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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  1. Hitch
    A slick new meta-romantic comedy selling a transparent yet strangely irresistible fantasy of upscale romance among the beautiful but guarded.
  2. Inside Deep Throat
    Inside Deep Throat starts small and keeps expanding outward until there's seemingly no facet of American life the phenomenon hasn't touched.
  3. My Mother's Smile
    As absurd as the situation gets--and the film occasionally launches into surreal asides that only heighten the absurdity--director and star both keep it grounded in the situation's emotions.
  4. Uncle Nino
    Written and directed by Robert Shallcross, and seemingly misdirected into theaters from its natural home on the ABC Family Channel, Uncle Nino is a sweet but not particularly distinguished effort.
  5. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    The movie winds its way artfully from a straight animal study to something more profound. It's hard to shake the film's astonishing final thoughts and shots, as Bittner nervously contemplates parrot eggs while hawks circle overhead.
  6. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    It's as notable for what it isn't as for what it is, but in a field full of loud, obnoxious fare, its easygoing affability qualifies as a welcome change of pace.
  7. The Letter: An American Town and the 'Somali Invasion'
    Makes effective drama, but ultimately it's just an outrage machine, designed to get the viewer fired up by the sight of warring ideologues preaching to their own.
  8. Nobody Knows
    Loosely structured around four seasons, Nobody Knows unfolds in a long series of episodes that slowly progress from lightly comic to bracingly sad as the situation deteriorates.
  9. Boogeyman
    Mostly Boogeyman remains content to be a film about a boogeyman who hides in closets and under beds and gobbles people up. And for that, it deserves a certain amount of respect. On the other hand, the film could hardly be any sillier.
  10. The Wedding Date
    The lucky Mulroney gets to play the kind of sensitive hunk that women want and men want to be, but he's the only one who can be heard over the tired wheezing of the romantic-comedy machinery.
  11. Harry + Max
    One of the film's oddest missteps is in making the boy-band gig just another occupation, instead of using it as a central way to illuminate the brothers' unusual bond.
  12. The Nomi Song
    Without coming out and saying it, The Nomi Song creates the sense that its subject might simply have been a few hundred years ahead of his time.
  13. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    It wants to humanize the plight of the disabled, but it undermines its worthy aims by presenting its leads as martyrs and saints.
  14. Swimming Upstream
    The film begins as a delicate duet between Rush and Davis, but as Rush spirals out of control, his performance becomes a flashy, over-the-top solo akin to his hammy turns in "Shine" and "Quills."
  15. Sunset Story
    Has its share of look-at-these-cute-old-commies laughs… But Gabbert mostly avoids making her subjects into hobbling punch lines, or even turning them into one-dimensional heroes.
  16. Assisted Living
    Assisted Living gets a little better as it wears on, and at least it's refreshingly short.
  17. Daybreak
    It maintains a strong enough sense of squirmy humanity that its characters' epiphanies and emotional growth feel both hard-earned and richly deserved.
  18. Freak Weather
    Though the whole of Freak Weather is too forced and fitful, significant stretches of the movie hold together. McKenzie gives a magnetic performance.
  19. Travelers and Magicians
    Unsurprising tribute to the sweetness of rural dwellers.
  20. Alone in the Dark
    A fairly faithful adaptation of what a game is like, but without the pleasure of getting to play or the much-needed option of pressing the "off" button.
  21. Hide and Seek
    Like far too many junky post-"Sixth Sense" thrillers, Hide And Seek essentially exists for the sake of its third-act plot twist, but the climactic revelation merely pushes it from bad to worse.
  22. Fascination
    Nearly everything about Fascination feels overdone. At its delirious worst, it's as pungent a Parisian cheese shop, offering a cornucopia of laughable scenes.
  23. Lost Embrace
    At its best, Lost Embrace conveys, with real warmth, the hopelessly intertwined pasts and shared futures of a community of outsiders and immigrants. At worst, it's a sitcom without a laugh track.
  24. Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land
    The main problem with The Promised Land is that Jhally and Ratzkoff are eager to foster dissent, but not to invite it into their own movie. Their talking heads sound rehearsed and repetitive, and the righteous anger dissipates without a contrary opinion to provide a ceiling.
  25. Army of One
    By the end, even Goodman seems to have lost interest.
  26. Are We There Yet?
    All too effectively conveys the claustrophobic horror of being shackled in a small space with two whiny, hateful children.
  27. Beautiful Boxer
    Uekrongtham films the saga in gorgeous style.
  28. Head-On
    A romantic comedy with jagged edges, Fatih Akin's exhilarating Head-On paves the road to love through miles of prickly thatch.
  29. Monsieur N.
    De Caunes and screenwriter René Manzor do well when they dwell on history from a mundane human perspective, but Monsieur N. is too dry and too unsurprising for its two-hour running time.
  30. Watermarks
    Well-intentioned and exceedingly nice, Watermarks aspires to warm the soul, but succeeds only in numbing the mind.
  31. She's One of Us
    For all the smart visual design, though, She's One Of Us is frustratingly clinical.
