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. Her Majesty
    It's as if Gordon feared his film's none-too-subtle suggestion that kids should ask questions and decided to provide answers instead, tying up his story with a phony happy ending.
  2. American Chai
    The ethnicity of its leads is the only novel aspect of an otherwise bland exercise.
  3. Hollywood Ending
    The best thing about the movie is its premise: It's a good idea, taken from before Allen's recent losing streak, but it's stretched too thin for its own good.
  4. Bruce Almighty
    Even the most narcissistic jerk, like the one played by Jim Carrey in the loathsome comedy Bruce Almighty, would be expected to dream up untold pleasures for himself, acting as a self-serving genie with infinite wishes.
  5. Conspiracy of Silence
    A well-intentioned but ultimately incompetent Irish dud.
  6. Saw
    Though dumber than a box of rocks, Saw forges ahead with the kind of conviction and energy that will keep bad-cinema junkies sitting bolt upright.
  7. The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai
    Truth be told, Sachiko Hanai is probably an accomplished "pink film"; just don't mistake it for something classier.
  8. CJ7
    C7J isn't as cutesy as "Batteries Not Included" or "Short Circuit," or as grim as "Gremlins," though it resembles them all in its jerky, semi-comic look at the havoc and helpfulness of weirdo artificial life.
  9. Horns
    Horns fumbles with its own powers, too. If its moments of Aja-ian archness blended better with the macabre sincerity that presumably comes from the source material, it might have provided a real autumnal chill. Instead, it’s more ambitious and complex than the horror movies that dutifully clock in to haunt multiplexes around Halloween—without actually being better.
  10. The Meg
    The Meg is lackadaisically paced, dull to look at, and has trouble keeping track of space and plot.
  11. Joker: Folie à Deux
    It isn’t just Harley Quinn fans who will be annoyed and possibly insulted by the filmmaker’s sour whims. The degree to which Phillips undermines fan expectations would be admirable if Joker: Folie À Deux wasn’t also something of a slog—and if its every creative decision didn’t feel strangely affectionless.
  12. Project X
    It's crude in every sense: The film looks like shit, the characters are boors, and it's as sloppily put-together as the home movie it pretends to be. Project X's commitment to its crudity almost redeems it, though.
  13. Another Happy Day
    Levinson stuffs the movie with so many emotional cross-currents and minor revelations that it's hard to keep them all straight, but the movie works the audience's nerves with enough determination to get under the skin and stay there, a sensation that comes awfully close to an earned emotional response.
  14. Rambo
    Rambo works best as a pure action movie devoted to delivering the cheapest kicks imaginable--and to a much lesser extent, to bringing attention to human-rights violations and genocide in Asia.
  15. American Mary
    Nonsensical and all-around third-rate, American Mary offers up Human Centipede-style surgical horror, except this time with endless absurd eroticism.
  16. Beerfest
    Random silliness rules the day, but the gags are frequently surprising.
  17. The Break-Up
    A lot of The Break-Up doesn't work. Actually, apart from some funny moments between old Swingers sparring partners Favreau and Vaughn, and a nice scene with Jason Bateman as the couple's realtor, virtually none of it works.
  18. Touch of Pink
    A tepid variation on the rash of cartoonishly drawn Indian-Anglo culture-clash comedies afflicting both sides of the Atlantic.
  19. The Last Days on Mars
    Even had it premiered at, say, London’s Frightfest, The Last Day On Mars would be a disappointment. What it was doing at Cannes is a mystery.
  20. Knight and Day
    Cruise is thrown into many sticky situations, with legions of trained assassins surrounding him on all sides, but he never once suggests that things aren’t entirely under control. It’s profoundly boring to watch a hero without weaknesses; after all, even Superman has Kryptonite.
  21. The Upside
    The rest is feel-good painted unenthusiastically by numbers: a repetitive series of artificially inflated character conflicts and tossed-off resolutions, interspersed with slapstick and jokes about prissy rich snobs, ultimately adding up to far less than the sum of its well-worn parts.
  22. The Magic of Belle Isle
    For a movie that spends so much time extolling the virtues of the imagination to show so little of its own is more than ironic - it's offensive.
  23. My Bloody Valentine
    There's a masked killer, an abundance of ready victims, and a series of elaborate, implausible deaths. But for those willing to look past the surface similarities, Valentine has its own distinctive charm.
  24. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    Part courtroom drama, part otherworldly shocker, the film basically restages the Scopes Monkey Trial and comes out once more against Mr. Darrow, and it's got the spine-twisting, tongues-speaking, devil-channeling hellion to prove it.
  25. Must Love Dogs
    The dialogue and the movie seem as canned as a Must-See TV laugh track.
