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. Swept Away
    Ritchie's frivolous comedy tries to have it both ways, thinning out the material for mass consumption while still sticking to the script -- an unstable alchemy that backfires horribly.
  2. How to Draw a Bunny
    The opportunity to dig into the trove of Johnson's art is an ultimate reward beyond all offbeat attempts to understand the artist himself. At its best, How To Draw A Bunny amounts to a shadow history of the American avant-garde.
  3. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer, who co-write, co-direct, and supply much of the voice talent, soft-pedal the proselytizing and explicitly Christian elements in favor of gags and gentle lessons, keeping the pace fast and the scenery colorful.
  4. Heaven
    With Heaven, Tykwer completes his self-appointment as Kieslowski's heir apparent, but since he has always been a better filmmaker than a thinker, his ideas drift into the ether.
  5. Welcome to Collinwood
    A low-key charmer that balances half a dozen winning performances, Welcome To Collinwood's momentum occasionally stalls, and it doesn't always produce laughs.
  6. Bloody Sunday
    At its best, Bloody Sunday produces the same chilling illusion of history writ large, clearly detailing the strategies of both sides, then blankly observing the conflict through unadorned, newsreel camera stock and the precise orchestration of large-scale chaos.
  7. Red Dragon
    Norton is a strong lead in an overwrought, mediocre film that trumps even Hannibal in its mercenary shamelessness.
  8. Just a Kiss
    The film's moralistic streak leaves a sour taste, especially because its battle of the sexes is so wildly off-balance.
  9. The Tuxedo
    A frenetic, busy, expensive machine that looks good but runs on autopilot.
  10. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Less a fantasy than a somber, enveloping mood piece, which is a large part of what makes it so strangely, irrationally compelling.
  11. Wasabi
    Offers watchable light entertainment, even though the prospect of the most respected national cinema indulging clunky cop-movie stereotypes is, if not scandalous, then at least disappointing.
  12. Sweet Home Alabama
    The film does coast along smoothly to the inevitable, which is a credit to the always-game Reese Witherspoon, who's courteous enough to pretend she doesn't know what's coming, then make it look like a huge surprise.
  13. Moonlight Mile
    Hoffman and Sarandon work well together, and Gyllenhaal, who's carved out a niche for himself as the new face of internalized conflict, fits nicely into a role Hoffman would have made a meal of 30 years ago.
  14. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    On the whole, the filmmakers hold too much to the text, and too often employ the smugly knowing, self-righteous tone typical of British telejournalism.
  15. Invincible
    An extraordinary story uniquely suited to Herzog's abilities, it eventually becomes easy to accept Ahola as a nearly mute witness to the obsessives around him, most immediately Tim Roth in a striking performance as Ahola's employer.
  16. Slap Her... She's French
    Mayron tries for a junior-league "All About Eve," but that backfires horribly, not least because her diabolical Eve (Perabo) is more charismatic and imaginative than her heroine.
  17. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    Looks like a video-game promo, has a story that plays like the fifth episode of a struggling syndicated action show, and feels like a headache waiting to happen.
  18. The Four Feathers
    Ledger is a charismatic, conflicted hero who internalizes his character's shame and anguish to powerful effect. Wes Bentley is similarly strong as Ledger's best friend turned romantic rival, and Kapur makes the most of Africa's breathtaking desert, crafting a gorgeous spectacle that's at once stately and hyper-real.
  19. The Banger Sisters
    Gets off to a bumpy start and runs into trouble along the way, but once it gets going, it's surprisingly warm and engaging.
  20. Trapped
    A tone of lurid idiocy permeates Trapped, a Z-grade woman-in-peril thriller starring scenery-chewing Kevin Bacon.
  21. The Ignorant Fairies
    His Secret Life's languid pace and general aimlessness keep getting in the way.
  22. 8 Women
    Intoxicates and overwhelms at the same time, giving off so much pleasure in a small space that the effect can be suffocating.
  23. Secretary
    There's something appealing about an unapologetic love story set in an office that's only a few clicks off from looking like a fetish dungeon, and Spader and Gyllenhaal make sure that the romance, kinks and all, carries the day.
  24. Spirited Away
    A wonderful encore, marked by the painstaking attention to detail and artful balance between terror and joy that make Miyazak's work unique.
