The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 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 2.6 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 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. Drive-Away Dolls
    Cooke and Coen manage to make a movie whose only virtue is reminding people of other better films they liked decades ago. There is not enough substance nor laughs to make Drive-Away Dolls anything more than instantly forgotten.
  2. Insidious: The Red Door
    Insidious: The Red Door is not a broken movie by any means. It’s a comprehensible experience, though perhaps less so if viewed as a standalone feature instead of the presumably final chapter of a continuing narrative. But Wilson was tasked with telling a pretty dull story, both in terms of its visceral horrors and its thematic ambitions.
  3. Saltburn
    The handful of explicit scenes feel like they’re included solely for shock value, coming across as schlocky and inert. That’s not to say the performances are at fault.
  4. The Hollywood Knights
    Powered by a soundtrack featuring many of classic-rock radio's most comically overplayed songs, The Hollywood Knights has almost nothing going for it aside from a surplus of enthusiastic vulgarity.
  5. Sorry/Not Sorry
    Sorry/Not Sorry functions more aptly as a recap of a situation most people who would seek out the doc already know about.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Wish
    Wish is a mess, but there are ways it could be called an innovative one.
  7. Arthur the King
    The film is named after the dog. The memoir upon which the film is based is about the transformative meeting with this dog. It seems clear that this should be a story about a dog! So it’s baffling to realize that the dog is almost an afterthought. Instead, it’s yet another star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg to unconvincingly sell himself as a likable everyman.
  8. Handling the Undead
    There’s a genuine sense of lived-in sadness here, but it isn’t enough to elevate the proceedings into something special or compelling.
  9. Nightbitch
    While Nightbitch certainly achieves relatability, it also presents a generic treatise on womanhood that reinforces more gendered conventions than it refutes.
  10. Kneecap
    Writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s film has a harder time connecting its stylish music video silliness with drama that meanders and a political message that repeats like it’s stuck on a cheap turntable.
  11. Tuesday
    Tuesday is a tonal mess, flitting between horror, humor, absurdity, and at least one candidate for this year’s most gag-inducing visual as quickly as a parrot traversing the oceans to deliver death to all the world.
  12. Ricky Stanicky
    In the wrestling ring, Cena used to wear a shirt which read “Rise Above Hate,” and indeed, he does so here. It would be better if he found a project where he didn’t have to.
  13. Tarot
    It’s trying to be everything at once, and ends up feeling flimsy, empty, and again, very, very frustrating.
  14. Trigger Warning
    The filmmakers frustratingly fail to dig into the familiar territory they’re traversing. What should serve as a warm welcome for Mouly Surya (helming her first English-language picture) and a kick-ass welcome back to lead roles for star Jessica Alba turns into a congealed mess of squandered potential.
  15. Time Cut
    Here, genre hybridization is a losing battle, sacrificing scares and intensity in favor of corny jokes about Instagram not yet being invented.
  16. Michael
    Michael is an attempt to remind audiences why so many fans fell in love with him in the first place, but it doubles as a pretty clear bit of hagiography.
  17. Finian's Rainbow
    I found much to like and dislike about Finian's Rainbow, from forest sets that look unmistakably like an Astroturf showroom to a bloated running time made even longer by a musical prelude and intermission.
  18. Dandelion
    While Dandelion begins on a promising note and intermittently strikes the right chords, this cinematic symphony sours during its crescendo when it should be intensifying, bringing its stirring sentiments together in resounding harmony.
  19. Red One
    The aggressively secular and gift-based systems of Red One are almost enough to prompt a moist-eyed holiday wish for more piously churchy seasonal entertainment.
  20. Y2K
    Y2K should mark the beginning of Kyle Mooney’s film auteurism, but his funnier instincts and command of human vulnerability have been replaced by weak jokes, weak characters, and a weak storyline.
  21. The Exorcism
    By the climax, The Exorcism is buried in plot points that obscure whatever the power of Christ is compelling us to do.
  22. Blues Brothers 2000
    Things pick up a bit toward the end, abetted by a string of relatively energetic musical numbers, but they can only partially redeem a film that's as pointless as it is perfunctory.
  23. The Ritual
    The Ritual just becomes a bad possession movie that’s not pulling off its hokey scares, rather than a bad possession movie unable to fulfill its more down-to-earth ambitions.
  24. It Ends with Us
    There are worse and more mind-numbing portrayals of domestic abuse out there, but is it helpful to offer up a pipe dream, double-acting as a trauma fantasy for eager voyeurs?
  25. The Devil's Bath
    Mileage will vary, dictated by your appreciation for methodical avalanches of sorrow driven by puritanical pressures. Everything is minimalistic, punctuated by the devastating context found in the research that helped shape Franz and Fiala’s screenplay. Some viewers will recognize dedication, others will have their patience tested.
