The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,422 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: 5,575 out of 10422
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10422
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10422
10422 movie reviews
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  1. Devil's Pass
    Here’s the trouble: Devil’s Pass isn’t actually about the Dyatlov Pass Incident. It’s about five blandly good-looking American kids who decide to make a documentary about the Dyatlov Pass Incident but subsequently disappear in the same area, leaving behind — sigh — their camera equipment.
  2. All Is Bright
    Directed by Phil Morrison (Junebug) from a lackluster script by Melissa James Gibson, All Is Bright coasts entirely on the formidable talent of its cast, though Giamatti merely offers another variation on the irascible persona he’s been cultivating since Sideways, while Rudd is ultimately defeated by his character’s shapelessness.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Informant
    Meanwhile, there’s a potentially fascinating theme imbedded in Darby’s story that goes largely unexplored: the idea that modern protest is little more than theater, and that the participants on both sides are just actors playing roles.
  4. Newlyweeds
    At times, it’s surprisingly compelling, thanks to King’s surefooted direction of actors and well-honed formal sense; while the movie’s execution never quite makes up for its conception, it does elevate it above, well, just being the sort of movie that would be called Newlyweeds.
  5. Begin Again
    True to its title, Begin Again periodically restarts itself, nestling flashbacks within flashbacks; it’s an unnecessarily complicated structure for what is, frankly, little more than a corny, overstuffed, “let’s put on a show” musical.
  6. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him
    Derives almost all of its very modest power from its relationship with its better half. McAvoy, turning up the broody charm, isn’t to blame. The trouble is that Conor’s drama, set against the backdrop of a lonely Manhattan, looks even more generic than Eleanor’s.
  7. The Invisible Woman
    Handsome and intelligent, it’s nonetheless a tepid portrait of a relationship that would be unremarkable were the gentleman not Dickens.
  8. Great Expectations
    In the end, a thoroughly needless rehash.
  9. Cinderella
    Clothed in a colorful mishmash of historical fashions and scored to sweeping strings, the movie is like an antique cut-crystal vase: gorgeous, fragile, empty.
  10. Le Week-End
    The end of Le Week-End reveals it to be the thoroughly ordinary melodrama a description suggests — a portrait of former ’60s fire-starters who are perfectly happy to settle for embers.
  11. 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.
  12. Horrible Bosses 2
    The laughs don't linger, even within individual scenes. What remains, reinforced by a set of end-credit outtakes, is the sense that Sudeikis, Day, Bateman, and Pine had a really good time making a sort of okay movie.
  13. Last Love
    Unfortunately, Nettelbeck also strives to make Last Love a genuinely complex drama rooted in recognizable human behavior, and fails utterly in that effort.
  14. The New Black
    The film largely lacks the urgency its subject demands. It’s an extended news segment in the form of a feature film.
  15. Endless Love
    The film also contains fleeting moments of authenticity. Most of these come courtesy of Robert Patrick, who plays David’s father, and Greenwood. Together, these two veteran actors turn could-be-thankless “good dad/bad dad” roles into credible depictions of wounded masculinity. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t about them.
  16. At Middleton
    Unremarkable, though hardly unpleasant, the middlebrow middle-age romance At Middleton often plays like a forgotten trifle from the Golden Age of Hollywood studio filmmaking, distinguished more by its competence and affable performances than by any formal or thematic potency.
  17. Chinese Puzzle
    It’s the best of the trilogy, though that’s not saying much; Xavier and his gal pals have mellowed somewhat with age, and Klapisch seems much more energized by New York than he was by his previous locales.
  18. The Quiet Ones
    all the retro production design in the world can’t disguise the sheer familiarity of the film’s paranormal parlor tricks.
  19. The Banshee Chapter
    Blending supernatural hokum with real horrors of U.S. history — namely, the MKUltra experiments performed by the CIA in the 1950s — The Banshee Chapter superficially resembles some lost episode of "The X-Files."