  25. Quitting
    Because Quitting admits its basic falsehood up front, the film is never emotionally affecting, but Jia's participation in this confrontation of his past shows remarkable courage and honesty, especially when his behavior doesn't inspire much sympathy.
  26. Igby Goes Down
    Gives the impression of spontaneity while being meticulously planned. Most importantly, Steers and Culkin know that the best way to evoke sympathy is never to beg for it; by the end, their achievement seems hard-won.
  27. Barbershop
    Ice Cube serves as the film's solid moral center, with a dizzying variety of supporting characters in his orbit. A refreshingly class-conscious comedy-drama that refuses to talk down to its audience, Barbershop tackles serious issues.
  28. Alias Betty
    A lot goes on, and it doesn't always make sense. But the cast embodies Rendell's ability to incorporate shrewd observations on human behavior into the framework of a crime story, and Miller has a great eye for the places on the Paris outskirts where the lives of haves and have-nots intersect.
  29. Stealing Harvard
    An uncomfortable-looking Lee soldiers doggedly through a thankless role, while Green, though never particularly funny, at least brings off-kilter energy to a role that provides Stealing Harvard's only spark of spontaneity.
  30. Swimfan
    At least Christensen seems to have the right idea: She gives her character a look that's part lust, part thousand-yard stare, and part Machiavelli in tight sweaters and form-fitting skirts. It's not exactly acting, but it's not predictable, either, which makes it stand out all the more.
  31. City by the Sea
    Calls on De Niro to drum up the sort of emotional intensity that's been allowed to atrophy of late. City By The Sea isn't always worthy of him, but it makes enough demands to bring out his best.
  32. The Execution of Wanda Jean
    Minimizes music and effects, relying on artful, informative screen titles to explain the action and letting the action explain the rest.
  33. In Praise of Love
    Its gloomy speculations on the ephemeral nature of art are paradoxically not easily forgotten, and Godard's daring again pays off, or at least comes close enough to get credit for trying.
  34. Mad Love
    At heart it's a randy, oversexed soap opera in period garb.
  35. FeardotCom
    Made with just enough craft to keep it from being the instantly dated camp howler its title promises, but it's quickly apparent that there's no thought or originality under its grim, familiar surface.
  36. Crop Circles: Quest for Truth
    The film remains frustratingly focused on uncontextualized individual events rather than the phenomenon as a whole, and as such, it rapidly becomes redundant in its grainy, washed-out digital-video images of excited people poking at bent plants, or studying and manipulating computer-generated images.
  37. Undisputed
    A triumph of craft and narrative economy, the darkly funny Undisputed is as lean, mean, and skillful as its competing heavyweights.
  38. Little Secrets
    Director Blair Treu hails from Brigham Young University, and while there's nothing explicitly religious about Little Secrets, his primary influence seems to be those LDS public-service announcements in which nice people learn to become even nicer.
  39. Serving Sara
    Misbegotten late-summer special.
  40. The Isle
    At once predatory and vulnerable, Jung has a primitive intensity that speaks louder than words, carrying an enigmatic and often maddeningly elusive film that's short on dialogue, rational behavior, and narrative logic.
  41. How I Killed My Father
    Fontaine gives her film the tone of a psychological thriller, with the potential of violence always lurking beneath the surface.
  42. S1m0ne
    The best scenes play like "Frankenstein" revisited, with a comically bedraggled Pacino cast as the mad scientist trying to protect his runaway creation from a rabid public.
  43. One Hour Photo
    Has a clean, antiseptic chilliness reminiscent of a Kubrick film. But too often, the director's stark visuals underline the naked simplicity of his story and make his picture of the suburbs seem hopelessly generic.
  44. Possession
    For a film that depends so much on the interaction between words and passion -- and the drama of how each shapes the other -- the shortage of both leaves Possession looking like nothing more than an "Indiana Jones" in which card catalogs stand in for treasure maps, and footnotes for bullwhips.
  45. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
    A headache-inducing mess without direction or purpose.
  46. Mostly Martha
    Becomes precisely the sort of film its elements demand. As tearful goodbyes and joyful montage sequences set to lite-jazz saxophoning take over, "neatly winsome" trumps "messy drama" yet again.
