The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 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: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. 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."
  2. Sukiyaki Western Django
    Loses some of its appeal once the novelty of Miike's conceptual shenanigans wears off.
  3. 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.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Girl Is in Trouble
    The story has plenty of possibilities, though Onah rarely manages to put his own stamp on things.
  5. Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever
    If Don’t Die had a bit more of the discipline its subject imposes on his own days, those feelings might linger longer.
  6. Bride & Prejudice
    Chadha doesn't seem at home with either Austen or Bollywood, and her ambitions far exceed her competence in the song-and-dance numbers, which are a clutter of stiff choreography and silly original lyrics.
  7. 'R Xmas
    A lean, well-contained slice-of-life at 83 minutes, 'R Xmas finds the director making a confident return to the hard-nosed realism on which he's staked his maverick reputation.
  8. 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.
  9. The Current War: Director's Cut
    The Current War employs actors capable of their own eccentric stylizations, and gives them very little leeway to make the material their own. Gomez-Rejon keeps snatching it back with every offbeat composition idea he can muster.
  10. A Futile and Stupid Gesture
    While pretty consistently amusing, the film still suffers from a chronic case of Wikipediitis, recreating Kenney’s bullet-point moments as substitution for original wit or drama.
  11. Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
    Breakin' 2 turned out to be pure, laugh-a-minute cheeseball entertainment. Granted, it's utterly terrible, with stiff, amateurish acting, enough vivid Day-Glo to blind an army of sunglasses-wearing Corey Harts, and the thinnest and hoariest of thin, hoary old plots. But the camp value is through the roof.
  12. King of the Corner
    It's a low-key actor's showreel, harmless and toothless and sleepy. It'd go pretty well with a glass of warm milk.
  13. The Conspirator
    The Conspirator should skip theaters altogether and become the first film released straight to middle-school history classes, where the standards for what can generously be deemed entertainment are much lower.
  14. 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.
  15. Dallas 362
    From the combustible opening-credits sequence, Caan displays a whip-crack sense of timing, pace, and energy that's so rare for a first-time filmmaker that it's tempting to call him a savant.
  16. American: The Bill Hicks Story
    Like "Man In The Moon," American applies a thick gloss of reverence and sentimentality to the story of a comic pioneer who made his living challenging the kinds of neat, convenient, slickly packaged narratives presented here.
  17. The Fundamentals of Caring
    The Fundamentals Of Caring is about as generic as indie dramedies come. (It even has ukulele on the soundtrack.) That doesn’t make it a bad movie—the cast all turn in convincing performances, and the dialogue is occasionally quite clever—but it doesn’t make it a memorable one either.
  18. The First Time
    In the first 15 minutes, viewers may be rolling their eyes at these kids; by the end, they might be eager to re-watch that opening scene, to get to know them all over again.
  19. The Prom
    On stage, the contrivances might seem less glaring (although the songs truly are terrible). As a movie, The Prom is all-star, feel-good, zazzy nonsense. Long after Murphy’s film drops its cutesy cynicism, it still manages to accidentally produce a damning indictment of Broadway phoniness.
  20. The Lion King
    Ultimately, only Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, as slacker sidekicks Timon and Pumbaa, make much of an impression; their funny, possibly ad-libbed banter feels both fresh and true to the spirit of the characters—the perfect remake recipe. Just don’t look too hard at their character designs. They’re realistic, hideously.
  21. The Secret Life of Pets 2
    Actual kids will probably enjoy The Secret Life Of Pets 2, just as they probably enjoy whatever mini-movies Illumination churns out to supplement its hyper-successful home-entertainment releases. But they might also start to sense just how mini this sequel feels, and start fidgeting after 15 or 20 minutes.
  22. MirrorMask
    Episodic, detached, and lacking in drive, but packed with amazing, hallucinatory dream-imagery that makes real dreams look flat by comparison.
  23. Frankie
    Éric Rohmer used to make one of these pictures practically every year, but it’s a tricky genre to pull off, and Sachs (working with regular co-writer Mauricio Zacharias) doesn’t supply the neurotic wit that would make Frankie distinctive rather than just… nice.
  24. The Astronaut Farmer
    Too odd for a studio movie, too cornpone for the independent scene, The Astronaut Farmer finds its creators stuck awkwardly between worlds, making what amounts to a deep curiosity.
  25. Tusk
    Like most self-conscious attempts at a “midnight movie,” Tusk lacks the conviction that would make it anything more than an outré curiosity; it’s essentially a filmed dare, combined with fan service.
