The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,422 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 A Life Less Ordinary
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,575 out of 10422
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10422
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10422
10422 movie reviews
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  1. Because I Said So
    Any relationship between the world of Because I Said So and actual human behavior is purely coincidental.
  2. The Messengers
    The Messengers, dutifully cobbles together a pastiche of successful horror films past--"The Grudge," "The Sixth Sense," "The Birds," "The Amityville Horror," and "The Shining"--without asserting a single original idea of its own.
  3. 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.
  4. Daddy's Little Girls
    While its look at interclass romance among African-Americans and the struggles of a working-class single father is fresh and vital, the heavy-handed execution isn't.
  5. Dead Silence
    Again coaxing the worst imaginable performances out of his actors (see also: Cary Elwes and Danny Glover in "Saw"), Wan casts charisma-free unknown Ryan Kwanten as a young married man whose small-town past catches up to him.
  6. Premonition
    Had it been easier to comprehend at the beginning, there's no telling how bad Premonition might have been.
  7. Color Me Kubrick
    The film makes funny use of music (particularly Lionel Richie's "Hello") and excellent use of Malkovich, but it literally only has one idea in its head, and when that idea runs dry, it's as lost as Conway is without his plethora of Kubrick masks.
  8. Lucky You
    Curiously lifeless, Lucky You feels like poker without stakes; it goes through the motions with nothing to play for.
  9. Slow Burn
    What results are surprises without sustenance.
  10. The Invisible
    The film disappoints on its own terms, failing to drum up any sympathy for a self-pitying rich kid who can't pry his eyes from his navel.
  11. Next
    Next bears some resemblance to another Dick adaptation, "Minority Report," about "pre-cogs" who can anticipate murders before they happen, but it doesn't really bother exploring the moral or emotional implications of Cage's power.
  12. Civic Duty
    Shooting in digital video, director Jeff Renfroe needlessly amps up the proceedings with jittery camerawork, jump cuts, and other technical hiccups meant to disorient the audience.
  13. Mr. Brooks
    Sadly, only Hurt seems to recognize that the only way to make this material work is to play it with lunatic enthusiasm instead of grave seriousness.
  14. Eagle vs Shark
    Might feel like a colorful little train-wreck drama, but given the recent popularity of such films, it comes across more like a nerdcore clip show, a sort of straight-faced "Epic Movie" for fans of discomfort comedy.
  15. 1408
    In the end, 1408 amounts to little more than a radical shock-therapy session for a man still finding his way after the loss of his daughter.
  16. Black Sheep
    The gold standard for the modern monster movie remains "Tremors," which combines genuine thrills with clever plot twists and distinctive characters. By contrast, Black Sheep has a bunch of one-note living jokes running around willy-nilly while being chased by killer sheep.
  17. Broken English
    Given the gift of Posey at the peak of her powers, Cassavetes squanders her star in low-key, go-nowhere conversations, shot without flair and drained of any improvisatory energy.
  18. Lady Chatterley
    This might be pleasant to watch, in a floaty '70s-movie kind of way, if not for the film's groaning 168-minute length and abrupt thudder of an ending.
  19. Introducing the Dwights
    The film suffers for her (Brenda Blethyn) egocentrism.
  20. Becoming Jane
    The film tries to squeeze Austen into one of her novels, and the peg doesn't fit.
  21. 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.
  22. Rush Hour 3
    For a series devoted to giving audiences exactly what they want, it'd be pretty damn appropriate.
  23. The Last Legion
    Though it's never wise to underestimate the power or universal appeal of Rai's cleavage and lustrous hair, that's about all that sets the doggedly mediocre The Last Legion apart from every other sword-and-sandal epic about the origins of Camelot.
  24. The Bubble
    Real love is often as complicated and painful as Middle Eastern politics, and Fox might have been better off acknowledging that, rather than making his characters such vague, sweet, safe ciphers.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Halloween (2007)
    This latest unsuccessful stab at Carpenter's masterwork just proves that the original Halloween is as unbeatable as its masked leading man.
