The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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  1. Snowpiercer
    Though shocking violence and black humor run through the length of the movie, what comes through most strongly is its pessimistic political conscience; were the movie less earnest, it might seem Verhoeven-esque.
  2. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Typically, Leigh withholds his own judgment as to whether Hawkins is a delight or a terror. But he does create a noticeable tension between the audience's expectations and the way the story plays out.
  3. Lassie
    Writer-director Charles Sturridge doesn't mess with the Lassie formula--he provides plenty of dog-porn shots of the collie bounding through scenery in slow motion--but the overqualified cast puts the film over the top.
  4. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    Block Party is largely a giant love-fest, which is fitting given the staggering amount of simpatico musical and comic talent on display, though some conflict surfaces nevertheless.
  5. The Quiet American
    Even as The Quiet American loses focus and urgency, Caine's performance keeps the doomed spirit of Greene's hero intact.
  6. The Fallout
    With a firm handle on tone, Park skirts the pitfalls of bad taste one might expect from a film that uses mass violence as a narrative device for a coming-of-age plot.
  7. Weiner
    This film doesn’t lionize Weiner or justify anything he did. What it does is capture the frenzy of politics, the iron-clad egos of politicians, and the failure of the media to cover the parts of campaigning and government that actually matter.
  8. Stalag 17
    Stalag 17's irreverence likely didn't revolutionize moviemaking for adults so much as it paved the way for the likes of M*A*S*H and Animal House. Then again, that alone is an achievement worth celebrating.
  9. Iraq in Fragments
    The first third of Iraq In Fragments is so intense--a masterpiece in miniature, really--that audiences may not have much emotion left for the rest.
  10. Mystic River
    In his best film since "Unforgiven," Eastwood ultimately lets observations on character, community, and the tidal patterns of tragedy shoulder a burden an ordinary murder mystery never could.
  11. Glengarry Glen Ross
    Gets most of its legs from the acting and the dialogue, which has such a rhythmic grace that scenes from the movie can be played and replayed with no loss of thump.
  12. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    By the rousing final act, Johnson has brought an apocalyptic grandeur to the lightsaber duels and airborne combat. His often-stirring addition to the saga finally lands on an affecting point about the importance of preserving essential cultural tradition without clinging too strictly to the dogma—and the texts—of the old way.
  13. The Cove
    The Cove's ultimate message gets muddled, especially since Psihoyos limits all counter-arguments to a few inarticulate or thuggish boobs.
  14. Mutual Appreciation
    Bujalski's brand of stylized dialogue sounds genuinely fly-on-the-wall.
  15. The Waiting Room
    Director Peter Nicks puts faces, names, and heartbreakingly relatable stories to a social problem that can all too often feel abstract and academic.
  16. Stray Dogs
    The plight of this struggling family unit weighs more heavily on the heart with each passing minute, making Stray Dogs the rare marathon-length art film that seems to grow less oppressive the longer it goes on.
  17. Universal Language
    To further dig into Rankin’s blending of the goofily left-field and the openly earnest, the message persisting through the dry punchlines is that to care for your neighbor, to care for all the oddities of home, is to care for yourself.
  18. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    An inspired, original, and gracefully integrated collaboration of theater and cinema that complements not only both forms, but also the seductive, dreamlike qualities of the source material.
  19. 13 Assassins
    The great Kôji Yakusho stars as a revered samurai who decides that enough is enough, and sets about assembling the assassins of the title like a men-on-a-mission movie.
  20. Boxing Gym
    Viewers' interest in Boxing Gym will likely wax and wane, depending on their interest in martial arts.
  21. Crazy Heart
    Crazy Heart could use more rough edges, but while it’s a little too sentimental and tidy, Bridges’ humane, deeply empathetic lead performance makes it easy to root for one man’s redemption.
  22. The Fool
    Yuri Bykov’s third feature is in the same vein as a slew of recent Russian films sounding a strident alarm.
  23. The Wrong Man
    The Wrong Man, an overlooked masterpiece from his greatest decade, eschews suspense for the straight-up nightmare of an innocent man dragged through the justice system.
  24. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
    It could all be done much more efficiently, but any other approach would lose Tsai's unique mix of stone-faced comedy and dewy-eyed lyricism.
  25. De Palma
    De Palma is just De Palma gabbing for two hours into a camera, and that’s its ultimate limitation, but also its great strength.
  26. His Three Daughters
    His Three Daughters is an extremely effective tear-jerker.
  27. Custody
    Custody doesn’t do much more than plunge the audience into this hellish situation, but it shrewdly understands the bad dad’s pathetic pathology, and the film may resonate for anyone who’s grown up under the unhealthy supervision of a mean bastard. Take that as a sobering recommendation.
