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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  1. The Razor's Edge
    The Razor's Edge never quite reaches its destination but there are all manner of minor pleasures to be gleaned along the way.
  2. Pushing Tin
    A mess, but for the most part it's a fascinating mess. It helps that it boasts great acting all around--not just from Cusack, Thornton, and Jolie, but also from Cate Blanchett
  3. Swing Vote
    This potentially sharp working-class fantasy proves strangely unsatisfying.
  4. Choke
    Cluttered, flavorless Choke, which crams the novel's nervy narration into an irritating voiceover, and leaps around in time and space with all the attention span of an ADD-addled child.
  5. Lisa Frankenstein
    And that’s perhaps the most amazing thing about Lisa Frankenstein: its instant timelessness. Sure, it may be a pastiche, or a love letter to previous eras, or any other euphemism for cinematic recycling, but that doesn’t prevent it from being just as much a singular creation as any of its forebears, sidestepping derivative rehashing in favor of an original take on teen angst that isn’t bound by its homage.
  6. Halloween Ends
    Halloween Ends is almost passable as a nondescript sequel—a little blood pumped into the carcass of an indefatigable slab of intellectual property. But for somebody who has fought and lost and survived for so many years, it’s less vital a finale than Laurie Strode deserves.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Wish
    Wish is a mess, but there are ways it could be called an innovative one.
  8. Salem's Lot
    Salem’s Lot isn’t a disaster (far worse horror films have made plenty of money at the box office), but a bloodless and frail version of the story drained of its vitality.
  9. Where the Truth Lies
    Egoyan's sensibility doesn't quite fit the material. His trademark stone-faced austerity never bends to capture the black comedy in the dissonance between his characters' public and private lives. It almost demands a trashier approach.
  10. The Next Big Thing
    John Waters covered the same territory in his underrated 1998 comedy "Pecker," but without Waters' colorful mix of outrageousness and affection, Posner can't stir up the rancor to score even a few glancing blows at an easy target.
  11. The Last Shot
    Given an irresistible premise, Nathanson doesn't trust his material enough to follow through without excessive mugging, but his sense of the absurd leads to amusing digressions along the way.
  12. I Am David
    While it's not always necessary for filmmakers to relate that closely to their material, Feig's marked distance from the story of a sullen boy who parts the Iron Curtain may account for its generic artlessness.
  13. Luther
    The unimposing Fiennes may not suggest the burly Luther's plain-talking peasant background, but he at least captures the charisma.
  14. Shall We Dance
    Chelsom has transformed a low-key charmer into an overblown shtick-com whose idea of restraint only extends to forgoing wacky sound effects, a laugh track, and amplified rim-shots every time a character delivers a wisecrack.
    • 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.
  16. Eenie Meanie
    Eenie Meanie largely coasts on clichés, every brief high point deflated by its worldview.
  17. Midway
    A stolid film that largely rests on its director’s competence at helming extravagant aerial views of pyrotechnic destruction.
  18. Reno 911!: Miami
    Reno 911's anti-heroes are doomed, deluded losers, but they engender a strange sympathy all the same.
  19. The Lost City
    Garcia might have thought he was making a Cuban "Casablanca," but his big, empty spectacle amounts to less than a hill of beans.
  20. Senior Year
    Painfully simplistic in its execution, which frequently undervalues its clever set-up, and featuring unlikeable, poorly drawn characters, the movie works overtime to make the audience actively dislike it.
  21. The Hitman's Bodyguard
    The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which bears the tagline “Get triggered” and is essentially a dumber, tackier "Midnight Run," was destined to be one of those Neanderthalic, faux-merican EuropaCorp action movies, like "The Transporter" or "From Paris With Love" ­­— except fate fumbled, and the film ended up as a coasting-on-star-power Hollywood programmer directed by The Expendables 3’s Patrick Hughes.
  22. The Wild
    There may be nothing new under the sun, but there are at least films that dress up old tropes in new ways. This isn't one of them.
  23. Poltergeist
    The most retro thing about the remake is its specific, outdated utility: If anyone still patronizes video stores with hard copies, and if those stores don’t happen to have the original Poltergeist (or Insidious) in stock on a Friday night, this version might do the trick.
  24. The Day After Tomorrow
    Emmerich now directs entirely in watered-down Spielbergisms, and his storytelling skills, never strong, have gone slack. His talent for stretching a concept that can be described in 10 seconds into a feature-length movie, on the other hand, remains impressive.
