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. Charlie Bartlett
    Watching Charlie Bartlett only makes Wes Anderson's work seem more accomplished by comparison, because it underscores that thin line separating the agreeably fanciful from the overbearingly precious.
  2. You Don't Mess with the Zohan
    Spectacularly, unimpeachably, relentlessly preposterous.
  3. The Hunting Party
    It's a hilariously half-baked scheme, one that quickly turns them from hunters to hunted, but the strength of The Hunting Party is its shaggy-dog quality.
  4. Bee Season
    Everyone in Bee Season is chasing spiritual peace and falling behind, and McGehee and Siegel catch them at their most worn-out and static.
  5. Mood Indigo
    No amount of imaginative trickery can fill the void of feeling at the movie’s center. Whimsy for whimsy’s sake is just too much to take.
  6. Life
    Life is a B movie on an A budget, an old-fashioned creature feature that delivers its cheap thrills expensively.
  7. Oslo
    What results is a very Western-specific view of this conflict and of the Oslo Accords that doesn’t embody the “both sides” approach the film ostensibly intends to provide.
  8. Another Simple Favor
    Though the simplest pleasures of Favor remain—catty chemistry between Kendrick and Lively, loopy twists, bravura statement outfits—the heat powering the concept has cooled to the extent that, despite the increased body count, the sequel feels as perfunctory as its title. It’s just Another one.
  9. One Missed Call
    Miike doesn't do enough to shake up the formula, but he's still expert at delivering shocks, and when the level of craftsmanship is as high as it is in the white-knuckle finale, originality doesn't seem to matter anymore.
  10. Thor: The Dark World
    Forget the fairy-tale romance between Jane and her hammer-wielding hunk. The real emotional center of the Thor series is this sibling rivalry, more compelling than any climactic battle royale or winking teaser for the next chapter.
  11. Beast
    For a singularly outlandish and specific premise, this is a film that lets its audience experience the horror right along with the characters on screen. This is cinema as spectacle distilled down to its rawest form, where basic storytelling leads directly to visceral and emotional catharsis.
  12. The Riot Club
    Boys will be boys and wealthy a--holes will be wealthy a--holes in The Riot Club, an alleged cautionary tale that revels in bad behavior for nearly two hours before finally offering up a stern “tsk, tsk, tsk.” Unlike the great gangster and outlaw movies, however, this unpleasant, moralistic film doesn’t succeed in making transgression look cathartically appealing.
  13. The Conjuring: Last Rites
    The Conjuring: Last Rites solidifies The Conjuring franchise as the Fast & Furious of horror movies: A conservative, Christian, family-oriented, spin-off and sequel-laden series of adventures that lose the plot and reinvest in the audience’s affection for its familiar beats and cornball leads.
  14. Lonesome Jim
    It finds some fine comedic moments when it stops focusing on Affleck's never-ending angst and starts exploring small-town oddness.
  15. The Last Stand
    It's a struggle at times, mostly because the action-movie clichés haven't been weeded out of the script, but the film is cheerfully, irresistibly destructive - an old-fashioned, "Rio Bravo" shoot-'em-up with the hicktown spirit of "Tremors," though it isn't as good as either.
  16. Thanks for Sharing
    Oddly, counterintuitively even, what’s most endearing about the film is how middle-of-the-road it is. While 2011’s "Shame" treated the same subject with too much seriousness, and next week’s "Don Jon" treats it with too little, Thanks For Sharing acknowledges that sex addiction, like most other problems in life, can be a source of both suffering and humor.
  17. To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
    A pleasant distraction without a lot of payoff. It doesn’t tarnish the original, but it never quite rises to its heights either.
  18. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
    Crude, grating.
  19. Spiderhead
    With nimble performances, slick polish, dark-pitched wit, razor sharp sentiments, and a Yacht Rock-infused soundtrack, the film proves a seductive high.
  20. Zack Snyder's Justice League
    The reality is that Justice League’s problems go beyond who was behind the camera. The villain is still generic and silly-looking. The plot is still assemble-the-team boilerplate, hinging on the hunt for glowing MacGuffins with a goofy name.
  21. I Am Not a Serial Killer
    What sets I Am Not A Serial Killer apart from other takes on this “killers hunting killers” concept (Dexter, anyone?) is its naturalistic, character-based approach.
  22. Pandora's Promise
    The most counterintuitive enviro-doc of the year, Pandora’s Promise makes the case that nuclear power may be the closest thing Earth has to a sustainable, realistic supply of energy.
  23. Joe Bell
    Wahlberg, delivering a performance that feels like community service, just isn’t up to driving a drama whose conflict is almost entirely internal; his default setting of sneering irritation is the wrong tool for the job. It leaves you wondering if this should have more fully been Jadin’s story, especially given the sensitivity of Miller’s turn.
