The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Wolf Totem
    It sets out to take the viewer on a journey, but ends up giving them little more than a pleasantly diverting sight-seeing tour. There are worse ways to spend two hours. Better ones, too.
  2. Race
    The rest of Race has other moments of engagement in a slickly produced and watchable package. But ultimately, it offers history told as a series of passing anecdotes.
  3. Maggie's Plan
    A comedy that proves that an appealing cast (Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore) and a wonderful premise are no guarantee of big laughs.
  4. Francofonia
    Less fluid than "Russian Ark," Francofonia is even harder to pigeonhole, which is something of a feat.
  5. From Afar
    From Afar plays like a typical first feature, with ambition outstripping execution by a hefty margin.
  6. Into the Forest
    Indeed, there are stretches of Into The Forest during which one could momentarily forget that it’s a survivalist tale at all… or even that it’s taking place in the middle of nowhere, for that matter. The essential becomes irrelevant.
  7. Sunset Song
    Stultifying in spots, the period drama Sunset Song marks an unexpected misstep for Terence Davies, the eccentric filmmaker whose movies evoke limbo states of memory and repressed feeling using a very British vocabulary of drab spaces.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Lolo
    The film is at its best when its central trio fumbles around the same circle of hell they’ve obliviously created for themselves, making the best of a situation that is much worse than they could ever imagine.
  9. Risen
    Refreshingly unpretentious, Risen reimagines the Gospel as an ancient Roman cop movie.
  10. The Idol
    There’s a fascinating story here, but the movie never gets out of its own way long enough to tell it.
  11. The Russian Woodpecker
    The Russian Woodpecker is ostensibly an investigative documentary, but there’s precious little investigation; its primary subject, Fedor Alexandrovich, is peddling a hypothesis for which he offers no tangible evidence whatsoever.
  12. Bridget Jones's Baby
    In other words, 12 years have elapsed since the last Bridget Jones movie. A skinnier, more put-together Bridget isn’t necessarily a more interesting character; she’s a little more "Sex And The City" this time out, however incrementally.
  13. Band of Robbers
    There’s an element of parlor trickery here that the movie’s never entirely able to overcome.
  14. The Girl on the Train
    Taylor’s direction is cosmetic, focused on well-groomed and well-dressed actors, spotless interiors, and the arty, textured camerawork supplied by cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, whose gifts are both self-evident and sort of wasted here. It’s artificial without a hint of intentional façade: No home looks lived in and no conversation feels like it could have occurred outside of a laboratory environment.
  15. Snatched
    It stands apart from the majority of R-rated, coprolalic studio comedies simply by being fast-paced and, on occasion, pretty funny.
  16. Extraction
    Extraction’s also not, by any stretch of the imagination, “good.” But at least it doesn’t waste everybody’s time.
  17. Stinking Heaven
    Like many of Joe Swanberg’s recent efforts, Stinking Heaven plays like a potentially strong idea for a movie that never quite takes shape, which is the problem with “writing” a movie while the camera rolls.
  18. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    This is a space opera animated not by joy but insecurity—the anxiety, evident in almost every moment, that if it’s not very careful, someone might feel letdown.
  19. Bad Moms
    The performers do sell a lot of this material. Bell is especially funny as a cheery, lonely mom whose litany of childcare responsibilities has cut her off from the rest of the world.
  20. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    A movie like this doesn’t require 30 Rock’s joke density or silly streak, but it’s surprising that Fey and Carlock’s satirical eyes aren’t a little more alert.
  21. War Dogs
    Despite all the time War Dogs spends with these two characters, it never develops them past the initial impression that one is basically a good guy and that the other is bad news incarnate.
  22. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
    The franchise-hungry tentpole-itis of the present studio model has produced oh-so-many dumb rehashes of classic myths and fairy tales, but this is the first that is always funny on purpose.
  23. No Home Movie
    Though No Home Movie is a very personal work by someone who was always a deeply personal artist, it’s hard to tune into. It contains a lot of Akerman, but very little of her art, and that seems intentional.
  24. Elvis & Nixon
    As much as the movie sidesteps biographical conventions with its narrow frame and playful tone, it can’t avoid a separate cliché that plagues this sort of material: Elvis & Nixon is basically a diverting TV movie given a theatrical release.
  25. Little Men
    The younger characters are so full of life, and the older ones so full of trenchant but predictable talking-point issues, that it sometimes feels like a middling movie encroaching on a good one.
  26. Captain Fantastic
    To those outside his bubble, it can look at best like a form of child abuse, at worse like a cult: the nuclear family as survivalist militia.
