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. Shrink
    Shrink is exactly like virtually all his (Spacey) post-"American Beauty" vehicles: flashy, phony, nakedly melodramatic, and full of big actorly moments disconnected from real life.
  2. Smurfs: The Lost Village
    An inoffensive children’s film with an above-average voice cast, competent animation, and no product placement. This is enough to make it the finest film ever made about the Smurfs.
  3. The Sisters
    The Sisters is still somewhat compelling thanks to Bello, whose unguarded, provocative work continually resuscitates this corpse of a melodrama whenever it lays fallow.
  4. Domino
    Domino is, for large stretches, just ludicrous—and atypically boring. It’s a sad sight to see from a filmmaker who, once upon a time, excelled at drawing a viewer into the thrill of seeing a sequence come together, with all the pieces falling into place. In Domino, one finds only the pieces.
  5. Aloha
    Perhaps the energy Crowe could have expended on shaping believable characters went instead to the cultural context.
  6. Insidious: Chapter 2
    The techniques of the movie, then, are sound. Wan still moves his camera and composes his shots with a patience that belies his dank Saw origins. But the cinematography isn’t as virtuosic this time around.
  7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    While it’s not necessarily a good thing to aim this kind of weaponized marketing at kids, it’s also silly and colorful enough to nearly work as a live-action cartoon. It might rot brains, but perhaps not while regarding them with utter contempt.
  8. Pitch Perfect 3
    It’s half-assed in every way but cast retention; almost all the major female characters return.
  9. 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.
  10. Wild Card
    A largely forgettable lark, notable more for its slight diversions from action-movie norms than anything else.
  11. From the Land of the Moon
    Cotillard tries hard to fashion a credible human being from this collection of shallow adolescent impulses, but the movie infantilizes Gabrielle at every turn.
  12. Battle for the Planet of the Apes
    The bloodiest of the Apes films, and one of the most despairing.
  13. Sandy Wexler
    Maybe it’s a question of drastically lowered expectations finally working to Sandler’s advantage, but Sandy Wexler is disarming in its charms.
  14. Outlaws and Angels
    The main problem with Outlaws And Angels, though, is that it lacks either a sense of authenticity or a streak of playfulness to give shape to its relentlessly ugly worldview.
  15. Toys
    If Levinson weren't so intent on cramming whimsy and joy down the audience's throat for two punishing hours, he might very well have succeeded in his very noble ambitions. Whimsy is a tricky thing: too much can become oppressive.
  16. Jupiter Ascending
    It is, in other words, just a few musical numbers and a whiff of marijuana smoke short of being the Thomas Pynchon book of big-budget, effects-driven movie sci-fi.
  17. Homefront
    The basic ingredients of a throwback action movie are all there; what’s missing is action and style.
  18. The 355
    In a spy thriller, a woman who drinks her whiskey neat—girlbosses never dilute—and kicks men in the face wearing a stacked heel has become as much of a cliché as the womanizing secret agent. And The 355 does nothing to complicate, deconstruct, or refresh that cliché.
  19. Saw II
    Stripped down to the barest genre essentials, Saw is a spring-loaded killing machine, packed with sadistic little deathtraps and ludicrous macabre twists, and its quickie sequel offers more of the same, which should again appease viewers who enjoy being jerked around.
  20. The Benefactor
    That makes the role well tailored to its occupant: Gere stays within his range of moneyed playboys, while still getting to indulge in the kind of unflattering behavior that a more put-together Richard Gere character would never exhibit.
  21. 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.
  22. Man on a Ledge
    As the plot unfolds, brick by brick, the structure starts to wobble until it finally collapses into unintentional comedy.
  23. Jack Frost
    Jack Frost's juxtaposition of the absurd and the absurdly predictable results in a film that's frequently entertaining, but for the wrong reasons.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Deep Impact
    If director Mimi Leder is really guilty of anything, it's of wasting three first-rate actors (Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Redgrave, and Robert Duvall) in underdeveloped roles while allowing Leoni's shell-shocked, unconvincing turn to become an embarrassment.
  25. White Men Can't Jump
    The remake of WMCJ, also set in the Black communities of greater Los Angeles, fancies itself as having more on its mind than the original flick, but the ball rarely makes it through the hoop.
  26. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Like the big shiny sphere at its center, the film is fairly pretty, but there's no real sense that there's anything inside it.
