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. Joyful Noise
    Like so many underdog movies, Joyful Noise will go over best with those who show up hugely eager for it to be exactly what it looks like, and to tell them exactly what they want to hear.
  2. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    In its best sequences, Ramsay puts her duress in dazzlingly visual terms, collapsing the past and present in an associative rush of red-streaked images and piercingly vivid moments out of time.
  3. The Devil Inside
    The hilariously convoluted thriller contains all the elements for a wacky parody of exorcism movies, except a sense of humor about itself: The Devil Inside never acknowledges its innate ridiculousness, so the laughs are unintentional.
  4. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    The body means different things for each of them, and Ceylan's mesmerizing existential drama takes its time establishing the players and bringing their inner lives into focus. It's cinema as autopsy.
  5. The Hunter
    Though The Hunter maintains the same even tone after it turns into a chase thriller, the look begins to resemble the work of William Friedkin and Walter Hill in its clean, elemental approach to action.
  6. Norwegian Wood
    Tran's visual precision is betrayed by his jumbled script, which fails to impose a cinematic structure on the source material.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Roadie
    Aside from the entertaining specificity about its setting and its protagonist's profession, Roadie is as disappointingly rote as its standard setup suggests.
  8. It's About You
    It's About You's sound is relatively clean and dynamic, but there's nothing remotely resembling a narrative here.
  9. Angels Crest
    Angels Crest has weaknesses that are tough to overcome. It relies too much on two particularly played-out indie clichés: a spare, plunky soundtrack, and a narrative structure that teases out characters' backstory far longer than necessary.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    El Sicario: Room 164
    El Sicario: Room 164 is an almost laughably simple, aggressively drab-looking film, but it packs a wallop.
  11. Pariah
    There are times when even its subtleties seem predictable, when it questions dramatic conventions that indie films have already questioned, like the temperament of movie-parents whose children fear coming out of the closet. Yet the film has an abiding sweetness that's ultimately irresistible.
  12. A Separation
    Beyond the impeccable performances and direction, it's foremost an exceptional piece of screenwriting, so finely wrought that the drama seems guided by an invisible hand.
  13. The Iron Lady
    Strangely, this Thatcher biopic might have been far more worthwhile if it wasn't about Thatcher: The aged, dotty stranger hanging out with her dead husband is a more compelling subject.
  14. The Darkest Hour
    Not since Mark Wahlberg trembled in fear beside a menacing houseplant in "The Happening" has a film tried to provoke terror with such an unlikely object of menace.
  15. Pina
    It's also representative of Pina's major flaw: the inability of artists to get out of their own way.
  16. In the Land of Blood and Honey
    It's a film of shuddering earnestness and fevered good intentions gone awry, a dreary slog of a message movie with little but noble if unfulfilled aspirations to commend it.
  17. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    It will always be "too soon" for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, which processes the immense grief of a city and a family through a conceit so nauseatingly precious that it's somehow both too literary and too sentimental, cloying yet aestheticized within an inch of its life.
  18. War Horse
    To create his disarmingly earnest film, Spielberg draws from the past. Its tone is humanistic and its technique classic.
  19. We Bought a Zoo
    It's an odd, unsatisfying combination that moves from mopey drama one moment to a reaction shot of a monkey smacking his forehead in exasperation the next. By the end of the film, viewers might understand the monkey's feelings all too well.
  20. Albert Nobbs
    Say this for Albert Nobbs: It's not some run-of-the-mill "life lived in service" drama.
  21. The Adventures of Tintin
    While it's essentially just another slick Spielberg action machine, it's operating effectively on all cylinders throughout.
  22. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    Mara's Salander is the film's lifeblood, a shrewd yet vulnerable outsider whose resilience and pluck help Fincher elevate The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo above the standard procedural. But just barely.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Cook County
    Cook County is an evocative portrait of the drug blight that's infected swaths of our country, but not only does it not get beyond that, its almost-gleeful horrorshow quality comes with the tinge of exploitation. Misery begets more misery, but to what end?
  24. Addiction Incorporated
    The heart of Addiction Incorporated is what happened after DeNoble was canned and later emerged as a key witness in news reports, courtrooms, and Congressional subcommittees. Bound by a non-disclosure agreement, DeNoble operated like a character in a real-life John Grisham thriller.
  25. Daguerreotypes (1976)
    It isn't just the fashions that date this documentary, or the subjects' shared experiences of the European turmoil of the mid-20th-century. It's also their work itself, which is like a relic of some ancient civilization.
