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. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    Director Samuel Bayer, a veteran commercial and music video director responsible for Nirvana’s “Smell Like Teen Spirit Video” back when the original Nightmare series was still a going concern, brings a slick visual sense but not a hint of vision.
  2. Furry Vengeance
    While Fraser’s presence doesn’t necessarily elevate Furry Vengeance into something better than the dumb, lowbrow timewaster it aspires to be, Fraser does make it a little easier to digest.
  3. The Good Heart
    Cox’s character is a living, hissing embodiment of the idea that no good deed goes unpunished. As an actor stuck in a movie that wastes his talents, Cox can surely relate.
  4. Harry Brown
    There's a deceptive gravitas to the British vigilante thriller Harry Brown that some are bound to mistake for class--or even truth--in the way it grapples with one man's violent stand against societal decay. Much of that is owed to Michael Caine, an actor of such rare dignity and stature that audiences are naturally willing to follow him anywhere, including into the heart of truly risible material.
  5. Mercy
    With Glenn offscreen for huge sections of the film, Mercy devolves into yet another navel-gazing drama about a glib cad redeemed by the love of a good woman.
  6. Please Give
    Some people might find it distasteful to make a movie about guilty rich folks who give themselves permission to splurge. Others will rightly appreciate the honesty.
  7. Anton Chekhov's The Duel
    It's a pleasure simply to linger in the characters' company, or at least to watch them from just far enough away to observe them without being judged in return.
  8. The Back-up Plan
    A film divided against itself. It’s really two movies, one silly and one serious. Too bad neither is particularly compelling.
  9. The Losers
    There isn’t a whiff of humility or self-deprecation to Clay, Roque, Jensen, Cougar, and Pooch, a collection of black-ops douchebags and our ostensible heroes.
  10. Best Worst Movie
    Though it's a ramshackle piece of filmmaking, Best Worst Movie is an honest one, too, staying open to awkward, humbling moments while still making a solid case for the film's immortal badness.
  11. The Good, the Bad, the Weird
    The story’s many advances and reversals can be hard to follow at times, but this isn’t really a movie where plot is paramount. Everything boils down to the action, and what that action means.
  12. Oceans
    It comes to American theaters saddled with narration by Pierce Brosnan, who purrs through the gratingly vague script like the world’s plummiest old half-drunken uncle.
  13. Death at a Funeral
    Rock acquits himself nicely as the responsible brother and resident straight man, but everyone else in the cast has apparently been advised to mug shamelessly and yell their lines as loudly as possible.
  14. Kick-Ass
    Vaughn opts for comic-book bigness—big fights, big laugh lines, big explosions—but without a Spider-Man or Batman at the front of the action, Kick-Ass’s heroes and villains look smaller-than-life in a larger-than-life world.
  15. The Joneses
    The inevitable breakdown on this commercial façade might have led The Joneses into more disturbing territory, but Borte goes the other direction, away from jagged comedy and toward well-meaning homilies. No sale.
  16. The Cartel
    The Cartel frequently veers into the realm of black comedy, as Bowdon uncovers instances of nightmarish teacher behavior, but the dark comic elements would be better served by deadpan detachment.
  17. The City of Your Final Destination
    It’s a frustratingly oblique film where few events connect, and fewer moments matter.
  18. Exit Through the Gift Shop
    A documentary that doubles as a comic thriller, and it’s as entertaining as it is thought-provoking.
  19. No One Knows About Persian Cats
    The movie comes to life whenever Hamed Behdad appears.
  20. The Perfect Game
    Few of the scenes in The Perfect Game feel authentic, but the ones in Monterrey are especially lacking in flavor.
  21. The Secret in Their Eyes
    The film sprawls across two decades and 127 minutes, but there isn't a memorable image in it.
  22. Date Night
    There’s something genuine and more than a little sad at the core of Levy’s poorly staged, modestly amusing comedy, but it isn’t the part that involves flash drives, blackmail, and glowering, gun-toting bad guys.
  23. After.Life
    Caught in a pretentious no-man’s land between horror and melodrama.
  24. Everyone Else
    It isn't pretty to witness, but the pain of it smarts.