  25. Puerto Ricans in Paris
    Guzmán has been a delightful presence in countless movies over the years, and it’s neat to see him take on an unambiguously leading role, especially one focusing on two Puerto Rican characters. But the movie’s Luis is a surprisingly dull Ugly American.
  26. Hercules
    Unsurprisingly, Johnson makes for a perfect movie-star Hercules, and the film gets a lot of mileage by playing his charismatic-but-modest take on the character off of the strong, predominantly British cast.
  27. The Trip
    It doesn't help that Sullivan has twice as much screen time and half as much charisma as Braun.
  28. Full Grown Men
    Full Grown Men often becomes as intolerably silly as the twee Amerindies it's reacting to.
  29. Rambo: First Blood Part II
    It may be a dishonest, xenophobic, exploitative act of historical revisionism, but it's effective, and Jack Cardiff's cinematography lends Rambo's comic-book adventures an epic sweep.
  30. The Sunlit Night
    Unfortunately, everything engaging about the narrative is overshadowed by gratuitous quirkiness.
  31. The Legend of Zorro
    Feels like a half-hearted shrug of a sequel, an attempt to put a lucrative franchise on life support.
  32. Max
    It is dull and weird — weird in that way that it is pronounced we-ee-eird, the stretched vowel signaling a weirdness that is probably unconscious on the part of the filmmakers.
  33. Irresistible
    When the wisdom being imparted is this conventional, you better find a dramatically or comedically satisfying way to package it. Stewart hasn’t.
  34. 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.
  35. Boy Kills World
    While the dialogue, world-building, and characters may be lackluster, there’s one thing that Boy Kills World can always be relied upon to deliver, and that’s violence.
  36. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny
    Anyone merely hoping for more gravity-defying fight sequences will be reasonably satisfied by Sword Of Destiny, which chugs along amiably enough and never goes very long without a skirmish of some sort.
  37. Masterminds
    Masterminds leans heavily on its cast of comic ringers—Ken Marino as a yuppie neighbor, Jason Sudeikis as a cavalier hit man, Leslie Jones as an irate federal agent—without giving them anything especially funny to say or do.
  38. The Time Traveler's Wife
    The story is still mostly fabulous, and its novelty helps carry the film, but this still comes across like a poor high-school stage version: sincere and kind of sweet, but endlessly clumsy.
  39. Project Almanac
    As a time-travel movie, Project Almanac pays fast and loose with its own fantastical rules, contradicting itself constantly.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blade
    Sure, the story is pretty standard, and the dialogue is laughable or worse. But creative cinematography and non-stop, decently choreographed gratuitous violence make watching this comic-book movie—Blade is a minor, almost-forgotten Marvel comic—entertaining.
  41. Daylight
    The assembly line of adrenaline-pumping obstacles makes the two-hour runtime fly by, though director Rob Cohen (DragonHeart, The Fast And The Furious, xXx) still manages to highlight a handful of quieter moments.
  42. Practical Magic
    Its flat whimsy, VH1-ready musical montage sequences, and less-than-magic magic realism will probably not be enough to hold the attention of all but the most undiscriminating fans of witches and Stockard Channing.
  43. The Prince and Me
    Few actresses exude restless intelligence as effortlessly as Stiles, which is fortunate, since Martha Coolidge's film relies on that forceful charisma to make it past awful dialogue, contrived situations, and hokey use of Disney-style butterflies.
  44. Man on Fire
    Scott's latest exercise in assaultive excess nevertheless lingers for two and a half hours, like a drunken houseguest who won't leave.
  45. Sonic the Hedgehog 2
    Working with what feels like a larger budget and fewer origin-story obligations, returning screenwriters Pat Casey, Josh Miller, along with franchise newcomer John Whittington, create a globe-trotting adventure that touches on fun ideas for viewers of all ages, even if the film is too long and jarring to stick the landing.
  46. Silver City
    Sayles' version of reality is grim, but it provides an enlightening, grounding reminder that there's a far more crucial world of politics going on behind the headlines.
  47. The Ardennes
    First-time director Robin Pront serves up plenty of brooding atmosphere, but the screenplay, adapted from a stage play by Pront and Jeroen Perceval (who also plays the sensible Harvey Keitel role), never succeeds in eluding genre cliché.
  48. Herbie Fully Loaded
    In reviving the beloved Disney property, Robinson attempts to resuscitate the fast-motion shots and sub-Three Stooges physical comedy of classic Herbie, but the new model seems distantly related to the innocent, peppy little car of old.