  26. Carnage
    By the time everyone in Carnage has revealed themselves, we're left not with flawed human beings, but with monsters of banality whose company represents a brutal form of punishment in itself.
  27. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    Ritchie has made a film that's so busy, it starts to become boring.
  28. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    As Cruise clings to the side of the building using malfunctioning equipment, and a sandstorm looms in the distance, the question shifts from whether Bird can direct an action film to whether there's anyone out there who can top him.
  29. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
    With its wall-to-wall pop covers, Chipwrecked isn't a kids' movie so much as a brightly animated, instantly forgettable animated feature-length advertisement for the NOW That's What I Call Music! compilation series of contemporary pop hits.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Knuckle
    It's an involving but frustrating peek into a private culture involved in a self-defeating cycle of violence and mythologizing.
  31. I Melt with You
    A movie about self-absorbed douchebags that wallows in their douchebaggery.
  32. New Year's Eve
    It's safe to say to no idea was nixed on the set of New Year's Eve for being too cheesy or sentimental; if anything, ideas were nixed for not being sentimental or cheesy enough.
  33. The Sitter
    Yet in its best moments - and there are several good ones scattered across this ramshackle comedy - The Sitter is a reminder that Green's sensibility has always been heavy on whimsy and play, and that maybe he hasn't strayed that far from home.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Young Adult
    Reitman lets the pop-culture references (oh hi, 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up") accessorize the story rather than guide it, and in its uncompromising treatment of a character who's troubled but also a stone-cold bitch, Young Adult offers compassion for rather than revenge on the "psycho prom queen" who has nothing left in life but a warped mix-tape from an ex who moved on long ago.
  35. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    After establishing an atmosphere of nearly unbearable dread, Alfredson keeps thickening and chilling it.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Lads & Jockeys
    By giving the boys onscreen room to be goofy and immature, Marquet makes the film something warmer than a formal study in discipline and being made to grow up before their time.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Khodorkovsky
    It's unlikely to enflame American audiences with less of a stake in Russia's political goings-on, but works as a persuasive portrait of a politically toxic situation. As one of Khodorkovsky's advocates admits to the camera, even capitalists are entitled to human rights.
  38. Answers to Nothing
    Films like these have taught us that suffering is the incontrovertible existential fate of attractive Los Angeles residents. Must these dour exercises in alienation make audiences suffer as well?
  39. 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.
  40. Shame
    McQueen is a showy director, but his bravura long takes have the effect of heightened attentiveness, allowing scenes to build in intensity without the relief of a cut.
  41. Outrage
    Outrage is compelling to watch until it becomes exhausting.
  42. House of Pleasures
    Without soft-pedaling it in the least, Bonello nonetheless mourns the passing of a time where prostitutes didn't control their destinies, but at least had each other.
  43. The Artist
    It's a beautifully shot, beautifully acted piece of fluff.
  44. A Dangerous Method
    Spielrein's name is less familiar than the others, but the film suggests she deserves to be more than a footnote in the history of psychoanalysis.
  45. My Week with Marilyn
    How could someone so frail and terrified at the mere thought of acting in front of the camera become the biggest movie star in the world? And how could someone so unknowable become so familiar? Then the film makes the mistake of trying to answer these questions.
  46. Arthur Christmas
    Arthur Christmas gets a little sappy toward the end - it is a Christmas movie, after all - but it otherwise strikes just the right combination of naughty and nice, reverent and irrelevant, holiday-sweet and Aardman dry.
  47. The Muppets
    Henson's characters maintained an essential innocence while sending up the very idea of entertainment. They put on a show with quotation marks around it, but the irony never felt cynical. When it isn't getting bogged down in unearned sentiment, The Muppets gets that right.
  48. Hugo
    It's a complex fusion of film history and personal history, filled with dazzling embellishments and unabashed sentiment about the glories of cinema.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    It may be impossible for anyone but existing fans to take this seriously, but for the unconverted, it's still a legitimately engaging, gape-worthy nutso spectacle.
  50. Tomboy
    It's so much fun that as Tomboy moves toward its conclusion, the inevitable end of Héran's days as Mikael feels like watching someone die.
  51. The Lie
    The Lie's payoff strikes an unexpected, refreshingly open note that makes this slight little indie more resonant than its scale suggests. The line this couple is about to cross is significant, and the film takes it seriously.
  52. Tyrannosaur
    Considine directs with the confidence of a veteran, giving his actors room to work while letting an ominous, overcast mood hang over almost every scene.
