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. Relationship Goals
    As a bit of forgettable, low-stakes Valentine’s Day viewing for the religious set, one could do worse. But those who only date their rom-coms “intentionally” could definitely do better.
  2. Her Private Hell
    There’s still evidence of his sardonic wit and stylistic flourishes but, save for brief blasts of cool brilliance, the film is for the most part a dud, as floaty and ephemeral as the fading mist that passes for one of the film’s central menaces.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tow
    By making the film about one woman (kind of) helping herself, with only vague connections to the world and the people around her, the filmmakers give up any worthwhile point about poverty, injustice, or community.
  4. Over Your Dead Body
    Over Your Dead Body is a gleeful, bloody romp masquerading as a dark marriage comedy, though unsurprisingly the two sides of its genre dynamic have a dysfunctional relationship.
  5. Pizza Movie
    There is room for vulgarity, horror, absurdity, and a whole lot of heart in Pizza Movie, though just barely, like attempting to host a rager in a 12′ x 14′ dorm room. The resulting stoner comedy is awkward, weird, and doesn’t quite work, but it just might become a core memory for those among the couchlocked who have yet to experience a proper house party.
  6. Apex
    Apex mistakes going bigger for going better when what it really needs is a little more cleverness, either in how Ben operates or how Sasha tries to survive her impossible scenario. For a movie with some pretty ridiculous plot swerves, everything winds up feeling oddly straightforward, which makes the survival genre’s requisite catharsis and comeuppance land anticlimactically.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    ChaO
    A talented animation team does its best to bail water from this sinking ship, but an overreliance on contrivances and slapstick leaves too many holes to plug.
  8. Swapped
    Even if it wasn’t hot on the tail of Pixar’s Hoppers, Swapped would still be an overly familiar adventure towards empathy, one light on comedy and insight despite plenty of visual imagination in its world of flora-fauna hybrids.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mirror Has Two Faces
    The problem with The Mirror Has Two Faces isn't Streisand's well-documented ego, or the movie's indirect, probably unintentional message that beauty makes all the difference when it comes to who loves you and why. It's that, at 130 minutes, it's long and plodding, with far too many cliches—the age-old spit-take scene, and so on—and inexplicable plot points.
  10. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    In Columbus’ hands, it once again all breaks down into a series of rushed, breathless special-effects setpieces, in a thrill ride that isn’t headed anywhere new.
  11. The Spy Next Door
    Chan’s anything-goes affability keeps the film from scraping bottom.
  12. Leap Year
    There isn’t a spontaneous or unpredictable moment in this loving, perversely reverent homage to rom-com, road-movie, and mismatched-romance conventions.
  13. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
    Sure enough, director Betty Thomas delivers pretty much the bare minimum: peppy, brightly colored, tune-filled nonsense sure to meet the low, low standards of its pre-kindergarten core audience.
  14. Surrogates
    Relentlessly plods from one dour moment to the next, coming to life only in a late-film car chase that takes the possibilities of a world filled with robots to an absurd extreme.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Twilight Saga: New Moon
    In spite of its wealth of conflict, New Moon suffers from a dearth of accompanying tension and excitement, thanks to the increasingly tedious relationship at its center.
  16. Gamer
    The trouble with Gamer is that it’s weird, but not weird enough for the long haul.
  17. New York, I Love You
    The segments don’t form anything like a coherent whole, but they aren’t distinctive enough to clash meaningfully with each other, either.
  18. 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.
  19. Armored
    It lacks that extra layer or two to make it interesting. The script and direction is all bones, no flesh.
  20. Everybody's Fine
    Follows a dispiritingly predictable arc.
  21. The Fourth Kind
    Terminally awkward in the way it meshes fake real footage with faker fake footage. It isn’t required to be convincing as fact, but it doesn’t convince as fiction, either.
  22. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    At least in the last half-hour, Bay's incredibly sloppy continuity and overeager rush to action pays off.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Twilight
    While the movie attempts to find an compelling middle ground between gothic supernaturalism and teenage romance, it usually winds up stumbling into the inane territory implied by both descriptions.
  24. Taken
    Taken's subject matter is too serious for an escapist chop-socky movie, and the sleazy, exploitative tone undercuts the thrills.
  25. Astro Boy
    Older viewers are more likely to see a muddled film full of one-dimensional characters and insultingly strident politics.
