The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    U2 3D
    The problem with U2 3D is that the U2 part is rarely as thrilling as the 3D part.
  2. One Night in Miami
    With the help of four intuitive performances, King’s film adaptation briefly removes these titans from their pedestals to tell a meaningful story that is as humane as it is political—a difficult feat when you’re talking about some of the biggest cultural figures in modern history.
  3. The Naked Kiss
    Innocence and corruption live together beneath the harmonious, hypocritical surface of an idyllic-seeming American town, and while that situation may seem familiar now, thanks to the films and TV shows Naked Kiss helped inspire—Blue Velvet comes immediately to mind—familiarity has dulled none of the film’s force.
  4. The Reason I Jump
    It’s a blatantly didactic film, yet its focus on advocacy feels justified given the misconceptions that continue to dominate society’s understanding of the autism community.
  5. Belle
    Individual moments in Belle are frequently magical: Many of the real-world scenes are beautifully staged and illustrated, with characters moving quietly and slowly through outdoor spaces while sunlight dapples across the water and birds flit by.
  6. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    The film succeeds by expertly melding the two stages of Tarantino's career. The rambling Tarantino of "Jackie Brown" and "Pulp Fiction" is evident in every lovingly crafted and delivered monologue, each leisurely paced scene and long take. The more action-oriented, fight-intensive Tarantino reappears in the viscerally exciting bursts of ultra-violence that punctuate the stretches of dialogue.
  7. Vera Drake
    The issue may be polarizing, but Vera Drake resonates with such seriousness and truth that it transcends the narrow limitations of polemic.
  8. Private Life
    The film’s dramatic core, its vision of what this kind of experience can do to a marriage, is rock solid, because Jenkins explores it with a high degree of specificity, precisely dramatizing her own difficult experiences.
  9. Moonage Daydream
    If there’s a message at all in Moonage Daydream, it is secondary to the experiential nature of the movie. That’s hardly a knock. One goes to a concert to be thrilled, not necessarily to gather life lessons. Leave that sort of thing for the other, lesser documentaries.
  10. BlacKkKlansman
    Although he’s made his most narratively entertaining movie in years, the filmmaker often still privileges polemical discourse over drama, grinding things to a halt for minutes-long speeches—he’s not so different from Godard in that way—and sometimes getting rather on-the-nose with the already exceptionally apparent contemporary echoes.
  11. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    Just as warm-hearted, bouncy, goofy, and unassumingly sharp as ever, the film makes the case that no matter how close Wallace and his out-of-time village get to our digitized reality, long-suffering Gromit will be there to provide grounding glares—and remind us to take a moment to pet your dog.
  12. Janet Planet
    Few artists can so seamlessly transcend artistic labels, but Annie Baker has proven that she possesses the natural knack for quiet storytelling across mediums.
  13. Lake of Fire
    If nothing else, the film puts the lie to the notion that an abortion could ever be frivolous or lightly considered. On that point, everyone in Lake Of Fire agrees, whether they acknowledge the other side or not.
  14. Under the Skin
    Under The Skin is rich with menacing atmosphere, so much so that viewers could probably tune out the narrative and still get on the proper wavelength.
  15. Red Army
    If Miracle can be thought of as "Flags Of Our Fathers: On Ice," Red Army is its "Letters From Iwo Jima." Gabe Polsky’s film humanizes the players of the Soviet Union national team, who were humiliated by a ragtag crew of amateur college kids during the most internationally politicized game in the history of American sports.
  16. Porco Rosso
    Porco Rosso was initially conceived as a short film for Japan Airlines, and its roots show in its delight with aviation and the experience of flight, but also in its somewhat shapeless plot.
  17. The Post
    A pile of muck (old muck, too) with no rake, Steven Spielberg’s National Board Of Review-approved Nixon-era newspaper drama The Post lacks the exact thing it glorifies: a reporter’s instinct for story.
  18. Fireworks
    Kitano infects the lyrical, meditative beauty of classical Japanese cinema with the jarring, low-down savagery of Western genre pictures. What emerges is more than the sum of its parts, an original and profound statement on mortality, how rich human life can be, and how quickly it can be taken away.
  19. Blind
    All this nesting-doll storytelling might feel hollow if Blind didn’t possess such a solid emotional foundation.