  20. Jersey Boys
    The unfortunate trade-off of Eastwood’s efficient, real-deal classical direction is his stubborn commitment to the script.
  21. Paul Verhoeven's Tricked
    The fundamental problem is that Tricked is more mildly amusing than funny, and most of said amusement comes from the pacing, which is one uninterrupted sprint.
  22. In Fear
    In Fear takes place almost entirely inside a moving car, severely limiting both the cast’s isolation (a big factor in Blair Witch’s strategy) and the extent to which they could wander off in an unexpected direction. Instead, the film simply goes in circles.
  23. Alice Through the Looking Glass
    It’s briskly paced and sometimes neat to watch in reality-bending 3-D, but none of it is quite as head-spinning as it should be. The movie doesn’t dare alienate its family base with genuine trippiness; instead, it pacifies with tedious familial backstory.
  24. Jane Got a Gun
    Even when the movie focuses on its imagery rather than its plot mechanics, it seems intent on covering its bases rather than committing to a particular look or mood.
  25. Cesar Chavez
    What Cesar Chavez critically lacks is a unique, complicated, or personal perspective on its world-famous subject. As is often the problem with portraits of influential firebrands, the film never quite sees past the movement to the man leading it.
  26. Draft Day
    It’s the first, and probably last, sports comedy to take its visual cues from Ang Lee’s "Hulk."
  27. St. Vincent
    St. Vincent goes down easier than it probably should. It helps that Lieberher, though saddled with some cutesy movie-kid dialogue, makes a sweet and empathetic sidekick for Murray (he calls him “sir” constantly, like Marcie in old Peanuts strips), and that McCarthy, like so many gifted comedians, proves capable of playing it straight as needed.
  28. Self/less
    It probably shouldn’t star Ryan Reynolds, who is generally likable, but frequently miscast. Only Kingsley’s bizarre, severely mannered performance seems to be following the undercurrents of the material.
  29. A Fantastic Fear of Everything
    The film’s whimsical specificity, random though it frequently seems, is the main thing it has going for it.
  30. Pan
    At once thinly conceived and maddeningly over-designed, irreverent and over-serious, and chock-full of strained references (to World War II, environmentalism, and drugs, among other things) and creepy violence, Pan is an elaborate flight of fancy with no vision — which makes it strangely compelling in spots.
  31. Lost River
    Lost River displays almost no distinctive personality of its own. The film proves that Gosling has refined taste in movies, and that he’s a quick study, but not that he has much to say as an artist. Not yet, anyway.
  32. Kill the Messenger
    It’s an interesting approach to a fascinating story — yet it still can’t fully break free of its initial limitations.
  33. The Captive
    The structural gamesmanship is just a smokescreen, a way to obfuscate the pulp nature of what is, ultimately, little more than a glorified, low-aiming potboiler.
  34. The Giver
    The ironic side effect is that this major influence on today’s new class of dystopian YA smashes now looks like just another greedy knockoff on-screen—a monochromatic "Divergent," or something similar.
  35. Magic in the Moonlight
    Firth and Stone are terrific, but they’re cast as screwball leads. Given only intermittent opportunities for levity, the two end up serving as mouthpieces for Allen’s dubious self-justifications.
  36. For No Good Reason
    Early on, Steadman talks about his humor needing to have a “slightly maniacal” edge. For No Good Reason has no such thing; it’s gently informative and amusing the whole way through.
  37. Far from the Madding Crowd
    To be fair, Far From The Madding Crowd isn’t the kind of novel that lends itself to adaptation; it was originally published as a monthly serial, and still reads that way.
  38. The Drop
    Cultural authenticity seeps into the cracks of this low-key lowlife drama, whose best attribute is the pungent sense of place it possesses.
  39. Manglehorn
    Pacino has finally started acting again, which is cause for celebration. It’ll be real cause for celebration if/when he also starts picking projects worthier than The Humbling, Danny Collins, and now Manglehorn, all of which see him struggling to find moments of truth within a contrived, borderline ludicrous scenario.
