The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,412 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: 5,570 out of 10412
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10412
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10412
10412 movie reviews
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  1. Little Richard: I Am Everything
    Little Richard: I Am Everything manages to find the proper balance between grace and respect towards Richard’s legacy and valid criticism of his more unsavory views or ill-conceived exploits.
  2. Chevalier
    As a celebration of a musical genius, Chevalier is a wildly entertaining ride, a thrilling history lesson in the making that remains as timely as ever.
  3. The Pope's Exorcist
    It’s impossible to take any of this remotely seriously, or find it particularly frightening. But it is its own sort of fun, at least for a while.
  4. Suzume
    Suzume is Shinkai’s biggest and possibly most complex movie, and parts of it feel more personal due to the invocation of real history, but it’s also a bit overly concerned with its plot—to the point where it seems to take its central relationship for granted.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Mafia Mamma
    If it all sounds silly, it is. But it works, far, far better than it should, for one main reason. Well, two, actually. The mighty Toni Collette (who also co-produced the movie) stars as Kristin, and she delivers a funny, touching, and effervescent performance that sweeps you along in its wake. Monica Bellucci plays Bianca oh-so-drolly and bounces beautifully off of Collette.
  6. Renfield
    Though Nicholas Hoult is charming as he struggles to find inner strength, Renfield lives or dies by Nic Cage camping it up. And he delivers.
  7. Beau Is Afraid
    The movie starts with the volume cranked to 10, then never takes a breath. At three hours it is unbearable. Yes, this is meant to be a “bad trip” of a movie, taking you inside the experience of someone undergoing a crisis, but there’s a limit. And then it’s revealed that this grown man has mommy issues. For that you made me sit through all this noise?
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Paint
    While it’s possible to quibble about the weirdly sci-fi mix of period signifiers (white boy afros exist beside cellphones), and to look askance at Paint’s rather too blithe approach to sex-in-the-workplace power dynamics, few comedies in recent memory come by their laughs more honestly than Paint does because, like all the best comedies, the laughter is based on a genuine unease.
  9. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    How To Blow Up A Pipeline plays like a taut thriller that tells an unusual story. Its strength lies in making a topical issue palatable and highly watchable.
  10. Showing Up
    To say Showing Up centers on the moments in between Lizzy unwittingly caring for a broken pigeon and making sure she has enough pieces to show at the gallery is accurate. Yet, in true Reichardt fashion, the point is not the plot so much as the spaces in between what’s happening on screen.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Air
    For a few scenes, Air feels like a gently satirical movie about corporate skullduggery. But it’s really a sports picture, where outcomes are determined by dedication, and a purity of purpose no one else can match. Damon’s Sonny is the scrappy and unlikely contender, whose love of the game gives him heart.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Super Mario Bros. Movie
    Ultimately, Nintendo fans are sure to find the second Mario film (unlike the first) well worth a trip to the cinema, and with a runtime of only 92 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. But to swipe a metaphor from the original NES Super Mario Bros. game, while the film may complete the level, it doesn’t quite nail the leap to the top of the flagpole.
  13. Murder Mystery 2
    It’s a set-up too contrived to feel real, yet not quite over-the-top enough to be hilarious.
  14. Rye Lane
    Rye Lane never tips over fully into cartoonish exaggeration, but the playful presentation of ids and egos through the dreamlike perspectives of its leads goes a long way toward making the film stand out as more than just a showcase for freewheeling chemistry.
  15. Tetris
    There’s a great deal of fun to be had here, even if the story is never quite as addictive as the game that inspired it. Tetris doesn’t cast the same spell as its namesake, but it will at least make you look at those falling blocks in a new way.
  16. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
    The entire picture exudes the wide-eyed (some might say immature) wonderment found around slobbering beasts and magic spells. No, you absolutely do not need to know a thing about D&D to like this. But if you have a familiarity with the Forgotten Realms, the 1980s D&D cartoon show, or if you’re just a Led Zeppelin fan, there’s something here for you. Otherwise, there’s too much going on to ever feel left out.