  32. Assault on Precinct 13
    Retains every hooky, marketable, and superficially attractive element from its source material while losing everything that made it special.
  33. Machuca
    Though Machuca ultimately doesn't shy away from taking sides, it wisely keeps the focus on the human element. The politics take place in the background until they demand the foreground.
  34. Coach Carter
    Coach Carter eventually curdles into a grim love letter to discipline and accountability, which makes it the perfect sports film for W.'s second term, but not a whole lot of fun.
  35. Elektra
    The role needs a steely, inhuman reserve, and Garner's innate likeability works against her.
  36. Racing Stripes
    A film divided against itself. Granted, neither part is particularly distinguished or appealing but the old-timey sports-movie elements at least possess a quaint charm. Unfortunately, that's wholly negated by the film's stumbling attempts at comic relief.
  37. The Chorus
    The Chorus plucks desperately at the heartstrings, but fails to breathe new life into a tired old tune.
  38. Appleseed
    Its busy, stiff, artificial graphics are a perfect match for its busy, stiff, artificial plot. A simple Shirow pinup parade might almost be preferable.
  39. Short Cut to Nirvana: Kumbh Mela
    Inept.
  40. White Noise
    It's a testament to Michael Keaton's fine lead performance that White Noise doesn't come off as laughably preposterous.
  41. Sky Blue
    Sky Blue is never subtle about its images of loneliness and isolation, or in fact about anything else. But as clichéd as its images are, they're still visually and tonally stunning.
  42. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    No movie that opens with the line "Time was never a friend to Bobby Long" could possibly be any good, and sure enough, A Love Song For Bobby Long lives down to its squibbed kickoff.
  43. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    Comparisons to "Taxi Driver" are unavoidable and mostly unflattering to Mueller's film, but Assassination engages more directly with the political fissures of the time, which deeply divided the nation.
  44. The Merchant of Venice
    When the halves of the film collide in the courtroom climax, it looks like a misbegotten pilot for Law & Order: Usury Victims Unit.
  45. In Good Company
    Only when it wraps up all its loose ends with a feel-good sitcom conclusion does it finally reveal itself: It's an interesting failure rendered all the more disappointing for veering so close to success.
  46. Fat Albert
    While endearing as cartoons, they don't wear flesh well.
  47. Darkness
    It's not even bad enough to be any fun.
  48. The Woodsman
    While The Woodsman gets the psychological profile right, it fails to make Bacon a man.
  49. The Keys to the House
    Rossi (who is handicapped himself) gives the film a magnetic presence, playing the part as a mix of sweet-natured good intentions and frustrating limitations.
  50. In the Realms of the Unreal
    In the end, it all gets to be too stifling. The film looks amazing, and there may be no better way to adapt Darger's work to the screen. But Yu's decision to limit the comments on Darger's enduring appeal keeps the audience locked in his cramped room too long, without a window of context.
  51. The Phantom of the Opera
    Adding an additional layer of cheese to a project that already reeks hopelessly of Velveeta, Schumacher pumps up the empty spectacle, stranding his fetching-but-lifeless mannequins amid giant sets and overblown production numbers.
  52. Meet the Fockers
    Meet The Fockers has assembled a historic, once-in-a-lifetime cast, then stranded them in the laziest, most mercenary kind of sequel imaginable. It's like the 1927 Yankees taking on the Special Olympics softball team.
  53. Hotel Rwanda
    The Rwandan genocide was one of the most shameful marks on Bill Clinton's presidency, but for all the film's powerful images, George stops short of the forceful political statement that Rusesabagina's story demands.
  54. Imaginary Heroes
    It looks good. It seems to work. It occasionally coheres into a priceless moment. But in the end, the pieces don't all fit together as they should.
  55. Beyond the Sea
    Anyone who thinks Beyond The Sea is a movie about Bobby Darin isn't paying close enough attention.
  56. Flight of the Phoenix
    With his bleached-blond hair, implacable European accent, and nerdy devotion to cool rationality, Ribisi acts like a cross between a young Reich officer and the Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons," and his unashamed hamminess steals the movie.
  57. The Sea Inside
    When pinned mostly in the man's bedroom, Amenábar's flashier instincts are stifled by a bolted camera and a procession of issue-of-the-week clichés.
  58. 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.
  59. The Aviator
    A frenzied, sometimes overreaching biopic that paints in bold colors on a huge canvas, the film stars a never-better Leonardo DiCaprio--as perfectly cast here as he was miscast in "Gangs."
  60. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
    At its best, A Series Of Unfortunate Events is the stuff nightmares are made of, a sick joke of a film that realizes the best children's entertainment doesn't hide from the bleaker side of life, but plunges into the void and respects kids enough to assume they can handle it.
  61. Million Dollar Baby
    Though conventional in many respects, it feels like no other boxing film ever made, due largely to Eastwood's unmistakable presence on both sides of the camera.
  62. A Talking Picture
    De Oliveira wraps A Talking Picture with a simultaneous introduction and farewell--a bold curtain-dropper that's either a bleak joke or an imprecisely controlled scream of rage.