  20. The Magdalene Sisters
    The film might have been more powerful, not to mention fair, if the nuns believed they were doing right; only on movie night, when McEwan sees herself in Ingrid Bergman in "The Bells Of St. Mary's," does Mullan grant her so much as the delusion of rectitude.
  21. Tyson
    Tyson can be brutal with himself, but Toback's fawning documentary lets him off easy.
  22. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Working from a script by Edmund North (Patton), taken from a story by Harry Bates, Robert Wise directs the movie with a minimum of spectacle.
  23. The Sting
    In an era full of auteur-driven turbulence in Hollywood, The Sting stands out as a model of old-school craft, a richly appointed studio production with big stars and a premium on efficiency and pace.
  24. Eastern Promises
    An engaging thriller done in the Cronenberg style is still worth anyone's time. And this one boasts memorable turns from Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Vincent Cassel.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Footnote
    The love, jealousy, and stubborn pride of the relationship between Ashkenazi and Bar-Aba is the heart of the film, and that makes the deliberately uncertain note of the ending particularly frustrating.
  26. Being 17
    Téchiné has made one of his simplest and most elemental films, which is both Being 17’s most arresting feature and its weakness.
  27. The White Diamond
    Herzog also finds extraordinary beauty in what Dorrington is trying to accomplish: Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his boat, Dorrington wants to float around the natural world in a reverie, and when he finally does, he experiences a connection with Plage that's genuinely transcendent.
  28. Original Cast Album: Company
    Original Cast Album: Company would be worth viewing solely for Sondheim's witty lyrics and infectious music, but the human drama makes the session especially riveting.
  29. Free Solo
    As it stands, however, Free Solo still has plenty to offer in the edge-of-your-seat department.
  30. Trouble the Water
    Trouble The Water is infuriating in its depiction of helpless Americans getting left behind, and uplifting in the way it shows the Roberts putting their lives together, but it's also frustrating, because it lacks some focus.
  31. Saint Maud
    Saint Maud distinguishes itself through an emphasis on character over metaphor, as well as the nightmarish depths of the darkness at its center. We only get to see the true ferocity of Glass’ vision for a few fleeing moments, but have faith: It’s enough to burn into your soul forever.
  32. Misericordia
    While it lacks the surrealistic and fairy-tale elements that distinguish many of Guiraudie’s films (among them Sunshine For The Poor, Time Has Come, and Staying Vertical), Misericordia is nonetheless pervaded by a casual dreaminess and a disregard for the strictures of realism that leads in some (intentionally) silly directions.
  33. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
    It makes for an ironically modest, tasteful tribute to two filmmakers who, in their finest and most moving moments, were anything but restrained.
  34. Mustang
    The result, while less poetic and artful than Eugenides’ book or Coppola’s film, is much more emotionally direct, and pulls off a very tricky balancing act between bemoaning its characters’ fate and celebrating their resilience.
  35. Palm Springs
    It turns out to be something kind of special in its own right: a modern rom-com that’s funny and inventive and sweet and totally mainstream and a little deranged all at once.
  36. James White
    So James White’s title character is an entitled, self-centered a--hole. But the movie about him is still a marvel: an honest, moving, and occasionally even funny portrait of what happens when a cripplingly immature young man gets hit with one reality check after another.
  37. It Follows
    Fans of early John Carpenter will immediately identify the master’s influence — on the voyeuristic slink of the camera, the synth pulse of Rich Vreeland’s throwback score, and the transformation of “safe,” warmly lit residential environments into landscapes of dread.
  38. Don't Think Twice
    Don’t Think Twice is the rare movie that’s immersed in improv as a subject, not a behind-the-scenes technique for goosing laughs.
  39. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
    It’s more of a gently comic character sketch in boxing trunks.
  40. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Burton brings his signature visual style, and a pair of stock players for his stars, into this film adaptation, but he wisely follows Sondheim's lead, letting the music and spirit of the original piece show the way.
  41. Court
    For the most part, Tamhane improbably succeeds in creating a damning courtroom drama that derives much of its power from observing the cogs in the machinery when the machine is switched off.
  42. Locke
    Locke, as fascinating as it is in theory, never evolves into anything more than a glorified acting exercise.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    20,000 Days on Earth
    One thing that ties all his projects together is a grainy, cinematic quality, which is partly the reason why 20,000 Days On Earth works so beautifully.
  44. The Woman Who Left
    The film boasts one of Diaz’s most dramatically conventional, involving, and satisfying narratives.