  28. Under the Shadow
    There’s still something exciting about seeing familiar tropes placed in an unfamiliar context — in this case, a nation ravaged by violent conflict and stifled by fundamentalist law.
  29. Adaptation.
    Kaufman strikes just the right balance between playfulness and sincerity, leaping freely from one absurd situation to another before pulling back on the reins.
  30. Fighter
    Far from the solemn earnestness of most Holocaust documentaries, Fighter addresses the war and its oft-toxic reverberations with refreshing impudence and candor.
  31. The Forbidden Room
    For those attuned to Maddin’s goofy sense of humor, it’s easily the funniest movie he’s ever made—a series of several dozen comic shorts strung together on a ludicrous clothesline. The only downside is that the experience, at just shy of two hours, can be a trifle exhausting.
  32. My Dinner with Andre
    Their talk feels as unforced as it is intense, but even that’s an illusion piled on top of an illusion. The film keeps returning to questions about the nature of reality and the function of performance, whether in theater or in everyday life.
  33. An American in Paris
    An American In Paris is muddled as an artistic statement, yet unsatisfying as conventional Hollywood product.
  34. The Secret of the Grain
    The Secret Of The Grain stretches out at the relaxed pace of a seven-course meal, but at the end of it, Kechiche has squeezed the most he can out of percolating dramas within the family and he lets the audience get to know its members without needing to throw them all a subplot.
  35. The Disciple
    For all the fascinating insight the film provides into a musical subculture passing slowly into the archives of history, its melancholy is more universal: Anyone who’s ever devoted themselves fully to a passion, only to discover that the rest of the world barely gives a shit, will smile sadly with recognition.
  36. Horse Feathers
    Anarchy finally reigned supreme in 1932's classic Horse Feathers, which was the first Marx brothers comedy that smoothly integrated the story into the troupe's routine.
  37. Between the Temples
    Underneath the prickly screwball banter, the jokes, the movie-isms, the occasional zaniness are probing questions about how we define ourselves and whether a community of faith can still represent something more important than gossip and an annual Holocaust remembrance bake sale.
  38. The Wind Rises
    While The Wind Rises isn’t top-shelf Miyazaki, it features more than enough gorgeous imagery to make his loss feel acute. Studio Ghibli will surely continue without him, but it’ll never be the same.
  39. Fantastic Mr. Fox
    This is no more a kids’ movie for kids than "Where The Wild Things Are"; it’s a film strictly for Wes Anderson fans of all ages. By now, they should know who they are.
  40. Limbo
    While there’s little disputing Sharrock’s empathy for his dislocated, stranded characters . . . there’s something rather limited about his alteration of dry fish-out-of-water gags and scenes of people staring forlornly into the barren middle distance.
  41. In the Loop
    In The Loop floats above its chaotic world on wave after wave of beautifully profane dialogue.
  42. Bus 174
    Edited with an impeccable sense of timing and rhythm, with each new revelation and insight planted at just the right moment, Bus 174 examines an already gripping story from a moving and untold perspective.
  43. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
    It’s a film comprised of snapshots, glimpses from a hazy evening. But the Ross Brothers understand that these are the moments that paint people in their best, most unguarded light.
  44. Soul
    It’s overflowing, like a bright portal into a new reality, with gorgeous details. So what if they don’t quite add up to a deeper whole?
  45. Osama
    Effective as a drama as it spirals Golbahari deeper into her nightmarish world, Osama is similarly powerful as a fictionalized account of the Taliban's obscene wish for a world where the stringent enforcement of religious laws took the place of instinctual human kindness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Salt of the Earth
    Whether snapping single-person portraits or expansive group shots, each of Salgado’s subjects is a unique and distinctive being. Their individuality resonates despite the fact that the world weighs heavy on them, threatening anonymity.
  47. The Perfect Neighbor
    The documentary’s damning look at stand-your-ground laws and the ineffectiveness of police even when they’re doing everything “right” (because the body-cam footage that makes up this film wouldn’t exist if they thought they were doing something “wrong”) is awful and thorough, avoiding cliché through a devotion to fisheye footage. Its upsetting, explicit-bordering-on-exploitative access drives its points into the pit of your stomach.
  48. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
    Most vitally, the filmmakers never let the audience lose track of how cool it would be to cruise the bottom of the ocean in an elegantly appointed super-boat. The secret of good escapist fare, as Disney's crew knew, is giving the audience someplace remarkable to escape to.
  49. Sing Sing
    The strength of the cast alone can’t elevate Sing Sing to the realm of truly socially conscious cinema.