  53. Happy Feet Two
    In some ways, it's a more grown-up story than Happy Feet, with more complicated messages delivered in subtler ways.
  54. The Descendants
    The movie suffers from backstory-heavy voiceover narration in its first half, followed by an excess of quirky laugh lines down the stretch, just when it seems to be finding a stronger rhythm. There's a shameless crowd-pleasing element to The Descendants that keeps its harder truths about family relationships at bay.
  55. Garbo: The Spy
    Even without the fine psychological shading, Garcia's story is a doozy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    In Heaven Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery
    Most people wouldn't expect a film that's inherently about death (and, to a lesser extent, the Holocaust) to be uplifting, but the gentle, tender documentary In Heaven, Underground ultimately achieves it.
  57. Another Happy Day
    Levinson stuffs the movie with so many emotional cross-currents and minor revelations that it's hard to keep them all straight, but the movie works the audience's nerves with enough determination to get under the skin and stay there, a sensation that comes awfully close to an earned emotional response.
  58. Immortals
    As mythic spectacles go, it beats "Clash Of The Titans," particularly in the areas of intimidating villainy and actual Titan-clashing. Nonetheless, it isn't any smarter than its inspirations, just prettier.
  59. Jack and Jill
    What makes Jack And Jill worse than the average Sandler vehicle is Jill, who's been conceived as little more than a dude in drag, hold the jokes.
  60. The Love We Make
    Mostly, though, the pleasure of The Love We Make comes from watching one of the most famous musicians in the world looking totally chill, whether he's rehearsing with his band or casually chatting with Bill Clinton.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    London Boulevard
    The directorial debut of William Monahan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "The Departed," London Boulevard collapses under the weight of its own ideas and the amount of talent it has to burn.
  62. Into the Abyss
    His film powerfully suggests that violent death of any kind, whether personal or state-mandated, transforms everyone in its vicinity.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    Padilha's film has a witheringly low opinion of most people - the gangs are no better than animals, the regular police are gleefully corrupt, the liberal intellectuals are sanctimonious fools, and the politicians are only interested in protecting themselves.
  64. The Conquest
    The Conquest offers that familiar thrill of being allowed to peek behind the curtain and see what our leaders are really like, and while it's more rote than revelatory, that may be because the American way of wielding power - and telling stories about it - has gone global.
  65. Melancholia
    The grand concept is really just a vehicle for a more intimate study of depression and its dangerous, shifting polarities.
  66. J. Edgar
    Eastwood's prim, respectful biography presents Hoover in turn as a muddy political metaphor, a lesson in self-mythologizing, and a case history in repression, but never particularly as a man.
  67. Tower Heist
    In the end, Tower Heist isn't a black Ocean's Eleven or a bold leap forward for feature-film distribution, just a passable piece of commercial entertainment that falls closer to product than art.
  68. Young Goethe in Love
    Whatever its basis in fact, there's nothing to Young Goethe In Love's story that dozens of other films haven't done before, and better. But Fehling keeps his Goethe just on the right side of obnoxious, and Stein invests a lot of character and gawky charm into what easily could have been just "the girl."
  69. The Son of No One
    A few individual performances survive - Liotta finds a little of his old edge, and Pacino briefly revisits Serpico territory - but they're smothered in the slow-burning absurdity.
  70. Killing Bono
    There's a difference between "funny" and "comedy," and the movie adaptation of Killing Bono tries way too hard to be nutty, at the expense of just getting across what McCormick knows.
  71. The Last Rites of Joe May
    The Last Rites Of Joe May succeeds in some of the smaller details and the soulful performances.
  72. The Other F Word
    The film's juxtaposition of punk-rock fashion and cozy domesticity proves neither comic nor revelatory. It is, however, adorable, though not adorable enough to compensate for the film's damnable lack of focus.
  73. The Look
    There are very few light, casual moments in The Look; even when Rampling pops into a deli to buy a sandwich, we hear her in voiceover talking about her demons. An hour and a half of this is frankly exhausting.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    5 Star Day
    5 Star Day is a middling indie, but it offers evidence of how far a synthetic setup can get just by allowing characters to react and reflect.
  75. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    The filmmakers throw everything at the audience, literally and metaphorically, and the results are exhilarating rather than exhausting.
  76. Janie Jones
    Contrivances aside, though, Janie Jones is one of the more realistic depictions of what the rock 'n' roll lifestyle is really like.