  63. Dolls
    Kitano's gentle side reigns in Dolls, a gorgeous meditation on love and devotion, but the film's hypnotic tone and beautifully formalized color scheme makes it unlike anything he's done to date.
  64. Ocean's Twelve
    What it retains is a playful sense of style, that combines with an anything-goes spirit.
  65. A Tale of Two Sisters
    Kim weaves these clichés into effectively nerve-wracking setpieces, though between the jumps, A Tale Of Two Sisters becomes mired in ponderous melodrama.
  66. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    Even when caught in a rut, Anderson's obsessive vision still yields many exhilarating surprises.
  67. Freeze Frame
    Compelling as it sounds, the idea behind Freeze Frame doesn't make any sense, especially when realized in practical terms.
  68. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Favors unforgettable images over in-depth storytelling, and prioritizing electrifying moments over narrative arcs.
  69. Blade: Trinity
    Swimming in computer-enhanced mayhem and a non-stop hip-hop-and-techno soundtrack, Blade: Trinity might as well come equipped with joysticks attached to the seats, so everyone can play along.
  70. House of Flying Daggers
    Choreographed to the last beat, the action scenes have a depth that the film's thinly sketched characters never quite develop.
  71. After Midnight
    As a story, it never develops beyond the routine. Still, the aesthetic philosophizing works as a framework for daring visual experiments.
  72. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    In spite of clunky effects and often extraordinarily ugly video footage, Game Over works very well just as a sports doc.
  73. Conspiracy of Silence
    A well-intentioned but ultimately incompetent Irish dud.
  74. The Deserted Station
    Deserted Station plays out like a dream, but Raisian moves comfortably between fantasy and nightmare, real and surreal.
  75. 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.
  76. WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception
    This indignant attack on the way the Iraqi war was marketed and covered feels about as timely and relevant as yesterday's newspaper.
  77. The Green Butchers
    It's a clammy, odd duck of a movie, a black comedy that seems strangely content with merely being morbid.
  78. The Aryan Couple
    An oafish bore.
  79. Closer
    Dramatically leaps through time, covering months or sometimes years in the span of a single cut. The effect is jarring and exhilarating, but it also bucks the common idea that relationships deepen over time.
  80. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
    Guerrilla still holds up as social history, primarily because its description of seething frustration in a divided America has become spookily relevant.
  81. Purple Butterfly
    A sumptuously moody memory play.
  82. A Very Long Engagement
    For all of Audrey Tautou's considerable charm in the title role, Jeunet's need for a well-ordered universe proved as suffocating and exhausting as being trapped on an amusement-park ride.
  83. Straight-Jacket
    Loses its sass too quickly.
  84. Paper Clips
    The story they get may be heartfelt and inspiring, but all that powerful sentiment doesn't make it any more complete.
  85. Notre musique
    A sophomore film major would be lucky to get a passing grade with such material.
  86. Christmas with the Kranks
    Hard not to pelt the screen with rotten fruit when confronted with a film like Christmas With The Kranks.
  87. Alexander
    Stone has made an excruciating disaster for the ages.
  88. Fear and Trembling
    A feverishly compelling film that doesn't force-feed its ideals to its audience.
  89. National Treasure
    It lacks the conviction to embrace its own garish awfulness, resulting in little more than tedious historical and patriotic hokum, a preposterous potboiler done in by slack pacing and pedestrian execution.
  90. Bad Education
    In accounting for Almodóvar's identity as an artist and a man, Bad Education comes together like a bold and far-reaching summation of his career to date.
  91. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    It's all innocuous, forgettable fun, but it's firmly aimed at those who find underwear endlessly funny.
  92. Ya lyublyu tebya
    The filmmakers have a keen eye for striking compositions, but unlike most advertising, movies have to amount to more than just a succession of vivid images.
  93. Bright Future
    But save for the mesmerizing final tracking shot, Bright Future just mopes around aimlessly, hoping that its vague themes will eventually congeal into something profound.
  94. Little Lili
    La Petite Lili isn't conventional or crowd-pleasing enough to appeal to audiences who like their foreign films safely sentimental, but it's also not daring enough for those who expect art to hurt a little.
  95. Noel
    Palminteri and screenwriter David Hubbard desperately want the crazy misfits in their movie to move the audience, but they're all too cracked to inspire empathy. There's no holiday magic, just famous faces playing people who don't exist.
  96. Seed of Chucky
    Seed Of Chucky goes even further toward comedy over horror, but the Chucky-as-comic-antihero gag has grown stale.
  97. After the Sunset
    When it comes time for the actual robbery, so little has been explained that the plan seems ridiculously easy in some respects and totally improbable in others.
  98. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    When a sequel has to hit the reset button and take all its characters back to where they started, it probably didn't need to be made.
  99. Kinsey
    For a film about man who spent half his life defying staid convention, Kinsey remains as timid as a choirboy.
  100. Finding Neverland
    Forster's movie doesn't want to grow up, but it doesn't seem to understand childhood, either. For a film about the life-affirming power of imagination, Finding Neverland displays precious little of its own.
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