  27. Delia's Gone
    James does a decent job with what he’s been given, but it’s never clear exactly what the movie hopes to do with his character. Is this just another crime and punishment retread? Or is it meant to serve as a metaphor for dealing with grief while disabled? It’s too broad to work as the latter, and too unhurried for the former.
  28. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
    It’s not a waste of a concept, exactly, but it’s not the reinvention that the franchise needs, either. Rock’s involvement brings some new blood to Spiral, but after a promising start it ends up becoming a pretty okay Saw movie with some bigger names than usual.
  29. Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
    As absorbingly weird and dark and sad as the film becomes, it still labors against jumpy construction, an irritating variety of visual styles and film stocks, and a crowded story that no one gets much individual screen time, which means that redemption for everyone comes far too quickly and neatly.
  30. Peaceful Warrior
    The "What The Bleep Do We Know?" crowd may well receive the film's wisdom like communion, but the rest of us are free to gag when Salva tries to jam it down our throats.
  31. Butter
    A toothless, insufferably smug satire using competitive butter-carving as a weak-tea stand-in for Midwestern politics, Butter is so contemptuous of its corn-fed rubes, it might as well be a Trojan horse crafted to prove the movie industry's liberal bias.
  32. Beastly
    In every aspect, from story to tone to characterization to visual aesthetic, it's laughably perfunctory, as though everyone involved were too embarrassed to give it more than a half-ironic token effort.
  33. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
    A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story’s mounting ludicrousness—two words: adamantium bullets—or a conclusion that’s only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown. Maybe.
  34. Slumberland
    Playing like an amalgam of Monsters, Inc. and Inception, this family-friendly fantasy thankfully doesn’t put audiences to sleep, but neither does it draw us into its dreamy sensation.
  35. Brick Mansions
    It’s a beat-for-beat remake of a movie whose plot was never meant to do anything except get characters to jump from rooftops, made by a less confident director (Camille Delamarre, one of the studio’s go-to editors) and set in a culture Besson has never been able to grasp. It’s also a silly pile-up of exaggerated action clichés—and much of the time, it’s pretty fun.
  36. Leatherface
    To turn Leatherface into a tragic figure, twisted by traumatic upbringing into a monster, is to forget that he’s scariest as a force of nature, which tend to be tough to diagnose. Remember, no one cares what the shark from Jaws was like as a tortured guppy.
  37. Dracula Untold
    More sad dad and noble martyr than creature of the night, Evans’ dashing Prince Of Darkness inspires less fear than just about any incarnation of the famous character, save perhaps the one played by Leslie Nielsen.
  38. My Little Pony: The Movie
    My Little Pony: The Movie tries to get meta on the sickly sweetness of its subject matter.
  39. Green Lantern
    A film so utterly lacking in conviction, it needs a 25-year-old Tom Cruise vehicle just to keep its spine straight.
  40. Simon Birch
    There's hardly a character, plot twist, or musical theme in the whole enterprise that isn't primed to go straight for the tear ducts, as if Johnson assumes that his audience is incapable of mounting a defense.
  41. Inhale
    It's neither remotely convincing as true-to-life drama or lurid and propulsive enough to work as exploitation. It's just bad.
  42. 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up
    While the third film has a little more narrative coherence—involving corporate pollution on a Native American tribe’s land—it’s also lazy in a way that’s hard to look past.
  43. Exorcist II: The Heretic
    It would be a lot easier to buy Exorcist II: The Heretic as a mood piece if it was able to sustain a tone beyond clumsy exposition and hysterical camp for longer than a few minutes.
  44. The Change-Up
    David Dobkin's film has the faults of raucous recent scatological comedies like "Bad Teacher," "Horrible Bosses," and "The Hangover Part II" with none of their redeeming facets. It's scattershot, sexist, and vulgar without being funny.
  45. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    Here and there, some of this starts to feel a little less like homework and more like fun. Though part one used up many of the good monsters—like Medusa and the hydra—part two is a fleeter entertainment, free of origin-story requirements.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Lethal Weapon 4
    It's a dead end to a franchise that should have been put to rest two movies ago.
  47. Jigsaw
    Jigsaw isn’t a series low point. It’s less aggressively unpleasant than some of the others.
  48. Dark Places
    Aside from the A-list cast, there isn’t much to differentiate Dark Places from an especially grim TV movie.
  49. Fame
    A film that’s largely a raw, uplifting love letter to creativity in every possible form.