  40. Maps to the Stars
    It’s a movie you’ve seen many times before, just never in the perverse key of Cronenberg.
  41. Serena
    Played as a kind of constant wake, grimly marching on to tragedy, Serena is hurt by relentless applications of Johan Söderqvist’s unimaginatively somber score and DP Morten Søborg’s reliance on lots of over-the-shoulder handheld shots, the camera swinging close to and around people’s faces and shoulders.
  42. Aloha
    Perhaps the energy Crowe could have expended on shaping believable characters went instead to the cultural context.
  43. Omar
    Knotty and tense for most of its running time, Omar becomes muddled in its closing minutes, conflating personal and political treachery.
  44. Laggies
    Shelton, who used to make scrappy, wholly improvised indie gabfests, continues to sand down the rough edges of her style, so that each new movie feels a little less distinct — and a lot less transgressive — than the one before it.
  45. Low Down
    Low Down keeps the histrionics to a minimum, but the inertia of a good man failing to be a good father isn’t enough to sustain nearly two hours of reflection, especially when Preiss consistently suggests that telling Amy’s story from Joe’s perspective would have made for a much better film.
  46. The Voices
    Satrapi makes some bad calls in her attempts to balance bleak humor with bleaker thrills, including ending the film on a glibly cheerful note. Her best decision, bar none, was entrusting such heavy material to the guy who played Van Wilder. Behind that perpetual smirk lurks a talent for quiet depravity. Bonkers looks good on him.
  47. The Better Angels
    As an impression of a Terrence Malick film, The Better Angels is technically faultless, unimprovable. All that’s missing is the soul.
  48. Odd Thomas
    Odd Thomas is at its best when it’s presenting — rather than commenting upon or explaining — juxtapositions of the wholesome and the supernatural.
  49. On My Way
    This isn’t the kind of movie that’s in a hurry to get anywhere in particular. Still, there’s no need for the journey to be quite so blah.
  50. Maladies
    All of the actors, including Franco, do excellent work, given the limitations imposed upon them by a scenario that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Were he a struggling up-and-comer rather than a movie star, the perception of an ambitious misfire like this one would probably be quite different. It’s not a good movie, but it deserves better than mockery.
  51. Teenage
    Like adolescence itself, Teenage is educational, scattered, and over much too quickly.
  52. Alive Inside
    Alive Inside runs a brisk 78 minutes, but that’s still far more time than it requires to make its point; once you’ve seen a couple of old people suddenly come to life upon hearing “I Get Around” or “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” there’s not much to be gained by being presented with half a dozen more instances.
  53. Land Ho!
    While it’s heartening in one sense to see this youthful, offbeat take on two men’s determination to stay eternally fresh, there’s something about the ease with which the characters reorder their lives that makes Land Ho! seem both a little slight and a little precious.
  54. As Above, So Below
    What’s the point in shooting a horror movie in the catacombs if it’s just going to end up looking like every horror movie not shot in the catacombs?
  55. A Walk Among the Tombstones
    Every year, so many artless, gormless, generically slick thrillers make their way into theaters that any time a genre director displays basic filmmaking smarts, the result ends up seeming like a retro novelty. Such is the case with writer-director Scott Frank’s murky potboiler A Walk Among The Tombstones.
  56. Earth to Echo
    The most derivative movie of the summer, Earth To Echo, is also the most visually unpredictable, chock-full of degraded digital textures that seem ready to boil off the screen, picture-boxed within Mac desktops and overlaid with extraterrestrial interface trees.
  57. The Legend of Tarzan
    It’s nice that The Legend Of Tarzan isn’t a nakedly mercenary franchise play that presumes dozens of sequels to come. (It’s also not a low-rent Casper Van Dien vehicle.) But it sure could use some money-grubbing set pieces to tie the genial silliness together.
