The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,419 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
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  1. The Legend of Ochi
    Yet for all of its imaginative inspirations, The Legend Of Ochi feels under-conceptualized: It’s a fairytale without much stirring under the studiously designed surface.
  2. Kill
    There’s something here about men becoming monsters, righteous goals, and so on, but the symbolism is inchoate; the violence, however stylized, never represents anything more than itself.
  3. A Real Pain
    There is no simple catharsis to reckoning the horrors of the past with the eases of the present day; all you can do is choose how to live with it, and Eisenberg’s refusal to wrap his film in a neat little bow elevates his sophomore film into something almost as difficult as its subject material.
  4. Dìdi
    It’s not upsetting, nor is it overly invested in tricking tears out of us. It’s just so specifically observed that you’ll be hiding your head in your hands, ashamed that you were ever as foolish, cowardly, insolent, horny, and ridiculous as Chris (Izaac Wang) A.K.A. Wang Wang to his friends.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. The Last Stop in Yuma County
    Galluppi’s premise has ingenious simplicity.
  8. Lonely Planet
    The fact that the movie has zero stakes and unfolds in one low emotional key is part of its appeal—the sort of subgenre known as “cozy romance” in publishing parlance.
  9. The Shadow Strays
    The carnage, it should be re-stated, does not disappoint.
  10. The Contestant
    Titley doesn’t mine for anything other than what’s already been explored elsewhere.
  11. The Party
    Veteran slapstick fans may get a kick out of the free-form antics, and the party's chaotic ending is suitably memorable, but empathetic viewers are likely to be as uncomfortable with Sellers' improv as the partygoers he leads into havoc.
  12. 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.
  13. TRON: Ares
    The result is a pretty dumb movie with beautiful visual effects, cleanly shot action, and a kickass soundtrack. Wouldn’t it be great if the future of blockbusters was only this bleak?
    • 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.
  15. Zootopia 2
    Rather than push animation forward, Zootopia 2 is content to be just another colorful kids’ movie about cute, funny animals in a big, frenetic world.
  16. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
    It makes for an ironically modest, tasteful tribute to two filmmakers who, in their finest and most moving moments, were anything but restrained.
  17. The Woman in the Yard
    Leave it to Collet-Serra to deliver a trim, serviceable product—something almost impressive when compared to some of Blumhouse’s other recent original efforts.
  18. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
    While the guys are enormous, Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera is lighter than the first movie. Cranking his personality to make Big Nick more morally palatable, Gudegast emphasizes the likability of his motley crew throughout, not the moral gray areas of law enforcement.
  19. Santosh
    In its most compelling stretches, Santosh operates as a kind of subverted procedural in which every aspect of the investigation is, at best, an informality of dubious legal standing.
  20. Inheritance
    Burger—a Hollywood journeyman who’s done some hackwork but began his career with the 2002 conspiracy mock-doc Interview With The Assassin—keeps things moving with a vérité point-of-view that sometimes makes it feel like the camera is the one doing the spying.
  21. Last Breath
    A pulse-pounding, high concept bio-drama, Last Breath is a commendable technical feat, though its melodrama falls short.
  22. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
    The Day The Earth Blew Up could honestly stand a bit more of that madness.
  23. F1: The Movie
    F1 feels, at times, like an underbaked episode of Netflix’s docuseries Drive To Survive—albeit one with Top Gun-style editing, incredible access, and enough drama to make someone bored of the racing become enthralled with the gladiatorial characters behind the wheel of these incredible machines.
  24. Transformers One
    If anything, the rarity of a franchise film that seems principally concerned with appealing to a new generation is more in line with the legacy of the original series than any film that has come since.
  25. The Last Showgirl
    It’s Pamela Anderson’s deceptively fragile performance that shoulders The Last Showgirl, her breathy, girlish rasp the perfect match for Shelly’s fluttery chatterbox personality. She is captivating, fully dissolved in the character, and it’s evident the extent to which Anderson is injecting her performance with her own complicated feelings towards aging, success, and spectatorship.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Jurassic World Rebirth
    Jurassic World Rebirth‘s attempt at rejuvenating its franchise mirrors the vitality of its once-extinct reptiles: This movie may have breathed life back where once it was thought lost, but this life is not pure or sustainable.
  27. From Ground Zero
    With little in way of organization, From Ground Zero can oscillate frustratingly between styles, artistic ambition, and production quality.
  28. Wolf Man
    Wolf Man rarely bares its teeth, opting instead for tail-tucked melancholy. Relatively absent of jumpy gotchas or relieving humor—though there is a slightly tongue-in-cheek moment involving a doggy door—the film relies on injecting its Gothic origins with a dose of modern dread. Dangers lurk outside the home, but could just as easily infiltrate it. The march of death could hasten its pace for anyone at any time, rendering those around them impotent.