  77. The Double
    Roughly 99 percent of the time, if a movie that seems like it should be a big deal appears almost out of the blue, it's because it's lousy. The Double doesn't exactly buck that trend.
  78. 13
    For a film about a "sport" where every competition is literally a matter of life and death, the oddly inert, suspense-free 13 is strangely lacking in urgency.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Silver Bullets
    The line between "highly personal" and "navel-gazing" varies depending on one's feelings toward the person offering up the serving of self-contemplation, but Silver Bullets' introspection feels earned.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Like Crazy
    By the film's latter half, we're left not hoping its lovers will find a way to be together, but longing for them to get over each other and move on.
  81. Anonymous
    It's as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who've spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him.
  82. Puss in Boots
    As a sheer visual experience, Puss In Boots makes a great theme-park ride, a thrill-a-minute feast for the eyes and the semicircular canals.
  83. The Rum Diary
    "Fear And Loathing" star Johnny Depp more or less reprises his role as Thompson's alter ego, once again playing a journalist whose yen for excess obscures the idealism at his core. But the film, despite its obvious intelligence and flashes of wit, doesn't bring that passion across.
  84. In Time
    Much like Niccol's "Gattaca," in which genetic perfection rather than time was the weapon a small group of snobby, unworthy elites used to hold down the meek masses, In Time is a chilly, stiff movie where clever ideas are delivered as self-righteous sermons.
  85. The Three Musketeers
    Beyond being unable to decide what kind of Musketeers movie it wants to be, Anderson's adaptation seems determined to underachieve as both heavy spectacle and light adventure. It's two mediocrities for the price of one.
  86. Paranormal Activity 3
    Paranormal Activity 3 has one new technical wrinkle, and it's brilliant: In addition to the cameras in the bedroom, Smith mounts a third to the base of a rotating electric fan, so it pans back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen and back again.
  87. Norman
    Chances are, Norman would have seemed like a retread whenever it came out, but it does the movie no favors to release it in the shadow of "Terri" and "Submarine," both far more compelling portraits of high-school loners, and both released to DVD in the last few weeks.
  88. The Mighty Macs
    There must have been a reason why the real-life Rush could do so much with seemingly so little, but The Mighty Macs never captures it. It lets canned inspiration provide the uplift, instead of something more tangible.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Klitschko
    The film acknowledges that the only great opponents left for the pair to face may be each other, but the question of whether they'd ever fight is rendered moot by the time it's actually addressed at the end.
  90. Paul Goodman Changed My Life
    Perhaps it's a tribute to the breadth of Goodman's life that even after 90 minutes, it feels as if we've just scratched the surface.
  91. The Catechism Cataclysm
    If The Catechism Cataclysm does have something to say, it's that it's possible to enjoy a trip even when it isn't really going anywhere.
  92. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    The moral to Clash's story? It's surprisingly easy being red.
  93. Johnny English Reborn
    Johnny English Reborn's sharpest gags riff on its protagonist's unshakeable Britishness.
  94. Le Havre
    Kaurismäki has a narrow vision, disarming and sweet, yet utterly predictable, and there's little distinction between the films he's directing today and the films he directed 30 years ago. They have the wrong kind of timelessness.
  95. Margin Call
    If nothing else, Margin Call serves as a rebuke to "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" emphatic style - which ultimately glamorizes the profession it means to shame - and brings this dangerous numbers game back to the trading-floor desktops and mahogany-covered conference tables where it belongs. It isn't sexy, but the stakes feel much higher.
  96. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    Because the movie plays on so many common fears - including fears of being in a remote house with big windows when intruders arrive - the confusion of Martha Marcy May Marlene proves effective, not sloppy.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Happy Life
    The roughness of Happy Life's production values and the inconsistency of its amateur actors would be forgivable if it showed any heart, but this low-budget ramble about techno's glory days instead inspires relief that things have moved on.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Fireflies in the Garden
    An ending that suggests reconciliation and forgiveness isn't just unearned, it's bewildering, given the wretched behavior we've seen; it implies that the entire story was filtered through some unidentified unreliable narrator who wanted to take the higher ground while still harboring a serious grudge.
  99. Texas Killing Fields
    Without "The Wire" and its like as a point of comparison, Texas Killing Fields might seem the natural heir to a gritty '70s cop drama. But with great contemporary TV around, it seems strangely incomplete.
  100. The Woman
    The mix of blunt sexual politics and dime-store-paperback luridness has the bracing quality of tub-brewed rotgut. It eats away at the stomach lining - that is, if it can be stomached at all.
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