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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    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Drama/Mex
    In many ways, Drama/Mex is a typical Iñárritu-style mélange of souls in crisis, bouncing off each other in unexpected ways.
  2. Joshua
    It's regrettable that Joshua veers into outlandish "Omen/Bad Seed/Good Son" territory when the real terror lies much closer to home.
  3. Introducing the Dwights
    The film suffers for her (Brenda Blethyn) egocentrism.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rescue Dawn
    Their bond lends this more or less conventional POW escape film resounding emotional depth.
  5. Transformers
    Turns the franchise into a terrible '80s comedy.
  6. License to Wed
    Krasinski knows how to play off Williams--his pained looks are all too appropriate in the face of Williams' desperate shtick--but it's disillusioning to see him here, because he seems too smart for this film.
  7. Ratatouille
    Bird and his co-writers leave room for quiet moments and gentle morals, but for the most part, they send visual gags and verbal punchlines tearing past at an enjoyably demanding speed, whipping up the film's energy at every turn.
  8. Sicko
    The problem with Sicko--one endemic to Moore documentaries in general--is that it never confronts any challenges to its position, which can make it seem like the crudest sort of agitprop.
  9. Evening
    Evening proves that there are such things as mistakes, by featuring two hours of bad choices and half-executed ideas.
  10. Live Free or Die Hard
    Willis does everything short of donning a cape and reversing time by orbiting the Earth at light speed, and the air of cheerful ridiculousness recalls Luc Besson-produced action films like "Transporter 2" or "District B13."
  11. Ghosts of Cité Soleil
    If nothing else, Leth shows how wrung-out and careless everyone gets amid constant bloodshed. "We don't need peace," one says. "We need school for our kids. Food. Sleep."
  12. In Between Days
    The director deserves kudos for setting her movie during such a gray, dreary Toronto winter. It couldn't have been easy to find a climate that so resembles adolescence.
  13. 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.
  14. Evan Almighty
    It goes without saying that Evan Almighty, a kid-friendly follow-up to the Jim Carrey vehicle "Bruce Almighty," is more Ronald McDonald than Holy Bible, but it didn't have to be this epically trite.
  15. A Mighty Heart
    Jolie simply exercises Mariane's persistent will, and honors her in the process.
  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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    You Kill Me
    The main pleasure lies in watching a cast filled with fine character actors like Kingsley, Farina, Hall, and Bill Pullman work their way around the salty, noir-inflected dialogue. It's just unfortunate that those lines add up to such piffle.
  20. Manufactured Landscapes
    What's left off the table is a meaningful examination of environmental artists' responsibility to the environment they depict, and the question of whether all truly great art leaves behind a little toxic waste of its own.
  21. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    Purists will balk at a pointless--and boring--revamp of a major villain, but that's the least of the film's worries. Only a few isolated shots of the group striding together as a team make Surfer feel like a Fantastic Four movie.
  22. Nancy Drew
    Once the rote mystery elements take over, the film devolves into a second-rate whodunit for kids, but even then, Roberts' irrepressible cheeriness and curiosity in the face of danger proves too adorable to resist.
  23. 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.
  24. Beyond Hatred
    It's so rare these days to see a documentary that aspires to be cinematic that Beyond Hatred may seem at first to be slightly better than it is.
  25. Macbeth
    It's Macbeth by way of “The Covenant,” all brooding pretty-boys with emo eyes and hipster hair, standing around in gauzily decorated rich-kid boudoirs in the dead of night, and at times, it's too overblown to take seriously.
  26. Lights in the Dusk
    Without Kaurismäki to introduce these lonely, forgotten souls to audiences, who's going to be his friend?
  27. Ocean's Thirteen
    The pleasure here, as before, comes from watching skilled professionals team up for a job well done.
  28. Hostel: Part II
    It's also, in its sick, sick way, a real crowd-pleaser.
  29. Surf's Up
    Mostly, it just stands out in a crowded field of tacky also-rans by being a reasonably acceptable, more or less non-obnoxious way to spend an hour and a half.
  30. La Vie en Rose
    For all its florid pretensions and epic length, the film's overwrought take on its subject's not-so-rosy life leaves behind no lasting insight.
  31. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    Porumboiu starts off making a mordant slice of life, but he gradually entwines the personal and the historical, then ends on a poignant note. The story and situation are slight, but in the best possible way.
  32. Knocked Up
    No one writes for ensembles better than Apatow, and his players are all skilled at giving his work a loose, improvisational feel.
  33. Gracie
    There's a reason the underdog sports formula is followed over and over: When it's executed as skillfully as it is here, the damned thing works every time.
  34. 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.
  35. Crazy Love
    There's plenty of black comedy in their twisted affair, but a more substantial documentary wouldn't leave you smiling.
  36. Day Watch
    Like the dream it so closely resembles, it's fairly distracting while it's going on, but it fades into forgettable nonsense by the light of day.