  27. Bleak Street
    Neither Ripstein nor his wife and regular screenwriter, Paz Alicia Garciadiego, succeed in unearthing (or inventing) anything of more than sensational interest from this tragedy.
  28. Forsaken
    An opportunity to see the Sutherlands onscreen together — with Donald playing Kiefer’s disapproving preacher dad — is the only new thing that Forsaken has to offer. Whether that’s enough will vary according to taste.
  29. Lazer Team
    Lazer Team is carried along by the sheer enthusiasm of its main quartet....It’s just too bad that there’s less wit in the dialogue than there is in the Barenaked Ladies’ closing-credits song.
  30. The Intervention
    Clea DuVall makes her debut here as writer-director, and after two decades in front of the camera, she knows actors — but the movie’s stifling familiarity prevents it from making much of an impact.
  31. Joshy
    While it is something of a comedy, Joshy is also serious, and its comic actors follow suit.
  32. Operation Avalanche
    Alas, while modern technology allows for impressive, convincing effects work on a comparatively tiny budget, the basic concept itself hasn’t improved with age. Clever ideas are still in short supply.
  33. Lovesong
    What stands out most are the performances, delivered by two actresses capable of generating a little emotion, even in a film that insists on keeping the volume “realistically“ low. The reality between the two of them is the one that really counts.
  34. Mekong Hotel (2012)
    For the most part, though, this hour-long curiosity feels like a fans-only doodle, riffing on motifs Joe has done better elsewhere. Even for a filmmaker who takes pride in scaling the fantastic down to everyday proportions, there’s such a thing as going too slight.
  35. Creative Control
    In the end, it all comes down a cautionary tale call to “real life” — a call that the movie will heed, just as soon as it’s done with this latest scene of David pretending to f--k a polygonal figure to Vivaldi.
  36. F9: The Fast Saga
    The movie’s deference to Diesel’s whims, sincerity, and ego all at once is part of its charm—though perhaps a smaller share of it here than in the past.
  37. Five Nights in Maine
    Five Nights In Maine’s grieving has a short-story quality, and many movies would do well to follow that model.
  38. The Cloverfield Paradox
    In the case of The Cloverfield Paradox, it’s just a fancy word for “junk drawer.”
  39. One More Time
    The main reason for anyone to see One More Time...is Walken, who brings a lot of life and fine shading to what could’ve been a one-note deadbeat dad type.
  40. In a Valley of Violence
    A by-the-numbers spaghetti Western that’s kind of slow and uneventful—and the world has no shortage of those.
  41. Boris Without Béatrice
    Boris Without Béatrice never feels like the work of an artist who actually believes in everything he’s doing.
  42. Clown
    While Watts deserves some credit for treating a totally ridiculous premise with a straight face, his grisly first feature plays very much like what it is: a 90-second joke stretched uncomfortably to full length.
  43. Standing Tall
    A non-professional making his screen debut, Paradot serves up plenty of volatility, but he never quite succeeds in making Malony seem like a kid with real potential that’s being squandered.
  44. The Shallows
    A fitfully entertaining mix of offscreen gore and Maxim-esque T&A.
  45. Unlocking the Cage
    In short, this is yet another doc that would make a first-rate book or lengthy article, gaining almost nothing from its chosen medium apart from (maybe) greater exposure. There’s no legitimate taxonomic reason for this material to be designated a film.
  46. Wedding Doll
    In spite of all Wedding Doll’s strengths, its scenario comes to seem a little unseemly: Giladi establishes Hagit’s hopes and dreams mostly just to show the terrible ways that they’re dashed.
  47. Kicks
    Here is a film that manages to be observant without being especially insightful—without deepening thematically beyond the observation that inner city life can still be really, really lousy for everyone involved.
  48. When the Bough Breaks
    When The Bough Breaks resembles nothing more than a cheap fast-food burger served on fine china: Tasty, sure, and quite enjoyable in the moment. But once the credits roll and the primal centers of the brain stimulated by guilty pleasures like this one return to normal, all you’ll remember is that it looked prettier than usual.
  49. L'Attesa (The Wait)
    The only way to enjoy this movie is to concentrate on its frequently stunning compositions and ignore the fact that none of it makes even a tiny lick of sense.
  50. ma ma
    Ma Ma’s corny simplicity makes its many flourishes look excessive, and even desperate.
  51. Tulip Fever
    The filmmakers might claim the sexy superficiality as their whole point; if so, it’s a thin one. Chadwick and Stoppard seem to be making a movie about the impulsivity of desire, but they never dig into those feelings beyond depicting them.