  47. Blue Crush
    Contains enough exciting surf scenes that it could almost get by on visceral thrills alone.
  48. Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
    A joyously demented musical-comedy built on a macabre foundation, like "The Sound Of Music" with a kickline of corpses.
  49. All My Loved Ones
    A situation of such inherent drama only suffers from the director's attempts to intensify it, and eventually, the scenes of professional and personal rejection begin to suffer from an overabundance of pathos.
  50. I'm Going Home
    From his wonderfully idiosyncratic bits of silent comedy at a storefront window to a brilliant one-take of Malkovich watching a calamitous scene unfold, de Oliveira seems determined to exit on his own terms.
  51. The Château
    Never recovering the energy of its early scenes, the heavily improvised Château becomes shapeless and dull.
  52. Scarlet Diva
    Though Scarlet Diva contains flashes of pungent black humor and self-deprecation, it's hard to know how seriously Argento takes herself, or how much her real life has been inflated for dramatic effect.
  53. Secret Ballot
    Pleasing low-key comedy.
  54. xXx
    Diesel clearly has fun playing a character so bullish that his skin seems to be made of leather, and he's self-conscious enough to pull it off even after the film surrenders to formula.
  55. 24 Hour Party People
    A funny, unexpectedly inspiring story of excess, poor choices, and unwavering high-mindedness, all tied to that quintessential bit of rock wisdom: Icarus did fall, but first he flew.
  56. Blood Work
    Eastwood's down-the-middle police procedural Blood Work ranks as his least ambitious work in a decade, anonymous save for his iconic screen presence and a tasteful selection of jazz on the soundtrack.
  57. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    The rare sequel that magnifies the scope of the original without diminishing the fun.
  58. The Good Girl
    Skillfully sketches the parameters of its small-town existence but never quite fleshes out the inhabitants of those parameters. Without the well-considered humor and strongly defined characters of "Chuck," only a good cast stands between Girl and some familiar stereotypes.
  59. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    Lawrence's public foibles haven't magically transformed him into a comic genius, but they have made his act surprisingly poignant, if never especially funny or profound.
  60. Full Frontal
    The fact that Full Frontal comes together so well removes any doubt that anyone other than a master filmmaker is pulling the strings.
  61. One Last Kiss
    Through it all, Muccino piles on one shrill confrontation after another. At times, he seems headed for the melodramatic turf owned and operated by Pedro Almodóvar, but where the young Almodóvar would have deployed a prankish wit and the older Almodóvar scraped toward the humanity beneath.
  62. The Master of Disguise
    A film about as funny as a seeping wound.
  63. Signs
    For a big-budget Hollywood feature, the film places an unusually high amount of stock in the audience's imagination; not since "The Others" or "The Blair Witch Project" have so many shocks been indirect or kept teasingly out of view.
  64. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    Chabrol handles the upended family dynamic beautifully until the final third, when a wildly implausible sequence of events lessens the suspense just as he should be turning the screws.
  65. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Evans has as distinctive an American voice as Mark Twain or Vin Scully, and the directors wisely let him do the talking.
  66. Swimming
    Siegel is almost too tasteful, nearly to the point where his coming-of-age story loses color and purpose. But he finds a mesmerizing presence in Ambrose, a terrific young actress who carries the film without a second of showiness.
  67. Lan Yu
    The connection between Hu and Liu seems more scripted than real, founded on musty allegorical clichés about innocent country folk and corrupt city slickers.
  68. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    A superb portrait of a band and an industry in flux.
  69. The Country Bears
    It has the courage to feature some refreshingly lousy bear costumes, but the film seems likely to send most kids tugging at sleeves for the cinematic equivalent of Space Mountain.
  70. Who Is Cletis Tout?
    In the absence of sincerity, Cletis Tout creates a vacuum that flushes out the entire story, leaving nothing but its own hollow cleverness.
  71. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    Myers returns as his menagerie of repulsive characters, but this time, his frantic mugging feels more like an insipid parlor trick than ever.
  72. Happy Times
    Happy Times doesn't buck the clichés so much as infuse them with feeling, playing off the pleasant, unforced rhythm of two characters who pine for simple companionship.