  50. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Contains all the elements of a satisfying teen genre picture, but they've been compromised out of existence.
  51. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
    The films are inane, sloppy, tone-deaf, moralizing, and have no sense of quality control, but there’s nothing quite like them. Madea, we hardly knew ye…
  52. Dead Man Down
    Dead Man Down exerts an unconscionable level of effort for minimal reward: It aspires to exquisite world-weariness, but just ends up feeling exhausted by its frenzied yet fruitless exertions.
  53. Clash of the Titans
    Modestly entertaining by the low standards of spring blockbusters. As with "Transporter 2" and "The Incredible Hulk," Leterrier aims no higher than competence and achieves just that.
  54. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
    About Piven: When did it go wrong? When did the caustic character actor guaranteed to liven up even the dullest movie turn into a walking black hole of smarm from which no joy can escape?
  55. Rodin
    But it’s still quite the mismatch of content to form — a movie as ordinary as Rodin himself was extraordinary.
  56. Why Him?
    Hamburg springs some surprises, albeit secondhand ones. More often, he calls his shots from a mile away.
  57. Jexi
    Surely, bland cultural insights can’t defeat a film whose main attraction is the promise of stupid, raunchy fun? Reader, Jexi fails even at that, as it awkwardly struggles across its slim running time to land a single one of its existentially painful, seemingly bot-generated jokes.
  58. The Green Hornet
    It's a strange, shapeless, rarely satisfying, but generally amiable movie in which everyone appears to be faking it as they go along, and almost-almost-getting away with it.
  59. Nobody's Fool
    When his zany cast of characters (many but not all played by Perry himself) takes leave of his material, as in Nobody’s Fool, his movie’s faults start to look more congruent with less auteur-driven studio comedies.
  60. The Wedding Weekend
    At least when they're singing, they aren't sniping and griping at each other. That original title really would have worked a lot better.
  61. Just a Kiss
    The film's moralistic streak leaves a sour taste, especially because its battle of the sexes is so wildly off-balance.
  62. Bringing Down the House
    Yet another comedy that suggests someone should take Martin aside and remind him that he can do better.
  63. Forgiveness
    Moshonov's capering, wheedling, and stagey monologuing become deeply taxing, and so does the conclusion, which makes more sense as metaphor than narrative.
  64. Me Him Her
    Unchecked impulse can be a boon, but Landis writes his way through every scene as though it were overdue homework, and directs with nary a hint of style.
  65. The Concorde... Airport '79
    It’s The Love Boat in the air, basically.
  66. Founders Day
    If you’re not a slasher nerd, don’t worry, this entertaining, wicked little movie can still win you over, even if it might take you a little longer to find its particular groove.
  67. Need For Speed
    Need For Speed’s dialogue-centric scenes are often clunky, and its comic relief is at times embarrassingly unfunny, but whenever Waugh shifts his focus to figuring out how to best convey an ingenious practical stunt with the camera, the movie comes alive.
  68. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
    Every aspect of of the movie feels as if it’s been determined by algorithm, workshopped and test-marketed into a state of pleasant, fleeting dullness.
  69. Nights in Rodanthe
    This isn't a movie: it's a feature-length Ralph Lauren commercial.
  70. The Boss Baby: Family Business
    Family Business feels like trying to eat lunch in a room full of screaming toddlers who keep slapping the sandwich out of your hands.
  71. Life as We Know It
    Pity any poor kid stuck in a house like that. Pity, too, anyone who has to stop by for a visit.
  72. Dirty Weekend
    Don’t get too excited: Not only is there nothing especially dirty about Dirty Weekend, the latest and lamest film by erstwhile provocateur Neil LaBute, but the movie doesn’t even occupy an entire weekend.
  73. Zoe
    Wrestling with the intrinsic creepiness of the premise would involve some social commentary, self-awareness, and honest-to-God storytelling, and that’s not Doremus’ bag.
  74. Queen of the Desert
    Whatever imprint Queen Of The Desert makes belongs mostly to Kidman, who stresses Bell’s compassion, her fearlessness, her eponymous regality.
  75. The Home
    The truth is that crummy, un-scary horror movies are nothing new, and are more the norm than the exception. And while The Home doesn’t distinguish itself in terms of style or subtext (one can argue that it doesn’t have any of the latter), it at least throws out just enough gross-out imagery to keep a viewer awake.