  49. The Nun II
    At least the jump scares are effective, especially in IMAX theaters where the headrests rumble every time Valak makes a sudden move. That, and a couple of decent makeup tricks are pretty much all The Nun II has. The character deserves better, and so do you really.
  50. The Great Gilly Hopkins
    The whole movie falls between stylization, which it mostly lacks, and realism, which it can’t quite claim with its non-teenage teenager spouting non-swearing swears.
  51. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    It may well be plenty for a fun enough ride at the theaters, but ultimately this is an exhausting trip into this increasingly unwieldy franchise.
  52. Maniac
    If it’s possible to be both impressed and appalled by a movie’s pull-no-punches savagery, Maniac earns that dubious distinction.
  53. The Dry Land
    A painfully earnest drama about post-traumatic stress disorder that sticks so closely to the soldiers-coming-home template, writer-director Ryan Piers Williams seems to be diligently working through a checklist of returning-warrior-movie clichés.
  54. The General's Daughter
    The General's Daughter isn't a poorly made or acted film, but it's so shallow, hypocritical, and sleazy that it's difficult not to find it repulsive.
  55. Open Windows
    Open Windows attempts to disguise a revenge movie by cloaking it in the flash of a voyeuristic techno-thriller, but the combined concepts are so high that the film resolves as Vigalondo reaches his Icarus moment, the corpse so mangled and unpleasant the project’s ambition can only be identified via dental records.
  56. Heaven Is for Real
    Unfortunately, Heaven Is For Real isn’t really a movie about religion so much as an attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audience of conservative evangelicals.
  57. The Giver
    The ironic side effect is that this major influence on today’s new class of dystopian YA smashes now looks like just another greedy knockoff on-screen—a monochromatic "Divergent," or something similar.
  58. Ong Bak 2
    What sold the original Ong Bak was the action, not the story, and on an action level, Ong Bak 2 lives up to its title.
  59. The Alto Knights
    This one’s The Irishman for anyone in dire need of new glasses.
  60. Empire Records
    The film exists for its shots of telegenic youngsters busting loose to a bankable soundtrack, and it's the cheesy dialogue, overstuffed plot, and predictable character arcs that come across as superfluous.
  61. Blair Witch
    Blair Witch will make popcorn fly. But it won’t make anyone believe.
  62. The Skeleton Key
    Wholly devoid of suspense or chills, The Skeleton Key simply bides its time until its big final plot twist, but the filmmakers don't seem to realize that a second-rate twist can't redeem a third-rate fright flick.
  63. Hotel Transylvania
    Hotel Transylvania is occasionally the kind of fast-moving, gag-a-second film that relies on quantity of humor rather than quality.
  64. Rock of Ages
    This glossy musical, from "Hairspray" director Adam Shankman, is a shameless crowd-pleaser where cardboard characters use the most overplayed and ubiquitous hits of the 1980s to express the aching banality of their souls.
  65. A Teacher
    By continually deferring dramatic tension, the filmmaker puts more weight on the movie’s closing scenes — which are abrupt but true to life — than they can handle.
  66. Gunpowder Milkshake
    Gunpowder Milkshake comes alive in its darkly comic action sequences, which prioritize creativity as much as brutality, with an uncommon focus on props, locations, and wide compositions.
  67. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    Carter and his underachieving cohorts have seldom given cultists less to believe.
  68. Like Mike
    Weirdly earnest and earnestly weird.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    U.S. Marshals
    It isn't so much a bad action movie as a symptom of the greater problem with most action movies: Audiences tire of sitting through the same fitful, unfulfilling formula, no matter how much terse language and gunfire is tossed in.
  70. Big Trouble
    It's a tribute to the film's goofy, inconsequential charm that it's still possible to laugh as someone sneaks a bomb past airport security.
  71. The Alamo
    Turns into an edited-for-TV version of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch"--flat, bloodless, and utterly bereft of period grit.
  72. Psycho
    Hitchcock's Psycho had a lot more than watchability going for it. Van Sant's film impresses only on the level of a cinematic parlor trick, and while that makes it an interesting curiosity, the world doesn't need it.
  73. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    The Odd Life Of Timothy Green attempts to stage a modern fairy tale in Middle America. But in spite of an abundance of earnestness, the pixie dust needed to create magic remains out of the film's reach.
  74. Semi-Pro
    Deserves credit for attempting something more emotional and dramatic than the typical Ferrell gagfest, but Harrelson and Benjamin's earnest subplots cost the film comic momentum and big laughs without adding much in return.