  26. 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.
  27. Screamers
    The band is sincere, and many of its followers are just as sincere, but there's always a danger that too much "screaming" can turn a meaningful statement into an inarticulate din.
  28. Invincible
    An extraordinary story uniquely suited to Herzog's abilities, it eventually becomes easy to accept Ahola as a nearly mute witness to the obsessives around him, most immediately Tim Roth in a striking performance as Ahola's employer.
  29. Evelyn
    From the maudlin musical cues to a senseless romantic subplot that's only barely tacked on, every aspect of Evelyn stabs blindly and insistently at emotional buttons -- Beresford has made the feel-manipulated movie of the year.
  30. Facing Windows
    Girotti has no magical powers, but his dementia has a way of coming and going at just the right time to move the story and themes wherever director Ferzan Ozpetek and co-writer Gianni Romoli want them to go.
  31. Secret Things
    Cobbled together from borrowed parts, Jean-Claude Brisseau's Secret Things makes a fearsome Frankenstein monster out of other movies, yet the influences are so thoroughly digested that they come out seeming wholly original.
  32. Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War
    As persuasive and exhaustive as the film's evidence is, the stock footage of charred corpses and bombed-out communities demands more than the smug talking heads that Bogdanich presents, safe in their offices and comfortable with their rightness.
  33. Not as a Stranger
    Not As A Stranger taps into the raging fury and animal sexuality lurking underneath Mitchum’s quiet-storm demeanor; the film’s redemptive arc requires him to realize what he has in a good, wholesome woman like de Havilland, but Mitchum’s bedroom eyes and leering swagger suggest that he really belongs to a femme fatale like Grahame, who undoubtedly tumbled out of the womb clutching a cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.
  34. Spy Kids: Armageddon
    Throw in a few fun set pieces, some dynamic creature designs, and a breezy narrative that zips by before your eyes, and Spy Kids: Armageddon comes away as a film that mostly works.
  35. Godard Mon Amour
    Though adapted from her memoirs, Godard Mon Amour dubiously minimizes her character. The most it offers is a depiction of a deteriorating marriage between a beautiful woman and an asshole who’s in the middle of a crisis of artistic conscience. And Godard already made one of those. It’s called "Contempt."
  36. The Missing
    Born to play a Western hero, Jones sells the film's syrupy message with a soulful, wounded performance, relieved at times by his agreeably cantankerous sense of humor.
  37. Romance & Cigarettes
    Sometimes the actors lip-sync, but more often, they're singing along with the original vocal tracks, trying to out-belt Elvis Presley and Bruce Springsteen, like a cadre of enthusiastic shower singers joining in with the radio. The resulting cacophony is generally harsh and sloppy, and the film follows suit.
  38. Liberal Arts
    Liberal Arts has the tony look and feel of a vintage Woody Allen movie, but the sophistication is all surface-level. Radnor will never ascend to Allen's rarified realm, but judging by his forgettable first two features, he could give Ed Burns competition.
  39. The Good Liar
    Instead of deepening his material, Condon has made an unsuccessful fling of a movie: fun for a while, but trying to get as far as it can by leaving crucial material off of its profile.
  40. Hours
    Though a screenwriter by profession, Heisserer proves to be more economical with style than storytelling. Like a few too many contemporary genre films, Hours suffers from flashbackitis, a chronic condition that leads filmmakers to believe that a tragic backstory will add gravitas.
  41. Everyday
    Movies don’t necessarily have to tell stories, but if narrative is eschewed in favor of an unvarnished portrait of ordinary life, it’s best to cheat a little and make ordinary life feel extraordinary. Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday refuses to stoop to such measures; for better and for worse — mostly for worse — it sticks to the mundane promise of its title.
  42. The Last Samurai
    What it lacks is artistry, those small touches of personality that might have distinguished its lugubrious history lesson from a bunch of pretty pictures with captions telling the story.
  43. Baby Mama
    It's not without laughs--Poehler and Fey, as ever, have strong chemistry, and there's a truly bizarre scene in which Martin offers Fey a strange "reward" for a job well done--but there's a lot of arid space between them.
  44. Hostel
    Roth gets the notes right while missing the music: He studiously replicates Miike's unblinking depiction of torture, but without much reflection or wit. It's merely unpleasant and more than a little dumb.
  45. 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.