  26. The Last Winter
    The Last Winter's heart is in the right place, but it isn't pumping any blood.
  27. The Jane Austen Book Club
    There's no subtext to The Jane Austen Book Club, just a skim across the books' surface that winds up re-shelving a great author into the self-help section.
  28. The Kingdom
    The heroes of Peter Berg's gung-ho retribution tale are fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here, but his film is indulging in a queasy brand of escapism. Winning imaginary wars isn't the same as winning real ones, but The Kingdom nonetheless smells like victory.
  29. Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee
    Finishing The Game doesn't get anywhere that "Hollywood Shuffle" didn't go to first, even if it has its own set of specific complaints about how show business treats Asians.
  30. The Heartbreak Kid
    Embellishments to Neil Simon's original script were inevitable, but when you're adding an "Uncle Tito," you're definitely on the wrong track.
  31. Rendition
    With a cast this stacked, the performances are predictably strong (particularly from Sarsgaard, whose slow-burning role recalls his work in Shattered Glass), but the first impression they make is the same as the last.
  32. Lars and the Real Girl
    In spite of the title, there's nothing particularly "real" about Lars And The Real Girl, just a couple layers of quirk several stops removed from the world as we know it.
  33. Why Did I Get Married?
    Smith emerges as this subtlety-impaired film's most intriguingly ambiguous character, at times an acid-tongued shrew and at others a bluntly righteous truth-teller. The liveliness of her performance helps ensure that while Married is stiffly written, didactic, and whiplash-inducing in its tonal shifts, it's also very seldom dull.
  34. Fred Claus
    Leave it to Giamatti to bring gravitas to the fat guy in the red suit; he's naturally the straight man in the sibling duo, but whenever Fred Claus goes for the heartstrings, he's the only one capable of plucking in tune.
  35. Beowulf
    Ten years from now, Beowulf may look like the groundbreaking project that helped kill live-action movies, but for the moment, its uncomfortable jokes and fakey rendering of life leave it wedged firmly in the uncanny valley. (Insert your own joke about Jolie's astonishing animated anatomy here.)
  36. Starting Out in the Evening
    Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."
  37. Flawless
    Moore hasn't tackled a lead role since the turn of the century, and judging by her eminently forgettable work here, she hasn't spent that time painstakingly honing her chops.
  38. Love in the Time of Cholera
    Newell's film arrives loaded with problems. The most superficial, but undeniably distracting, involves the way characters age at different rates and under makeup of varying believability.
  39. The Walker
    A paper-thin character study undermined by a convoluted conspiracy thriller.
  40. The Kite Runner
    It's okay to be manipulated, so long as you don't feel the strings being pulled. Here the tug is constant, and constantly distracting.
  41. 27 Dresses
    It's a tangle unknotted in the most predictable fashion by Aline McKenna's script, and with little flair from choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher.
  42. First Sunday
    A corny yet unexpectedly moving scene in which Morgan is moved to tears by Loretta Devine's simple kindness helps make the film's shift into inspirational drama far more palatable than it really has any right to be.
  43. How She Move
    The film's good intentions gradually get lost in a sea of overwrought contrivances, stock characters, awkward cameos from B- and C-listers (R&B singer Keyshia Cole and not-so-funnyman DeRay Davis) and warmed-over family issues.
  44. Step Up 2: The Streets
    The central romance is terminally bland, while Evigan's woozy family melodrama seems borrowed from countless superior dance movies.
  45. Horton Hears a Who!
    Just because the live-action Seusses have dialed down expectations doesn't mean that Horton shouldn't aspire to more than time-wasting mediocrity. There are precious childhoods at stake here.
  46. Never Back Down
    Director Jeff Wadlow and screenwriter Chris Hauty are so committed to following through on the "Karate Kid" formula that they don't care for novelty; it's enough for them just to hit their cues and play up the slo-mo MMA brutality. In the future, movies this derivative will be made by robots.
  47. Sleepwalking
    Well-intentioned to a fault, Sleepwalking blurs the line between dramatizing free-floating misery and spreading it.