  58. The Brothers Grimsby
    Eventually, though, The Brothers Grimsby runs out of room to fully work as a hit-or-miss comedy — and perhaps most disappointing, doesn’t reserve any of its hits for co-stars Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, and Penelope Cruz; it’s a great, diverse female cast assembled to do not very much.
  59. Focus
    On the most basic level, the con-artist romance Focus is a Cary Grant movie in the "North By Northwest" or "Charade" mold.
  60. Goosebumps
    Though it revives at least a dozen of Stine’s most popular beasts and fiends, the new Goosebumps movie rarely recalls the old preteen page-turners for which it’s named.
  61. The Signal
    The movie never becomes truly involving — mostly because it’s hard to get wrapped up in a narrative when you can’t shake the nagging feeling that the rug under your feet is being tugged.
  62. The Great Invisible
    It does put a human face on the suffering of those who lost jobs and/or loved ones, which has some value, but anyone hoping for a more nuanced take than “corporations are bad and regular folks are good” will be disappointed.
  63. Hotel Transylvania 2
    The problem is, Hotel Transylvania 2 focuses so intently on parental neuroses—Dracula needs Mavis to remain his little girl and needs his new grandson to conform to his vampire lineage—that the movie itself feels smothering (especially on the heels of the similarly themed original).
  64. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
    For much of the movie, nothing happens, and it’s not the rigorous, locked-in nothing of the long-take art film, but the slow-motion, music-montage nothing of the artsy American indie.
  65. Into the Storm
    Into The Storm is an uncanny valley disaster movie — not as consciously cheesy and cheap as something like "Sharknado 2," but built around a similar equation of unreality and gratification.
  66. Watermark
    Unfortunately, while the documentary’s points are clear, its desire to articulate them primarily through contrasts neuters some of its persuasiveness.
  67. Tom at the Farm
    As interesting as it is to see the filmmaker move out of his wheelhouse, Tom At The Farm is neither dramatically satisfying nor psychologically convincing. Something was clearly lost in its transition from stage to screen.
  68. A Night in Old Mexico
    Here’s a film that knowingly and transparently exists for little reason other than to let the 83-year-old actor bow out in a blaze of glory. And though A Night In Old Mexico won’t be Duvall’s last screen performance, it’s as fitting a farewell as he’s likely to get.
  69. Wolf Creek 2
    McLean puts the pedal to the metal from the start, forgoing suspense in favor of instant, gruesome gratification.
  70. Fed Up
    Like most mediocre documentaries these days, Fed Up alternates between regurgitated facts (often presented in snazzy animated interludes), talking-head interviews, and a “human angle” involving a few regular folks who are struggling with the problem in question.
  71. The November Man
    Too frequently, the movie also treats its female characters as props to be shuffled in and out of danger as the screenplay requires — a nasty tendency that undermines its ongoing (and murkily argued) debate about whether a successful agent can maintain his humanity.
  72. The Hundred-Foot Journey
    This innocuous crowd-pleaser delivers everything that its pedigree and ad campaign promise, courting the patronage of foodies, Oprah Book Club members, Travel Channel subscribers, and Helen Mirren lovers alike.
  73. 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.
  74. The German Doctor
    Nestled within the movie’s overtly schematic design are strong performances—namely, newcomer Bado—and a few details about German-Argentinean life which are, frankly, more interesting than the question of Helmut’s past.
  75. Trust Me
    Like a cocky insider, Trust Me touches success only to throw it away on a gamble.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Whitewash
    A more dynamic character or script would have gone a long way to help audiences find their way through this storm.
  77. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
    What this film provides is easy charms; luckily, those come plenty.
  78. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    Patchy but occasionally charming, the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them delivers most of what has come to be expected from J.K. Rowling’s book series and its successful film adaptations.
  79. Macbeth
    We’re talking maximum sound and fury, and while no movie that stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard could signify nothing, this one doesn’t signify a whole lot.
  80. The LEGO Ninjago Movie
    The Lego Ninjago movie isn’t any worse than any number of professionally made but unexciting cartoons aimed at kids, and sometimes a gag will pop through with the same high-energy surprise that powered so much of The Lego Movie.
