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. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    Most of the content of this film is wheel-spinning or conscious setup for the final installment, and that feels apparent at every melodramatic moment.
  2. White Wedding
    Jann Turner's shiny, happy crowd-pleaser gleans a tiny shred of substance and social relevance from its exploration of racial and class politics in a post-apartheid South Africa that's still very much split across race lines.
  3. Heartbreaker
    Heartbreaker relies far too heavily on the charm and attractiveness of romantic leads whose chemistry is lukewarm at best to sell a groaning collection of rom-com clichés.
  4. Skyline
    It isn't clever. It isn't original. It isn't scary. At best, Skyline is a proficient, forgettable programmer that only occasionally lapses into irredeemably silliness.
  5. Today's Special
    So relentlessly generic and familiar, it might as well be called Crowd-Pleasing Ethnic-Food-Based Coming-Of-Age Comedy-Drama.
  6. Hereafter
    Just because a film takes place entirely in the long shadow of death doesn't mean it has to be this relentlessly dour.
  7. Cool It
    Here's a man who's doing to environmental science what the Atkins Diet did to weight loss, and Timoner isn't looking for anyone to call his conclusions into question? Nonsense.
  8. Red Hill
    The problem is that Hughes fails to imbue this homage with anything personal. Aside from splicing together a policier and a Western, there's no spin here, just a checklist of clichés.
  9. Restless
    Somehow, Van Sant has made a film about life and death in which the stakes never seem higher than whether one insolent kid will stop being such a horrible mope.
  10. Drive Angry 3D
    Drive Angry feels like a five-minute Comic Con show reel that's been expanded beyond its limits. It's agonizingly cool.
  11. Unknown
    Tacked onto a perfectly respectable thriller, Unknown's mass of unlikely turns and implausible reveals make the whole film seem retroactively less sophisticated.
  12. Sucker Punch
    Browning has wildly expressive eyes and body language, but she turns wooden when delivering Snyder and Steve Shibuya's alternately purple and stilted banter. Like the film, she seems to regard plot and dialogue as necessary evils.
  13. Frankie & Alice
    Berry’s performance effectively turns a routine drama to a minor oddity, and Frankie & Alice’s complicated release history further adds to the curio factor.
  14. In a Better World
    Bier allows her film to be buried by its own overwrought ambition.
  15. Water for Elephants
    It's a tastefully managed, passionless melodrama, full of brooding looks and reasonably sweet moments, but typified by a scantly characterized central couple who bring no sense of engagement to their relationship.
  16. Scream 4
    It's rare for a sequel to extensively acknowledge its own pointlessness, let alone make the unnecessary nature of its existence a recurring theme, the way Scream 4 does. Then again, the Scream franchise has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to deconstructing itself and the rules of the slasher genre.
  17. Arthur
    Russell Brand steps into the role of Arthur Bach for the 2011 remake, and while it's one of the more reined-in performances of his short, busy big-screen career, Brand's unvarying onscreen persona just doesn't do soulful.
  18. Your Highness
    If Your Highness often feels like an inside joke, the principals neglected to let the audience in on the fun.
  19. Rio
    Rio could use fresher ingredients and more spice.
  20. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    Apart from Cruz, who throws herself lustily into her tough-seductress role, the actors give negligible performances, with McShane, Rush, and Keith Richards in a repeat cameo all playing nigh-identical smug glowerers.
  21. The Eagle
    The formalities of the period dialogue and a wavering, inexplicable accent test him (Tatum) beyond his limits, and the film isn't thoughtful or original enough to survive it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
    Comes as close as the film series has gotten to reconciling the epic romance it's billed as and the self-aware camp-fest it often hints at wanting to be, but it's still a messy, unwieldy slab of film product that's targeted directly at fans of the book series, with little regard for anyone else.
  23. Cowboys & Aliens
    You want cowboys and aliens in the same movie? This one's for you. If you want anything beyond what the title promises, look elsewhere. And that means even anything resembling a clever mash-up of established genres.
    • The A.V. Club
      • Posted Jul 28, 2011
  24. The Lincoln Lawyer
    It's agreeably mediocre, a cinematic paperback novel transformed into the kind of fare folks mindlessly consume on planes and forget about before touching down.
  25. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    Ritchie has made a film that's so busy, it starts to become boring.