  48. Drillbit Taylor
    Wilson's funny. Mann's funny. But paired together here, nothing works.
  49. Nim's Island
    Directors Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin deliver some eye-catching fantasy sequences in the early scenes, but the film grows more mundane and the tone more uneven as it goes on.
  50. The Ruins
    Director Carter Smith suffers from another, more common problem: In trying to squeeze every plot point from the book into a 90-minute movie, he failed to capture its chilling essence.
  51. The Forbidden Kingdom
    At best, The Forbidden Kingdom counts as an amiable time-waster for kids, but much more should be expected from the momentous union of two kung-fu titans.
  52. Deception
    The dynamic between Jackman and McGregor bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy from "In The Company Of Men": the cool, suave, experienced philosopher of excess and his weaker, more earnest pupil.
  53. Then She Found Me
    With Midler missing in action much of the time, the film drowns in a sea of thudding earnestness.
  54. Made of Honor
    What do you call it when someone pulls a gender reversal on someone else's movie? If that movie is "My Best Friend's Wedding," you call it Made Of Honor.
  55. Speed Racer
    Borderline-experimental in the way it challenges the limits of perception. It's forward-thinking, visionary, and much of the time unwatchable.
  56. Frontier(s)
    There's no depth, surprises, or wit to the screenplay, which seems motivated by the sole desire to generate the vilest, most disgusting people and images imaginable.
  57. What Happens in Vegas
    Complain all you want about the affable slobs in Judd Apatow comedies; at least they're not tools.
  58. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    Ultimately, it's an absence of personality that does the film in. The creatures remain beautifully designed and Narnia still looks like a colorful, inviting place, but it feels as lifeless as the fantastical anyworlds found on glittery unicorn posters.
  59. The Foot Fist Way
    Trouble is, the gags just keep finding new ways to make McBride's strip-mall sensei seem pathetic, and the few scattered laughs never justify the cruelty.
  60. Before the Rains
    The one appealing aspect of Before The Rains is that there are no villains, just three characters who are driven first by shared desires, then by a natural impulse for self-preservation that brings them into conflict.
  61. You Don't Mess with the Zohan
    Spectacularly, unimpeachably, relentlessly preposterous.
  62. Quid Pro Quo
    Stahl quietly plays the straight man, giving the usually skillful Farmiga plenty of room to overact with abandon; she plays her character as one part Rosanna Arquette in David Cronenberg's "Crash" to two parts Natalie Portman's magical life-saving pixie in "Garden State."
  63. Mamma Mia!
    The incongruous mix of real locations and stage sets, real voices and overdubs, is a constant distraction, while the choreography lumbers in group numbers and goes flat in more intimate ones.
  64. Step Brothers
    This is a loud, ugly, foul comedy whose shortcomings extends far into the supporting cast.
  65. Australia
    It almost goes without saying that the film looks gorgeous, but the filmmaking behind it feels unsure how to work on this grand a scale. Australia is big. But it never fills the screen.
  66. The Wackness
    The Wackness' main draw is Kingsley's giddily over-the-top performance as a pothead, and the film delights in showing Gandhi sparking a huge bong or making out with Mary-Kate Olsen in a phone booth.
    • The A.V. Club
  67. The House Bunny
    Faris has mostly logged time in dire vehicles like The House Bunny, which are dumb-dumb to her smart-dumb.
  68. Henry Poole Is Here
    Henry Poole cycles through so many indie film clichés--that it continually skirts self-parody.
  69. Ping Pong Playa
    Something is missing here.
  70. Towelhead
    From its title on down, Towelhead alarms and manipulates, and succeeds in goading the audience like a schoolyard bully, but apart from Bishil's harrowing attempts to find herself, the strings stay too visible.
  71. Hounddog
    Pretty but overwrought, Hounddog doesn't deserve its infamy, nor does it merit being seen or remembered.
  72. The Express
    Long on inspiration, short on specifics.