  73. K-19: The Widowmaker
    After spending so much time letting the characters' deeds do the talking, the film veers into overkill, which comes as a letdown. But the actions linger longer than the words.
  74. What to Do in Case of Fire
    Even if the time were somehow right for a madcap comedy about terrorists, What To Do In Case Of Fire would still look pretty lousy.
  75. Stuart Little 2
    Never becomes more than a just-acceptable kiddie time-filler.
  76. Tadpole
    Though sloppily structured and sometimes dangerously flimsy (not to mention truncated at a mere 78 minutes), Tadpole has an unforced charm that compensates for the absence of more traditional cinematic virtues.
  77. Eight Legged Freaks
    The few isolated funny moments, particularly a witty visual gag involving a pop-up tent with legs, provide only a short break from the screen-flooding onslaught of CGI creatures and screaming extras.
  78. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    Drifting through time and space without firmly situating the viewer, Iwai's elliptical style requires patience, but also a willingness to be carried along by its gorgeous, dreamy lyricism.
  79. My Wife Is an Actress
    Sadly, that thin premise snaps after a while, and when Wife takes a serious turn, it becomes apparent how little the director has to say.
  80. The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    The pleasure to be derived from watching a loopy Australian risk life and limb is not to be dismissed or underrated, but Collision Course proves that that guilty pleasure, no matter how potent, just isn't a solid basis for a film.
  81. Tosca
    Using a single set for each act and cutting minimally, Jacquot seems to recognize his limited ability to make the opera cinematic.
  82. Reign of Fire
    Director Rob Bowman seems at a loss as to what to bring to the film, which, even with its good choice of leads, plods along from one dragon fight to the next, all of them staged to showcase Fire's impressive CGI dragons, but none choreographed with any real flair.
  83. Sex and Lucia
    Medem turns screenwriting into a feng shui exercise, shifting story elements like pieces of furniture around a room, as if the best films are the ones that end up facing southeast.
  84. Never Again
    Clayburgh and Tambor demonstrate genuine chemistry, but the film keeps diluting it with awful attempts at comedy and worse attempts at drama.
  85. Halloween: Resurrection
    It seems content to plod listlessly through the motions.
  86. Road to Perdition
    Mendes' second effort plays like a familiar song transposed to a minor key, a gangland fable soaked in portent and fatalism until its familiarity ceases to be an issue.
  87. Last Dance
    Displays, in all its discomfort and occasional fruitfulness, the trouble inherent in aesthetics by committee.
  88. Me Without You
    Aided by raw, committed performances from her two leads, Goldbacher makes them tough company for themselves and anyone else around them, on or off the screen.
  89. Read My Lips
    For as long as director and co-writer Jacques Audiard focuses on the central relationship, his stylish film stays on steady footing.
  90. Like Mike
    Weirdly earnest and earnestly weird.
  91. Men in Black II
    None of it sticks, but with the door left open for a third Men In Black movie, the one advantage of forgetting everything is not knowing exactly what's coming two summers from now.
  92. Songs from the Second Floor
    Though the laughs in Songs From The Second Floor tend to stick in the throat, they're also cathartic and oddly comforting, because the world outside the movie theater is bound to look cheerier than the one on the screen.
  93. The Powerpuff Girls
    It's a good movie infused with moments of greatness.
  94. Lovely & Amazing
    Emerges as something rare, an issue movie that's so honest and keenly observed that it doesn't feel like one. It earns its thesis statement through minute details and a unique grasp of a commonplace problem.
  95. The Cockettes
    Makes a terrific case for the group's historical importance, even though its performances seem more fun to discuss than watch.
  96. Notorious C.H.O.
    Despite her healthy fan base, Notorious C.H.O. looks like the dead-end to a limited repertoire.
  97. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    Nothing about Hey Arnold! The Movie cries out for the big-screen treatment, but it at least makes the transition from television to film with its charm intact.
  98. Harvard Man
    Channels Toback in his purest form, which will probably be a treat for auteurists and a headache for just about everyone else.
  99. Pumpkin
    The film doesn't seem to know how it feels, much less how others are supposed to feel about it.
  100. Mr. Deeds
    The film owes as much to Caddyshack as to Capra.
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