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. Overnight
    As Overnight progresses and its title grows increasingly ironic, it paints a mesmerizing portrait of a profane, overbearing monster engaged in a drawn-out act of professional suicide.
  2. The Polar Express
    As a spectacle, The Polar Express looks remarkable. As a film, however, it's the equivalent of an elaborately wrapped Christmas present containing a nice new pair of socks.
  3. Callas Forever
    A hysterically over-the-top backstage melodrama whose temperature seldom falls below overheated.
  4. Fade to Black
    Beyond offering a valuable look at Jay-Z's creative process, the behind-the-scenes material complements the concert footage, showing the work that allows Jay-Z to entertain tens of thousands of fans live.
  5. Brother to Brother
    Well-intentioned to a fault, the film packs a strange, ultimately unsuccessful combination of prurience and clumsy identity politics.
  6. Alfie
    Caine played Alfie as an incorrigible S.O.B. who at least made for good company. Law makes him a delicate boy with self-control problems who can't stop talking, and his charm runs out long before the film ends.
  7. The Incredibles
    The action sequences are choreographed with the crackerjack timing expected from Pixar, but the film's funniest and most affecting moments exploit the tension between a special family and a world that insists on dulling them down.
  8. Ali G Indahouse
    In jumping from the small screen to the big one, the franchise seems to have dropped its collective IQ by a good 50 points. Cohen's HBO series was a smart show pretending to be stupid. Making its debut on DVD after a brief 2002 theatrical run, Ali G Indahouse feels like a stupid movie made by smart people.
  9. Enduring Love
    Enduring Love's plot inevitably drifts into “Fatal Attraction” territory, but its wholesale immersion in Craig's deteriorating condition render it a wrenching, uncompromising study of the human mind in freefall.
  10. Birth
    The ick-factor deepens as the story progresses, but the mystery never does.
  11. 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.
  12. Ray
    As Ray nears its abrupt ending, it veers into camp silliness, complete with a psychedelic freak-out withdrawal sequence straight out of a Roger Corman LSD epic.
  13. This Girl's Life
    Marquis herself rarely comes off as less than fascinating, in spite of her cheaply titillating material.
  14. Home of the Brave
    Di Florio loses her grip on Liuzzo's story whenever she lapses into generalities. But when Di Florio gets into the specifics of her subject's legacy, Home Of The Brave stands out as both relevant and moving.
  15. Sideways
    Good comedies are rare, but rarer still are those that conflate laughter with intimacy.
  16. Fish Without a Bicycle
    This vanity project belongs to an audience of one.
  17. Undertow
    Undertow may prove the least immediately satisfying of Green's films, but it remains an achievement, emotionally rich and rife with biblical and mythic undertones.
  18. Hearts and Minds (re-release)
    During his clumsiest moments, Davis' fondness for provocation rises to the surface, which is unfortunate, since it weakens the impact of his many salient points about how American men are socialized to be warriors.
  19. Lightning in a Bottle
    When Lightning In A Bottle steps back and simply lets the old-timers ply their trade, the result is consistently riveting.
  20. Postmen in the Mountains
    Huo never quite finds the filmic vocabulary to tilt the film toward greatness-and the mawkish synth score does little to help-but Postmen In The Mountains ultimately succeeds.
  21. The Machinist
    Unrelentingly dreary, and seemingly destined to be remembered, if at all, as that movie Christian Bale lost a full third of his body weight for. It doesn't deserve any better.
  22. The Grudge
    Less a film than a terror delivery system, The Grudge repeatedly shows off Shimizu's technical chops, but never gives viewers a reason to care about or identify with the victims.
  23. Surviving Christmas
    Affleck's psychotic enthusiasm aside, no one seems to be having a good time, and the ill will becomes infectious.
  24. Sex Is Comedy
    When she (Breillat) succeeds, as she does in "Fat Girl" and in the final minutes of Sex Is Comedy, the impact can be overwhelming for filmmaker and audience alike.
  25. P.S.
    While not dwelling on plot eventually gets P.S. in trouble during the slack finale, it gives Linney and Grace plenty of room to maneuver.
  26. The Final Cut
    Naim directs The Final Cut as if it were the pilot to a TV series: He teases the audience with all sorts of story threads, focuses on a minor self-contained mystery, and leaves the rest for future episodes that will never come.
  27. Moolaadé
    Though Moolaadé doesn't shy away from the task of educating its viewers about the brutality of "purification," it works equally well as a tribute to righteous defiance wherever it surfaces.
  28. Being Julia
    It looks handsome but seems infected by the idea of playing different roles; a comedy in one scene, it adopts a mood of a high seriousness the next and clutters the stage with minor characters that contribute little. In the end, this inability to make up its mind does the film in.
  29. Saints and Soldiers
    Too often, Saints And Soldiers confuses bravery for faith.
  30. 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.
  31. Team America: World Police
    Years from now, Team America will better convey the political character of 2004 than a stack of Time magazines. Staying funny helps even more.
  32. The Scandal
    Sumptuously photographed in bright primary colors, with equally immaculate period clothing and design, Untold Scandal lacks some of the emotional and thematic depth of previous adaptations, but it has the refreshing candor and explicitness that marks the current wave of Korean cinema.