  24. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    Without the mythical power or giddy adventurousness of the first two Star Wars movies, the impact is strangely numbing, like watching a two-and-a-half-hour ILM show reel in search of moneyed investors.
  25. Kung Fu Panda 4
    Instead of finding the perfect balance of humor as the other films did, jokes outweigh and occasionally undercut the few resounding sentiments on personal evolution.
  26. Cashback
    In short form, Cashback simply dealt with how a quirky group of supermarket employees whiled away the endless hours of a night shift, but the feature version spoils that economy by tacking on a romantic subplot and indulging its hero's precious ruminations on love and art.
  27. Cracks
    Cracks stumbles down the stretch, when the melodrama finally washes in and the behavior becomes more extreme.
  28. Battle in Seattle
    It's the next best thing to being there, in that it's likely to make shuddering viewers intensely glad that they weren't.
  29. Entrapment
    Entrapment is ostensibly some sort of action film, but perhaps out of deference to its sleepwalking star, it moves slowly and contains very little actual action.
  30. Ya lyublyu tebya
    The filmmakers have a keen eye for striking compositions, but unlike most advertising, movies have to amount to more than just a succession of vivid images.
  31. Jersey Boys
    The unfortunate trade-off of Eastwood’s efficient, real-deal classical direction is his stubborn commitment to the script.
  32. Effie Gray
    On a purely technical level, Effie Gray is fine, if uninspired, with its washed-out color, attention to detail, and lack of heavy-handed moralizing. As an experience, though, it’s a drag without much reward.
  33. Memoirs of a Geisha
    The film comes to life whenever the cartoonishly vindictive Gong throws a tantrum, but she played virtually the same role in Zhang Yimou's "Shanghai Triad," which presented a far more compelling rationale for her star fits. Without her, this expensive piece of backlot pageantry turns vivid history into an ossified tchotchke.
  34. Battle for Terra
    On one level, it's a down-market Star Wars-inspired shoot-'em-up for kiddies; on another, it's a radical alien invasion story where the HUMANS are the aliens.
  35. Shuang long hui
    Twin Dragons is still a Chan film, albeit not a great one. As fans have figured out by now, that goes a long way.
  36. Hidalgo
    Mortensen nicely underplays his role, offhandedly tossing off one-liners and making the script's sometimes purple dialogue sound a little less cheesy, but the rest of the film often lurches into hammy overdrive.
  37. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
    The improvised dialogue takes hairpin turns, some less fruitful than others, holding onto just enough traces of structure to sustain the film's brief length.
  38. Alice in Wonderland
    A striking effort in its own right, though not in the ways that make one generation pass a film lovingly down to the next.
  39. 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.
  40. Pontypool
    Primarily though, the film works as a tour de force for McHattie--a veteran character actor making the most of his character’s long, fluid monologues--and as a sly commentary on journalistic responsibility.
  41. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
    The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim is a slight Middle-earth adventure that’s fleet-footed but inconsequential.
  42. Art School Confidential
    Zwigoff has a rich comic gallery of pretentious boobs to lampoon. But his satirical target just seems too easy this time around: It's hard to spoof institutions that already veer so close to self-parody.
  43. Ricki and the Flash
    Ricki And The Flash is a movie of things that may have been done better earlier — sometimes by Demme himself — but which are done all too rarely nowadays, which makes it feel both retro and refreshing.
  44. Save the Date
    Save The Date's achievements are modest - it could be funnier and more affecting, and it ends with a shrug - but the film is wise about sibling relationships, the uncertainty of youth, and smaller matters, like the way people relate to each other after a break-up.
  45. Sparkle
    The film spends so little time developing its characters, apart from all that expository dialogue, that it's like asking audiences to care for paper dolls. And Sparkle never delivers on the promise of its most famous song by giving viewers something they can feel.
  46. The Devil's Rejects
    Zombie fills The Devil's Rejects with thrilling setpieces, pays homage to his inspirations without outright ripping them off (most of the time), brings back some cult-movie icons (hello, Mary Woronov and E.G. Daily), and works in some profanely clever dialogue.
  47. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
    No one will ever mistake the Jackass franchise for good cinema, but it never aspired to that. It was always about allowing the gleeful anarchy of the TV series to escape the constraints of television — to be more outrageous, gross, and profane than the FCC would ever allow.
  48. 10 Items or Less
    Freeman is clearly enjoying himself, but his charisma and heavyweight presence can't quite redeem this featherweight concoction.
  49. Hands of Stone
    Somehow, Hands Of Stone even manages to make Don King (Reg E. Cathey) seem bloodless.
  50. Goodbye Christopher Robin
    Director Simon Curtis, the purveyor of such middlebrow fluff as Woman In Gold and My Week With Marilyn, lays the sentimental hues and sunbeams on thick, hoping that someone will give a sh-t.