  46. 5 Flights Up
    If 5 Flights Up is worth seeing, it’s primarily for the pleasure of Keaton and Freeman’s company, plus maybe for some tips on buying and selling an apartment.
  47. Anesthesia
    Still, it’s dispiriting to see him (Nelson) produce something as turgid and heavy-handed as Anesthesia, which employs a dozen or so cardboard characters as mouthpieces for singularly unilluminating thoughts about the ways in which people struggle to bury their unhappiness.
  48. Song to Song
    The quartet of actors lends Song To Song somewhat more focus, but it still finds ways to sprawl.
  49. Noise
    Bean always writes interesting scripts that toy with big ideas, but the films that result aren't always good. (Or even bearable.) Here he sets out to make an aural "Fight Club," but instead he's made a movie about a guy who really needs to buy earplugs.
  50. The Mind's Eye
    From its opening title card proclaiming “This film should be played loud,” the telekinetic body-horror film The Mind’s Eye is punk as f--k.
  51. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    If Showalter resists a cartoon takedown of Tammy Faye Bakker, he also hasn’t made a very deep look at her life, either.
  52. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
    Dense and laborious, Bardo sometimes feels like an endurance test. Its moments of visual brilliance carry it far. Just not far enough to become essential viewing
  53. Pride
    There are formulaic moments aplenty in Pride, the "inspired by a true story" tale of Philadelphia swimming coach Jim Ellis, but in its first scenes, at least, it deserves some credit for doing the unexpected.
  54. National Lampoon's Vacation
    There's hardly a shot in the film where Chase doesn't try to swallow the camera with one broad expression or another, and Vacation follows in turn, laboring too hard to drive every punchline home.
  55. The D Train
    It’s a mess, but it’s a commendable mess. Bonus points for ambition and nerve.
  56. 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.
  57. Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
    It's absorbing stuff, with some of the dishy quality of Andy Warhol's diaries and an almost humorous single-mindedness whenever Nijinsky returns, yet again, to the subjects of his vegetarianism, or how much he loves Russia (and France, and England, and just about everywhere he's ever been).
  58. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
    Mostly, Dodgeball just feels off--never consistently funny, but also never dire. It's as if Thurber resigned himself to making a dumb, formula-bound movie with a dusting of smart gags instead of a smart movie in dumb-movie clothes.
  59. 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.
  60. The Adam Project
    With an overworked script that checks boxes rather than delivers compelling characters, this effort lands as perfectly bland.
  61. They Live
    All this colorful mayhem is mere warm-up to the great rabble-rousing catchphrase Nada delivers when he enters a bank, armed to the hilt: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I'm all out of bubblegum."...I love that line as much as anyone else, which is enough to make any cultist salivate like a dog in anticipation, but here's the thing: I wish a better actor than Roddy Piper had delivered it.
  62. Home
    Though it opens with the studio’s seemingly mandatory voice-over setup, the story itself, adapted from the children’s book "The True Meaning Of Smekday," shows immediate conceptual audacity.
  63. Idlewild
    Idlewild boasts too much personality around the edges--especially in Terrence Howard and Macy Gray's scene-stealing turns--and not enough at its center. It's a vehicle for OutKast's music and personality in which the music and lead roles feel like afterthoughts.
  64. Hellraiser
    Bruckner, Collins, and Piotrowski plant their vision in fields that are no less rich, terrifying, or gorily violent than the hellbound story that started it all.
  65. The 33
    Stalled in management mode for much of its duration, Riggen’s film nonetheless has its solid elements, one of them being Banderas’ energetic lead performance.
  66. The Great Gatsby
    Like Romeo + Juliet (1996), Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby emerges as a half-reverent, half-travestying adaptation that’s campy but not a betrayal, offering a lively take on a familiar work while sacrificing such niceties as structure, character, and nuance.
  67. Pathology
    Much like "Crank," it's the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.
  68. Ping Pong Playa
    Something is missing here.
  69. The Bride!
    Gyllenhaal never tones down the brutality, ripping us through bloody tongues, heads, and bodies—in cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s fit of gorgeously captured violence—until the frenzied finish
  70. The Bank
    LaPaglia brings the hero into a world of greed and compromised values, but his fork-tongued monologues aren't remotely seductive, which makes the ending a foregone conclusion.
  71. Old School
    A comedy with a terrific premise and little else.
  72. City of Angels
    At least Dennis Franz, as a former angel, livens up his scenes, and Ryan is less intolerable than usual. Meanwhile, the always-interesting Cage does a good job pretending he's in a better movie. But he's not.
