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. S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine
    A harrowing, unblinking look at the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime that by some accounts killed off more than a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.
  2. Shrek 2
    The lovable characters remain, but they never do much of interest in a sequel that's safely above average but superfluous.
  3. With All Deliberate Speed
    At once inspirational and deeply depressing, With All Deliberate Speed, directed by "Hoop Dreams" producer Peter Gilbert, is too candid and forthright about the current state of race relations to allow for the sort of cheery, unambiguous uplift favored by civil-rights documentaries.
  4. Carandiru
    Babenco's hard work is undercut by his squarely theatrical notion of realism: Specifically, how did the touring company for "West Side Story" wind up in such an awful spot?
  5. Breakin' All the Rules
    Written and directed by Daniel Taplitz, Breakin' has a hard time building up steam and an even harder time distinguishing itself from any number of UPN sitcoms.
  6. A Slipping-Down Life
    The two leads help create an atmosphere of quiet surety, but they can't elevate the film beyond its self-imposed smallness.
  7. Strayed
    Strayed moves forward with an absorbing ruthlessness, yet without sacrificing those tiny incidental details that lend it singularity and power.
  8. Springtime in a Small Town
    Has the suffocating intensity of great chamber drama.
  9. Coffee and Cigarettes
    As the film goes along, themes and even lines of dialogue resurface, and Jarmusch's comic sensibilities grow more assured.
  10. Troy
    Troy does look good--so good, in fact, that it takes a while to reveal itself as a thundering dud with much action but little personality, human drama, or brains.
  11. The Mudge Boy
    An auspicious debut for writer-director Michael Burke, the film makes a superb actor's showcase for Hirsch as well as Guiry.
  12. Godzilla
    Why it works is anyone's guess. It's fair to argue--and the film makes this argument itself, with no great subtlety--that Godzilla embodies Japan's nuclear anxieties in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  13. Valentin
    It takes mere seconds for every charming moment to go from "Ahhh..." to "Aarrggh!"
  14. Oasis
    In a sense, Oasis is an unabashed tearjerker, but Lee keeps knocking the melodrama off-balance, making all the big emotional payoffs a little discomforting, because they're not that far removed from something really disturbing.
  15. Super Size Me
    Spurlock's film proves yet again that the phrase "crowd-pleasing documentary" doesn't have to be an oxymoron.
  16. Van Helsing
    A work of staggering stupidity.
  17. Seeing Other People
    Eventually finds its rhythm with late flashes of dark humor and bedroom hijinks, but it takes too much time to get there.
  18. New York Minute
    An unabashedly pop confection, but it's flat where it should fizz, lumbering when it should skip.
  19. Superstar in a Housedress
    Plays like a 90-minute wake, albeit a warm and humorous one.
  20. Laws of Attraction
    Moore works to feign vitality where none exists, but that just makes it even more embarrassing to watch her writhe around fruitlessly in the most thankless and ill-fitting of roles.
  21. Since Otar Left
    Julie Bertucelli spends part of the film letting her characters worry whether they've made the right choice, but mostly contents herself with capturing a place where hard choices have become unavoidable. Though her decision to pace the film to Gorintin's old-lady rhythms sometimes kills the dramatic momentum, in the end it's time well spent.
  22. Godsend
    It mostly serves as a warning to stay away from future films involving director Nick Hamm and screenwriter Mark Bomback.
  23. Envy
    In short, every element suggests Envy ought to be amusing, but the only comparably disastrous movie in recent memory involves Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and a rapping retarded man.
  24. Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius
    Duller than a rain delay on the Golf Channel.
  25. The Saddest Music in the World
    Maddin films have a higher rate of invention per frame than the majority of his peers can muster.
  26. Mean Girls
    The film lacks the discipline to stay on point all the time, but Fey and director Mark S. Waters (Freaky Friday) have fun with offbeat throwaway touches.
  27. People Say I'm Crazy
    What's so remarkable about the movie is how matter-of-fact it is.
  28. The Agronomist
    Driven by Dominique's personal magnetism, The Agronomist is a haunting, inspirational valentine to free speech and human resilience.