  37. Ten Canoes
    Like a lot of folk tales, Ten Canoes peters out into something more prosaic than profound, but it flows like water, and has a deceptively gentle pull that proves hard to escape.
  38. Pierrepoint
    Pierrepoint is handsomely crafted and well-acted, but its sense of scale is as constricted as a noose.
  39. Radiant City
    The faux-documentary aspect of Radiant City is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off. If anything, the movie's observations about the corrupting social influence of cluttered mall spaces get undercut by the fact that Burns and Brown feel the need to INVENT characters to prove their truth.
  40. Bug
    Friedkin's latest rivals his Druid horror flick "The Guardian" for sheer lunacy--Bug remains disconcerting, real, and raw. It poignantly suggests that some lost souls would rather be crazy and doomed than alone.
  41. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    What started out as a fleet one-off swashbuckler with novel supernatural elements has become loaded and graceless, with each new entry barreling across the goal line like William "The Refrigerator" Perry.
  42. Angel-A
    At heart, it's just the latest from one-man industry Luc Besson, so even though it looks like art, it plays like schlock.
  43. Paprika
    A film so joyfully insane that it feels like Kon is overcompensating.
  44. Amu
    The flat, pat talk is symptomatic of Amu's overriding problem: It has no sense of personal style.
  45. Steel City
    For the most part, they live life convincingly, in a refreshingly inward-looking, well-made film that's smart enough to stay small, and leave the car crashes to the big summer action movies.
  46. The Boss of It All
    The Boss Of It All, though clever as a piece of genre deconstruction, isn't terribly funny.
  47. Shrek the Third
    Shrek The Third instead goes for less: fewer jokes, less energy, and toned-down characters.
  48. Flanders
    Once again, Dumont cycles through the pet themes of films like "L'Humanité" and "Twentynine Palms," but their repetition is beginning to seem like shtick.
  49. Severance
    Severance still seems a few rewrites away from living up to its potential, but it's remarkable how much just a modicum of wit can spice up the standard backwoods slice-and-dice. Scaring people with a horror film is easy; entertaining them takes a little skill.
  50. Fay Grim
    Sadly, there's a thin line between goofing irreverently on the maddeningly convoluted nature of spy thrillers and actually being a muddled mess, and Fay Grim crosses it constantly during its deadly second hour.
  51. Private Property
    Like many French films of its kind, Private Property remains content to simply observe a situation without tidying up the narrative, which in this case leaves some big questions unanswered. But Lafosse knows that problems that beg for a resolution sometimes don't get one.
  52. Hollywood Dreams
    It's unclear whether Frederick's an awful actress or a tremendous one pretending to be awful, but either way, it's hard to pity her nasal, pushy, babyish Iowa girl.
  53. Once
    In its own subdued, mellow way, Once is just about perfect.
  54. 28 Weeks Later
    Under Fresnadillo's assured direction, 28 Weeks Later blurs the line between genre entertainment and a photojournalist's shots of the next urban catastrophe.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    Delta Farce
    The worst thing about Delta Farce is its overall feeling of contempt--for the filmmaking process, for common decency, and, most despicably, for the audience.
  56. Georgia Rule
    Garry Marshall has too much confidence that he can match the weighty issues here with the light comedy. He can't. Or at least he can't with this cast.
  57. The Hip Hop Project
    Project provides an unmistakably one-sided view of rap as God's gift to the poor, angry, black, and young, but given the beating rap has taken in the press lately (please Oprah, don't hurt 'em!), the film's pro-rap cheerleading couldn't be more timely or necessary.
  58. The Salon
    So sanctimonious and sincere in its pandering.
  59. Chalk
    Chalk pays homage to the kind of teachers students never forget, which makes it all the more perverse that it's so stubbornly, albeit affably, forgettable.
  60. The Ex
    It never comes close to being funny.
  61. Provoked: A True Story
    There's a noble cause buried under all the clumsy speeches, blatant manipulations, and foreordained conflicts, but the thudding lack of subtlety proves exhausting.
  62. ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
    ShowBusiness is a smart, highly entertaining piece of cinema-reportage, but it never quite rises to the level of penetrating insight or emotional catharsis.
  63. Day Night Day Night
    Loktev's efforts to universalize this story by avoiding specifics ends up making Day Night Day Night broad and blank, reducing the lead character to one more generic nutcase for us to fear and pity.
  64. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
    The film ends so beautifully that it's easy to forgive the dead passages that preceded it and hope it carries over into his next movie.
  65. Brand Upon the Brain!
    Coming after the inspired trifecta of "Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary," "Cowards Bend The Knee," and "The Saddest Music In The World," Brand feels a little like boilerplate Maddin rather than a fresh burst of inspiration.
  66. Away from Her
    Has its heartbreaking moments and its surprise giggles, particularly thanks to Ron Hewat's minor role as a former hockey play-by-play announcer now narrating his nursing-home life.