  29. Flow
    Though initially revolving around the attention to detail that takes center stage when creating a world of silent naturalism, the script from Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža sometimes overpowers the incredible showcase of light, color, and movement with out-of-place cartoonishness.
  30. The Housemaid
    Paul Feig has always seemed a little uncomfortable with exploitation, but he makes some progress with this thriller.
  31. The Ballad of Wallis Island
    This fable’s push to meet, then fix, your heroes can still sound as saccharine as a solo acoustic set, but it’s smart enough to undercut itself early and often.
  32. Twinless
    As its characters make bad choices, some foolish, some perverse, and some truly Machiavellian, Twinless sticks with the absurd emotional catastrophe that follows. That dedication to the mess it’s made is often captivating, even when the film’s intentional line-blurring between comedy, romance, and gaslighting thriller never reaches the heights of its twin-centric sources of inspiration, like Brian De Palma.
  33. 2000 Meters to Andriivka
    More damningly prosaic than the overwhelming chaos of a war movie’s climactic assault, 2000 Meters To Andriivka marches through death by a thousand unknowns. There’s still heartstopping terror and momentary poetry in this toil.
  34. Final Destination: Bloodlines
    Bloodlines honors a legacy of unrepentant silliness and gleeful gore with a knowing wink.
  35. Happy Gilmore 2
    The sequel is another indication that Sandler is still undertaking his longtime mission of making silly comfort-food comedies with the stealth seriousness of older age.
  36. Materialists
    The film lacks the finesse for character and chemistry that the filmmaker showcased in her inaugural effort.
  37. Fountain of Youth
    Portman acquits herself charmingly, as she usually does in her occasional slumming blockbuster role; maybe she and Krasinski should have swapped parts. The erstwhile Jim Halpert isn’t even all that terrible here; at least he makes his character’s smarmy-doofus quality work for his non-relationship with Esme. The real star, though, is Ritchie’s unflagging spirit, as if chasing after bigger blockbusters in the 2010s led him to his own rejuvenating fountain.
  38. The Naked Gun
    That stupid-smart mix of clunkers, wordplay, old-school set-ups, prop humor, and left-field ideas that the writers just couldn’t stop laughing at doesn’t inherently make for a comedy classic—especially as a late plot escalation draws attention to the dull sheen shining over much of the film—but it does prove how effective these films’ formula can be when followed properly.
  39. The Running Man
    [Wright] continues to prove more adept at tightly weaving his thematic concerns into genre-friendly comedy. Making a muscular, fun-enough adaptation of The Running Man is at once beneath him and beyond him.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Eddington
    Eddington is only a partly coherent mishmash of tones and ideas: sincere and satirical, astute and self-obfuscating. The only thing it is completely is ambitious.
  41. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    Unlike a recent franchise reimagination like 28 Years Later or even the pop culture savvy remix of 2022’s Scream (side note: both Wes Craven and Gillespie’s original films were written by Kevin Williamson), I Know What You Did Last Summer doesn’t successfully subvert its storyline nor glean anything remarkable by setting it in our current era.
  42. Mountainhead
    A wry smackdown of four insanely rich bros hanging out at a gaudy estate in the Utah mountains, the movie generates a decent amount of laughs, but it’s best when Armstrong puts satire aside for rage, seething at the tech kingpins destroying our society to increase their profits.
  43. The Rose of Versailles
    The crossdressing, androgynous heroine, whose internal struggle around binary gender roles still feels fresh, grounds the broad emotions and classic, over-the-top aesthetic permeating the film.
  44. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
    Happily, the narrative moves ahead quickly, the better to demonstrate new, inventive methods of reducing murder-happy billionaires to sloppy carcasses in between beats where Weaving and Newton get to play off of one another.
  45. Left-Handed Girl
    There’s something impersonal about Left-Handed Girl, like a greeting card written by a close friend with their non-dominant hand. Select words and phrases are legible, but the overall wobbliness has the entire sentiment feeling a bit fuzzy.
  46. A Private Life
    A Private Life offers plenty of fizzy pleasures alongside somber reflections on the passage of time and the regrets you have to live with.
  47. Deaf President Now!
    Deaf President Now! honors that struggle, even if the polished packaging doesn’t always possess a similar righteous fury.
  48. Urchin
    Despite his confident and unfussy direction, Dickinson owes most of Urchin‘s success to his lead actor, Frank Dillane.
  49. 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.