  29. MC5*: A True Testimonial
    MC5's mix of showmanship, hippie idealism, and brawling Detroit muscle makes it tough to categorize, and A True Testimonial carefully moves through each step of the progression.
  30. Man on Fire
    Scott's latest exercise in assaultive excess nevertheless lingers for two and a half hours, like a drunken houseguest who won't leave.
  31. The Twilight Samurai
    The film is a bit of a slog, but in the end, it's a slog worth taking, thanks to a strange, moving ending that reduces the samurai era's codes of warfare, class, and honor down to two men meeting face to face.
  32. 13 Going on 30
    Cheers and many happy returns to Garner as she makes her first starring film role. She's the real deal. But jeers to every other aspect of 13 Going On 30.
  33. This So-Called Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs the Late Henry Moss
    The scattered insights in This So-Called Disaster aren't worth the sifting it takes to find them.
  34. Annie Get Your Gun (re-release)
    Though the film suffers from Sidney's point-and-shoot approach to the Robert Alton-staged musical numbers, it's buoyed nicely by the songs themselves, a clever script, crisp Technicolor cinematography, and Hutton's spirited performance.
  35. 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.
  36. The Punisher
    Sadly, The Punisher is about little more than bullets hitting bone, and how good it might feel to be on the right end of a gun.
  37. Gypsy 83
    The outsider road picture Gypsy 83 means well, but writer-director Todd Stephens can't keep his aesthetic out of the way.
  38. Connie and Carla
    Seems as much an imposter in the drag-queen world as its heroines; it fronts the sort of safely asexual gay characters found on network TV.
  39. Young Adam
    In this long, slow fall from grace, unceremonious nudity and half-hearted sex begin to look like a mockery of a paradise lost.
  40. A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky
    Ultimately, the film is the kind of neither-fish-nor-fowl work unlikely to satisfy anyone: There's not enough hot-and-heavy action for thrill-seekers, and not enough substance for those looking for above-the-waistline kicks.
  41. The Middle of the World
    When they (the family) arrive at their destination, the story arrives at an ending that's neither obvious nor interesting, kind of like the film leading up to it.
  42. Twentynine Palms
    For most of the way, the film is perceptive about the hot-and-cold volatility of wounded relationships, when couples are struggling to communicate yet familiar enough to exploit each other's weaknesses.
  43. The Girl Next Door
    It sputters whenever it has to move the story along, and it too often forgets to pay attention to Cuthbert; it makes a point about the mistake of treating women as sex objects, but it's perfectly content to use her as a plot device for the second and third acts.
  44. The Whole Ten Yards
    The least necessary sequel since "Agent Cody Banks" embarked on a London mission a few weeks ago.
  45. I'm Not Scared
    Cinematographer Italo Petriccione gives the film a dramatic look, but that never compensates for the lack of actual drama; when so much of the conflict concerns Cristiano's reluctance to betray his father, it might have helped to spend more time on exploring that relationship than on capturing what light looks like when it pours in from a cellar door.
  46. The Alamo
    Turns into an edited-for-TV version of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch"--flat, bloodless, and utterly bereft of period grit.
  47. Ella Enchanted
    None of it would work without Hathaway, whose self-possession and lack of irony represents a throwback to old-fashioned Hollywood wholesomeness and glamour.
  48. Johnson Family Vacation
    It's a sign of trouble when watching a movie prompts nostalgia for the movie it's ripping off, particularly when that movie wasn't any good. But walking out of Johnson Family Vacation, it's hard not to feel misty-eyed for the urine-soaked-sandwich gags, incest jokes, and other refined comic elements of "National Lampoon's Vacation."
  49. The Blonds
    Grapples with tough subject matter, and earns a little leeway in its approach.
  50. Walking Tall
    To its credit, the new Walking Tall is a good half-hour shorter than its predecessor, but even at 86 minutes, sitting through it is a chore.
  51. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
    It IS a little obvious, but that's the way it goes with spiritual enlightenment. The film's lessons are plain--spoken aloud, even--and deal with the close relationship between what can be shed in this life and what binds people to the world in spite of their best efforts to purify.