  73. Standing by Yourself
    There's too much missing from Josh Koury's documentary Standing By Yourself to call it a great film, but it contains some undeniably riveting, visceral moments.
  74. Diminished Capacity
    Broderick, Alda, and Madsen are all fine--and Alda has some poignant moments as he realizes the implications of his forgetfulness--but their presence in a movie like this reaffirms its conventionality.
  75. The Men Who Stare at Goats
    This is a movie about a “New Earth Army” full of misfit soldiers yearning for a chance to be non-conformists with a cause, which means it’s already two-thirds of the way to being awesome. Had Heslov eased back a bit, Goats might’ve made it the rest of the way.
  76. Don't Make Me Go
    Even for a movie obsessed from the outset with its destination, Don’t Make Me Go mostly takes a road to nowhere.
  77. The Pact
    More horror movies set in the 21st century ought to integrate technology into their scares as well as Nicholas McCarthy's The Pact.
  78. Passion
    Passion, De Palma’s latest film, will irritate the faithful for about an hour, then thrill them as the master abruptly springs to life and starts carving up screen space with his usual reckless precision.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
    Clearly aiming for “cult classic,” Wyrmwood is too basic to be anything more than a forgettable bro-pocalypse.
  80. 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.
  81. Hulk
    Takes the form of a wounded behemoth, battling to negotiate a compromise between a strong artistic vision and franchise expectations. It doesn't fully succeed on either count, but its integrity and substance stand out like an oasis in a field of cotton candy.
  82. The Ranger
    With its blaring hardcore punk soundtrack and aggressive neon color palette, The Ranger isn’t remotely subtle. Given the type of movie it is, that’s mostly a good thing, though the in-your-face style gives away some of the aforementioned character-driven twists earlier than it should.
  83. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    This might be the best week for The Reluctant Fundamentalist to open or the worst, but the timing doesn’t matter when the powder is damp.
  84. Assassination Nation
    Assassination Nation tells you right up front what to be appalled by, then simply delivers what it promised. Unlike the best examples of either horror or satire, it ultimately comforts and confirms rather than challenges.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Volcano
    Deft filmmaking that allows the special effects to help, not be, the story combines with an actual script to make Volcano a smart, self-aware, and most of all fun disaster movie.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    To Rome with Love
    The storyline involving Alec Baldwin, as an established architect on vacation in the city, is by far the most rewarding in the film, and it provides substance to what would otherwise be a strenuously whimsical endeavor.
  87. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
    The cast is mostly made up of film and TV comedy pros, all of whom seem to be having a good time overacting Hosking’s Bizarro World dialogue.
  88. Iron Lung
    As a performer, Fischbach’s frantic performance can sometimes be distractingly monotonous, but as a filmmaker, he has an impressive eye not only for compositional details, but also for how his images cut and flow together.
  89. Is Anybody There?
    The script is always shakier than the performers trying to bring it across, and by the third act, it lets them down completely.
  90. V/H/S
    It also, in its best moments, makes horror out of the 21st-century obsession with self-documentation.
  91. And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen...
    It works for a little while, but an Irons-narrated slideshow of the region would have worked just as well.
  92. Deep Blue Sea
    It's every bit as silly as it sounds, sillier really.
  93. Cuba: Island of Music
    As one man's vacation video, it's outstanding, but as a documentary, it lacks verve, stylistically or journalistically.
  94. Cézanne et Moi
    Intensive research has killed many a biopic, but Cézanne Et Moi, which recounts the tempestuous lifelong friendship between Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola, labors even more tediously than most to accommodate personal details, whether or not those details serve the narrative.
  95. Snow Cake
    If only Snow Cake had hewed closer to this idea of showing what an adult autist's life and experiences are like, rather than getting caught up in Rickman's rote re-awakening, it could've been as powerful as it strains to be.
  96. The Green Butchers
    It's a clammy, odd duck of a movie, a black comedy that seems strangely content with merely being morbid.
  97. Imagine That
    Though he commits to a lot of embarrassing silliness, Murphy projects so little genuine warmth that his transformation barely registers.
  98. Puncture
    Puncture excels in the smaller touches, from Shaw's quiet performance to the woozy, unrushed motel idylls where the hard-driving Weiss finally slows down for a few breaths.
  99. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
    Abandoning its more original elements, the movie opts for a banal carpe diem conceit that turns Mitty into a globetrotting bystander.
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