  26. The Amazing Spider-Man
    The Amazing Spider-Man, helmed by "(500) Days Of Summer" director Marc Webb, doesn't put its own stamp on the material, which feels warmed-over in ways that don't help.
  27. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
    The sequel, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, isn't motivated to change the formula in the least, but it's ever-so-slightly more palatable, if only for being less of a total spazz.
  28. Rubber
    While it's admirably perverse for a "killer-tire movie" to be this snooty, it's about half as clever as it thinks it is.
  29. Larry Crowne
    The story feels half-considered, the relationships thin, and the direction visually indifferent.
  30. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    Solidly mindless, breathless summer fun.
  31. 30 Minutes or Less
    An egregiously miscast Eisenberg stars as a young man toiling as a pizza boy, even though he displays only slightly less intelligence and savvy than the world-beater Eisenberg played in "The Social Network."
  32. We Bought a Zoo
    It's an odd, unsatisfying combination that moves from mopey drama one moment to a reaction shot of a monkey smacking his forehead in exasperation the next. By the end of the film, viewers might understand the monkey's feelings all too well.
  33. xXx: Return of Xander Cage
    The essential question here, of course, is how kickass those action scenes are, since no one’s watching an xXx movie for the plot. (That particular assumption may explain how loose the continuity remains throughout.) The answer is variable.
  34. On the Road
    Since there's no plot, just a series of anecdotes, much of the meaning in the movie version of On The Road is meta-textual, relying on the viewers' knowledge of who Kerouac was, and how the novel's vision of America differed from how most of the rest of popular culture documented the '50s.
  35. In Time
    Much like Niccol's "Gattaca," in which genetic perfection rather than time was the weapon a small group of snobby, unworthy elites used to hold down the meek masses, In Time is a chilly, stiff movie where clever ideas are delivered as self-righteous sermons.
  36. Kill the Irishman
    It's just another gangster movie for the pile.
  37. Albert Nobbs
    Say this for Albert Nobbs: It's not some run-of-the-mill "life lived in service" drama.
  38. Everything Must Go
    Writer-director Dan Rush could've approached this material in dozens of ways, but the way he chooses-turning it into an occasionally wry, ever-earnest dramedy-is precisely the wrong one.
  39. Trust
    With a little tweaking, this easily could have veered into grindhouse exploitation or mindless wish-fulfillment, but Schwimmer's detached, theatrical approach to his material makes it is more cerebral than visceral, and more Steppenwolf Theatre than Charles Bronson.
  40. Elektra Luxx
    As with "Women In Trouble," Gutierrez unveils a series of loosely connected characters and subplots that concern players in and around the porn industry, but the intended colorful irreverence looks a lot like standard indie quirk.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Skateland
    If he were even a fraction as appealing to the audience as he so mysteriously is to everyone in the film, Skateland would be much more engaging.
  42. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer
    Not that anything in Judy Moody is meant to be taken seriously - or could be, even if it was meant to - but even for sugary neon fluff, it's awfully lightweight.
  43. The Vow
    It's unashamedly escapist, but a turn for the serious as The Vow nears the finish line only underscores its essential silliness and what a poor job the film has done making it seem like its characters need each other for reasons beyond looking good together.
  44. One Day
    The ultimate end of the story reveals that it's all about Sturgess' suffering, which just isn't that compelling a topic. Given its lack of center and balance, the film might more appropriately be called "One Dude."
  45. American: The Bill Hicks Story
    Like "Man In The Moon," American applies a thick gloss of reverence and sentimentality to the story of a comic pioneer who made his living challenging the kinds of neat, convenient, slickly packaged narratives presented here.
  46. The Bang Bang Club
    Silver means to get across the adrenaline rush of lives lived in dangerous extremes, but winds up trivializing their accomplishments and making them seem like men of hearty appetites, but little intellectual depth.
  47. I Don't Know How She Does It
    In theory, the film is another hoary exploration of the pressures of modern womanhood, but in practice, it offers the exact same thing as those NYC ingénue books: cookie-cutter wish-fulfillment and lifestyle porn for easily pleased, lonely romantics.
  48. Bride Flight
    The subtitles and period setting conjure a smattering of respectability, but in essence, this is arthouse pap, particularly for older audiences, turning the past into a concatenation of worn-out tropes that comforts as it distorts. Think of it as instant mashed potatoes for the soul.
  49. Trollhunter
    The trolls are the best part of Troll Hunter; they're funny and creepy.
  50. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
    The overall mood of Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is curdled and sour. It leaves the feeling that the next chapter can't come soon enough.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    This latest film aims for "The Joy Luck Club's" crossover appeal but ends up stilted and emotionally remote.
  52. The Ledge
    The Ledge is a sometimes-fascinating, often-aggravating chamber thriller that works best when it's doubling as an inquiry into faith.
  53. The Best and the Brightest
    The farce withers away when it should be expanding.
  54. Daydream Nation
    It's a film about teen angst that's too caught up in its characters' state of mind to see its way through to the other side.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Whistleblower
    The Whistleblower's loose camerawork and cool tones sometimes recall Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," but without his control or unwillingness to strip away his characters' humanity.
  56. American Reunion
    The film alternates sloppily executed sex gags with sentiment, as did its predecessors. And it's all just slightly more endearing and amusing than it has any right to be.
  57. What to Expect When You're Expecting
    The film is mostly an excuse to do a pregnancy-themed "Love Actually," an overblown symphony of birthing stories that reaches its crescendo in the maternity ward.
  58. 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.
  59. The Woman in Black
    Without Radcliffe at the center looking scared out of his wits, The Woman In Black would seem even slighter than it already does.
  60. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
    At times, G.I. Joe: Retaliation has a sense of its own ridiculousness — Pryce seems to be having a good time, anyway — but not enough to soften the mass death, hardware fetishism, and militaristic zeal that gets in the way of its escapist fun.
  61. Resident Evil: Retribution
    At this point, the Resident Evil movie franchise has become a personal playground for husband-and-wife team Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich; every few years, they find another excuse to pit Jovovich's videogame-inspired dark superhero, Alice, against zombies and other gruesome monsters.
  62. Hunter Killer
    The problem with this sort of Hungry-Man dinner theater is that it needs a true believer or at least a testosterone junkie behind the camera to rise above the lowest-common-denominator appeal of watching men yell at and rescue each other. Donovan Marsh is neither; his direction is perfunctory, unable to evoke even something as basic as the claustrophobia of a submarine’s interior. Perhaps he’s just following orders.
  63. Good Deeds
    As Wesley Deeds - get it? - Perry is stripped of Madea's fat suit and fright wig, but his performance is so muted, he might as well be swaddled in cloth.
  64. Despicable Me 2
    What’s missing — and this was the crucial component of part one — is a little sour to undercut the sweet. Like its protagonist, a bad guy gone boringly good, Despicable Me 2 has no edge. It’s fatally nice and insufficiently naughty.
  65. Halloween
    Halloween isn’t explicitly a horror-comedy, but it does have the destructive habit of undercutting its scares with broad laughs, Green and McBride deflating the tension at every turn with goofball asides.
    • 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.
  67. R.I.P.D.
    Nothing short of wiping their memories with a real-life neuralizer is going to convince moviegoers that the supernatural buddy-cop comedy R.I.P.D. is anything more than a thinly disguised "Men In Black" ripoff.
  68. Seventh Son
    Seventh Son is brisk and unpretentious, though the fact that these two qualities can be considered remarkable probably says more about the state of modern genre filmmaking than it does about the movie itself.
  69. Epic
    Epic is heavy on celebrity voices and light on imagination.
  70. The Watch
    In spite of some prominently featured green slime and power-beam weaponry, it won't make anyone forget "Ghostbusters" anytime soon.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tanner Hall
    The result isn't bad, it just lacks momentum and a strong reason for existing.
  72. Outrage
    Outrage is compelling to watch until it becomes exhausting.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bunraku
    Bunraku comes up frustratingly empty, and just as many of its elements simply bloat an overlong run time. (Demi Moore shows up seemingly to give the film more than one female speaking part.) It looks good, but Bunraku feels like a Frankenstein's monster of references that someone failed to animate.
  74. The Lucky One
    As a pretty, low-stakes bayou romance The Lucky One works well enough. When asked to carry any kind of dramatic weight, however, it collapses.
  75. The Woman in the Fifth
    In spite of his considerable intelligence and cinematic gifts, Pawlikowski isn't Roman Polanski, so the delusions and psychosis of his put-upon lead character doesn't have the right intensity. Fifth feels like a literary bauble, chipped by imperfections.
  76. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    In spite of a promising start, an unconventional setup, attractive photography, and game lead performances from Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing quickly turns into exactly the sort of wet cardboard box of a movie its title suggests.
  77. I, Frankenstein
    If the film is made with the understanding that campiness needs to be straight-faced to be funny, then are its “unintentional” laughs really that unintentional?
  78. Taken 2
    None of it is particularly novel or exciting.
  79. Warm Bodies
    For a movie about a love so powerful that it brings people back from the dead, it's curiously tepid. In spite of its repeated, overwrought image of grey, dead zombie hearts flushing and throbbing with new life, it lacks a beating heart of its own.
  80. The Other F Word
    The film's juxtaposition of punk-rock fashion and cozy domesticity proves neither comic nor revelatory. It is, however, adorable, though not adorable enough to compensate for the film's damnable lack of focus.
  81. Angels Crest
    Angels Crest has weaknesses that are tough to overcome. It relies too much on two particularly played-out indie clichés: a spare, plunky soundtrack, and a narrative structure that teases out characters' backstory far longer than necessary.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Roadie
    Aside from the entertaining specificity about its setting and its protagonist's profession, Roadie is as disappointingly rote as its standard setup suggests.
  83. 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.
  84. It's About You
    It's About You's sound is relatively clean and dynamic, but there's nothing remotely resembling a narrative here.
  85. Frankenweenie
    While Frankenweenie is pleasant enough as a curated tour through horror's past, it doesn't add much to its present.
  86. Escape from Planet Earth
    It’s unchallenging fun for a younger crowd, but adults might feel like they’re staring down a colorful 24-piece board puzzle, trying to figure out how such a simple activity could be drawn out over 90 minutes.
  87. We Have a Pope
    It's a shame that a movie about the pope as a man shows such scant fascination with the actual papacy - or with humanity, for that matter.
  88. The Swell Season
    It's too focused on capturing a bygone moment and portraying it as the present, while the band and the couple have inevitably moved on, to a new album, a high-profile suicide at one of their concerts, a band hiatus, and well beyond.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding
    Olsen, so good in "Martha Marcy May Marlene," is stuck playing a judgmental scold, while Wolff waves a video camera around and insists he wants to be Werner Herzog.
  90. Intruders
    Feels tentative and weak whenever it isn't simply baldly derivative. It's old-fashioned to the point of ossification.
  91. Darling Companion
    The tone is mild, the setting is peaceful to the point of sleepiness, and the stakes are incredibly low, even with the heart-tugging central presence of an adorable animal in danger.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jack and Diane
    Werewolves aren't a new metaphor for the wildness of adolescent urges, but Jack & Diane is a trudgingly self-serious affair that doesn't manage to be transporting on either its literal or conceptual levels.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Perfect Family
    Turner's interactions with Deschanel are so much weightier than the rest of the film that the other storylines seem extraneous.
  94. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    What a pity, then, that almost no imagination has been expended on the narrative.
  95. The Hangover Part III
    The best that can be said for the third, supposedly final chapter is that it jettisons the retracing-our-steps scenario of the 2009 original and its 2011 carbon-copy sequel. There is, in other words, no hangover in The Hangover Part III.
  96. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
    Borrowing every single component of its complicated plot from other sources, The Mortal Instruments is hodgepodge claptrap, but there’s a faint flicker of fun in its introducing-the-world passages.
  97. The Face of Love
    The Face Of Love provides itself with countless similar opportunities for emotional sweep, and squanders most of them by being workmanlike and unambitious, presuming that a story and a string score are enough to carry a movie.
  98. Madea's Witness Protection
    There aren't many laughs in this vaudevillian gambit, and fewer still in the fish-out-of-water comedy of Madea hosting a rich white family that's chiefly concerned with yoga, wi-fi, and their carb intakes. Still, Perry remains a true outsider artist-nobody makes movies like his. (And please don't try.)
  99. Pitch Perfect
    Theoretically, the "Bring It On" model can be applied to any remotely performative art. All it takes is a certain level of sass, some eye-catching performance showcases, and a plot where a talented outsider livens up a moribund group with some fresh ideas. Pitch Perfect slaps that stencil onto college a cappella singing groups, with a smattering of success.
  100. Cosmopolis
    As Pattinson nears the bottom - both of his fortune, and to all appearances, his sanity - Cronenberg has to take the film somewhere, emptying out into a confrontation between Pattinson and a disgruntled former employee (Paul Giamatti) that never fully ties together all that's come before.
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