  52. The Prince and Me
    Few actresses exude restless intelligence as effortlessly as Stiles, which is fortunate, since Martha Coolidge's film relies on that forceful charisma to make it past awful dialogue, contrived situations, and hokey use of Disney-style butterflies.
  53. Adored
    Adored stands at the crossroads where Telemundo and beefcake magazines collide, but for strangers to that intersection, the film's camp value is exceeded only by its tedium.
  54. Hellboy
    Pretty much impossible not to like a little, but it's also hard to like a lot. There's a fantastic film to be made from this material, but now, the burden of making it falls to a sequel.
  55. Home on the Range
    A sweet, raucously funny, comic Western that corrects a glaring historical injustice by finally surveying the Old West through the eyes of cows rather than cowboys.
  56. The United States of Leland
    Hoge, who scripted and directed The United States Of Leland, caters to his cast too much. He gives almost every character a way-too-involved subplot, which distracts from the heart of his story.
  57. Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space
    Tamala 2010 feels like either a singularly detail-organized dream, or an exceptionally formal drug trip.
  58. Two Men Went to War
    Cleverly realizing a novel premise, it's a slight but charming look at the lighter side of WWII.
  59. Mayor of the Sunset Strip
    Through Bingenheimer, the film not only gets the last word on the peculiar allure of celebrity, but also captures a fascinating shadow history of West Coast rock, which owes no small part of its livelihood to Bingenheimer's influence as a tastemaker.
  60. Never Die Alone
    Though steeped in both subgenres, Never Die Alone subverts that vicarious enjoyment by showing violence and abuse so unrelentingly ugly that only a sadist could derive the least bit of pleasure from it.
  61. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    Nothing is more dangerous than a sequel to a wildly successful awful movie, because the artisans involved have to preserve the franchise, which means honoring the original formula as if it were a cure for cancer.
  62. The Ladykillers
    Already as dark as London soot, the comedy hardly needed work to bring it in line with the Coen brothers' sensibility, but the remake moves to a beat of its own, one unexpectedly in sync with the gospel music dominating its soundtrack.
  63. Jersey Girl
    Though Smith loses many of his past efforts' familiar trappings--Jay and Silent Bob are now confined to the production-company logo--Jersey Girl plays to Smith's strengths like no film since "Clerks."
  64. Dogville
    The incendiary Dogville confirms the director's sadistic knack for locating his characters' (and his audience's) soft spots and prodding them for a singular emotional experience.
  65. Raja
    Even without all the other complications, Doillon's handling of the language gap alone gives Raja a pungent dramatic edge.
  66. The Gatekeeper
    The same willingness to plunge into luridness and melodrama allows The Gatekeeper to work as a taut suspense film on its shoestring budget.
  67. Bon voyage
    Whenever Rappeneau stays close to Adjani, the film briefly soars on her giddy self-absorption--particularly in the first hour, when it hasn't been sullied by misfortune. But ultimately, the big stars are just window dressing for an expensive nothing.
  68. Taking Lives
    Sadly, Taking Lives, adapted from a novel by Michael Pye, proves to be one long wallow in elements that have long since had their effectiveness dulled flat.
  69. Intermission
    Like many stylish, whipcrack American and British indies made in the wake of Quentin Tarantino and "Trainspotting," the film gets off on the same anything-can-happen storytelling brio, which at least keeps things lively. But without any resonant characters or ideas, it's all empty calories.
  70. Dawn of the Dead
    Swarming with zombies on both sides of the camera, the film is unrelentingly relentless, leaving no room for original director George Romero's wry satire on consumerism or his slow-paced, creeping undead.
  71. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    A surprisingly bittersweet love story at heart, Eternal Sunshine values the sum of experience, which in this case means a thorns-and-all openness to romantic possibilities.
  72. Divan
    Divan overcomes its stylistic clichés only because Gluck's story is rich, and because it comes to a knockout finish.
  73. Noi the Albino
    Only in the final minutes, when Kári overreaches for ironic effect, does the film plumb too far into the darkness.
  74. Spartan
    Using simplicity as another form of deception, Mamet lays out a hand of three-card monte for the audience to see, then tricks it into guessing falsely. In this case, it's worth getting fooled out of a little cash.