  26. Skincare
    It’s a film about the costs of selling your own superficiality to the world only ends up just as superficial.
  27. The Killer
    The film can’t stop splitting the difference between dissonant remnants of Woo’s baroque sentimentality (Zee lighting a candle for each life she takes) and snarky Hollywood action idiocy.
  28. Shelby Oaks
    Unfortunately, even taking into consideration the fact that this is a first time filmmaker, the result is a mass of half-baked ideas and poorly executed tonal shifts, squandering the promise of its early premise and devolving into a middling mess.
  29. The Platform 2
    Gaztelu-Urrutia’s expansion feels redundant and over-explained, but also sludgy and disjointed. It’s like being served a second dinner after you’re uncomfortably full; the flavors taste the same, but the experience is far less fulfilling.
  30. The 4:30 Movie
    The familiarity is, of course, the point: Anyone going to a new Kevin Smith movie in 2024 is either already well-versed in the comfort food of the View Askewniverse, or is being dragged on a date by someone who is. The result evokes a kind of bittersweet nostalgia—not for the much-mythologized pop-cultural ‘80s, but for a younger, fresher writer-director who was able to do a lot more with a lot less.
  31. Caddo Lake
    Held and George’s film twists and turns, but charting their narrative swamp is a simple and unrewarding exercise.
  32. House of Spoils
    The result is too serious to ever go full B-movie bonkers and too silly to ever actually scare, let alone say something meaningful.
  33. Brothers
    Its true shortcoming is that it isn’t very funny, offering only generic diversions.
  34. Cleaner
    Cleaner is a perfectly serviceable time waster for plane rides and afternoon naps. It might even make a good addition to Daisy Ridley’s acting reel, should anyone think of her for a better action movie. But Campbell’s timid direction of a tired script can’t rise to the occasion.
  35. Wuthering Heights
    Overlong and undersexed, Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights betrays her audience of edgelords and perverts. Even stranger, those who have fostered a distaste for the filmmaker’s sensibility will similarly find themselves disappointed. It’s one thing to make art that can be read as indulgent, ill-conceived, and tasteless—it’s another to turn around and make something that’s just boring in comparison.
  36. G20
    If G20 barely registers as original, its star remains commanding. Even when Davis dutifully goes through the motions as stern government official Amanda Waller in the recent DC films, she seems incapable of phoning in a role or winking to the audience.
  37. The Dating Game
    The moments where these reluctant clients open up about their wholesome desires, their dreams of spending their lives with someone they can grow old appreciating, invigorate the unfocused film. The rest of the time is spent whirling around all the fascinating subtopics Feng brushes.
  38. Mercy
    Mercy takes a more bombastic approach with more speculative technology, only to chicken out of using that bombast to do anything other than jostle the audience through a series of contrived absurdities. If this is the future of crime thrillers, everyone needs their screentime severely curtailed.
  39. Summer of 69
    Summer Of 69 doesn’t flesh out its characters, themes, or jokes with enough finesse to even rank within the storied teen sex comedy canon.
  40. Echo Valley
    To the extent Echo Valley sporadically connects or has some saving grace, it’s because of the efforts of its other players, behind but especially in front of the camera.
  41. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is a slog, confused about the artist at its heart and stuck on unconvincing ideas about his art.
  42. Eleanor the Great
    This tonally tricky comedy-drama tackles aging, loss, the Holocaust, Jewishness, and the difficulty of determining the truth in a fake-news world. But Johansson’s well-meaning film couldn’t be more aggravating, and its biggest problem is its insistence that we find Eleanor so damn endearing, no matter what.
  43. In Your Dreams
    In Your Dreams has all the excitement of a low-anxiety, day-in-the-life nightmare stirred up by a case of the Sunday scaries. And, like those mundane nightmares, as soon as the film is over, you’re left momentarily wondering if it actually happened in the first place.
  44. Regretting You
    The best that can be said about the film is that The Fault In Our Stars director Josh Boone, well-versed with the teen weepy, sometimes approaches the schlock with a bit of self-deflating slyness—something more attuned to the audience’s eyerolls and the cast’s barely-hidden smirks than to the serious source material.
  45. Ella McCay
    It all adds up to a movie that isn’t screwy enough to be a screwball comedy nor deep enough to be a dramedy.
  46. Eenie Meanie
    Eenie Meanie largely coasts on clichés, every brief high point deflated by its worldview.
  47. The Carpenter's Son
    It takes dedication to make a dull movie where Nicolas Cage plays Joseph and Jesus gets into a fistfight with Satan, but The Carpenter’s Son sets to its task with devotion, if little else.