  25. La mission
    Bratt’s character is stuck in old ways of thinking, and the movie, for all its well-meaning social intent, is right there with him.
  26. The Square
    The occasional missteps (some overly precious symbolism, the grimy DV look) rarely get in the way of the film’s many winces, gasps, and breathless, cringing anticipation.
  27. When You're Strange
    Director Tom DiCillo does his damnedest to make his documentary about The Doors unwatchable, but the subject matter is too compelling--and the vintage footage too electrifying--to be completely worthless.
  28. Who Do You Love
    Works best when it isn’t about freezing time and explaining moments in pop-music history, but is instead about guys playing music together.
  29. Women Without Men
    The movie moves fluidly back and forth between these women's stories, as well as between reality and a kind of dream-state, as all four find their way into a walled orchard where they share fellowship and temporary refuge from the demands of men.
  30. The Greatest
    It’s when the small moments become large ones that Feste overreaches and the shaky performances don’t bail her out.
  31. The Thorn in the Heart
    If he’d pulled back more, Gondry might’ve seen the real story here: how maternal figures often look better to people who don’t actually have them for a mother.
  32. Why Did I Get Married Too?
    The movie’s like an old sofa, overstuffed and misshapen, but so familiar that it gives comfort all the same.
  33. Warlords
    The Warlords relies too much on combat movie clichés and corny sentiment, weighted down by speeches about heroism and hypocrisy.
  34. Clash of the Titans
    Modestly entertaining by the low standards of spring blockbusters. As with "Transporter 2" and "The Incredible Hulk," Leterrier aims no higher than competence and achieves just that.
  35. The Last Song
    Offers a taming-of-the-shrew scenario so relentlessly bland and old-fashioned it makes "Dear John," the Sparks adaptation from two months ago, look like "Last Tango In Paris."
  36. Hot Tub Time Machine
    Engaging enough, but its characters’ path to redemption would be more satisfying if it weren’t greased with authentically ’80s-style casual sexism, gay panic, and frat-comedy clichés.
  37. Chloe
    It all goes awry in the end, but for a good stretch, Chloe neatly fixes Egoyan’s career-long obsessions with identity and communication to the familiar framework of the erotic thriller.
  38. The Eclipse
    Though The Eclipse travels a sleepy route to a shrug of anticlimax, it’s refreshing to see a film acknowledge that life and love don’t end at 50, even in the outsized shadow of a soulmate’s death.
  39. How to Train Your Dragon
    It’s a great-looking film--and an impressive use of 3D--but ultimately, the story makes it memorable.
  40. Waking Sleeping Beauty
    A surprisingly intimate behind-the-scenes documentary.
  41. Blue Beard
    As with Breillat’s 2007 period piece "The Last Mistress," Bluebeard is subdued and unadorned, almost plain.
  42. Repo Men
    It’s a time-waster with brains, but ultimately not enough brains, and one that wastes too much time.
  43. The Bounty Hunter
    Tennant and his actors have done the bare minimum to carry their lifeless movie past the finish line, and their apathy reads a lot like contempt.
  44. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
    For all its ridiculousness, its enthusiastic comic excess, and its fart/booger/gross-out jokes, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid's heart is firmly in the right place.
  45. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    Tattoo is as much mood piece as mystery, and the mood is almost always disturbing.
  46. Greenberg
    Bittersweet and beautifully realized, harsh but humane, Greenberg is a self-consciously small film that nevertheless leaves an indelible mark.
  47. The Runaways
    They're now the first major all-girl punk band to inspire a bleary, excessive, and altogether mediocre big-screen biography.
  48. City Island
    The movie too often equates drama with volume, and agita with authenticity.
  49. Neil Young Trunk Show
    Demme’s excitement for Young and his music is evident throughout, and the songs fit comfortably in the unvarnished setting.
  50. Vincere
    Vincere starts to run dry of stunning visual gambits and become redundant in its second hour, as the madhouse sequences dominate, but Bellocchio’s central premise retains its power and poignancy throughout.
  51. Mid-August Lunch
    It’s a trifle, but a trifle that sticks.
  52. The Exploding Girl
    There isn’t much to The Exploding Girl, but it’s blessedly compact, and owns its no-big-deal-ness.