  17. John Wick: Chapter 4
    The film illustrates the inherent difficulties in successfully serving multiple (narrative, in this case) masters. In the end, maybe that’s fitting for the John Wick franchise, an entertaining and somewhat unlikely series long poised between the expansive and the intimate.
  18. A Good Person
    Asking the question “what makes a good person” might have been an intriguing idea. However, in trying to come up with an answer, A Good Person ends up presenting an overwrought narrative that’s full of cliches that do not resonate.
  19. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
    We’re used to these movies being designed to launch us into one big final fight, and that’s fine, but the craftsmanship this time is shoddy, packed with dead ends, and struggling to maintain its grasp on an emotional throughline.
  20. Boston Strangler
    The movie attempts to serve multiple narrative masters, but ends up coming across as vague and indistinct.
  21. Moving On
    This Paul Weitz project may be a reminder that good chemistry and stellar leading ladies can only get you so far.
  22. Inside
    Still, the greatest asset of the picture is Dafoe’s finesse in a part that’s both physically demanding and fiendishly fun to witness. It’s like someone dropped him in the middle of an antique shop with a baseball bat and said, “Go to town!” And that he does.
  23. Champions
    Harrelson is enjoyable as always, and the rest of the cast delivers, but the film is too warm, fuzzy, predictable, and by the numbers to be anything more than a pleasant diversion that will vanish from your mind by the time you leave the multiplex.
  24. 65
    Aiming to be a gripping survival thriller, 65 rarely surprises. With only two characters to speak of, the stakes feel decidedly low.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Scream VI
    Fueled by a seemingly endless appreciation for how enjoyable it can be to subvert horror conventions and audience expectations, Scream VI is one of the most fun (and funniest) modern horror experiences one can have at a movie theater.
  26. Luther: The Fallen Sun
    The film’s effectiveness hinges on transferring the hallmarks of the series to the big screen, and to that end, Cross and Payne succeed.
  27. Children of the Corn
    There’s no reason a movie with this premise couldn’t be better. Just not in these folks’ hands.
  28. Creed III
    Creed III captures the spectacle and ceremony of boxing, providing the audience with an entertaining thrill ride. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, owing much to its predecessors in the Rocky and Creed series in story structure and character development.
  29. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
    For the most part, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a fun time at the movies. There’s laughter, action, and movie stars playing to their strengths. It’s exactly what audiences expect to see from Ritchie and that’s its main selling point. If only the second hour was tighter, maintaining the film’s fast rhythm.
  30. A Little White Lie
    The execution of the simultaneous mistaken identity and fish-out-of-water shenanigans that ensue is oddly muted; you keep waiting for Maren to amp up the comic energy and narrative complications, but it isn’t until the satisfyingly madcap climax that he really does.
  31. We Have a Ghost
    Closure is inevitably attained, of course, but at a cheapened cost that dramatically lessens the impact of its main characters’ journeys. And that’s truly dispiriting.
  32. Cocaine Bear
    And while it is enjoyable and has many great moments, it doesn’t quite come together with polish.
  33. The Quiet Girl
    The Quiet Girl has a meaningful message on nurturing. But with so little of consequence going on, it’s crucial to get the emotions precisely right. Without voiceover narration tying everything together, some scenes feel out of place, random, or offer little beyond aesthetics.
  34. Emily
    Mackey’s Emily is a young woman who lives the life she writes about, daringly, perhaps knowing time is short.
  35. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey
    To say that Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey delivers everything a slasher movie should is higher praise than it used to be. Marketing alone would have guaranteed this movie a certain percentage of curious eyeballs, but Frake-Waterfield made sure that what genre fans see is everything they expected.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Marlowe
    A small elegance, expressed in decent production values, terse pacing and long lateral camera takes, is the main thing director Neil Jordan has to offer in the mostly misguided Marlowe, the latest of perhaps too many attempts to pour the old wine of Chandler’s fiction into new bottles, and then sell the resulting concoction as vintage.
  37. Devil's Peak
    The cast is solid, the film’s pedigree is good, there’s a sense of direction and competence laced through it all, but the whole is lesser than its parts. It’s hard to watch not just because it fails, but because you see all the ways it might have succeeded.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    Quantumania’s tone is sure to be polarizing, but if you can surrender yourself to its bonkers A Bug’s Life-meets-Return of the Jedi antics, the two hours (already short for a Marvel film) will fly by.