  48. Normal
    If you’re not immediately tickled by Normal‘s premise, which cements into the traditions of narrative conflict—man versus nature, man versus man, man versus self—the very literal concept of “man versus entire town,” this is the least of the Odenkickass movies. And if that idea makes you smile, Normal might be even more disappointing for how mechanically it goes through motions that used to be novel.
  49. Sacrifice
    Void of righteousness, indignation, or even straight-up nihilism, Sacrifice won’t cause even the most malleable of worldviews to waver.
  50. People We Meet on Vacation
    As low-stakes viewing about two blandly likable people, People We Meet On Vacation at least looks better than the cheapest level of streaming rom-coms, and fans of the book will probably find something to like. Ironically, however, its place on Netflix means it’ll miss out on its truest calling as a film you half-watch on a plane.
  51. I Can Only Imagine 2
    More inarticulate than outright bad, I Can Only Imagine 2 re-packages a heap of barely legible dramatic and comedic shorthand as an uplifting testament to “the goodness of God.” It’s mostly inoffensive, but also doesn’t really have anything to say.
  52. Lee Cronin's The Mummy
    If Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is like any of the director’s previous work, it’s most like Evil Dead Rises, since it’s also programmatically upsetting yet narratively threadbare to the point of distraction. And while this movie’s relentless, reflex-testing shock scares suggest that the filmmaker has a sense of humor, the audience is never really encouraged to laugh along with them.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Dreadful
    A too-modern sensibility and a drastic change from the original folktale lead the movie dreadfully astray.
  54. Protector
    It’s both more and less than “Taken: Mom Edition,” another boneheaded poking of conservative’s self-inflicted wounds around human trafficking with a title just as deluded as its content.
  55. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
    Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice practically warns the audience against taking it too seriously, even while talking out the other side of its mouth about its own heartfelt themes.
  56. Thrash
    While Thrash resembles a general-audience survival horror drama, its forgettable protagonists also frequently stop to reassure viewers—mostly through profanity-laced dialogue and occasional bursts of gore—that it’s okay to scoff at whatever they’re looking at.
  57. The Notebook
    Opening shots tend to say a lot about a movie, but they say everything about The Notebook, a glossy adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' four-hanky sudser.
  58. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    It would take a true visionary not to borrow from Alien Vs. Predator's predecessors, but Anderson lifts more than most will consider polite, borrowing to the point where some viewers may wonder whether he simply edited in footage from the old movies (or even, at one point, "Jurassic Park").
  59. White Noise
    It's a testament to Michael Keaton's fine lead performance that White Noise doesn't come off as laughably preposterous.
  60. Racing Stripes
    A film divided against itself. Granted, neither part is particularly distinguished or appealing but the old-timey sports-movie elements at least possess a quaint charm. Unfortunately, that's wholly negated by the film's stumbling attempts at comic relief.
  61. Appleseed
    Its busy, stiff, artificial graphics are a perfect match for its busy, stiff, artificial plot. A simple Shirow pinup parade might almost be preferable.
  62. She's One of Us
    For all the smart visual design, though, She's One Of Us is frustratingly clinical.
  63. Fascination
    Nearly everything about Fascination feels overdone. At its delirious worst, it's as pungent a Parisian cheese shop, offering a cornucopia of laughable scenes.
  64. Uncle Nino
    Written and directed by Robert Shallcross, and seemingly misdirected into theaters from its natural home on the ABC Family Channel, Uncle Nino is a sweet but not particularly distinguished effort.
  65. Constantine
    Reeves rigid delivery makes Constantine's occult backstory sound pretentious and silly, and converts Constantine himself into a repressed cipher. The film's biggest revision isn't in not making him blonde, or not making him British. It's in not making him human.
  66. 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.
  67. Man of the House
    Jones' role, on the other hand, only requires him to look embarrassed at all times, which shouldn't have been too hard to pull off, considering the circumstances. Is that what they call "method" acting?
  68. The Jacket
    Still, the central mystery remains effective and compelling for most of the film, until it becomes clear that it's all image and no intent.
  69. Guess Who
    An implausible, wildly protracted setup that drags on forever before reaching a payoff that barely registers.
  70. D.E.B.S.
    An incorrigible tease. It baits its audience with the promise of fluffy, light-footed cotton-candy fare, but delivers a clumsy, talky, indifferently filmed lesbian romance.
  71. Girl Play
    In the process of becoming characters, the writer-stars have diminished themselves.
  72. Sahara
    McConaughey is usually a welcome presence, but here, he looks like making the movie was getting in the way of his exciting African adventure.