  53. She's Out of My League
    Baruchel and Eve never shed that awkward first-date chemistry, which speaks less to their talents or the possibilities of mismatched romance than to a movie that forces them together like animals being mated in captivity.
  54. Green Zone
    For the first time in Greengrass' career, the politics too often get ahead of the action, so points that might have been subtly embedded in the story are instead laid out like a left-wing editorial.
  55. Mother
    Again as with Bong's earlier films, Mother is a genre exercise that honors convention, yet weaves around it whenever possible. Bong carefully turns Mother into a classic gumshoe tale, with red herrings, interrogations, and moments of sublime suspense.
  56. Our Family Wedding
    We remain a nation divided, but hopefully we’ve at least progressed beyond the need for clumsy message movies about racial tolerance, as fortified with dick jokes.
  57. Remember Me
    The major problem with Pattinson’s ascendancy to the Dean throne: His soulfulness is a pose, an effect achieved more by hair and makeup (and yes, genetics) than the scenes where he’s required to emote at high volume.
  58. Stolen
    Stolen is mildly engaging, inasmuch as it poses a riddle and makes the audience wait for the answer, in the classic mystery mode.
  59. Alice in Wonderland
    The best adaptations have found ways to put a personal stamp on the familiar stories. Others have simply reproduced an Alice facsimile in the image of their own era. Surprisingly, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland belongs to the latter camp. That doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie, just another frustratingly impersonal one from a director who once had trouble compacting his personality down to movie size.
  60. Brooklyn's Finest
    To quote Yogi Berra, it’s déjà vu all over again.
  61. Cop Out
    With Cop Out, Smith works from a script other than his own for the first time--this one penned by siblings Mark and Robb Cullen--but his slack direction siphons the energy out of this tongue-in-cheek throwback to ’80s mismatched-buddy comedies.
  62. A Prophet
    A Prophet has been compared to American TV series like "Oz" for its episodic plot and large cast, but it’s more like a Gallic "Goodfellas": thoroughly absorbing, exciting, even poetic. It’s a full evening’s entertainment.
  63. The Crazies
    The crazies themselves could be a lot more terrifying. Without the rotting ickiness of proper zombies, they just seem like methed-out Iowans looking for a fix. That’s scary, but not scary enough.
  64. The Yellow Handkerchief
    It’s nice to see a film unafraid to be quiet and sensitive, but one good gust of coastal breeze would blow this one away.
  65. Easier with Practice
    Love stories don’t come much squirmier than this one, and Alvarez plays it with honesty, insight, and the awkwardness inherent in this blindest of blind dates.
  66. The Art of the Steal
    A damning example of justice bending toward those who can most afford to buy it.
  67. Prodigal Sons
    Prodigal Sons comes packed with multiple hooks. Aside from the sex-change angle, the movie takes a turn when Marc---whom Reed’s parents adopted before she was born--learns that he’s the biological son of Rebecca Welles, and the grandchild of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.
  68. Shutter Island
    There’s a purpose to all this madness--though to talk about the primary reason the film succeeds would be giving the game away--but it should be appreciated first as a vivid, waking nightmare.
  69. Happy Tears
    Happy Tears is a complete mess of a movie, but Lichtenstein conjures some sweet moments and striking metaphors.
  70. Blood Done Sign My Name
    Draws attention to a little-known chapter in the history of the civil-rights movement, but it doesn’t do much to pull that moment into the present, or to pull the audience into the past.
  71. The Ghost Writer
    The Ghost Writer may not go down as one of Polanski’s masterpieces, but if it does end up being his swan song, it’s the ideal denouement to a life and career of unsettling resonance.
  72. Lourdes
    Lourdes starts from the unexpected position of believing miracles are possible, but it doesn’t paper over the religious and practical problems they raise--for the blessed and bereft alike.
  73. The Wolfman
    A few stray livers and severed heads aside, this is a monster too polite for its own good.
  74. Valentine's Day
    Explores love in all its myriad forms, from the sickeningly sappy to the cornball to the groaningly precious and obnoxiously cute.