  26. Detour
    Detour is just film-school-ish synthesis, right down to the cinematography-midterm shot lit through venetian blinds and the anachronistic analog static on the motel room TV—the story of a young man who hates his stepdad so much that he stumbles right into an over-complicated thriller set-up that can only be watched once.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Back in Action
    Despite reuniting them, Back In Action has nothing new to give its movie stars. It’s not enough that they’re “back” in more of the same material seen in Charlie’s Angels, Knight And Day, or White House Down. They deserve material that considers all that has come before and builds upon it.
  28. IF
    IF feels markedly strung together, the consequence of its few creative ideas with no coherent visual language to bind them.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Teen Witch
    Real life is about real stuff, and Teen Witch certainly isn’t. It is a fun escape, though, even now.
  30. Honest Thief
    Not exactly a thinking man’s action movie, and not a gleefully dopey thrill ride either, Honest Thief is as grudging as its main character when it comes to doling out thrills.
  31. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
    Awkward and unfunny in exceptionally long stretches, Reboot probably won’t turn his diehard fans against him. But it’s unlikely to win him any new converts either. For that, there’s "Clerks," "Mallrats," or "Chasing Amy."
  32. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
    It’s heartening to see a big-ticket cartoon franchise end with the animation as its true star.
  33. Wolves
    Most of the cast does a fine job of turning this hooey into something serviceable.
  34. The In-Laws
    Perhaps the oddest thing about The In-Laws is that it's aimed at an audience old enough to remember not only the original, but also how much funnier it seemed at the time.
  35. Venus Boyz
    Becomes hard going the longer Baur stretches out the parade of narcissists, all spouting received wisdom, cultural clichés, and bad poetry.
  36. Kiss the Girls
    Freeman and Judd are fine, as could be expected, but their pairing deserves a better movie -- not one with a cheap twist ending that will easily be spotted by anyone who's studied the complex machinations of any episode of Murder, She Wrote.
  37. The Watchers
    The Watchers isn’t terrible: Shyamalan’s direction is legible, and the whole thing makes sense on a thematic level. (Maybe a little too much sense, actually.) But it lacks the creativity and confidence to go beyond “competent” and into “inspired”—probably because this one is just for practice.
  38. Every Secret Thing
    Every Secret Thing doesn’t feel like it fell off an assembly line, but that’s not saying that it’s been skillfully engineered. By the end, its rickety narrative architecture collapses entirely, leaving a lot of good actors stranded in the rubble.
  39. Stung
    Paul and Julia can rescue each other, but they need more help pulling Stung out of "Tremors" and "Party Down"’s combined shadow.
  40. Second Act
    Lopez gets a decent scene partner in Hudgens and an even better one in Leah Remini, who steals the movie as Maya’s brassy, no-nonsense best friend.
  41. Fun Mom Dinner
    While there is plenty of drinking and a fair amount of drugs (just pot though, let’s not go crazy), the overall effect is more akin to passing out on the couch at 9 p.m. than partying until dawn.
  42. Tora! Tora! Tora!
    The careful balancing of the two sides produces its own interesting effect, however, showing how war goes from possible to inevitable, whatever the wishes on either side. Had Tora! Tora! Tora! taken the notion a bit further, it might have created a portrait of escalating tension chilling enough to rival its carefully orchestrated climactic bombing raid.
  43. El cantante
    Anthony delivers a respectable performance, but his character never comes into sharp focus. Consequently, Lavoe emerges as a supporting character in his own story.
  44. They/Them
    The moments when it succeeds at commenting on continuing anti-LGBT travesties feel like a landmark of queer cinema, proudly planting a pride flag in the horror genre’s fertile fields. Unfortunately, They/Them’s biggest stumbles come from a crisis of identity—not in its characters or queer themes, but in the genre conventions it employs, misunderstanding the opportunities its storytelling affords.
  45. Yes Man
    The film contains so many plugs for Warner Bros. movies like the "Harry Potter" series and "300" that it could almost double as an infomercial.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    U.N. Me
    Horowitz has Michael Moore's smug tendencies without his schlubby everyman charm, which makes his attempts at goading humor out of uncomfortable interviews come off as unpleasant.
  47. Beneath the Planet of the Apes
    Beneath The Planet Of The Apes is a joyless retread that at least has the distinction of ending with the nuclear annihilation of Earth.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Smilla's Sense of Snow
    The matter-of-fact way in which the story is presented serves as a constant reminder of how implausible the whole thing is. Add to this the single expression Ormond and Byrne are allowed throughout the film, and you're left with one more weak, confusing, ignorable movie that embarrasses its source.
  49. Killing Bono
    There's a difference between "funny" and "comedy," and the movie adaptation of Killing Bono tries way too hard to be nutty, at the expense of just getting across what McCormick knows.
  50. The Dukes
    The Dukes could use more music and less sap, but it's refreshing to see a film about the problems of working-class men on the far side of middle age, struggling just to get by.