  51. Stockholm
    Hawke is no stranger to elevating subpar material with a committed performance, but his fidgety crook-with-a-heart-of-gold act is undercut by Budreau’s uncreative use of the limited setting (almost the whole thing takes place inside the bank) and unskillful handling of the broad tone.
  52. 12 Strong
    Surprisingly stolid and barren for a Bruckheimer production, 12 Strong skates by on the virtues of an old-fashioned programmer: technical competence, an above-average cast, and well-written dialogue, the latter courtesy of screenwriters Ted Tally (The Silence Of The Lambs) and Peter Craig (Blood Father).
  53. Melinda and Melinda
    A second-rate comedy and a third-rate drama, Melinda And Melinda gives viewers two unsatisfying movies in one. The only genuine tragedy here involves a once-brilliant comedy writer plunging further into a seemingly permanent artistic freefall.
  54. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Mean-spirited and stagy where "Psycho Beach Party" was cinematic and charming, Die, Mommie, Die recycles gags from Busch's screenwriting debut--from transparently phony rear projection to a character's crippling constipation--and the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty hard.
  55. Too Late
    If you enjoy strippers delivering monologues on Bugs Bunny — something that actually happens in this movie — then Too Late will scratch that same adolescent itch that leads young film buffs to dress in black suits and Ray-Bans after seeing "Reservoir Dogs" for the first time.
  56. All the Wilderness
    Nothing even remotely wild touches this generic indie movie, which embraces every imaginable cliché in depicting the emotional travails of a sensitive kid in mourning. There isn’t a wolf in it, nor a fox, nor a hog, nor much of anything else. Maybe a chicken.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love Etc.
    It's too bad the wanness of the majority of those storylines makes it seem more like a fling than a relationship with any chance of going the distance.
  58. Arthur the King
    The film is named after the dog. The memoir upon which the film is based is about the transformative meeting with this dog. It seems clear that this should be a story about a dog! So it’s baffling to realize that the dog is almost an afterthought. Instead, it’s yet another star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg to unconvincingly sell himself as a likable everyman.
  59. How to Be a Latin Lover
    The difference between this film and the majority of late-period Sandler flicks—besides the fact that nobody goes on vacation and that the dialogue is partly in Spanish—is that it’s pretty funny in spots.
  60. Hamlet 2
    Funny excuses an awful lot, and at its best, Hamlet 2 is nothing short of hilarious.
  61. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
    Genial and pleasant to a fault, the film could benefit from a little more personality.
  62. Bruno
    Cohen no longer has freshness and novelty on his side, but he’s retained the power to shock, offend, provoke, unsettle, and most importantly, entertain a jaded, desensitized public.
  63. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    Bad Boys: Ride Or Die has clearly glommed onto a more Fast & Furious sensibility in its middle age, albeit with hard-R violence and swears. It’s equally calculated and sweet (well, maybe somewhat more calculated) that Smith and Lawrence no longer assume they can get away with Bad Boys II-level nastiness.
  64. Amu
    The flat, pat talk is symptomatic of Amu's overriding problem: It has no sense of personal style.
  65. The Big Uneasy
    So sleepy and understated that when John Goodman shows up to yell his way through an angrily sarcastic segment called "Ask A New Orleanian," it's incredibly jarring.
  66. When Animals Dream
    The gore is there, as are the transformation sequences, but they’re played in such a muted fashion that their more visceral pleasures are somewhat mitigated. But viewers who check their expectations will find a solid entry into the burgeoning feminist werewolf sub-genre that’s well worth a look.
  67. Uncle Kent 2
    A short running time and an amiable tone kept Uncle Kent from ever becoming a chore, but aside from one hilariously awkward ménage à trois scene and a poignant final shot, the film was so slight that it almost dared the audience to get anything out of watching.
  68. The Stepford Wives
    With its references to consciousness-raising groups and other archaic matters, it's very much of its time, but the film is effective for its vision of homogenized suburbia as a place in which housewifery has made women as interchangeable as the mass-produced products in their supermarket.
  69. House of Darkness
    Ultimately, House Of Darkness exists in a strange and equally fatal no man’s land of being simultaneously under- and overwritten. As a feature film, it’s entirely insubstantial, with a premise better served in short form as part of an anthology.
  70. Strays
    For what it’s worth, Strays is nominally funny, but in a way that rarely provokes genuine laughs, just chuckles of appreciation. It’s a breezy, inconsequential film that will drip from the wrinkles of your brain like slobber from a chew toy, but as a late-summer distraction, maybe that’s enough.
  71. Puccini for Beginners
    Maggenti is still trapped behind surfaces, enamored of the IDEA of making a buoyant, urbane romantic comedy, while falling short of anything really resonant or personal.