  45. Neptune Frost
    There’s little about it that is realistic, but it has points to make about the real world.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Apostle
    The numerous, extended revival scenes are amazing, with Duvall a dynamo of divine energy and devout dedication.
  47. Election
    Witherspoon's broad, obsessive comic performance is bound to get the most attention, but Broderick does the best work of his career, finding an affecting spot between the all-purpose defiance of Ferris Bueller and the put-upon foil of his recent work.
  48. Creed
    Creed works far better than it should, and does so twice: as the unexpected payoff to a nearly 40-year-old series, and as the confirmation of a major talent in its director.
  49. Memories of Murder
    It takes enormous skill to pull off such a high-wire act without diminishing the gravity of the situation, but Bong and his first-rate cast are up to the task.
  50. Pride & Prejudice
    Most importantly, the director, script, and cast (rounded out by Judi Dench and well-placed imports Donald Sutherland and Jena Malone) all recognize that Austen is about much more than pretty costumes and knowing looks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Monsieur Lazhar
    More than a class full of convincing child actors and a genuinely affecting performance by Fellag, Falardeau offers a film as believably wrenching, and finally cathartic, as the grieving process itself.
  52. Transit
    Transit doesn’t just freeze its characters in place. They’re stuck in time, too, on a continuum that connects today’s exiled lost souls to yesterday’s. Because when it comes to people without country fleeing for their lives across the globe, there is no old or new, no then or now, no past or future, just an awful present tense. Transit, meanwhile, looks from this present tense like an early contender for the best movie of 2019. Or wait, is it 1939?
  53. Venus
    O'Toole is frail and probably won't make many more movies. So Venus is pitched partly as a fond farewell to a beloved artist, and his whole beautiful generation.
  54. Dear Comrades!
    Critics are often accused of reviewing a filmmaker’s politics over the film. But the truth is that, outside of welcome stretches of humor (in the beginning) and tension (towards the end), there isn’t much more to Dear Comrades!. The script is filled with flat, rhetorical speeches that are done no favors by Konchalovsky’s static direction.
  55. The Love Witch
    If The Love Witch simply raised the profile of its director, Anna Biller — a true auteur who not only wrote, directed, produced, and edited this film but also designed and hand made its sets and costumes — then it would be a success.
  56. Hundreds of Beavers
    Hundreds Of Beavers is one of the most distinctive movies you’ll see all year, and one made for midnight viewings if ever anything was.
  57. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
    Frequently, Morrison punctuates her points and her recollections with a warm chuckle, expressing the same embrace of life’s fullness that informs even her bleakest stories.
  58. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
    The film gives the audience a front-row seat and a pretty good approximation of what it was like to be there in the thick of it.
  59. Peter Hujar's Day
    The little things, the random asides and minor revelations, are just as powerful as the star-studded namedrops during this extensive conversation.
  60. The Killing of Two Lovers
    Ultimately, a movie like this succeeds or fails largely on the strength of its lead actors, and Machoian cast his well.
  61. Night of the Kings
    Lacôte’s got a lot on his mind, and despite a few missteps, his ambition pays off.
  62. Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
    At times, Goldsworthy's philosophy edges into fuzzy New Age-isms, but with an ever-widening gulf separating humans from their environment, his work demonstrates the enlightening pleasures of reconnecting.
  63. The Second Mother
    There’s a rah-rah element to The Second Mother that undermines its sociological ambition.
  64. Three Times
    A sampler of novella-length films set in three different time periods and starring the same two actors, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times resembles one of those delicate trios served at fine restaurants, each a fresh interpretation of a common ingredient.
  65. Hit Man
    While Hit Man satiates as a slick, sexy comedy-noir that will actually get at-home viewers to engage with media outside of the dreaded algorithm, it’s worth hoping that Linklater’s forthcoming big swings are met with similar zeal.
  66. Ghostlight
    While it connects as authentic and heartfelt, there’s also a sneaky profundity to match. Experiencing that in a theater alongside strangers is a very good thing.
  67. Ajami
    Copti and Shani show characters of different backgrounds interacting peacefully as individuals, then show how those characters subtly change when their affiliation with a group becomes an issue. And always the threat of violence looms.
  68. Viola
    It’s a pleasant, negligible wisp of a movie, notable mostly for what it suggests of its director’s potential.
  69. 127 Hours
    Worse still, all that introspection adds up to a disappointingly shallow accumulation of regrets and life lessons, none of them surprising. After the adrenaline rush, 127 Hours turns to vapor.