  51. The Heartbreak Kid
    Embellishments to Neil Simon's original script were inevitable, but when you're adding an "Uncle Tito," you're definitely on the wrong track.
  52. Cheaper by the Dozen
    Much of the film feels like watching "Home Alone" and "Mr. Mom" on 12 different TVs at once.
  53. Chasing Liberty
    On record and in her movies, Moore is sold as wholesome and real, which sometimes translates as generic and blah, in spite of her genuine appeal and accessibility.
  54. Pumpkin
    The film doesn't seem to know how it feels, much less how others are supposed to feel about it.
  55. Firedancer
    For the most part, Fire Dancer presents an energetic mosaic of a displaced culture.
  56. Life of the Party
    The movie portrays Deanna’s rediscovery of a pre-mom life, and how she squares that freedom with her identity as a loving mother, with a lot of warmth, and its refusal to gin up tired conflicts or mawkish lessons is admirable. That does, however, leave Life Of The Party without much comic momentum.
  57. Lonely Planet
    The fact that the movie has zero stakes and unfolds in one low emotional key is part of its appeal—the sort of subgenre known as “cozy romance” in publishing parlance.
  58. The Last of Robin Hood
    On the sliding scale of low expectations associated with the “I (may or may not have) slept with a famous person” biopic genre, Robin Hood is more smoothly professional and tolerable than the lowly likes of "My Week With Marilyn" or the JFK-adultery-soap opera "An American Affair."
  59. The Devil and Father Amorth
    The stuff is about as convincing as a chain letter and requires considerable padding, despite a slim running time.
  60. Samaritan
    It’s both ironic and fitting that while Samaritan positions itself as fresh territory for the actor, it’s only entertaining once it belatedly refashions itself as a throwback to vintage Stallone fare.
  61. She's the Man
    Bynes appears in practically every scene, and the film seems to have been designed as a showcase for her comedic skills, which she apparently left behind in the trailer.
  62. Flipped
    This results in a film that spells everything out visually, then further elaborates through groaningly obvious dialogue, then drives every point home for slow-witted audiences via shameless narration.
  63. Mad City
    Hoffman and Travolta are both good, but this toothless satire does little to justify their performances.
  64. [REC] 3: Genesis
    Where the first two films maintained a breathless tone and found new ground in the zombie genre by linking a physical virus to demonic possession, [REC]3: Genesis runs out of ideas early, and becomes a slogging massacre spiked with callbacks and visual gags.
  65. Tracers
    Tracers, then, is unavoidably a movie about Taylor Lautner joining a parkour gang, and often exactly as silly as that sounds. But it’s also a major improvement over Lautner’s last action-thriller, "Abduction," which had little action, few thrills, and zero abductions.
  66. Krull
    If it’s all more than a bit silly, not to mention derivative, Krull manages to cast a fantastical spell courtesy of Peter Yates’ direction.
  67. Pain & Gain
    Any pretensions of satire, moral ambiguity, or social commentary get lost in a hurricane of empty, mindless spectacle.
  68. Straw Dogs
    The original was repulsive but impossible to shake. This remake is pure applause bait, which makes it barbaric in ways Peckinpah would never have dreamed.
  69. Black or White
    Tempting though it might be to celebrate any earnest, good-faith attempt to talk about race in America, it’s clear that the creator of Mind Of The Married Man was not the right one to do the talking.
  70. Odd Thomas
    Odd Thomas is at its best when it’s presenting — rather than commenting upon or explaining — juxtapositions of the wholesome and the supernatural.
  71. A Night in Old Mexico
    Here’s a film that knowingly and transparently exists for little reason other than to let the 83-year-old actor bow out in a blaze of glory. And though A Night In Old Mexico won’t be Duvall’s last screen performance, it’s as fitting a farewell as he’s likely to get.
  72. The Tomorrow War
    The movie accumulates much from its betters before it starts to rot from the inside. Eventually, it becomes a distended corpse of a big-ticket blockbuster, washed up on streaming.
  73. The Singing Detective
    What this Singing Detective really needed was to be reworked top to bottom, preferably by a writer fleeing some demons of his own.
  74. Club Dread
    With "Super Troopers" and Club Dread, Broken Lizard has cranked out two genuinely funny movies in a row.
  75. Mona Lisa Smile
    It almost takes skill to make this cast dull, but the relentlessly tepid film does it anyway, by never getting the characters straight.
  76. God's Sandbox
    The sensual sex scenes and raw violence of God's Sandbox make it pretty much an exploitation film, and as an exploitation film, it isn't bad.
  77. American Assassin
    It’s paper-thin, predictable, and goofy as hell, but if you can get past the whole “pro-military propaganda” thing, it’s pretty fun in the moment.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Evita
    Its political insights are half-hearted at best, and as entertainment it fails to excite. The songs sound mostly like glam-rock relics.