  50. Turning Red
    We all need a little reassurance once in a while to stay true to ourselves, and Turning Red is speaking directly to generations of Asian women in the diaspora when they need to hear this the most.
  51. Office
    Office is one of the most original and imaginative musicals of the last decade, in spite of Lo Dayu’s largely unremarkable, temp-track-like score.
  52. Being There
    Being There finds humor in the way Sellers becomes a blank screen on which people project their expectations. But it also finds value in his simplicity, which might seem like a lot of New Age hokum if not for Sellers' disarmingly quiet performance.
  53. Chop Shop
    Though Chop Shop is an American film, it feels more like an Iranian movie or the Dardenne Brothers’ "Rosetta"; Bahrani introduces something like a plot point in the late-going, but he mostly focuses, to riveting effect, on how his young hero hustles and claws through everyday life.
  54. Raising Victor Vargas
    What makes Raising Victor Vargas so special, beyond its irresistible charisma, is how Sollett and his cast capture the thrill of first love.
  55. '71
    The setting may be Belfast ’71, but Demange’s sensibility — first-rate suspense coupled with black-and-white politics — is much more James Cameron ’86.
  56. The Cave
    It’s a monotonous descent into agony that coasts on the impossibility of anyone walking away unaffected by the imagery.
  57. Blackfish
    Blackfish’s strongest argument against the existence of parks like SeaWorld is how much more gorgeous orcas look in the open ocean than leaping about an oversized swimming pool. And the audience won’t get soaking wet watching them frolic in movies, either.
  58. The Guilty
    It might not be the kind of movie that anyone needs to see twice, but its variations on the classic building blocks of suspense implicate our own guesswork in interesting ways.
  59. I Wish I Knew
    Even in shortened form, I Wish I Knew can at times feel overly discursive. But its implications, particularly regarding the Cultural Revolution, are difficult to miss.
  60. The Girl and the Spider
    It pays off in a work of gorgeous stylistic precision where cautious glances and wistful anecdotes melt together to form a melancholy arthouse jewel about the tearing down of one woman’s identity.
  61. Corpse Bride
    Like all Burton's best work, it takes place in a distorted, vividly colored, meticulously crafted world where whimsy and gleeful ghoulishness mix freely.
  62. Young Frankenstein
    Young Frankenstein (1974) and High Anxiety are as much loving homage as irreverent spoof.
  63. Predators
    In forcing a viewer’s roiling, complex feelings inward, Predators is also asking audiences to sit with cruelty, and ponder how contributive, even in a small way, they might have been—as well as just how deep their own personal reservoir of compassion might be.
  64. Project Nim
    To an equal extent, Project Nim shows the human capacity for cruelty and narcissism as well as compassion and selflessness.
  65. Neil Young Trunk Show
    Demme’s excitement for Young and his music is evident throughout, and the songs fit comfortably in the unvarnished setting.
  66. The Lighthouse
    The Lighthouse is more satisfying when viewed through the prism of its pitch-black humor; it’s fine as a thriller, borderline brilliant as a comedy of cabin fever and competitive machismo.
  67. Spider-Man 2
    The filmmakers smartly counter heavy drama with goofy comedy, mining a rich vein of humor in the juxtaposition of the mundane and the superheroic. Maguire and Molina excel at opposite ends of the moral spectrum, but the film is stolen once again by J.K. Simmons.
  68. Saint Frances
    Saint Frances goes down easy. It’s refreshingly small and intimate, and is specific on the lives of very particular women without overreaching to look more politically salient or strike zeitgeist concerns. Bridget’s personal growth is understated, and so, for the most part, are the pleasures of Saint Frances.
  69. Mandy
    The look of the film is a hoot: double lens flares over wood paneling, psychedelic lighting, crude animated sequences, slow-mo and telephoto shots, and enough vintage MTV fog machines to kill a hair metal band.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When We Were Kings
    When We Were Kings is an energetic, passionate documentary of this event, and a revelation for people who only know Ali as an ex-champ with Parkinson's and Foreman as a Care Bear.
  71. 20 Feet from Stardom
    Twenty Feet From Stardom touches on fascinating issues, but too often it does no more than that.
  72. Avatar
    Avatar is a weak patchwork of his other films: the leaden voiceover from "Terminator 2" here, the military/civilian conflict from "Aliens" there, even a Jack-and-Rose-style forbidden love story cued to adult-contempo soundtrack.
  73. 20th Century Women
    While Beginners unfolded almost entirely from the point of view of its directorial stand-in, 20th Century Women creates a more generous equilibrium of perspective.
  74. Pina
    It's also representative of Pina's major flaw: the inability of artists to get out of their own way.