  75. The Witches
    Where is the Zemeckis who projected a cartoon-noir Christopher Lloyd into every child’s nightmares? The same director has thrown a softening, coddling filter over Dahl, preserving the shape of his source material while sanding down its edges.
  76. Lakeview Terrace
    Ultimately, Lakeview Terrace isn't about race so much as it's about being a man, which has been LaBute's fallback theme from the start.
  77. Everybody's Fine
    Follows a dispiritingly predictable arc.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Lebanon, Pa.
    The turns the film takes toward the end do offer a few surprises, particularly in the form of redemption for the waffling hero-not in running after the ones he loves, but in standing by them when they need him.
  79. Slipstream
    The result is either one of the most self-indulgent vanity projects in the history of the Hollywood star system, or a rare revealing look at a distinguished actor who usually keeps his real self out of the spotlight.
  80. Gypsy 83
    The outsider road picture Gypsy 83 means well, but writer-director Todd Stephens can't keep his aesthetic out of the way.
  81. Kate
    Even if the combat choreography that made this vein of cinema so popular is up to snuff, and Winstead does handle her steps ably even as her character breaks down, this film should aspire to be more than a delivery system for a few solid shootouts.
  82. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
    We’re used to these movies being designed to launch us into one big final fight, and that’s fine, but the craftsmanship this time is shoddy, packed with dead ends, and struggling to maintain its grasp on an emotional throughline.
  83. Until Dawn
    The terrible script so often steals the spotlight that the gory, by-the-numbers filmmaking putting it into action is almost besides the point. Sandberg, for his part, can stage an effective horror sequence.
  84. November
    Feels more like a clever student short that got out of hand than the Kafka-esque nightmare that director Greg Harrison (Groove) likely intended.
  85. Drones
    Mumford and O’Leary struggle to make sense of their characters, but are stymied by a script that regards them primarily as mouthpieces for talking points that, again, aren’t even the points anyone’s using when talking about drone warfare.
  86. Pumpkinhead
    Had Pumpkinhead been made in the silent era, it might now be treated with the reverence granted Nosferatu.
  87. Just Like Heaven
    Part of the problem is Mark Ruffalo, whose tortured sensitivity in "You Can Count On Me" and "We Don't Live Here Anymore" made him seem like Marlon Brando's heir apparent, not Will Smith's.
  88. Before I Disappear
    The result is predictably, frustratingly bloated and meandering, even as the short’s charms remain largely intact.
  89. The A-Team
    The film's featherweight tone and self-conscious excess would be a lot more palatable if everyone didn't seem so insufferably pleased with themselves. The film acts as if it's won the race before the starting gun has even been fired.
  90. The Passion of the Christ
    Gibson makes sure that no blow remains unfelt, and his approach can't help but stir the body, but he never touches the soul.
  91. Just Friends
    The tantalizing promise of 90 heavenly minutes of Ryan Reynolds in a roly-poly fatsuit and unconvincing tubby make-up (which make him look like a younger version of Martin Short's Jiminy Glick) proves a case of the old bait-and-switch.
  92. The Manitou
    While Manitou does have its slower sections, the climax is a thing of beauty to be enjoyed forever, with crummy special effects, bad lightning, a star field, an Evil One symbolized by a cataract, and Tony Curtis struggling to maintain his dignity.
  93. Bobby Deerfield
    Don't be fooled by the action-packed DVD cover: Pacino spends roughly five minutes of Deerfield racing, and two hours learning, from a woman facing death, how to embrace life.
  94. Secret Society
    A feeble and self-congratulatory heart-warmer.
  95. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    Nothing about Hey Arnold! The Movie cries out for the big-screen treatment, but it at least makes the transition from television to film with its charm intact.
  96. The Other Side of the Bed
    The Spanish import The Other Side Of The Bed takes a winning idea and drives it directly into the ground.
  97. Anything But Love
    Predictable and corny, but to their credit, Cary and Rose strive to make the situation real.
  98. Nostalgia
    Hamm gets to dig deeper than he has before on the big screen, tweaking some Draperian notes of aloofness into a credible emotional dimension, even when Nostalgia abandons its unsensational, slice-of-life-in-boxes approach for something closer to traditional tragedy.
  99. In Secret
    If it weren’t for the costumes, the basic plot could be mistaken for a 19th-century version of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" or "Double Indemnity."
  100. A Country Called Home
    There are a lot of bad things this movie doesn’t do, which is not quite the same as doing anything particularly well.
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