  50. The Lost Bus
    Without that grandeur—that Hollywood-sheen take on storybook resilience—the film’s uneven application of sad-sack strife might extinguish McConaughey’s guiding performance. But Greengrass’ throwback disaster-movie efforts, plus a healthy fury induced by our harmful ecological footprint, keeps feeding this fire.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    All You Need Is Kill
    Judged both in a vacuum and against its source material, All You Need Is Kill is a rare retelling that finds its own tenor.
  52. My Oxford Year
    Cute and comedic, but with a heavy dose of Lifetime Original energy (notably, source author Whelan cut her teeth as an actress in such vehicles), My Oxford Year may not be subversive, but it is serviceable.
  53. Anaconda
    Anaconda may be getting the benefit of the doubt here because of how few studio comedies make it to theaters. In another era, it might easily have gotten lost in a wave of post-modern updates that included The Brady Bunch and Starsky & Hutch. Its plot offers few surprises, but its simple foundations and character motivations give Rudd and Black so much room to play that it’s an amiable time.
  54. Is This Thing On?
    Is This Thing On? might come to its healing from an appropriately modest place, but there’s still a bit of actorly grandiosity under its skin.
  55. GOAT
    The actual sports stuff feels a little sweatier, with too much clamor for each animal teammate to really pop. But Goat still leaps over the worst pitfalls of big-studio kid-centric animation. Where it counts, the movie knows just enough ball.
  56. Late Shift
    Even with all these spinning plates, Volpe struggles with maintaining tension despite Benesch’s knack for immediacy and impeccable dramatic timing.
  57. The Woman in Cabin 10
    This is Hitchcock lite, with a great leading lady and a story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It may not be the kind of film that lingers after it’s done, but for a good trip, rather than a long trip, it’s worth climbing aboard.
  58. Fuze
    Fuze doesn’t fly off the rails at its midpoint. It keeps moving forward at a steady clip. By its final stretch, however, the effort to sustain itself becomes more visible, and less quietly confident.
  59. Tuner
    Where Tuner truly shines is in the work of Oscar-winning sound designer Johnnie Burn and the film’s sound team as they carefully recreate Niki’s world through the film’s engrossing soundscape. Roher’s technically impressive approach to this element weaves itself organically throughout the film and its story, setting the crime drama apart from more typical crowdpleasers.
  60. Reminders of Him
    While the plot isn’t realistic, it’s deeply felt, which is what these kinds of melodramas are supposed to offer. It’s a leaps and bounds improvement over Regretting You, and though Reminders Of Him has fewer grace notes than It Ends With Us, it’s got a more cohesive, meaningful message.
  61. The Plague
    Aside from these shallow moments of over-explanation and a kinetic ending that lifts whole cloth from the aforementioned Beau Travail, this exciting debut boasts some honest and cutting commentary around these angry, confused little boys.
  62. In the Grey
    It’s Ritchie in fun-workhorse mode, more businesslike than Operation Fortune but fleeter than Fountain Of Youth.
  63. Forbidden Fruits
    If you don’t worry about the story and just immerse yourself in the gags, Alloway’s film is a must-watch for the Venn diagram overlap between Shudder subscribers and the slumber party crowd.
  64. Solo Mio
    While Solo Mio feels familiar, it doesn’t feel generic—and that’s a balancing act as impressive as James’ late-career pivot.
  65. They Will Kill You
    After so many smirky bloodfests, They Will Kill You scarcely needs believable human relationships to earn some goodwill. All it really needs is Beetz convincingly going through hell.
  66. 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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Best Summer
    There’s an undeniable warmth and nostalgia here, but unless you were on those tour buses—or attended one of those shows—you can’t quite connect with The Best Summer like you want to. It’s like looking at someone else’s scrapbook or home movies. This very well could’ve been “the best summer.” It just wasn’t yours or mine, and that’s okay. We appreciate Davis giving us a peek at this cool moment in her life.
  68. Exit 8
    Exit 8 excels at capturing that isolation and disaffection in an elegant environmental ouroboros, though what it does once it establishes its atmosphere never matches that simple artistry.
  69. War Machine
    Forget the gritty realism and quippy one-liners that so often define the modern action genre, War Machine is proudly, almost guilelessly old-fashioned.
  70. Roommates
    The trouble is, Roommates‘ emotional realism is so compelling that by the time it decides to swing around to being a full-on black comedy, it’s hard not to feel disappointed by the ending. To be fair, that is the setup promised by the framing device, so the film doesn’t exactly pull a fast one, and the cast is equally committed to the more heightened comedy when it arrives.