  72. Get Smart
    There are many stretches when it's easy to forget that Get Smart is a spoof; it's more like a third-rate James Bond with pratfalls.
  73. Firebrand
    The screenplay fails to bring any ingenuity in structure or dialogue, thus diminishing the power of Aïnouz’s characteristically operatic filmmaking.
  74. Dear Mr. Watterson
    Just as it’s impossible to capture in a 600-word review what made Calvin And Hobbes so special, no 100-minute film on the subject can really hope to convey its magic either. But Dear Mr. Watterson does its best, relying on choice excerpts of the work and enthusiastic talking-head interviews.
  75. CSNY/Déjà Vu
    The music isn't much of a relief either, mostly because Young keeps cutting away from the performances.
  76. The Château
    Never recovering the energy of its early scenes, the heavily improvised Château becomes shapeless and dull.
  77. Reno: Rebel Without a Pause
    For a comedian who thrives on spontaneity, the heart of Reno's act seems conspicuously canned.
  78. Chuen jik sat sau
    In keeping with Hong Kong's style-as-substance tradition, Fulltime Killers is beyond reproach.
  79. Let's Get Frank
    Everly tries to patch together a profile out of borrowed news clips and shoddy videography. In the process, Frank's charisma and force never emerge.
  80. The Bread, My Sweet
    Though The Bread, My Sweet is never even a little bit better than this description makes it sound, writer-director Melissa Martin's stagy, unattractive-looking film should at least get credit for going all the way with its manipulation.
  81. LBJ
    It’s almost sadistic to cast Jenkins, the actor who most resembles Johnson, in a supporting role in LBJ. His scenes with Harrelson suggest a man talking to his own Halloween-mask likeness.
  82. Whole New Thing
    Develops its story slowly and carefully, nearly always opting for the plausible over the sensational.
  83. The First Purge
    Wringing genre thrills from headline atrocities, The First Purge is at once crass and provocative in its timeliness—in Blumhouse’s toolshed, it’s the sledgehammer to Get Out’s scalpel.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Fierce People
    Fierce People's first hour is dominated by brittle social satire, but in its third act, the film takes a jarring turn toward tremblingly sincere melodrama it can't pull off.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cymbeline
    Almereyda tackles one of the Bard’s lesser-regarded later works, the plot-heavy tragicomedy Cymbeline, and again unearths untold depths.
  86. Fairhaven
    Fairhaven's location is lovely. Its actors are terrific. All of them beg for something better.
  87. Escape from L.A.
    Escape From L.A. is a mild letdown. It repeats the basic plot of the original, with a lighter tone, cheaper-looking (yet actually more expensive) special effects, and a grunge soundtrack.
  88. Wasp Network
    The initial hour is a tightly wound piece of directorial surveillance in Assayas’ trademark style, fluidly tracking the obscure motives and movements of the characters. The rest is a lot less compelling.
  89. What We Did on Our Holiday
    What We Did On Our Holiday sets up a sturdy comic scenario and then proceeds to head in another direction altogether—one that’s nearly impossible to anticipate, making the film much more of a goofy delight than would have seemed likely at the outset.
  90. False Positive
    Glazer and Lee both work primarily in comedy, but the commentary here is drier and more serious, producing knowing nods instead of outright laughter.
  91. Eddie the Eagle
    Starring Kingsman: The Secret Service’s Taron Egerton jutting out his chin and sporting oversized glasses in a concerted attempt to appear less handsome, Eddie The Eagle wears its quirkiness on its puffed sleeve.
  92. The Discovery
    At the very least, its central mystery keeps you guessing, right up until a final turn that’s nearly as clever as it is convoluted.
  93. M3GAN 2.0
    It seems that Johnstone and his collaborators learned the wrong lesson from M3GAN‘s shocking success.
  94. Bobby
    The film has virtually nothing to say about the man, or about much of anything, really. It's a sketchbook trying to pass as a tapestry.
  95. Moxie
    There are worse fates than dorky earnestness, of course. But Moxie just isn’t all that funny either.
  96. A Decent Factory
    Director Thomas Balmès mostly just tags along for the ride, but the incidental details he picks up taint the sense of guarded hopefulness.
  97. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
    Alexander is a watchable, affable, pretty good, well-done kids’ movie buoyed by a humorous script and talented cast.
  98. The Exterminating Angels
    The problem with Exterminating Angels is that its explanatory side overwhelms its playfully perverse side.
  99. Captive State
    It’s not unreasonable to expect something like excitement out of a story about freedom fighters plotting to take back the planet. Captive State does not clear that fairly low bar.
  100. Freeze Me
    Comfortable with the inherent contradictions, Ishii throws all sexual politics to the wind in his highly stylized, fearlessly gratuitous fantasy, an unsettling mix of titillation, morality, victimization, and empowerment.
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