  33. Vera Drake
    The issue may be polarizing, but Vera Drake resonates with such seriousness and truth that it transcends the narrow limitations of polemic.
  34. Around the Bend
    There are good ideas in Around The Bend, but they're presented in outline form, as the bare, dry bones of what could have been a living body.
  35. Vodka Lemon
    A dark-humored film about devastation, which makes Vodka Lemon's final rush into comedy in the truest sense all the more refreshing. Even in the wasteland, there might be humor other than the gallows kind.
  36. Go Further
    Like much of Mann's work, it's an unabashed love letter to the counterculture. But this time out, Mann has made an unintentionally vicious satire of the fuzzyheaded self-intoxication and impracticality of the progressive left, a film that's far more scathing than anything Tom Wolfe could dream up.
  37. Silent Water
    Converts relevant contemporary history into intimate personal drama.
  38. Stage Beauty
    As historical speculation, it's clever enough. As a film, it glows with flop-sweat.
  39. Friday Night Lights
    When Friday Night Lights gets to the big games, the time it's spent creates an atmosphere thick with tension, one akin to the real-world experience of watching a favorite team play for its life.
  40. Primer
    A brainteaser of the first order, Primer ranks among the best of recent thrillers such as "Memento" or "The Matrix," which rupture the fabric of reality and radically destabilize the narrative in kind.
  41. Raise Your Voice
    Dreadful.
  42. Tarnation
    Caouette's shattering Tarnation represents a landmark in personal filmmaking: It finally realizes the digital dream of a raw, unsanctioned glimpse into the soul.
  43. Taxi
    Feels stitched together from bits and pieces of lame '80s buddy-cop movies.
  44. Tying the Knot
    Tying The Knot's central point remains insistently stated. It would be hard for anyone to watch it and still think of the demand for same-sex marriage as a mere passing fancy.
  45. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    When it steers away from campaign-ad testimonials and considers Kerry's moral awakening in Vietnam and beyond, Going Upriver features some tremendously powerful scenes.
  46. Dig!
    By giving Taylor the last word, Dig! becomes little more than a self-serving, unconvincing infomercial for a musician who comes across as functional and bearable only when compared to his counterpart.
  47. Shark Tale
    Every single joke, character detail, music montage, and pop-culture reference looks extensively market-tested, whether via screenings, focus groups, or other box-office successes.
  48. I Heart Huckabees
    One of the boldest, most audacious American movies of the last 25 years, a freewheeling cerebral carnival of energy and ideas, if not always coherence or cohesion.
  49. Ladder 49
    In a shrill attempt to overcompensate for the film's shortcomings, William Ross' hyperbolic score does the audience's work for it, cheering heroism, guffawing during lighthearted moments, and getting all misty-eyed during the tender and tragic scenes.
  50. The Yes Men
    The Yes Men's brilliant lies unlock explosive satirical truths, but the film runs out of steam a bit toward the end.
  51. Moog
    Short and shapeless but nonetheless welcome documentary.
  52. First Daughter
    It sends a bad message to the film's young audience that the daughter of a world leader needn't be more than a vapid bikini-stuffer.
  53. A Dirty Shame
    Embracing ugliness, lousy production values, and borderline hysteria as virtues, A Dirty Shame is one for the cultists, a proud retreat back into the sandbox of sexual juvenilia, a potty-mouthed manifesto from an elder statesman of shock.
  54. Rick
    It's hard for Rick to maintain this jangled tone, which aims to be simultaneously heartbreaking and broadly satirical. The latter tack pushes Rick too far, and too soon.
  55. 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.
  56. The Forgotten
    Though it soon devolves into a laughable mess, The Forgotten at least spends its first 10 minutes or so raising provocative questions.
  57. Shaun of the Dead
    Mixing horror and humor is no mean feat, but Shaun Of The Dead tightens throats in fear without making the laughs stick there in the process.
  58. Anatomy of Hell
    Even without the difficult imagery, Breillat's grim observations on men, women, and sexual orientation, are tough to take.
  59. The Motorcycle Diaries
    Handsomely shot by Brazilian director Walter Salles and beautifully played by the two leads, The Motorcycle Diaries would amount to little more than a minor, softly politically conscious coming-of-age story, if not for its historical context.
  60. The Take
    The Take tells a compelling story of courageous, industrious people, but it begs for a second act.
  61. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
    It could all be done much more efficiently, but any other approach would lose Tsai's unique mix of stone-faced comedy and dewy-eyed lyricism.
  62. 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.
  63. Head in the Clouds
    The film feels more at home with sex than war, like a romance novel where the swinging lovers find their passions stirred by bombs exploding in the distance. Their three-way dalliances are so frivolous and silly that once the action turns dark, Duigan and his cast leave audiences unprepared for the emotional fallout.
  64. Mr 3000
    Sputtering along on Mac's sleepy improvisations, Mr. 3000 volleys between the dumb, frat-house wackiness of "Major League" and the "Wonder Bat" schmaltz of "The Natural" and "Field Of Dreams," chasing the gags with a lame baseball-as-life message about playing for the right reasons.
  65. Incident at Loch Ness
    Incident is too reverent for its own good. It could use a big blast of Herzog-like madness, but it sticks to the conventional show-business satire's arsenal of clichés.
  66. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers
    Originally titled Lady Killers, this rancid, underlit B-movie aspires to little more than cheap laughs eked out of the discomfort and queasiness Owen and Friedle feel over sexually servicing assertive, kinky old women.
  67. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    As an imaginative visual experience, there's nothing like it. Today, at least.
  68. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
    At times, Innocence feels like a clip show of Oshii projects past. But the effect proves more dulling than warmly familiar.
  69. Wimbledon
    The perfect movie for 14-year-old girls having a slumber party, and a must for everyone else to avoid.
  70. 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.
  71. Reconstruction
    Reconstruction doesn't evoke much emotion beyond cool ennui. At that, the film excels.
  72. Criminal
    Without any glimmers of depth or subtext.
  73. Testosterone
    It might as well be retitled "Waiting For Antonio," since Sabato's appearances bookend miles of convoluted nonsense. For the prurient, that's probably too much to endure.
  74. Cellular
    The film works by putting the accelerator to the floor and never looking in the rear-view mirror.
  75. When Will I Be Loved
    Beyond the "hell hath no fury" angle that overlays the story, When Will I Be Loved amounts to nothing more than another repository for kinky Tobackisms: Seen one (and the one to see remains 1978's Fingers), seen them all.
  76. Resident Evil: Apocalypse
    Takes too long to get going to qualify unequivocally as a good movie, but when Jovovich finally starts kicking zombified ass, it becomes good enough.
  77. Evergreen
    Evergreen suffers from creeping indie-itis, epitomized by the low-light digital video and droning electric-guitar soundtrack, but its biggest weakness lies in Zentelis' apparent fear of surprise.
  78. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
    Crude, grating.
  79. A Letter to True
    The definition of a vanity film, Weber's latest opus lacks the focus even to qualify as dilettantish. Offering plenty for the eye and little for the brain, the film suffers from a dearth of ideas as it glides pleasantly but emptily from one gorgeous surface to another.
  80. 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.
  81. The Cookout
    Gives virtually every cast member a shot at humiliation.
  82. Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    In spite of the unavoidable disappointment that comes from raised expectations (and lowered elevations), it's clumsy storytelling that ultimately keeps Warriors grounded.
  83. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    After a sentimental opening sequence, he (Kang) scarcely lets the film pause to breathe, which dulls its effectiveness.
  84. Wicker Park
    Instead of building toward a grand romantic climax, it just gets sillier before exploding into a torrent of unintended laughs.
  85. Paparazzi
    Paparazzi follows the vigilante playbook in all its banality, without much in the way of moral reflection.
  86. Persons of Interest
    The absence of style can be numbing, but it serves a purpose, positioning the documentary as a public record, not a work of art. As such, the film is eye-opening.
  87. Vanity Fair
    Either a radical reinterpretation of the source material or a mammoth failure of nerve. Whichever the case, it makes for a tremendously dull film that gives Witherspoon little to do except pose against a pretty backdrop.
  88. Brothers in Arms
    Has little to recommend it. A sterling example of how an unimaginative combination of interviews and archival footage can drain the life from even the most compelling topic, it feels padded at a mere 68 minutes.
  89. Suspect Zero
    Given nothing to do, Carrie-Anne Moss looks on from the sidelines as the film halfheartedly toys with the tired old notion that only a thin line separates the dogged investigator and the compulsive killer. She looks bored, and she should.
  90. The Brown Bunny
    If the independent film world were littered with alleged disasters like The Brown Bunny, the scene would be far richer for it.
  91. 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.
  92. Hero
    Brilliant in flashes, thinned out as a whole, the film seems ideal for the DVD revolution, where the greatest hits can be compiled at the touch of a remote.
  93. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
    When the CGI snakes finally arrive, they look like they've just returned from a guest spot on "Charmed;" if the film had cut any more corners, it would have had to borrow graphics from an old Intellivision game.
  94. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
    The most perversely unnecessary sequel in recent memory.
  95. Bright Leaves
    Under his (McElwee's) watch, the possibilities of a documentary seem to expand by the minute, incorporating not only journalistic truths, but also personal insights and philosophy, unique regional textures, and unexposed pockets of humanity.
  96. End of the Century
    As for the unfortunates who aren't already in love with The Ramones, End Of The Century should give them a better understanding of what they've been missing, and leave them wondering why they've missed out on it for so long.
  97. Almost Peaceful
    Too many of these characters behave like they just stepped out of a Noel Coward production.
  98. Nicotina
    Nicotina's lack of originality ultimately proves forgivable. Its glib, heartless nihilism doesn't.
  99. Rosenstrasse
    Von Trotta lingers for so long on the backstory and framing story that the movie's heart never comes to the fore.
  100. Mean Creek
    Dyslexic, talkative, and permanently tethered to a video camera that documents his solitary life and vivid fantasy world, Peck, in a stunning performance, resonates as both monster and victim, predator and prey.
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