  71. Deep Water
    In this case, Eckhart exudes the sort of unselfconscious paternal energy that’s needed to keep things moving in between the familiar, but well-executed disaster movie story beats. He almost single-handedly makes Deep Water a better-than-average genre exercise, though the bloody shark attacks and corny banter don’t hurt either.
  72. Crash
    Haggis, who wrote the fine adapted screenplay for "Million Dollar Baby," embeds Crash's script so deeply in allegory that every revelation feels manipulative and programmatic, in spite of some terrific individual scenes and performances.
  73. Harry + Max
    One of the film's oddest missteps is in making the boy-band gig just another occupation, instead of using it as a central way to illuminate the brothers' unusual bond.
  74. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    It wants to humanize the plight of the disabled, but it undermines its worthy aims by presenting its leads as martyrs and saints.
  75. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    It's as notable for what it isn't as for what it is, but in a field full of loud, obnoxious fare, its easygoing affability qualifies as a welcome change of pace.
  76. Alexandra's Project
    But de Heer's high-concept feminist tract loses some of its integrity over time, as it slowly devolves into a seedy, voyeuristic thriller that takes all too much pleasure in turning the screws.
  77. Up and Down
    Sags into a dreary, humorless family melodrama.
  78. Be Cool
    Be Cool more often evokes the image of a screenwriter furiously trying draft after draft to accommodate all the stars. Accommodating the audience becomes a distant priority.
  79. Intimate Stories
    Intimate Stories stays doggedly, purposefully minor, in part because director Carlos Sorin and screenwriter Pablo Solarz want to explore the casual interactions of people doing nothing.
  80. Walk on Water
    When it unexpectedly shifts back into its initial thriller mode, Walk On Water loses in human drama what it gains in tidiness, revealing itself as a film that carries more weight in its light scenes than its heavy moments can sustain.
  81. The Upside of Anger
    The film's outsized ambitions are deceptive: Everything here is less than meets the eye.
  82. The Ring Two
    It's passably gripping and occasionally lively.
  83. Milk and Honey
    Once Milk And Honey stops lurching after huge, actorly moments of near-psychotic intensity, it loosens up and actually gets around to telling a reasonably compelling human story.
  84. 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.
  85. Fever Pitch
    Barrymore has rarely been so bright and effortlessly charming, but it's all lost on Fallon, who often resembles one of those unfortunate SNL guests who freeze up on live TV, completely out of their element. If Fallon wants a life after SNL, he might want to try another medium.
  86. 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?
  87. The Girl from Monday
    There's ample opportunity here for a sharp consumerist satire, like a dryer cousin to the candy-colored pop-culture send-up “Josie And The Pussycats,” but Hartley misses his own joke.
  88. Save the Green Planet!
    Has a free-ranging mood, mixing tragedy and comedy irregularly, but Jeong's film is equally free with genre, and entertains its audience openly before pouring on the astringent.
  89. The Man Who Copied
    There's at least one good movie in The Man Who Copied's 124 minutes, but Furtado never settles on it.
  90. xXx: State of the Union
    Thankfully, State Of The Union's pulpy, adrenalized blaxploitation spin on the secret-agent genre provides the dumb fun its predecessor should have dished out.
  91. 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.
  92. A Hole in One
    Looks and sounds better than the average indie film debut.
  93. Bomb the System
    Has an exhilarating edge. It's only when they open their mouths that the movie gets into trouble.
  94. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    By the film's halfway point, the subplots have all started to head in the most obvious directions imaginable, which is too bad, since they all have real potential. Ferrera's story of spending the summer as an out-of-place ethnic element in the milk-white suburbs stays interesting the longest, in large part thanks to her performance.
  95. Lords of Dogtown
    It's no surprise that when it ultimately tries to pluck at the heartstrings, it rings hollow. The film lives and dies by speed.
  96. Chrystal
    If the people in Chrystal are intended to be authentic, why do none of them look like they've ever seen the inside of a Wal-Mart?
  97. Heights
    Director Chris Terrio adapts Amy Fox's play with flashes of wit, moments of insight, and some fine performances. But Heights' characters move along such preordained paths and perform such familiar movie actions that they might as well sport antennae.
  98. Yes
    Like Potter's "Orlando" and "The Tango Lesson," Yes showcases a craft and a hushed, vibrant intensity that prove compelling even when the story loses its focus.
  99. Dark Water
    Dark Water devolves into something resembling genre schlock, albeit the kind featuring zesty supporting performances from the classy, Oscar-nominated likes of John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, and Pete Postlethwaite.
  100. The Beautiful Country
    A gorgeous film, framed with an eye that makes every country seem beautiful in one way or another. It's probably fitting that the human element seems fragile and flat by comparison, but the contrast leaves Beautiful Country fairly bland.
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