  79. Evening
    Evening proves that there are such things as mistakes, by featuring two hours of bad choices and half-executed ideas.
  80. Takers
    Rapper, producer, and mogul Tip "T.I." Harris was recently named "global creative consultant" for Rémy Martin cognac. Coincidentally or not, he's also the star and producer of Takers, a heist thriller that feels suspiciously like a feature-length commercial for expensive liquor.
  81. The Protector 2
    In brief spurts, the film is funny, but taken as a whole, it feels like a waste of talent. Cheesiness should not be the most memorable thing about a Tony Jaa movie.
  82. Gigi & Nate
    For a solid portion of its running time, Gigi & Nate at least delivers what it promises: a young man and his monkey—to be more specific, a young, newly quadriplegic man and his service monkey.
  83. Factory Girl
    The film strays so far from verisimilitude that it feels more like a big celebrity dress-up party than history brought to life. The profoundly silly Internet favorite series "Yacht Rock" offered a more convincing take on pop-culture history and that was at least going for laughs.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Son
    Despite the shallow handling of truly important and nuanced subject matter, Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and a scene-stealing Vanessa Kirby go deep with their performances in ways that almost make The Son’s manipulative and predictable story worth sitting through—almost.
  85. Pretty Persuasion
    In a star-making performance, Evan Rachel Wood stars as essentially a younger version of Nicole Kidman's media-age femme fatale from "To Die For," an aspiring 15-year-old actress who hides a sharp, calculating mind behind a façade of vapid, chattering self-absorption.
  86. Dragonball: Evolution
    The film is crammed with treats for old-school "Dragonball" fans, from the inclusion of all these characters (who don't actually do much) to the moment when spiky-haired Goku dons his orange gi. For everyone else, this amounts to another seen-it-before, probably-willing-to-see-it-again distraction.
  87. Still Life
    While Still Life remains relatively successful at sustaining its plainly downbeat atmosphere—and at conveying the deep silence and stifled yearning of days and nights spent profoundly alone—it brooks too little subtlety in navigating many of the plot’s larger-picture developments.
  88. Happythankyoumoreplease
    HappyThankYouMorePlease has a different vibe than "Garden State" or "HIMYM." It's more like a late-'80s/early-'90s Woody Allen film, after Allen stopped separating his comedy and drama.
  89. Whatever Works
    Though Clarkson acquits herself reasonably well in a terribly conceived role, her entrance interrupts David’s hilariously twisted mentorship of Wood and sends the movie careening in a far less promising direction.
  90. End of the Spear
    In spite of End Of The Spear's fundamental conservatism, the missionaries' disastrous initial encounter with the Waodani ultimately teaches the progressive message that when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of foreign cultures, Bibles and superior technology are no substitute for a thorough understanding of their language and culture.
  91. Hoodwinked!
    There's no getting around the fact that it all looks like a cutscene from a kiddie video game. It's a great showreel. Now someone give these folks a real budget so they can make a movie that looks as good as it sounds.
  92. Extraordinary Measures
    The film closely follows the pattern of 1992’s "Lorenzo’s Oil," but with fewer filmmaking risks, visceral emotions, and colorful, outsized characters.
  93. Girl in Progress
    Girl In Progress is ultimately less interested in subverting the clichés of the genre than in recycling them. It wants audiences to know it's in on the joke though it's not always apparent that there even is a joke in the first place.
  94. Uncharted
    Like text that’s been translated into another language and then re-translated back by someone else, Uncharted bears a clunky resemblance to any number of classic action-adventure movies.
  95. The Girl from Monday
    There's ample opportunity here for a sharp consumerist satire, like a dryer cousin to the candy-colored pop-culture send-up “Josie And The Pussycats,” but Hartley misses his own joke.
  96. The Chamber
    Even more sad is an embarrassingly shrill performance by Faye Dunaway, and an ending which insults the ability of the audience to watch a movie without having a conclusion spoon-fed to them.
  97. Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
    Reckless cultural insensitivities aside, Stone and Hopper’s writing is simply not smart or funny. Poop and fart jokes comprise the core of their repertoire, and if you’re curious how reliant the film is on this material, Paramount is literally handing out whoopee cushions to promote the film.
  98. Into the Blue
    Laughably awful.
  99. The Weight of Water
    Perhaps because the present-day characters are such insufferable twits -- especially the brooding Penn, who's given to tossing around stanzas by Yeats and Dylan Thomas -- the modern story feels like a device, a flimsy entrée into events that would be better accessed directly.
  100. The Three Marias
    A series of third-act complications provides much-needed narrative surprise, but until then, The Three Marias is a disappointingly flavorless genre exercise.
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