  73. House of D
    House Of D never feels honest, but when Duchovny consciously tries to score sentiment points, the strain is more than the film can handle.
  74. The Great Role
    A short and soppy story that Coyote lends some dignity, but not much power.
  75. Saving Face
    The umpteenth variation on second-generation American immigrants bucking the traditions of their first-generation elders.
  76. The Honeymooners
    Lunchbox-toting time-waster.
  77. Wild Side
    A sustained mood piece of disquieting intensity, but its almost unbearable air of morose ennui becomes hard to take even in small doses, let alone in a highly concentrated torrent of misery like this.
  78. The Perfect Man
    Where Locklear's careful, clipped delivery confirms that she's better suited for TV stardom than the movies, every time Duff opens her mouth, she confirms that her natural home is in magazines. Or voicing animated squirrels. Either one would work.
  79. Ethan Mao
    Without contrivances, the movie would only run about five minutes.
  80. King of the Corner
    It's a low-key actor's showreel, harmless and toothless and sleepy. It'd go pretty well with a glass of warm milk.
  81. Lila Says
    One long tease, not just because it keeps promising sex it doesn't deliver. It teases at deeper themes and cultural commentary.
  82. The Warrior
    Boasts an action-movie plot and an action-movie title, but precious little action. It's a lovely film about brutal men, but its integrity and visual splendor ultimately can't make up for its overall lack of visceral excitement.
  83. The Island
    An overblown science-fiction epic in which ostensibly unthinking, unfeeling stem-cell-like entities not only think and feel, but look and act like glamorous movie stars.
  84. Saint Ralph
    Scott can invest just about any scene with heft and intelligence, but neither the material nor his co-star give him much help.
  85. Valiant
    It was made fast and cheap, which shows in every none-too-slick frame.
  86. The Cave
    It's an undistinguished effort in which none of the actors distinguish themselves.
  87. The Man
    It's the kind of featherweight slot-filler people turn off after 15 minutes on a plane or have on in the background on cable while they vacuum the floor.
  88. Steal Me
    Steal Me suffers from a distinct charisma vacuum at the center, which makes it easy to linger on its many shortcomings, especially its stilted dialogue and pseudo-poetic, pseudo-philosophical narration.
  89. G
    For a film about shimmering surfaces and the glittering allure of the superficial, G boasts a depressingly flat, undistinguished visual style, and whenever Bill Conti's score reaches for rarified, elegant romance, it instead suggests the dewy earnestness of a feminine hygiene commercial.
  90. Venom
    Gillespie showed a real knack for '80s-style retro horror with "I Know What You Did," and while a few sequences here have the familiar-but-enjoyable framing and stylization of an old EC horror comic, his material defeats him.
  91. Dear Wendy
    Its mad rush to offer shallow takes on every Big American Issue would be offensive if it weren't so misguided. It's almost cute the way Dear Wendy thinks it knows what it's talking about and then just keeps going and going long after it's stopped making sense.
  92. In Her Shoes
    The whole exercise feels hopelessly shallow and artificial. In Her Shoes is basically a double-date romantic comedy, in which not one but two women find themselves and learn to live and love again, etc. etc., and while it's well-acted on most counts, it's also as plodding as it is obvious.
  93. Waiting...
    There's real potential in the premise of young, unmotivated screw-ups logging time at a dead-end restaurant job--a hash-slinging "Office Space," basically--but first-time writer-director Rob McKittrick makes it look like a homemade sitcom laced with profanity.
  94. Never Been Thawed
    What's most surprising about Never Been Thawed is that it's not completely awful. It's just a little awful.
  95. Stay
    It's become a tired cliché for characters in "serious" science-fiction movies not to realize they're dead or dying, but Stay as a film doesn't seem to realize that it's dead from the outset, an unconvincing automaton grimly going through the motions.
  96. 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.
  97. Derailed
    Much of the second half is spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, though you don't have to have 20/20 vision in order to see the big twist coming from miles away. Once it arrives, the film officially disembarks from reality with an over-the-top climax and denouement that play shamelessly to the bloodthirsty masses.
  98. Bee Season
    Everyone in Bee Season is chasing spiritual peace and falling behind, and McGehee and Siegel catch them at their most worn-out and static.
  99. Just Friends
    The tantalizing promise of 90 heavenly minutes of Ryan Reynolds in a roly-poly fatsuit and unconvincing tubby make-up (which make him look like a younger version of Martin Short's Jiminy Glick) proves a case of the old bait-and-switch.
  100. Duane Hopwood
    Duane Hopwood is suffused with hangdog dreariness, equivalent to a unsoled shoe treading rainwater.
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