  73. Nothing Like the Holidays
    Take a cue from Guzmán, who serves as a kind of court jester, bouncing in and out of scenes in a one-man quest to bring levity to the occasion. The movie could stand to have more of his Christmas cheer; instead, it's a recast "Family Stone."
  74. Yes Man
    The film contains so many plugs for Warner Bros. movies like the "Harry Potter" series and "300" that it could almost double as an infomercial.
  75. Last Chance Harvey
    If nothing else, Last Chance Harvey proves that you're never too old to be the subject of a zany trying-on-dresses montage, but considering the prestige of its leads, that's a minor victory at best.
  76. Marley & Me
    Could not be more ordinary.
  77. Valkyrie
    Bryan Singer’s solid direction and some flavorful supporting performances from the dependable likes of Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, and Tom Wilkinson keep Valkyrie within the realm of handsome mediocrity.
  78. Defiance
    There are lots of movies about Jews suffering, dying, and surviving in Europe during World War II, but precious few about Jews fighting back. So why does everything in Defiance feel so doggedly familiar?
  79. Good
    It's an old-fashioned hoke-fest, in which the otherness of Germany is connoted by having everyone speak with a British accent.
  80. The Uninvited
    The result is a middling Frankenstein-like hybrid of spectral mayhem and murder mystery, constructed entirely out of borrowed parts.
  81. New in Town
    New In Town grinds its plucky protagonist through a predictable arc from dispassionate big-city ice queen to redeemed small-town tenderheart.
  82. He's Just Not That Into You
    The big names don't do needy as well as "Big Love's" Ginnifer Goodwin.
  83. The Pink Panther 2
    Plays like an undeserved victory lap for a series that only limped to the finish line the last time.
  84. Fanboys
    Fanboys has a lot of talent in its margins, including Jay Baruchel, Kristen Bell, Seth Rogen, and other usual suspects.
  85. Angels & Demons
    At half the length, and with half of Hanks' sneering pretension, this would make a pretty terrific action film.
  86. The Edge of Love
    The Edge Of Love is more like a museum piece, placing historical figures in frozen positions, and asking us to judge them as the curators do.
  87. Race to Witch Mountain
    Director Andy Fickman, who previously blanded Johnson up in "The Game Plan," has fashioned the film into a one-size-fits-all, action-packed special-effects extravaganza for the whole family.
  88. Paris 36
    The overstuffed film lumbers across clichés of the heart and of history until it reaches a big, tune-filled climax that isn't worth the wait.
  89. Hannah Montana: The Movie
    The only folks Montana is interested in pleasing are prepubescent girls and Disney stockholders.
  90. 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.
  91. The Soloist
    The result feels cluttered, overcooked, and underfelt.
  92. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
    At least Douglas has a good time bringing the smarminess that McConaughey so studiously avoids.
  93. Easy Virtue
    Easy Virtue needs a strong center to justify its celebration of American effrontery, and Biel lacks that prideful edge.
  94. Shorts
    Jon Cryer and Leslie Mann have a couple of sly moments as overworked career people, and Spader again proves he learned a lot by working with William Shatner for so long. But the bottomless slapstick and silly effects quickly grow wearying, as does a cast of young actors whose work can politely be called energetic.
  95. The Yes Men Fix the World
    Given the duo’s withering take on capitalism, it’s ironic that their stumbling second feature feels throughout like an infomercial for a shtick whose expiration date is rapidly approaching.
  96. Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
    Jaud isn’t telling a story so much as he’s making a case, and while his case is persuasive, it doesn’t really work as a movie. The information in Food Beware could fit just as easily--and just as effectively--into a pamphlet.
  97. A Christmas Carol
    The holiday spirit feels real, but the film does not.
  98. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
    For a movie about the unpredictability of life, Pippa Lee plays it awfully safe.
  99. Wonderful World
    Broderick’s tendency to hang all his problems on corporate greed and heartless bureaucracy leads to some strange missteps.
  100. Creation
    What begins as a multilayered tale of scientific discovery and cultural history gets reduced to a single maudlin idea: that even Charles Darwin had to evolve.
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