  52. Lucha Mexico
    Suffice to say, masks are a big deal in the world of Mexican professional wrestling, known colloquially as lucha libre. Why are they such a big deal? Even after watching the movie, it’s hard to explain.
  53. Jia Zhangke, A guy from Fenyang
    The problem with art like Jia’s is that a straightforward approach isn’t going to reveal anything that isn’t already there in the work or document anything that the movies don’t already document themselves. And why settle for second-hand when you can just go and watch the real thing?
  54. The Innocents
    Like many historical dramas, unfortunately, this one depicts gripping events without bothering to craft a coherent viewpoint that lends them meaning.
  55. Two Lovers and a Bear
    By the time Roman and Lucy seek shelter from a storm in an abandoned military bunker, Two Lovers And A Bear has turned into a horror film in which backstory is the monster.
  56. Risk
    It’s a patchy and seemingly unfinished film.
  57. The Final Master
    Without Wong Kar-Wai’s visual grandeur to provide a sense of the epic, The Final Master just lurches clumsily from one scene to the next, flatlining whenever fists aren’t flying.
  58. Denial
    Intentionally or not, Denial is perfectly timed to a season of insane conspiracy theories and feelings-based readings of facts.
  59. Almost Christmas
    Whatever its faults, this is a nice movie, a crowdpleaser best experienced with an appreciative audience.
  60. Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru
    At best, the film is a Rorschach testimonial, lionizing its subject while offering enough objectivity to allow non-believers to opt out. At worst, it’s a very long infomercial.
  61. War on Everyone
    War On Everyone’s saving grace is its freewheeling refusal to commit to any particular tone, including the rancid one that generally dominates.
  62. Gold
    Gold is fitfully entertaining, but for a movie that gives itself license to go bigger and weirder than real life, its imagination for excess runs out whenever it isn’t focused intently on its star.
  63. The Lost Arcade
    At bottom, this is the story of freaks and geeks everywhere: a quest for the like-minded, rooted in obsessive engagement with a tiny sliver of pop culture.
  64. The Commune
    Rather than portray a turbulent group dynamic, the film focuses on the marital woes of one particular couple, squandering its novel milieu on a banal conflict that would play out similarly in just about any context.
  65. Mary Poppins Returns
    It’s less heartwarming than heart-microwaving.
  66. All I See Is You
    Lively has become an expert at creating the impression that at some point, the movie behind her will come together. All I See Is You comes closer than "Adaline," but its adult intentions don’t go far enough.
  67. Trespass Against Us
    Try as its talented cast does to pump some life into these desperate archetypes, it’s impossible not to draw unflattering comparisons with other, better films.
  68. Una
    Una demonstrates that when it comes to the staginess of stage adaptations, the cure can be worse than the disease.
  69. A United Kingdom
    The movie falls short of delivering a memorable experience of its own. Outside of confirming its stars’ presence, A United Kingdom is more valuable as history than filmmaking.
  70. Hidden Figures
    For all of its current touchstones, Hidden Figures feels far too late, both in the recognition these women deserve and the filmmakers’ goodhearted but dull approach to their stories.
  71. Girl Asleep
    Never betraying an iota of lived experience, it trots out tropes seen in dozens of movies and sitcom episodes (the embarrassing dad, the big party, the fictional rock star crush, etc.), which can ring true only because they’ve been in circulation for decades.
  72. Chuck
    The movie is more interested in him as a lovable loser, a working-class palooka who stumbled briefly into the spotlight, and Schreiber — bulked up, mustachioed, having a grand time — leans enjoyably into his hangdog mediocrity.
  73. Maudie
    The problem is as old as the biopic: Somewhere in trying to tell a life story, life gets lost.
  74. The Ivory Game
    Unlike a lot of other advocacy docs—films that seek to raise awareness regarding some serious issue, often concluding with a call to action—Netflix’s The Ivory Game offers something spectacularly visual: elephants.
  75. The Monster
    With The Monster, writer-director Bryan Bertino plants a prickly mother-daughter drama at the center of a violent creature feature. It’s an intriguing combination in theory, but the individual elements both feel a little half-baked, and stirring them up into one doesn’t help. They’re two mediocre tastes that taste mediocre together.
  76. Catfight
    In more ways than one, Catfight lives down to its title. This is a spectacularly petty and mean-spirited comedy that pivots around, yes, two women beating the shit out of each other.
  77. Daguerrotype
    Daguerrotype is frustratingly easy to rationalize. It’s also about an hour too long; by the time it reaches the end credits, even the spell cast by his eerie direction and handsome widescreen compositions has worn off.
  78. Tramps
    The film itself is barely bluffing that it has any stakes; the caper is vague enough to be inconsequential. Tramps knows it’s small potatoes, but is it any better for it?