  75. Animal Kingdom
    Animal Kingdom joins in the tradition of brutally unsentimental Australian crime dramas like "The Boys," in which the stakes are low, except to the people staring down the barrel of a gun.
  76. Hugo
    It's a complex fusion of film history and personal history, filled with dazzling embellishments and unabashed sentiment about the glories of cinema.
  77. Tenebrae
    Franciosa and John Saxon (as his agent) turn in amusing performances, and Argento makes some points about the intersection of art, reality, and personality, but the director's stunning trademark setpieces, presented here in a fully restored version, provide the real reason to watch.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The LEGO Movie
    Effervescent in style, conveying a substantive message without ever devolving into saccharine preachiness.
  79. Gloria
    Movies about middle-aged women are so rare that it’s tempting to praise them on that basis alone. Thankfully, the Chilean drama Gloria, which won Paulina García the Best Actress prize at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival, doesn’t require much critical mitigation.
  80. Drag Me to Hell
    Raimi’s new film feels distinctly unburdened and fun, happily frolicking in its own pulp silliness.
  81. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
    Gordon's feature directorial debut mostly stops being about video-game obsession and turns into a film about what it takes to make it in America.
  82. Taxidermia
    Frequently funny, for those who can stomach it.
  83. Spider
    Were he only trying to remark on that world's creepiness, Cronenberg would still succeed brilliantly, if coldly, but his sympathy makes the film.
  84. The Day He Arrives
    The Day He Arrives is a talky movie, full of long, boozy scenes and cosmic coincidences - and in that it echoes Allen, as well as Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and the best of British kitchen-sink drama.
  85. The Selfish Giant
    That The Selfish Giant feels familiar rather than groundbreaking makes it seem to some degree a step back for its talented director, but she’s avoided the sophomore jinx with aplomb.
  86. Ixcanul
    This is a decidedly small-scale tragedy, but it still packs a cumulative wallop.
  87. Evil Does Not Exist
    Hamaguchi presents an uncomplicated tale about contemporary issues—corporate greed, climate change—packed with so many complex narrative beats that it plays like a dense 19th century novel. It’s simple, but it explains life itself.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Crossing
    Perhaps a bit predictably, Crossing emphasizes the importance of forging new connections rather than holding onto relationships that may no longer serve us. However, its dramatic conclusion still manages to forgo cliched expectations and cater instead to the limitless possibilities that abound in an urban sprawl.
  89. Seymour: An Introduction
    The biggest problem with Seymour, though, is that Hawke can’t quite find a structure or rhythm for the movie as a whole. It’s only 81 minutes long, and never remotely boring, but the feeling that it’s due to end at any moment kicks in around the midpoint and persists right up until it actually does end, like the documentary equivalent of "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King."
  90. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    Chabrol handles the upended family dynamic beautifully until the final third, when a wildly implausible sequence of events lessens the suspense just as he should be turning the screws.
  91. 56 Up
    However crafted their stories may have become, and however reluctantly they participate, their sacrifice will be appreciated by history, and by the next generation of voyeurs as well.
  92. Triad Election
    Like the best crime stories, this one isn't about how the bad guys live, it's about how WE live.
  93. Serpico
    Director Sidney Lumet (working from a screenplay by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler) chooses not to press the superheroic aspect of his protagonist. Serpico is more street-level, tracing a decade of NYPD change--and refusal to change--through an episodic, often elliptical structure.
  94. Up in the Air
    What Up In The Air lacks in surprises--apart from an elusive final scene--it compensates for by conveying the pleasures of living from landing to landing, and the terror of floating away.
  95. Milk
    It's a little disappointing to see Van Sant dial back into mainstream respectability. Had he evoked Harvey Milk's life with the poetry that he did Kurt Cobain's, Milk might have been something special.
  96. Lilya 4-Ever
    What it became is essentially one long free-fall from destitution to despair.
  97. Burning Bush
    On the whole, though, Burning Bush is an absorbing docudrama that maintains a gratifying equilibrium between hope and cynicism. You can fight City Hall. It just takes a while.
  98. Who We Are Now
    Newton’s screenplays still suffer from third-act problems — both "From Nowhere" and Who We Are Now conclude with an ironic twist that feels slightly cheap — but his dedication to fine-grained real-world complexity sets him apart from most indie filmmakers these days.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Enter the Dragon
    Even though the movie was, in a lot of ways, a glorious mess, it turned out to be a huge success on just about every level.
  100. Cutie and the Boxer
    Unfortunately, Cutie And The Boxer feels the need to contextualize — and possibly valorize — the Shinoharas as artists, which detracts from its portrayal of them as a couple.
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