  75. Knafayim Shvurot
    Broken Wings doesn't stray far from the common melodrama in its setup and resolutions, but Bergman's uncommon sensitivity makes the film feel specific, intimate, and utterly plausible at every turn.
  76. Secret Window
    Secret Window is almost worth seeing for his characteristically assured performance alone, but Koepp sabotages Depp and his surroundings with an ending so atrocious, it callously betrays everything that came before it.
  77. Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
    Opens with its snazziest effects sequences and gets cheaper from there, as if studio executives were constantly scaling back the budget as the filmmakers went along.
  78. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
    Intended to be shamelessly heart-tugging and even uplifting in an odd way, but it's recommended mainly as an acting showcase.
  79. Games People Play: New York
    Sets a new nadir in the reality genre's race to the bottom. The price of sacrificing dignity for the amusement of the general public gets lower every day.
  80. Ghost River
    La Vie Promise's style is too slick for the subject matter.
  81. Hidalgo
    Mortensen nicely underplays his role, offhandedly tossing off one-liners and making the script's sometimes purple dialogue sound a little less cheesy, but the rest of the film often lurches into hammy overdrive.
  82. Starsky & Hutch
    A textbook example of how a remade '70s show can feel like an enjoyable lark rather than cultural recycling run amok.
  83. The Reckoning
    Maddeningly dull. It works on the cerebrum while the rest of the body drifts off to sleep, and the dullness only intensifies as the film goes on.
  84. Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen
    Shou focuses on a meaty subject, and he has an insider's access to the world he's exploring. But his behind-the-scenes film doesn't spend nearly enough time behind the scenes.
  85. James' Journey to Jerusalem
    An awkward marriage of fairy-tale and social realism.
  86. WTC the First 24 Hours
    The mostly wordless film simply presents Ground Zero, the dust-covered surrounding areas, and the city's immediate rescue efforts. As a document, it's invaluable, and as a viewing experience, it's somewhat shocking.
  87. Collateral Damages
    Sauret's approach isn't the most artful, but it doesn't have to be. Hearing his subjects speak for themselves is good enough.
  88. Club Dread
    With "Super Troopers" and Club Dread, Broken Lizard has cranked out two genuinely funny movies in a row.
  89. Greendale
    There's no forgiving the home-movie slackness of Greendale for its numbing dearth of imagination.
  90. Twisted
    Twisted marks a bottoming-out for pretty much everyone involved, particularly Judd and director Philip Kaufman, who should know better. The film is the creative equivalent of waking up naked in a puddle of cheap wine and vomit.
  91. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Contains all the elements of a satisfying teen genre picture, but they've been compromised out of existence.
  92. Goodbye Lenin!
    Surprisingly successful blend of goofy political farce and sober family drama.
  93. Risk/Reward
    For all the film's aggressive crosscutting, the individual stories would work just as well apart as together, because they pack less cumulative power when yoked awkwardly into one sweeping statement.
  94. The Passion of the Christ
    Gibson makes sure that no blow remains unfelt, and his approach can't help but stir the body, but he never touches the soul.
  95. Our Father
    Abouna starkly defines the masculine and feminine influence in raising children, and what happens when they're not so complementary.
  96. Big Animal
    Shooting in dreamy black and white, Stuhr finds quiet poetry in shots of his character wandering the countryside with his new friend, and deadpan comedy in scenes of the camel patiently watching his new owners eat dinner, his head filling a window frame as he waits for scraps.
  97. Against the Ropes
    Right up to the ludicrous finale and an even more improbable denouement, everything rings Hollywood-false. More galling still, the filmmakers' inventions take the zing out of the facts.
  98. EuroTrip
    The brain trust responsible in part for last year's "The Cat In The Hat," Eurotrip seems like the result of a particularly half-hearted brainstorming session.
  99. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
    Doesn't have a mean bone in its body, but it's so sloppily assembled that even Lohan's charm can't keep it together.
  100. Kitchen Stories
    Seems too subtle at times and too obvious at others, but Hamer strings together pieces of conversation and layers of voyeurism (everybody in the movie is watching somebody) into a moving study of the perils of presumption.
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