  39. Sharper
    The film operates like a clockwork mechanism. If there were foul-ups or major implausibilities—as such trick plots often have—they eluded me.
  40. Your Place or Mine
    Your Place Or Mine isn’t that invested in crafting a world that looks anything like ours; it’s arguably more interested in giving its supporting cast’s ace one-liners (which, I’ll admit, is where the film sporadically got me chuckling).
  41. Somebody I Used to Know
    The film’s rom-com template feels more like a structure to play with, a solid foundation on which to question the very tenets of romance and comedy.
  42. Magic Mike's Last Dance
    Since more moviegoers are likely coming to a Magic Mike movie for the moves than the plot, let it be stated the moves are outstanding, even if the movers remain mostly blank slates.
  43. Knock at the Cabin
    Knock At The Cabin is a harrowing and intense home invasion thriller that feels like a step in the right direction for Shyamalan.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Baby Ruby
    Despite some unevenness, Baby Ruby is a fervently uncomfortable and aesthetically compelling depiction of new motherhood, an unsettling horror exploration buoyed by strange imagery and a no-holds-barred lead performance from Noémie Merlant.
  45. 80 for Brady
    The film is by no means distinctive, hilarious, or memorable in any way, but, for as cloying as this attempt at Brady brand rehabilitation could have been, it’s a testament to the magnetic appeal of ageless stars who know how to carry a film to the end zone.
  46. Maybe I Do
    Instead of gags, we’re treated to endless observations about love, commitment, romance, parental responsibilities, and other well-trod subjects. None of this is particularly insightful or interesting.
  47. You People
    For the first half-hour, Netflix has a high-concept hit on its hands. Pause it there, and imagine the rest—you won’t do any worse than Barris and Hill’s script at conceiving an ending.
  48. Close
    Close is exquisite, tender, and bruising in equal measure, managing to feel both like an open wound and a balm.
  49. Infinity Pool
    For his third feature, Cronenberg the Younger doesn’t ape his father’s style so much as he expands upon it. With Infinity Pool, in comparison to Cronenberg the Elder’s good-but-not-great Crimes Of The Future, you could even say he’s perfecting it.
  50. One Fine Morning
    One Fine Morning is about people, family, friends, lovers, their disappointments, and their passions. It’s bitter and sweet, but mostly bitter. It’s lovely, but mostly not autobiographical.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Teen Wolf: The Movie
    Teen Wolf: The Movie is many things, but despite veteran director Russell Mulcahy’s brisk professionalism, a movie is not one of them.
  52. When You Finish Saving the World
    Eisenberg’s main concern is the screenplay, yet the canvas it’s drawing upon is so small that it boxes its imagination. The conflicts it creates for Evelyn and Ziggy are so simple and easily resolved that the film becomes a throwaway that’s quickly forgotten despite some of the cast’s good work.
  53. Shotgun Wedding
    Although the madcap antics come up short in some areas, and it’s unable to strike a good balance between its main and supporting players, you’ll find it easy to say “I do” to this one.
  54. Alice, Darling
    Nighy feels like she’s finding her way in a new format. She’s got the hard part down, pulling off effective emotional beats even when the story seems to be operating on screenwriting 101 paradigms. All that remains is to find a script that’s up to the rest of it.
  55. Missing
    Screenlife may never be one of the primary ways we tell cinematic stories, but Missing is a prime example of what the format is capable of, tapping into our increasingly digital humanity to excellent effect.
  56. The Drop
    The Drop isn’t really about dropping a baby. But it’s not about much else, either.
  57. Saint Omer
    This is a rich text, bracing for the minutiae it includes and for what it excises. Its power comes from a director who knows exactly what story they want to tell and how to tell it well.
  58. House Party
    To its credit, and this isn’t damning with faint praise, the new House Party is frequently very funny. (The R-rated language and creative insults are a great asset, even if they might restrict the potential teen audience.) What it has in humor, though, it lacks in pace.
  59. Plane
    If you buy a ticket for this one, just know there’s no First Class option. But with moderate expectations, you’ll still get to your destination.
  60. Skinamarink
    We have a long way to go in 2023, but Skinamarink is already a top contender for the year’s most frightening film.
  61. M3GAN
    Though the contortionist-level juxtaposition of an American Girl murderbot should probably be more viscerally satisfying, Cooper’s offbeat humor and Johnstone’s ability to build tension with her characters make for a potent combination.
  62. A Man Called Otto
    Unlike Jack Nicholson or Bill Murray, whose smile can be either charming or sinister, Hanks always lets us know the character is headed towards redemption. A Man Called Otto would have been a more authentic emotional journey if he didn’t.
  63. Broker
    Though Kore-eda began his career as a documentarian, his positions on social issues are far from neutral. He reveres the resilience of those who have been dealt a bad hand in life, a sentiment that certainly shines through in Broker.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Living
    Living is not a big movie, despite the pedigree of its creators. But it is an artistically masterful one—a film that, while deceptively simple, may linger in your mind for years to come.
  65. The Pale Blue Eye
    This is a case of one movie with two endings, and neither of them totally satisfy.
  66. Wildcat
    Wildcat may have a tiny fraction of Avatar’s budget, and the bad guys—loggers, mostly—remain off-camera. But at heart, it has the same appeal. Get back to nature, put others first, be as good to your family as you can, but let them go their own way.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody
    While spending two hours listening to Whitney Houston’s greatest hits will never be a waste of time, Dance With Somebody is a sanitized, trope-laden retelling of Houston’s life that lacks purpose and a point-of-view.
  68. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
    Puss In Boots: The Last Wish is one of cinema’s biggest surprises of the year.
  69. Women Talking
    Women Talking is about as direct as cinema gets in portraying the complexities and nuances of the feminist struggle, and it achieves much with characters who wouldn’t likely consider themselves feminist or revolutionary.
  70. The Apology
    Where The Apology slips up, and where it slips up frequently, is in the journey between that wonderful opening turn towards darkness and the heart-wrenching conclusion, in which all three stars give it everything they’ve got and Locke’s script once again ratchets the tension and the darkness all the way up.
  71. The Mean One
    For a film with such a promising premise, it turns out to be a plodding example of how to squander potential.
  72. Mindcage
    The end result is a movie whose chief entertainment value may come from taking an inventory of the different ways its various characters pronounce the name of its imprisoned, assistive madman.
  73. Babylon
    Babylon mostly operates in a structure of set pieces, thoroughly earning its not-a-minute-too-long runtime—a whopping 189 minutes—and it’s packed to the gills with stunning craftsmanship.
  74. Avatar: The Way of Water
    Avatar: The Way Of Water not only delivers upon everything its predecessor established, but advances them in ways gleaming and ocean-deep, through the eyes and heart of a cinematic storyteller with a passionate and well-documented love of the sea.
  75. Empire of Light
    Mendes the first-time solo writer juggles too many disparate story elements, and the nagging sense they should cohere makes it all the more perplexing that they don’t.
  76. The Whale
    The Whale’s raison d’etre seems to be about being the engine driving Fraser’s long-awaited resurgence. Beyond that there’s nothing much to see.
  77. Something from Tiffany's
    Director Daryl Wein makes a commendable, if ultimately flawed, attempt at making a memorable holiday romance from Tamara Chestna’s anemic screenplay, adapted from the novel by Melissa Hill. Though it bears the appearance of a winter confection, it has about as much substance as an over-yeasted loaf of bread.
  78. Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
    Carlo Collodi’s serialized story for kids may have inspired it, but del Toro isn’t going for fealty. He very much has a take, and if he creeps you out with it, so much the better.
  79. Emancipation
    A drama that aches to connect with the George Floyd era is more like amped-up misery porn, a Will Smith vanity project that pales next to more accomplished films about Black suffering that better remind us of our nation’s ongoing shame.
  80. The Eternal Daughter
    What Hogg accomplishes here—an acutely emotional parable—is something to truly cherish. The Eternal Daughter, sincere yet artful, is quite surprisingly the most relatable movie of the season.
  81. Christmas with the Campbells
    It’s a surprisingly thoughtful blend of earnest and silly, and Niederpruem’s confident, Hallmark-tinged direction only adds to that sense of familiar surroundings ready to be subverted.
  82. Hunt
    Lee stars in, directs, co-writes, and co-produces this taut, extravagant, and technically proficient effort, which comes off more as an auspicious filmmaking debut than a vanity project, one that stacks up favorably with most American spy thrillers.
  83. Violent Night
    It’s a premise that’s just clever enough to work; although too many anachronistically cheery needle drops during gruesome fight sequences abound, there’s plenty to milk from the juxtaposition of family-friendly Christmas spirit and R-rated action and comedy.
  84. Nanny
    It’s not a film that seeks to freak you out with jump scare after jump scare, but rather a film that wants to burrow down into your heart and fester, seeping into your room like a slow trickle of water.
  85. Lady Chatterley's Lover
    While witnessing the physical act of love on screen can sometimes transcend into something with great depth, this is, sorry to say, not one of those cases. It’s just a lot of huffing and puffing.
  86. White Noise
    It’s always admirable when a filmmaker makes a bolder choice and expands their horizon. For Baumbach, such a venture leads to a familiar place; the nuances of family strife remain his artistic sweet spot.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Son
    Despite the shallow handling of truly important and nuanced subject matter, Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and a scene-stealing Vanessa Kirby go deep with their performances in ways that almost make The Son’s manipulative and predictable story worth sitting through—almost.
  88. Spoiler Alert
    When the film lets its guard down—namely, whenever Aldridge gets to deploy his charm as Kit or manages to let Field echo a weathered kind of Steel Magnolias screen presence—the film sings. Yet its attempts to distance itself from the very genre of a film it so clearly is (there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time I left my screening) end up shortchanging its impact.
  89. There There
    If the resulting film feels like little more than the cinematic equivalent of a series of B-sides of varying quality strung together, it at least whets the appetite for the next proper cinematic album that Bujalski releases.
  90. Blood Relatives
    Like the cobbled-together parts of an aging engine, or the seemingly incompatible members of a chosen family, Blood Relatives holds together with just enough passion and love that its sturdy engine takes audiences for an enjoyable if not always memorable ride.
  91. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
    It is extremely clever and deeply moving, and winningly gets at the essence of Goldin’s current and past work, without straining too hard to ape her style.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Strange World
    Strange World feels like a new iteration of Disney, one that is more thoughtful and inclusive without sacrificing any of the humor or fun.
  93. Bones and All
    Guadagnino’s formidable crew deserves credit for shaping the movie’s world too, including Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and regular film composing partner Atticus Ross, who contribute a striking score that imaginatively combines spare acoustic strumming with intense synthesizer blasts. Like Bones And All itself, it’s simultaneously freaky and from the heart in a special, singular way.
  94. Devotion
    Devotion admirably tries to tell the story of a heroic man, trying to place him within a recognizable historical and social context. However, in its attempts to show heroism and fortitude, it misses the complexity that must have influenced someone who was able to rise so high.
  95. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    Like its predecessor, it’s whip-smart, joyful, and more than a little bit mischievous, yet another manipulation/reinvention of the classic whodunit, made with a cast whose thrill to be working produces an experience that’s as exuberant for them as it is for viewers. In short, it’s nothing less than perfect crowd-pleasing counter-programming for folks craving something that isn’t either superhero or horror-related.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Inspection
    The Inspection isn’t a perfect movie, but there are times when it feels like it’s tantalizingly close.
  97. Disenchanted
    Its lack of legitimate wit, cleverness, and focus makes a promising concept feel like a wasted wish, conjuring little of the magic that made its predecessor feel so memorable.
  98. The Last Manhunt
    Momoa’s clearly abetting a passion project here, but unfortunately, Camargo hasn’t managed to capture a similar passion from his main cast.
  99. She Said
    There is a compellingly naturalistic chemistry between Kazan and Mulligan as the reporters develop a bond of their shared pursuit of the truth, but these character beats are, at best, a garnish on the side of a relatively bland meal.
  100. The Menu
    Mylod’s stew saves its most mouth-watering plate for the last. That’s why it’s fiendishly delightful.
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