  26. Knowing
    Knowing frequently feels one Revelation quote away from turning into a chiding, fundamentalist-friendly end-of-the-world movie in the "Left Behind" mold.
  27. Saw VI
    Because Saw does nothing to alter the look, tone, and engineered gimmickry from one movie to the next, it keeps going deeper into backstory and character arcs than horror series past, as if this ugly, cheap-looking schlock were somehow "The Lord Of The Rings."
  28. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
    Tucker Max’s only real strengths are his outrageousness and his uncompromising self-confidence, but neither comes into play in this punch-pulling, frankly boring film.
  29. Departures
    Here's a great way to start savoring life: Don't waste it on pat manipulations like this.
  30. My Sister's Keeper
    It would take a heart of stone not to be affected by My Sister’s Keeper, but the film’s unceasing manipulation has a Medusa effect on the organ.
  31. Pirate Radio
    Do you like montages, but grow bored with the tedious plot bits in between? Then Pirate Radio is the movie for you.
  32. Summer Storm
    It just grows darker and broodier as Stadlober grapples with coming out. That's not an easy thing, but someone should tell the poor guy that being gay doesn't have to mean being this lame.
  33. Last Holiday
    For a film ostensibly about how life means nothing without adventure and unpredictability, Last Holiday all feels as preordained as the film-ending Emeril cameo.
  34. Tristan and Isolde
    Moves so sluggishly that someone must have been dosing the cast and crew with Nyquil.
  35. Underworld: Evolution
    There's a ton of backstory behind Underworld: Evolution, which gets slightly denser and rowdier than its predecessor, but it's ultimately all in the service of a nigh-endless series of numbing, mechanical battles in which snarling protagonists and CGI monsters shoot, claw, and bloodily eviscerate each other. In other words, it's "Underworld," but more of it.
  36. Pizza
    Christopher delivers cutesy jabber and one-note characters, as oily and devoid of substance as... well, you know.
  37. Annapolis
    At a time when movies, even from Hollywood, are finally turning their eyes to conflicts abroad, Annapolis seems conspicuously myopic and reactionary in its denial of the world outside campus, though a movie this formulaic wouldn't pass muster during peacetime, either.
  38. Winter Passing
    Winter Passing is full of nice dramatic turns, including one from relative-unknown Amelia Warner as Harris' former student-turned-nanny (and possible lover). What Winter Passing lacks, however, is a reason to exist other than as a dramatic exercise.
  39. Aquamarine
    Adapted (and significantly reshaped) from a young-adult book by novelist Alice Hoffman, Aquamarine has the tossed-off quality of an ABC Family TV movie. Its lessons come pre-digested.
  40. Failure to Launch
    The only bright spot--beyond McConaughey's boyish Southern charm and a pleasant soundtrack--is Zooey Deschanel as Parker's acid-tongued roommate, whose quirks include alcoholism and nihilism. Someone really should tell Deschanel that she's already too big and too good for thankless Eve Arden roles.
  41. The Hills Have Eyes
    Thanks to assured direction and a fine cast, Hills isn't terrible, only terribly unnecessary.
  42. American Gun
    The Sutherland segments are the most bothersome, because they never really reach a resolution, and because they're betrayed by Avelino's uni-faceted approach.
    • The A.V. Club
  43. Stoned
    Apart from Considine, the actors all deliver superficial performances beneath several layers of slathered-on Summer Of Love drag, and Woolley's use of multiple film stocks and flash-cut editing jumbles together a bunch of '60s filmmaking clichés without putting them to any particular use.
  44. The Benchwarmers
    For the first two acts, veteran lowbrow director Dennis Dugan at least keeps The Benchwarmers' pace brisk and the wall-to-wall soundtrack upbeat and infectious. Then the big third-act twist arrives and the film drags to a finish, leaving a slug-like trail of squishy sentimentality.
  45. Phat Girlz
    While it's a pleasure to watch the likeable Johnson open up and come out of her shell, Phat Girlz belongs to Mo'Nique, a grating, belligerent woman who alternates self-deprecating fat jokes with drama-queen meltdowns and simpering pleas for acceptance. Save it for the talk-show circuit, please.
  46. When Do We Eat?
    A tonal mess, a kitchen-sink comic melodrama that veers from broad comedy to sticky drama without ever finding a palatable or consistent tone.
  47. Silent Hill
    Recommended to those who feel "The Crucible" doesn't feature enough bodies ripped in half vertically. Others are duly warned.
  48. Kinky Boots
    Kinky Boots doesn't seem to realize that its time came and went long, long ago.
  49. 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.
  50. The Proposition
    The sketchily symbolic characters and flat plot just frame an atmosphere of sticky heat and Biblical reckoning.
  51. One Last Thing...
    The real problem with One Last Thing… isn't that it's a teen sex comedy or a sappy melodrama, it's that it can't make up its mind.
  52. Twelve and Holding
    The drama feels factory-cut and shrink-wrapped, with each of three kids' stories following predictably twisty paths to ironically hopeful conclusions.
  53. The Omen
    Pretty much everyone in the cast is wildly overqualified, including Pete Postlethwaite and David Thewlis in key supporting roles.
  54. Agnes and His Brothers
    Oskar Roehler's serio-comedy Agnes And His Brothers tries to make some incisive points about the damage wrought by society's sexual hang-ups, but though Roehler throws three different characters at the subject, only one halfway sticks.
  55. Lady in the Water
    Shockingly misconceived, poorly executed effort.
  56. Scoop
    As it is, the film perpetually teeters on the edge between a functional vehicle and a train wreck, and whenever Allen opens his mouth, he pushes it violently in the latter direction.
  57. World Trade Center
    The politics of Stone's 9/11 movie lean right, if they lean any way at all. Mostly, the film sits up straight and just wants to be loved by all. There are more controversial Hallmark cards.
  58. Pulse
    Ultimately, the glacial pace kills Pulse. What was dreadful and trance-like in the original feels here like nothing-much-at-all sandwiched between some stock horror jolts.
  59. Zoom
    Zoom suffers from following three "X-Men" movies and "Sky High," but even if it preceded them, it'd still qualify as little more than a cheap, ugly, forgettable footnote to the seemingly endless superhero boom.
  60. Trust the Man
    Trust The Man presents itself as a funny, insightful Manhattan relationship comedy in Woody Allen mode, but morphs into the phoniest of Hollywood rom-coms.
  61. 10th & Wolf
    It isn't exactly a waste of time, but anyone who's seen a mob movie or TV show in the past 30 years has pretty much seen 10th & Wolf.
  62. Looking for Kitty
    Burns has continued to cram one-dimensional characters into thinly plotted comedy-dramas, hoping to re-impress moviegoers with his aloof leading-man charm and faux-natural, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny dialogue.
  63. Haven
    The film boasts compelling performances--from Bruckner, and especially from Stephen Dillane as a wildly pragmatic money-man who radiates well-deserved cynicism. But Bloom is the giant void at the center of the film, and his laughable histrionics pull Haven firmly into camp territory.
  64. Feast
    Gulager shows that he truly is PGL's most gifted alumnus.
  65. The Grudge 2
    While the film deserves some credit for creating and sustaining a creepy atmosphere, it doesn't matter much when the plot doesn't go anywhere, and here, it winds toward the most arbitrary, nonsensical final scene in recent memory. But, hey, they're ghosts. They can do some pretty crazy shit.
  66. Zerophilia
    All the nudity in Zerophilia is either prosthetic or body-doubled. Which means the sex scenes--and the feeling and meaning behind them--are just as phony.
  67. Unknown
    Unknown manages a hat trick by making its march toward the climax so tedious and unlikely that it unravels even as it gets off the ground.
  68. Backstage
    Bercot moves the characters up and down like lines on a chart, never granting full access to what any of them are thinking. And access is what Backstage promised.
  69. Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj
    Penn, who probably didn't need this shoddy placeholder after the cult success of "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle's," acquits himself with a gentle charisma that makes the crudity go down easy. Granted, it's still s---, but with a sweeter odor than usual.
  70. The Architect
    The Architect wears its heavy social consciousness like an albatross, and Tauber's plodding, earnest direction does little to wean the material away from its stage roots.
  71. Turistas
    Once the torture finally commences, the film attempts to float a political point about the Third World taking back First World health-care privileges, but the chief torturers' sadistic humanitarianism is never seriously considered.
  72. Eragon
    If Eragon proves anything, it's that not all dragons produce magic.
  73. Happily N'Ever After
    Even Eddie Murphy's endless hyper "Shrek" vamping is more entertaining.
  74. Stomp the Yard
    Unfortunately, it misses the one cliché that might have been welcome: the predictably plotted flashy dance movie where the actual dance makes it all worthwhile.
  75. The Hitcher
    Somehow, music-video veteran David Meyers fails to hurtle this project into the pantheon of great horror movies.
  76. Smokin' Aces
    The plot tangles until it seems irrelevant, the jokes can't push through the somber tone, and the most interesting moment apart from the action scenes involves one character using the corpse of one of the more famous cast members for a grisly ventriloquist act.
  77. Hannibal Rising
    Director Peter Webber can't do much about what's missing from the story: a soul or a sense of purpose.
  78. Gray Matters
    Far from a watershed moment for lesbian coming-out films, Gray Matters has a queer sensibility that's several miles south of "Will & Grace."
  79. Shooter
    Fuqua keeps the action moving efficiently, but he doesn't know when to stop piling it on, and eventually, Wahlberg's army of one becomes more a comic-book vigilante than a righteously disgruntled patriot.
  80. Firehouse Dog
    The lesson here is that dogs don't need "attitude." They're loveable enough on their own.
  81. Pathfinder
    If this uninspired fight-fest had been delayed out of existence, it's unlikely anyone would have missed it.
  82. Perfect Stranger
    When the left-field ending finally arrives, it explains a lot, including why she's so off-putting and histrionic, but it never really explains why audiences should bother sitting through such a tangled mess.
  83. In the Land of Women
    "Women" confirms that the only thing less enjoyable than enduring long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships in real life is watching movies about people having long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships.
  84. The Condemned
    The film keeps adding layers of superfluous nonsense to its plot until all that's left is glowering ultra-violence and a whole lot of missed opportunities.
  85. Kickin It Old Skool
    For a film that has nothing to offer but lazy '80s nostalgia, Kickin' It Old Skool doesn't even bother to get the details right.
  86. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    What started out as a fleet one-off swashbuckler with novel supernatural elements has become loaded and graceless, with each new entry barreling across the goal line like William "The Refrigerator" Perry.
  87. Day Watch
    Like the dream it so closely resembles, it's fairly distracting while it's going on, but it fades into forgettable nonsense by the light of day.
  88. La Vie en Rose
    For all its florid pretensions and epic length, the film's overwrought take on its subject's not-so-rosy life leaves behind no lasting insight.
  89. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    Purists will balk at a pointless--and boring--revamp of a major villain, but that's the least of the film's worries. Only a few isolated shots of the group striding together as a team make Surfer feel like a Fantastic Four movie.
  90. Transformers
    Turns the franchise into a terrible '80s comedy.
  91. Cashback
    In short form, Cashback simply dealt with how a quirky group of supermarket employees whiled away the endless hours of a night shift, but the feature version spoils that economy by tacking on a romantic subplot and indulging its hero's precious ruminations on love and art.
  92. Goya's Ghosts
    If Forman is trying to communicate that art isn't an effective way to change American society, he's proved his point neatly with this muddled, wandering dud.
  93. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    If it doesn't look ridiculous now, try watching it again in a decade or three. Then it'll be funny for all the wrong reasons.
  94. Fat Girls
    In the words of his own character, this young filmmaker hasn't found his "inner fat girl."
  95. No Reservations
    No Reservations is pretty much the dramatic equivalent of a burger and fries, however pretty the presentation.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Who's Your Caddy?
    The tired racial stereotypes that Caddy inserts into the old Caddyshack-style "slobs vs. snobs" formula should probably make it much more offensive than it is.
  97. Bratz
    Bratz's strong anti-clique sermonizing would be slightly more convincing if it weren't tethered to a movie romanticizing the most awesome clique ever.
  98. Illegal Tender
    For a film about growing up, Illegal Tender loses itself in a lot of silly juvenilia.
  99. War
    In spite of a late-game adrenaline surge, the hoped-for fireworks between Li and Statham never quite materialize.
  100. Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
    Manda Bala is exciting and stylish, and Kohn knows exactly what he wants the movie to say. But he makes most of his points in the first 10 minutes, with disgusting slow-motion frog footage and sound bites from social scientists pointing out how "corruption is what links all other crimes." The rest is just so much show.
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