  79. Wakefield
    It’s a tale of what happens when male inadequacy runs rampant, starring a committed Bryan Cranston, but it’s ultimately hamstrung by its overwrought sensibilities.
  80. The Whole Truth
    The Whole Truth is a moderately clever, reasonably entertaining courtroom drama, which is only a problem given the talent involved with bringing something this middle-of-the-road to the screen.
  81. Mulan
    Rather than lean into the more mature elements that make it stand out, the movie does frustratingly little with its noteworthy upgrades on the original, resulting in a version of the story that’s only superficially more sophisticated.
  82. Michael Moore in TrumpLand
    This 73-minute speech isn’t really much of a movie, and as advocacy it’s unlikely to reach Trump-leaning voters. But as a case for Clinton aimed at third-party supporters who are convinced they couldn’t stomach casting a ballot for her, it might turn a few heads.
  83. Detour
    Detour is just film-school-ish synthesis, right down to the cinematography-midterm shot lit through venetian blinds and the anachronistic analog static on the motel room TV—the story of a young man who hates his stepdad so much that he stumbles right into an over-complicated thriller set-up that can only be watched once.
  84. Army of One
    The problem is that Army Of One doesn’t add up to much. It’s not quite a satire nor quite a full character study.
  85. American Assassin
    It’s paper-thin, predictable, and goofy as hell, but if you can get past the whole “pro-military propaganda” thing, it’s pretty fun in the moment.
  86. The Duelist
    The premise of intrigue and revenge in a high-society Tsarist underworld is irresistible and pulpy, but Mizgirev’s script is an indigestible, soap-operatic mess of backstories, clichés, and the kind of ambiguous mystic overtones that have become an unbreakable addiction for Russian film.
  87. Old Stone
    It’s too bad that the movie shifts from having too little juice to having too much, because there are hints of a more compelling middle ground.
  88. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
    They’ve chased a valuable science lesson with something that comes closer, occasionally, to a celebrity profile.
  89. 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.
  90. Unforgettable
    Which brings us to the fatal flaw in Unforgettable: With its formulaic story and hackneyed dialogue, all there is to do in between moments of self-aware outrageousness is admire the decor, like an Anthropologie catalog punctuated with the occasional knife wound.
  91. The Ardennes
    First-time director Robin Pront serves up plenty of brooding atmosphere, but the screenplay, adapted from a stage play by Pront and Jeroen Perceval (who also plays the sensible Harvey Keitel role), never succeeds in eluding genre cliché.
  92. The House That Jack Built
    The film lands somewhere between self-flagellation and apologia; however hard von Trier is on himself, he’s not above mounting defenses, and he spares plenty of punishment for us, too.
  93. The Ornithologist
    Perhaps The Ornithologist lends itself so well to scholarly unpacking because it has too little of its own to offer. Maybe it’s healthier to just enjoy the light bouncing from the water to Hamy’s abs.
  94. The Case for Christ
    The Case For Christ is pretty slow going, tedious rather than offensive, with Strobel repeatedly whiteboarding out the evidence as callback voice-overs add up all the pieces until he’s convinced. “All right, God,” he finally says. “You win.”
  95. Girls Trip
    Before the opening credits have finished rolling, voice-over narration is lamenting the distance that can grow between even the tightest of friendships and hyping up the audience for a reunion of characters who have barely been introduced. It may be shameless, but it’s honest.
  96. The Hitman's Bodyguard
    The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which bears the tagline “Get triggered” and is essentially a dumber, tackier "Midnight Run," was destined to be one of those Neanderthalic, faux-merican EuropaCorp action movies, like "The Transporter" or "From Paris With Love" ­­— except fate fumbled, and the film ended up as a coasting-on-star-power Hollywood programmer directed by The Expendables 3’s Patrick Hughes.
  97. Only the Brave
    So squarely old-fashioned that it’s a little jarring to notice that many of the characters have smartphones.
  98. Murder on the Orient Express
    Suspense remains a foreign concept for actor-director Kenneth Branagh. His erratic direction — more interested in cut glass and overhead shots than in suspicions and uncertainties — bungles both the perfect puzzle logic of the crime and its devious solution.
  99. Kung Fu Yoga
    The absence of necessity or consistency has its appeal; it guarantees that the movie stays unpredictable even as it pilfers shamelessly, piling cliché upon cliché, but rarely in a way that makes a lick of sense.
  100. Dean
    Dean turns out to be quite touching, in retrospect. If only it were funny, clever, or in any other way particularly inspired from moment to moment.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »