The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,419 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
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    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Real Blonde
    Unfortunately, this slight, dull film would have benefited from a bit more style, as well as substance, as its lame characters and obvious observations never rise too far above the soap operas DiCillo parodies.
  2. TRON: Ares
    The result is a pretty dumb movie with beautiful visual effects, cleanly shot action, and a kickass soundtrack. Wouldn’t it be great if the future of blockbusters was only this bleak?
  3. Bartleby
    Parker's film is flat beyond the flatness appropriate to the story; the conflict between Glover and Paymer follows Melville's original so squarely that it quickly begins to feel like they're going through the motions.
  4. Brother Bear
    Unfortunately, Brother Bear doesn't offer much to marvel at beyond its animation.
  5. Bush's Brain
    Constructed out of poorly supported accusations, vague innuendo, and naked emotional appeals, Bush's Brain has a Rove-esque quality of its own.
  6. Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
    One amusing disadvantage of the crystal-clear, you-are-there 3-D cinematography, and the focus on the audience experience is that in practically every shot, it's easy to pick out off-message concertgoers who are bored, tired, or otherwise disengaged.
  7. Saw III
    Saw III may be the best of the trilogy; hopefully, it'll encourage its makers to wrap the franchise on a relatively high note.
  8. Ted 2
    Either way, Ted 2 strikes a sometimes-awkward balance between sincerity and cheap provocation. It also forgets that the real draw of the first film wasn’t Ted himself, but Wahlberg, whose sweet-lug routine scored a lot of belly laughs.
  9. Bride of Chucky
    Bride Of Chucky is pretty f.cking stupid, but it's also oddly effective in its sheer audaciousness and contempt for good taste. It probably won't win a lot of converts, but for Child's Play fans, horror geeks, and stoners, it should seem like manna from heaven.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Divergent
    The ultimate irony is that a series predicated on diverse individuals rising up against totalitarian regiment falls so completely in lock step with all other post-apocalyptic young-adult franchises.
  11. The Greatest Showman
    For the most part, the movie’s ideas about Barnum are incredibly stupid and, at times, kind of sweet in their daftness.
  12. And While We Were Here
    A committed Bosworth gives herself over to the role. Yet, there’s ultimately no real role for her to play.
  13. Phantasm: Ravager
    But even though it doesn’t make much sense, Phantasm is wildly imaginative and legitimately creepy, confronting death and mourning as part of the coming-of-age process while also delivering nutty Jawa-type critters and blood spurting out of peoples’ faces.
  14. The Banishing
    While it’s admirable that this isn’t just another haunted house movie that relies solely on atmosphere and a handful of jump-scares, The Banishing is, in the end, a bit too much: Watching it is akin to sitting through a supercut of highlights from a season of American Horror Story (subtitle: British Countryside). There’s fun to be had, but too little of it can be un-ironically admired.
  15. Last Vegas
    The high point of Last Vegas is also arguably the low point of Robert De Niro’s career.
  16. Luck
    The movie’s slipshod reasoning and grating rhythms suggest strongly that Lasseter’s ignominious professional defenestration (he was driven from his perch in 2017-18 amidst allegations of sexual misconduct) has impacted his storytelling judgment, the expertise and skill level of people who wish to work with him, or both
  17. Trudell
    Anyone looking for history lessons from Rae's documentary will have to be patient and alert enough to pick through the poetry.
  18. The Skin Game
    Alfred Hitchcock's early films run the gamut from not-bad to dreary, but they're mainly remarkable for how Hitchcockian they are.
  19. 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.
  20. Spanglish
    Though Brooks has a broad, crowd-pleasing sensibility, he knows how to appeal to the masses without insulting anyone's intelligence, and that's a rare gift these days.
  21. My Amityville Horror
    Walter has the case down cold and arrives at suitably ambiguous conclusions about terrors both real and suggested, but he gets there through a mix of dimly lit interviews and ominous underscoring that wouldn’t be out of place on an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries."
  22. Lucky Break
    The big musical setpiece, rife with possibilities for humor and uplift, needed to be funnier and more energetic than the half-hearted lyrics and choreography bother to muster.
  23. The Gatekeeper
    The same willingness to plunge into luridness and melodrama allows The Gatekeeper to work as a taut suspense film on its shoestring budget.
  24. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    Given the talent on display in Sinbad, and the winning brio it dredges out of questionable material, it's easy to wonder what Dreamworks' animation department could accomplish if it stopped following Disney's lead and started forging new paths of its own.
  25. 50 First Dates
    Dull and sappy, though anyone who finds Sandler dreamy should love it.
  26. Virgin
    Shot on shaky-cam digital video, filtered through what appears to be an old sweatsock, the film mimics Dogme-style realism in its vision of modern persecution, but in the end, it offers the sort of touchy-feely mysticism that belongs to the crystal-ball and tarot-reading set.
  27. Tears of the Sun
    Impossible to swallow as truth, this Rambo treatment is equally hard to enjoy as escapism.
  28. Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
    Doesn't aspire to do much more than disseminate Chomsky's ideas. On that level, it's a success, but on every other level, it's downright snooze-inducing.
  29. Ju-on: The Grudge
    Both too obvious and needlessly complicated, Ju-On juggles several non-chronological chapters based on different characters, ensuring that none of the corpses-to-be make much of an impression.
  30. Every Day
    At the movie's center, Schreiber approaches the role with a seriousness that lacks joy or any other colorful inflection.
  31. Jungle
    The fundamental intensity of Ghinsberg’s story is hard to totally squander. When it doesn’t give in to the desire to be a more traditional crowd-pleaser, Jungle provides a graphic and unvarnished account of a genuinely incredible story.
  32. The Counselor
    No amount of needless chatter can quite dilute the power of The Counselor’s grim endgame, especially given the way its writer and director conspire to keep the threat offscreen, like some terrible, unseen force of nature.
  33. Song One
    Not enough happens in Song One for the movie to really qualify as unpredictable, but it deserves credit for a steadfast avoidance of melodrama in a story that practically begs for it.
  34. Doctor Detroit
    Like Boat Trip, another guilty pleasure of mine, Doctor Detroit is so transcendently stupid, gimmicky, and shameless that it almost becomes a smart meta-parody of stupid, gimmicky, shameless high-concept '80s comedies.
  35. The Hawk Is Dying
    A fragile little movie, occasionally ridiculous, but with M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady In The Water," Giamatti proved that he can make even the weirdest material believable.
  36. Red Hook Summer
    The film's 121-minute running time is similarly cause for concern. Lee can be tight and focused as a gun-for-hire, but he's always viewed personal projects as irresistible invitations to self-indulgence and overreaching. Red Hook Summer is no exception.
  37. Solomon Kane
    It's taken a while for Kane to make it to the big screen, maybe because fantasy barbarians and long-ago kings have more immediate appeal than pious, slouch-hat-wearing men with poor senses of humor, but Solomon Kane gives it a go anyway. The results suggest a compelling movie could be made from the material, even if it isn't this one.
  38. Paris Can Wait
    As the movie pulls over to look at museum fabrics in vain search of a groove, it turns the audience into its impatient child, threatening to start kicking the back of the car seat any minute now.
  39. The Oh in Ohio
    It's never a promising sign when an attractive young woman's insatiable sexual desire for Danny DeVito represents the most convincing and compelling aspect of a movie, but that's the best this one can do.
  40. Underwater
    Unlike the best programmers, it never transcends its derivative origins and basic thrills. It’s another movie about thin characters and bland monsters—albeit one that’s better than the norm.
  41. Yonkers Joe
    Yonkers Joe is largely concerned with the delicate balance between a crook's business life and his personal life--a balance the movie itself has trouble managing effectively.
  42. Martin & Orloff
    The film too often gets bogged down by a rhythmless pace and an overabundance of the kind of wacky physical business better left to experts in a dumber brand of comedy.
  43. Prey for Rock & Roll
    An actress of magnetizing screen presence whose inability to land choice roles can only be attributed to her post-TRL age, Gershon easily identifies with her character, giving her performance an edge that this lazy, punked-up melodrama otherwise lacks.
  44. Rumble
    There’s liveliness in the conception of Rumble, knocked around and out by the demands of formulas no one has bothered to figure out.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Octagon
    Even if it’s not a good movie, it’s an important one, culturally and within the history of action movies. Along with Eric Van Lustbader’s novel The Ninja and the miniseries Shogun, both of which also came out in 1980, this was the first time the idea of the ninja, the shadowy mystical assassin figure, really permeated Western pop-culture consciousness.
  46. Thrash
    While Thrash resembles a general-audience survival horror drama, its forgettable protagonists also frequently stop to reassure viewers—mostly through profanity-laced dialogue and occasional bursts of gore—that it’s okay to scoff at whatever they’re looking at.
  47. Planes: Fire & Rescue
    It’s nice to look at, easy to watch, and impossible to remember for the length of a car-ride home.
  48. Escape Room
    The escape-room scenes themselves (a.k.a. the good stuff) are imaginatively conceived and deftly executed enough to justify a late-night cable viewing.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Emperor
    Since Hirohito remained in ceremonial power until his death in 1989, there’s no suspense about the outcome. Instead, the film offers a labored treatise on the Japanese national character, with endless speeches about honor, devotion, loyalty, and the people’s reverence for their emperor as a human deity.
  50. Tomb Raider
    When it comes to what should be the reliably dumb fun of tomb raiding, maybe there are worse crimes than insulting viewers’ intelligence or bombarding them with crappy special effects. Boring them? Now that’s a felony offense.
  51. Solo Mio
    While Solo Mio feels familiar, it doesn’t feel generic—and that’s a balancing act as impressive as James’ late-career pivot.
  52. Chicken Little
    Turning brief fairy tales into sweeping mini-epics has long been Disney's hallmark, but even for a fable, Chicken Little is thin stuff; it's a brief cautionary tale against alarmism, essentially "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" without any of the poetic irony.
  53. Child's Play
    As an enchanted talisman housing a depraved mind, Chucky was born one-of-a-kind. As nothing more than a glitching machine, he lacks the sniggling spirit that made him special. He’s been mass-produced.
  54. Noelle
    Noelle has a few of those peppermint hot chocolate moments, but thanks to its bizarre warm-weather detour and wasting of a stellar cast, it just barely makes the nice list.
  55. 21
    Short of counting the cards out loud, these geniuses seem to do everything they can to get caught.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gran Turismo
    Gran Turismo lacks the concentration to feel like it’s really going anywhere. Instead, there’s the nagging feeling it’s just spinning its wheels.
  57. 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.
  58. The Core
    With the exception of Hilary Swank, whose earnestness spoils the fun, a stellar cast seems in on the joke.
  59. The Santa Clause 2
    Despite the obviously mercenary nature of this sequel, there's a thimbleful of clever ideas at work here, most notably in the way Allen's RoboSanta begins to turn his toy factory into a tiny dictatorship.
  60. Orange County
    Ultimately it lacks even the conviction of its own nastiness.
  61. Super Troopers
    With no greater ambition than reworking the Police Academy movies, Broken Lizard comes up with a winning formula: one part laughs to two parts goodwill.
  62. Some Girl(s)
    The title’s parenthetical plural sums up the problem with Some Girl(s): Five slow-cook dialogues that reveal the nice-guy protagonist as a super-tool is four too many.
  63. 300: Rise of an Empire
    Murro doesn’t so much direct as frame and stage, placing the characters against digital desktop-wallpaper skies and constructing each battle scene as a showcase for the characters’ prowess and toughness.
  64. State Like Sleep
    The whole thing aspires to art, but can really only be appreciated as trash.
  65. Lockout
    More than any masculine heroics, Pearce's primary job is maintaining the tone: smug, irreverent, and giddily punch-drunk.
  66. Carnage Park
    Keating keeps the story tight, giving the audience enough twists and turns to keep the ride fun.
  67. The Map That Leads to You
    While The Map That Leads To You looks great—much of it clearly shot on location in Spain during golden hour—it’s too staid and calm to reflect the throw-caution-to-the-wind passion of its two young protagonists. Rather than getting swept up in Heather and Jack’s courtship, the film keeps them at a distance, like a slow-motion car crash you can’t look away from.
  68. Bullet to the Head
    The X-factors tend to be the script and the performances, and those elements largely betray him in Bullet To The Head, which is a perfunctory exercise whenever Hill isn't busying himself with gun battles, ax fights, and other mano-a-mano confrontations. He can only do so much.
  69. Daisy Miller
    The film looks amazing, but the cranked-up acting (complete with the most rapid-fire dialogue Bogdanovich had yet attempted) is tough to bear, especially as it becomes apparent that James' subtle character study is beyond the story-driven Bogdanovich's capabilities.
  70. The Sicilian Girl
    She was simultaneously a pariah and a marked woman, and Amenta respectfully honors her quixotic, deeply lonely quest for justice.
  71. Kiss of the Damned
    Like a lot of the retro-horror films that have popped up on the art-house and festival circuits over the past several years, Xan Cassavetes’ Kiss Of The Damned is more about mood and texture than plot.
  72. I'm Still Here
    If this is a documentary, it's a profoundly embarrassing one, in which Affleck has exposed Phoenix's soul and found it shallow and damaged. If it's a mockumentary, though, its greatest value is in pointing out the media's gullibility, and reminding audiences that even in an age of limited privacy, they still have to question what they're told and even what they witness themselves. It's cruel either way, but riveting nonetheless.
  73. The Girl on the Train
    Taylor’s direction is cosmetic, focused on well-groomed and well-dressed actors, spotless interiors, and the arty, textured camerawork supplied by cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, whose gifts are both self-evident and sort of wasted here. It’s artificial without a hint of intentional façade: No home looks lived in and no conversation feels like it could have occurred outside of a laboratory environment.
  74. Angels & Demons
    At half the length, and with half of Hanks' sneering pretension, this would make a pretty terrific action film.
  75. Journeys with George
    Pelosi should be roughed up some, though, for what little she does with her access to the then-president-to-be and the political circus surrounding him.
  76. High Crimes
    A major disappointment that lacks the courage to follow through on its premise's themes.
  77. Orgazmo
    The film too closely resembles what it's attempting to spoof--minus the obvious payoffs, of course.
  78. Casino Royale
    Casino Royale offers plenty for the eyes and ears, but little for the funnybone.
  79. Gold
    Tension does build and there is a satisfying conclusion, but there is a significant stretch where, undeniably, a sizable amount of air comes out of the balloon.
  80. The Longest Yard
    The 2005 version refashions the material into a dual vehicle for Chris Rock and Adam Sandler, "Saturday Night Live" alums who specialize in lazy, ramshackle comedies that are just okay enough to not completely suck.
  81. Alien Trespass
    Even the movie's rubber monsters look tired.
  82. 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."
  83. Writer of O
    More speculative than deeply felt.
  84. Tolkien
    The real model here, of course, is "Shakespeare In Love," but that movie was also a comedy, while Tolkien is as reverent and moist-eyed as a Peter Jackson goodbye scene.
  85. The Rider Named Death
    In spite of good performances and colorful design, The Rider Named Death is too grave and remote to stir much emotion.
  86. American Gun
    The Sutherland segments are the most bothersome, because they never really reach a resolution, and because they're betrayed by Avelino's uni-faceted approach.
    • The A.V. Club
  87. Wonderful World
    Broderick’s tendency to hang all his problems on corporate greed and heartless bureaucracy leads to some strange missteps.
  88. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    The idea of a toy store as a living, responsive being is a good one, but Helm doesn't take that idea to imaginative places.
  89. The Perfect Host
    It's best enjoyed as a crackling performance piece.
  90. Step Up
    Rather than cast actors who can't dance or dancers who can't act, Step Up splits the difference with stars Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, who pull double duty with uninspired competence.
  91. Penelope
    First-time director Mark Palansky is trying for a deft, hip, modern fairy-tale feel, but the odd material, sprawling story, and complicated tonal balancing act get away from him, and the film winds up as a poorly paced tug-of-war between sweet quirk and sloppy camp.
  92. Porto
    Its strongest evocation of poignant, imperfect memory has to do with its leading man, and the glimpse it provides of a fuller career that never was.
  93. The Retaliators
    The film teases us with hat-tips and in-jokes and then pushes them aside to become an ungainly horror mashup that works in pieces, most notably during its climatic free-for-all, but not as a whole. In The Retaliators, the storylines fly in as many directions as the blood.
  94. The Twits
    The Twits is exactly what one might imagine a Netflix Dahl adaptation to be: Diluted, simplistic animation, as cloying and feckless and smoothed over as anything from the last decade of Illumination films.
  95. Admission
    Admission ultimately can’t quite figure out what kind of a film it wants to be, so like a lot of promising but unfocused contenders, it never quite lives up to its potential. But there’s value to be found in its meandering.
  96. Womb
    It's a fascinating film to think about, but far too cool to touch.
  97. Liam Gallagher: As It Was
    It’s a good story—especially the focus on music as redeemer—but it does feel a bit too warm and fuzzy.
  98. 3 Needles
    Give Fitzgerald credit for ambition and good intentions, but for all its truth-to-power saber-rattling, 3 Needles is distressingly dim.
  99. Particles of Truth
    Though clumsy, Particles Of Truth isn't hopeless. Before turning to filmmaking, Elster made her living as a celebrity fashion stylist, so she has a good eye for color, motion, and the feel of New York in summer. And, because she worked primarily on music videos, she uses music well.
  100. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    It reduces a large cast to an unwieldy collection of simpletons and caricatures.
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