  81. Jimmy's Hall
    Jimmy’s Hall is one of [Loach's] clunkers: Footloose set in 1930s Ireland, basically, with jazz in lieu of Kenny Loggins.
  82. Wrinkles
    Ultimately, though, Wrinkles doesn’t offer the aesthetic rewards necessary to make its sad material compelling.
  83. White God
    As a curious hodgepodge of ideas, White God gets by. But the releasing-of-the-hounds at the start is a bad omen. The film, like the dogs, mostly goes downhill.
  84. Joy
    Rough even by Russell’s standards, this grab bag of dropped plot points, visual metaphors, and theatrical cues looks like the underdrawing of a comic drama, only half covered in bright impasto strokes.
  85. The BFG
    There’s no doubt that Spielberg has made The BFG his own, drowning everything in the tinkle of a familiar John Williams score and even managing to incorporate a kid in a red coat. But maybe this is one story that didn’t need to become his own, or really anyone else’s. State-of-the-art special effects are no substitute for Dahl’s inviting prose, for the dreams he blew into adolescent imaginations.
  86. Me and You
    The movie is an underwhelming coming-of-age fable that skirts around its own lurid undertones.
  87. The Kill Team
    War is hell, in other words, and punishing these soldiers—and Winfield in particular—for doing what they were taught to do is wrong.
  88. Web Junkie
    It’s clear that these kids have a genuine problem, and a more probing film might have questioned the cultural factors that contribute to it, as well as the efficacy of more or less kidnapping errant youths and trying to coerce them back into productivity. Web Junkie doesn’t do much probing, however.
  89. Annabelle
    As a blunt object, a machine built to put nerves on edge and fingers over eyes, Annabelle is still crudely (and cruelly) effective. Fear comes cheap.
  90. Uncharted
    Like text that’s been translated into another language and then re-translated back by someone else, Uncharted bears a clunky resemblance to any number of classic action-adventure movies.
  91. My Old Lady
    Apparently struggling to please two very different audiences at once, Horovitz seems to have little control over the material, ultimately wrapping things up with a neat little bow that makes a mockery of the preceding ugliness.
  92. Paper Towns
    While director Jake Shreier (Robot & Frank) doesn’t do a whole lot with the camera besides make sure that there are people in the frame, he does manage to provoke strong performances from Wolff—who looks kind of like a young Dustin Hoffman, but stretched out like a piece of taffy—and the young supporting cast.
  93. Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle
    The film is something like a digital tiger itself: an approximation, not exactly the same as the real thing. With the cut to credits, it ceases to exist.
  94. Cheatin'
    As is, Cheatin’ offers little narrative or emotional advantage over watching a series of the director’s more concise works. At 76 minutes, it should play like a short feature. Instead, it’s more like an extra-long short.
  95. Revenge of the Green Dragons
    Most of the pleasure in Green Dragons comes simply from the opportunity to watch some underused actors dig into meatier parts than they’re usually offered.
  96. Saban's Power Rangers
    When it comes time to morph and break out the Zords to the sound of “Go, Go, Power Rangers,” the film groans and shuffles, like a sulky teen who’s been told that they have to finish the dishes before they can borrow the minivan.
  97. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    While it’s not necessarily a good thing to aim this kind of weaponized marketing at kids, it’s also silly and colorful enough to nearly work as a live-action cartoon. It might rot brains, but perhaps not while regarding them with utter contempt.
  98. To Be Takei
    The technical, workmanlike production is made more irritating than necessary by Michael Hearst’s score, whose grating circus-comes-to-town sprightliness is routinely slathered over mundane footage.
  99. Metro Manila
    The movie is a catalogue of Nolanisms translated into Tagalog and executed on a tight budget.
  100. Krampus
    Neither particularly frightening nor especially funny, the Yuletide horror-comedy Krampus scrapes by on the novelty of its setup.
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