  70. Relaxer
    For a movie that’s often embarrassingly funny — with its absurdist hangout dialogue, posturing nobodies, and perfectly timed spews — Relaxer is fundamentally sad.
  71. Tell No One
    The story starts at a low boil and quickly heats up, but the problem with Tell No One--a common problem with contemporary pulp literature--is that at some point, all the narrative's intriguing questions resolve with prosaic answers, delivered in long, convoluted speeches by people wielding guns.
  72. The Illusionist
    The result is one beautiful movie-and no less so for making a strong case that beauty is a lie.
  73. The Deep Blue Sea
    There's a suffocating air to The Deep Blue Sea that makes it harder to access than other period romances of its kind, but Davies aligns himself wholly with Hester.
  74. The End of the Tour
    The result is less portrait of an artist than snapshot of a brief, meaningful encounter, shared between two men enjoying different stages of professional success. That one of these men happens to be a modern literary hero is almost, if not quite, incidental.
  75. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    Handsomely produced and photographed, which alone distinguishes it from the guerrilla standards of its cut-rate peers, Enron succeeds most by simply making a complex situation graspable, a tall order when the perpetrators are masters of grand-scale deception.
  76. Vortex
    Vortex looks unsparingly at characters at the end of life, and finds their experiences as scary as any traditional horror tale.
  77. There Is No Evil
    The film’s as compassionate as it is unsettling, and as provocative as it is poignant.
  78. Thieves Like Us
    Remove all the crime-movie trappings—and there aren't that many, once Altman gets through with them—and the film would still endure for its surface alone, capturing the Depression-era South with brushstrokes of language, décor, and radio-plays on the soundtrack.
  79. Maiden
    Director Alex Holmes and editor Katie Bryer cannily draw out the story beneath the story, allowing it to bob along in the wake of Edwards’ tale.
  80. War for the Planet of the Apes
    The end result is too boxed in by the demands of the franchise era and the usual restrictions of a PG-13 rating to qualify as art. It can’t show morally troubling violence or embrace hopelessness, and its day trip into the heart of darkness has to end with a ray of sunshine—“The horror, the horror...” in quotation marks.
  81. Duma
    The cheetah is the star in Duma, and no one directs animals more convincingly than Ballard, who knows better than anyone how to integrate patchwork nature shots into narrative action. Too bad the two-legged talking animals aren't as compelling this time out.
  82. The Constant Gardener
    Fiennes is the perfect John Le Carré hero: reserved and sophisticated, possessing the driest of wits, yet deceptively passionate in a way that people never really anticipate from him.
  83. You Won't Be Alone
    Stolevski ably balances art-house and horror tones to a degree that fans of both will appreciate, but like the film’s pointedly empathetic point of view, his emphasis on each helps fans of one style understand and appreciate the other.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Grand Tour
    Gomes picks apart an imagined past by experiencing its present, at the same time sharply unpacking the screwball comedy by separating the running man and the pursuing woman.
  85. Short Term 12
    At its best, the film conveys a wealth of compelling details that only an insider, or at least someone who’s done extensive and thorough research, would think worthy of singling out.
  86. Two of Us
    The burden of love is the fear of loss, and that unease is compounded when it’s tied to the inability to live as your authentic self. Meneghetti understands that loving someone isn’t just a joyous experience. It’s an anxiety-inducing one, too.
  87. A History of Violence
    Ed Harris and William Hurt deliver inspired turns as the villains.
  88. Grand Theft Hamlet
    A making-of film fueled, like the Let’s Plays and livestreams it’s in conversation with, by the chaos of a plan gone wrong, Grand Theft Hamlet is equal parts charming and cheesy—both due to its experimental setting.
  89. Sugar
    Instead of hitting all the usual beats, Sugar just moseys in a mostly delightful way.
  90. Marwencol
    Jeff Malmberg's documentary Marwencol is at its best when it focuses on Hogancamp's little world, and lets the artist walk the viewer through his town's increasingly dense mythology.
  91. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    There's a kind of dry tastefulness about The Wind That Shakes The Barley's historical recreations, even when Loach is staging rapes and executions.
  92. Rye Lane
    Rye Lane never tips over fully into cartoonish exaggeration, but the playful presentation of ids and egos through the dreamlike perspectives of its leads goes a long way toward making the film stand out as more than just a showcase for freewheeling chemistry.
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