  75. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    In Columbus’ hands, it once again all breaks down into a series of rushed, breathless special-effects setpieces, in a thrill ride that isn’t headed anywhere new.
  76. Videocracy
    If a team of clever screenwriters tried to script a cautionary tale about the politics of fame (and the fame of politics), they likely couldn’t come up with anything odder or more apt than Erik Gandini’s documentary Videocracy.
  77. October Country
    In digging deeper into the stories behind the junk--many of which involve the drug problems, legal problems, custody battles, cycles of abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorders of Mosher’s own family--October Country veers awfully close to exploitation.
  78. From Paris with Love
    With his flamboyant ridiculousness, Travolta does, however, give From Paris With Love a pulse, which is more than can be said for the film’s petulant hero, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
  79. Dear John
    Hallström's approach to the material is tasteful and restrained to a fault.
  80. District 13: Ultimatum
    More of the same, only more. Yet here, “more” means a more needlessly convoluted plot, a more cartoonish parade of ethnic stereotypes, and more leaden political metaphor than viewers can digest.
  81. Frozen
    While the actors are game, their characters are awfully generic.
  82. Terribly Happy
    This is a smart, melancholy crime picture, which takes its cues from the title of the perverse old standard Christensen plays on her stereo at night: “You Always Hurt The One You Love.”
  83. Ajami
    Copti and Shani show characters of different backgrounds interacting peacefully as individuals, then show how those characters subtly change when their affiliation with a group becomes an issue. And always the threat of violence looms.
  84. Edge of Darkness
    Quickly devolves into another showcase for Gibson’s snorting-bull act, a routine he could happily have shelved during his time off.
  85. When in Rome
    It’s the kind of wretched embarrassment that may leave viewers trying to suspend the belief that they’re still sitting in the theater watching it.
  86. Saint John of Las Vegas
    Predictably, the best moments belong to Buscemi, whose performance is a model of understatement in a field of grotesques.
  87. North Face
    The historical backdrop is fascinating and an important part of this story, but there’s a pervasive sense that director Philipp Stölzl and his screenwriters soft-pedal it as much as possible in order to exalt their heroes.
  88. Legion
    A cartoonishly grim supernatural thriller that could stand a lot less talk and a lot more thrills.
  89. Extraordinary Measures
    The film closely follows the pattern of 1992’s "Lorenzo’s Oil," but with fewer filmmaking risks, visceral emotions, and colorful, outsized characters.
  90. The Girl on the Train
    Given several years’ distance from the media blitz, Téchiné brings clarity, maturity, and perspective to the case while still subtly addressing all the thorny social issues the affair touched off.
  91. Creation
    What begins as a multilayered tale of scientific discovery and cultural history gets reduced to a single maudlin idea: that even Charles Darwin had to evolve.
  92. Tooth Fairy
    For a bad, broad comedy, Tooth Fairy boasts a surprising number of positives. Which isn’t to say that it’s good, but it could be much, much worse.
  93. The Paranoids
    The Paranoids summons a scuzzy, winning nocturnal ambience, particularly when Hendler breaks out of his funk, hits the dance floor, and does his best impression of Michael Stipe in the “Losing My Religion” video. For a few brief moments, he and the movie transcend their four-walled ennui.
  94. Room and a Half
    For those who can’t abide conventional biopics, here’s a viable alternative: A Room And A Half, a fantastical, imaginative depiction of the life of Nobel-winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.
  95. Pop Star on Ice
    Perhaps television will prove a better medium to explore Weir’s idiosyncrasies than this engaging yet superficial documentary.
  96. The Book of Eli
    Its hero may be on a mission from above, but in a refreshing twist, the fate of mankind rests with the literate.
  97. Fish Tank
    In that way, Jarvis is a lot like Arnold: an artist who knows the steps, but doesn't yet have all the moves.
  98. The Spy Next Door
    Chan’s anything-goes affability keeps the film from scraping bottom.
  99. Daybreakers
    After a while, Daybreakers settles into the lulling rhythms of too many horror movies, as the characters ponder what to do in darkened rooms instead of doing much of anything.
  100. Youth in Revolt
    Arteta’s well-intentioned film version feels simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked.
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