. Blue Crush
    Contains enough exciting surf scenes that it could almost get by on visceral thrills alone.
  82. Beijing Bicycle
    Even without its bleak and affecting story, Beijing Bicycle would work beautifully as a travelogue alone.
  83. Sunlight Jr.
    Sunlight Jr. is one no-hope bummer after another, and it’s just not psychologically or sociologically acute enough to make the experience worthwhile. Watching anyone over 30 working for minimum wage would achieve the same goal in about 15 minutes.
  84. Capitalism: A Love Story
    The tone is so smart-ass that it’s bound to put a lot of viewers into a default defensive posture.
  85. Secretariat
    The film ultimately feels like a well-trod journey to a familiar destination with not enough wonder along the way.
  86. Day Night Day Night
    Loktev's efforts to universalize this story by avoiding specifics ends up making Day Night Day Night broad and blank, reducing the lead character to one more generic nutcase for us to fear and pity.
  87. She's So Lovely
    At once grittily realistic and hopelessly romantic, She's So Lovely walks a fine line between artiness and pretension, and to its credit, it seldom falters.
  88. Nymphomaniac: Volume II
    Taken as a whole, with volumes one and two in concert, Nymphomaniac looks like nothing less than a career overview, touring each era of the director’s development.
  89. Wah-Wah
    Wah-Wah can't sustain the mastery of its superior first hour, but it maintains a core of truth that sets it apart from less-convincing depictions of boys becoming men.
  90. Wall
    While Bitton engages in some penetrating conversations, and shoots some artful video footage, Wall never really tops its first scene.
  91. Fast & Furious 6
    Fast & Furious 6 is equal parts Ocean’s movie, Road Runner cartoon, and WWE SmackDown. In other words, it’s more or less the same movie as its predecessor.
  92. Lilting
    Khaou’s avoidance of visual fireworks and his attempt to barrel through his own script in such a workmanlike fashion has the side effect of letting his actors down.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    This Must Be the Place
    This Must Be The Place practically dares viewers not to find it ridiculous, but few will accept the challenge.
  94. Muppets Most Wanted
    The Muppets are creatures of indulgence, and their sense of humor is one of excess. Muppets Most Wanted is a mess of a movie, but anything tidier would be a poor fit.
  95. Onward
    Watching Onward, it’s hard to shake the feeling that maybe Pixar has overplayed the mundane half of its winning equation. They’ve made a movie about looking for misplaced magic in the modern world that, well, kind of misplaces the magic.
  96. 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.
  97. 13 Tzameti
    Géla Babluani is unmistakably a first-timer, and his debut project is raw and rough-edged. But he aces the way simple images can make the most of a simple story.
  98. The Rehearsal
    The Rehearsal, director Alison Maclean’s first feature since the 1999 Denis Johnson adaptation Jesus’ Son, is such a hodgepodge of arthouse references, arch distancing effects, and emotionally vacant wide-screen compositions that one could easily mistake it for an awkward debut film.
  99. Extract
    Nobody is better at capturing the crushing banality of everyday life than Judge.
  100. Abominable
    The movie is gentle enough for younger kids, but doesn’t feel obligated to play straight to a 5-year-old’s sensibility. For the first time in a while, DreamWorks seems to be trusting its filmmakers with a semi-original idea, rather than racing breathlessly to the finish line.
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