  76. The Edge of Love
    The Edge Of Love is more like a museum piece, placing historical figures in frozen positions, and asking us to judge them as the curators do.
  77. Aftershock
    Right up until the quake, Aftershock is a bland, sub-"Hangover" comedy about guys on the make in South America. Then finally, blessedly, the ground swallows up these shallow idiots.
  78. The Greatest Beer Run Ever
    The arguments presented by the characters on each side are broad and reductive. There’s no nuance and no original thoughts. The information is obvious and presented at its least confrontational. It’s a scene meant to depict the moral dilemma at the center of its story, and it ends up being ridiculous.
  79. Provoked: A True Story
    There's a noble cause buried under all the clumsy speeches, blatant manipulations, and foreordained conflicts, but the thudding lack of subtlety proves exhausting.
  80. Alvin and the Chipmunks
    There's just not enough here for a movie. It's almost as if some ideas were meant to live for three and a half minutes each Christmas season, not to get stretched to the breaking point for 50 years.
  81. Man of the Year
    If there's anything sadder than a satire without teeth, it's a thriller without thrills. Even sadder is the rare movie that fails at both genres simultaneously. That, and that alone, makes Man Of The Year exceptional.
  82. Silk
    Sensual but profoundly silly, Silk is ultimately little more than softcore porn with arthouse trappings, a moony, dopily romantic "Red Shoe Diaries" variation for the NPR set.
  83. Growing Up and Other Lies
    Part of what made Edgar Wright’s "The World’s End" so refreshing was the way that it feinted at being a certain tired sort of movie before suddenly making a wild leap in another direction. Growing Up And Other Lies, is exactly the mediocre movie that The World’s End was pretending to be.
  84. Here
    For all of its ambitions, Here is ultimately too simplistic to work as either a domestic drama or a deconstruction of the same—an experiment in storytelling that turns out to be an object lesson in undercooked ambition.
  85. Never Back Down
    Director Jeff Wadlow and screenwriter Chris Hauty are so committed to following through on the "Karate Kid" formula that they don't care for novelty; it's enough for them just to hit their cues and play up the slo-mo MMA brutality. In the future, movies this derivative will be made by robots.
  86. 3 Ninjas Kick Back
    Going from subplot to subplot illustrates the apathy that exists on every level of the filmmaking, from the screenplay to the fight choreography.
  87. Synchronicity
    Synchronicity is more contraption than movie, its plot as mechanically functional as a clock, rotating characters around like gears.
  88. The Deliverance
    The Deliverance is alternatingly dull and totally nuts. It is never scary, and only sometimes holds your attention.
  89. The Exorcist: Believer
    An exorcism movie may not need to be compelled by the power of Christ, but something about it still needs to be compelling, and slapping the name The Exorcist on a screenplay that reads like a brainstorming session is just not enough.
  90. Moonwalkers
    By the umpteenth scene where the “joke” is that one of the characters is on drugs, the movie’s strained wackiness becomes wearisome.
  91. Get Away If You Can
    One hopes the entire process made for great couples therapy, because watching it certainly doesn’t.
  92. Dot the I
    The plot's profound implausibility wouldn't matter if the ideas and emotions behind it had any power.
  93. The Wraith
    The Wraith’s plot is predictable and its genre nods skimpy (primarily limited to The Mystery Racer’s ability to resurrect himself after crashes), but Marvin directs with real energy and wit.
  94. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
    James has a sweet, appealing presence, but the dreary, joke-light script and generic direction do him no favors.
  95. The Darkest Minds
    A generic and frankly very tedious compendium of YA clichés.
  96. Intruders
    Intruders ultimately comes across like basic-cable schlock (or is it Netflix schlock now?), slightly redeemed by the germ of a great idea, even if said idea never truly germinates.
  97. UglyDolls
    Adults in charge might want to take a cue from the movie’s penny-pinching, and save some money on movie tickets.
  98. City Heat
    Even at its best, film noir dialogue teeters on the verge of self-parody and City Heat all too often crosses the thin line separating crackling from cornball.
  99. The Kissing Booth 2
    In broadening the world of the first film without really deepening it, The Kissing Booth 2 often feels more like a spinoff TV series—although at an unconscionable 132 minutes long, it’s hardly a breezy watch.
  100. Beauty and the Beast
    Without a poignant note or undercurrent of suggestion, it amounts to a world of effects, rather than a world of magic.
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