  67. Spider-Man 3
    So Spider-Man 3's action is superb and its theme fairly weighty. Then why does it feel a letdown from its predecessor? Nearly all the blame rests with director Sam Raimi, who's taken the success of some light slapstick moments in Spider-Man 2 as a cue to get even sillier.
  68. Lucky You
    Curiously lifeless, Lucky You feels like poker without stakes; it goes through the motions with nothing to play for.
  69. 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.
  70. L'iceberg
    The film is striking and often charming, and any movie that places three tall, lanky types aboard a miniature boat named "Titanique" can't be slammed too much. But in the end, it's easier to admire than to love.
  71. Paris, je t'aime
    Because Paris, Je T'Aime's episodes are so short, the duds don't stick around long enough to grate much. But the good ones also don't get to explore their assigned Parisian spaces as much as they could.
  72. Waitress
    It's an imperfect film, but it's the kind of imperfect film of which it would be nice to have seen Shelly make more.
  73. Jindabyne
    In the end, it's all a bit too self-consciously mysterious and Lawrence leans a bit too much on the atmosphere to do the work for him as he builds to a frustrating ending. But his vision of a place haunted by a restlessness it can't define proves unsettlingly infectious.
  74. The Condemned
    The film keeps adding layers of superfluous nonsense to its plot until all that's left is glowering ultra-violence and a whole lot of missed opportunities.
  75. 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.
  76. Kickin It Old Skool
    For a film that has nothing to offer but lazy '80s nostalgia, Kickin' It Old Skool doesn't even bother to get the details right.
  77. 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.
  78. 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.
  79. Les amitiés maléfiques
    Up to the last five minutes, Poison Friends stays true to that heady, idealistic-to-a-fault world of academia.
  80. The Wedding Weekend
    At least when they're singing, they aren't sniping and griping at each other. That original title really would have worked a lot better.
  81. Diggers
    As befits a heartfelt ode to working-class values, Diggers puts in lots of hard, honest work that finally pays off in a wholly predictable yet unexpectedly moving conclusion.
  82. Triad Election
    Like the best crime stories, this one isn't about how the bad guys live, it's about how WE live.
  83. Hot Fuzz
    Everything an action-comedy should be. It achieves through parody what most films in the genre can't accomplish straight.
  84. Vacancy
    Making an assured transition to Hollywood after his Hungarian cult sensation "Kontroll," director Nimród Antal gets his business done with an efficiency that recalls "Red Eye," another thriller that clocks in under 90 minutes. But efficiency isn't everything, and Antal sacrifices too much in order to sustain tension.
  85. Fracture
    Not since Lecter has a role been this well suited to Hopkins, whose intelligence and pristine formality as an actor often make him seem alien--or worse, an incorrigible ham.
  86. In the Land of Women
    "Women" confirms that the only thing less enjoyable than enduring long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships in real life is watching movies about people having long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships.
  87. Syndromes and a Century
    These moments, enjoyable and arcane, may not add up to a masterpiece. But they're uniquely Weerasethakul's.
  88. Red Road
    As long as Arnold can avoid giving any reason for Dickie's strange behavior, Red Road remains creepy and hypnotic, but as soon as Arnold explains what's going on, the movie's structure collapses into the rubble of cliché.
  89. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
    Begins by living up to its fans' rabid expectations, and ends by justifying skeptics' doubts. In between lie roughly equivalent levels of tedium and hilarity.
  90. Pathfinder
    If this uninspired fight-fest had been delayed out of existence, it's unlikely anyone would have missed it.
  91. Perfect Stranger
    When the left-field ending finally arrives, it explains a lot, including why she's so off-putting and histrionic, but it never really explains why audiences should bother sitting through such a tangled mess.
  92. Redline
    A PG-13 celebration of hot chicks, fast cars, and deplorable behavior is like diet Mountain Dew, near-beer, or an expletive-free version of Straight Outta Compton--a tame, watered-down version of the real thing.
  93. Year of the Dog
    White's gently perceptive film is a funny, poignant, emotionally honest minor-key character study.
  94. Slow Burn
    What results are surprises without sustenance.
  95. Private Fears in Public Places
    Resnais and Ayckbourn care primarily about observing these characters' private and public faces, who they are and who they present themselves as. To that end, they've achieved a mood of enchanting intimacy.
  96. The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai
    Truth be told, Sachiko Hanai is probably an accomplished "pink film"; just don't mistake it for something classier.
  97. Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    If modern art-lovers want to understand what the Jack Smith experience was like, Jordan's documentary may be their best chance.
  98. Disturbia
    Once the plot finally kicks into gear, director D.J. Caruso (Taking Lives) effectively cranks up the tension.
  99. Grindhouse
    Like the best of its forebears, Grindhouse contains thrills to keep viewers in their seats, plus moments to think about on the ride home, which will probably seem unusually fraught with peril.
  100. The Hoax
    It's an accomplished potboiler entertainment, as calculated and clever as the stories Irving spins to stay afloat in the growing sea of his own lies.
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