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. Inspector Gadget
    Anyone older than eight is likely to find it a ridiculously extravagant exercise in stupidity.
  2. The Haunting
    You can buy the special effects, but if that's all you have to offer, it won't amount to much.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Lake Placid
    It doesn't help that, at 80 or so minutes, it feels like there's a reel missing—you know, the one with the finale that's even slightly more pulse-pounding than any of the four or five other scenes in which the big, impressive-looking monster attacks the heroes as their legs dangle in the water.
  4. The Wood
    A mess, a poorly paced, poorly structured, lukewarm comedy-drama that fails even to capitalize on the cheap nostalgia inherent in its plot.
  5. Eyes Wide Shut
    Above all a masterpiece of sustained tone, a tightrope act that pays off in rich and unexpected ways.
  6. The Blair Witch Project
    A truly scary horror film, something akin to a lost art these days.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Muppets from Space
    The cavalcade of guest spots does give viewers the rare opportunity to see Andie MacDowell getting punched in the stomach by Miss Piggy, as well as the chance to watch Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes reject the amorous advances of a wise-cracking prawn, but they also undermine Muppets From Space's attempts to transcend its dull, plodding shenanigans.
  8. Late August, Early September
    Late August, Early September is a resolutely minor work, a quiet departure from the brash showiness of Irma Vep, but it's crafted with the sure hand of a major director.
  9. Summer of Sam
    Lee at his best, a virtuoso piece of filmmaking that's stylish, substantial, and rich in detail.
  10. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
    When it's on its game, and it frequently is, South Park's portrayal of its foul-mouthed, pre-teen, construction-paper-like protagonists' navigation of the absurd adult world around them cuts as deeply as any other current comedy.
  11. The Dinner Game
    Adapted from a long-running stage play, The Dinner Game has been refined to peak comic efficiency, with every misunderstanding and hare-brained scheme neatly cascading into bigger and bigger catastrophes.
  12. Big Daddy
    Sandler's best movie, a surprisingly touching and consistent comedy that finds him reaching out to new audiences without abandoning the transgressive meanness that has enlivened his best work.
  13. Tarzan
    The main problem with Tarzan is its story, which, after a strong start, finds a steady groove and stays with it, offering no particular highs or lows.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Run Lola Run
    May be all Eurotrash flash, but it's not often that a film packs this much visceral punch.
  15. The General's Daughter
    The General's Daughter isn't a poorly made or acted film, but it's so shallow, hypocritical, and sleazy that it's difficult not to find it repulsive.
  16. The Red Violin
    As pleasant stimulation for the eye and ear, it's two hours of sumptuousness, but anyone looking for more won't find it here.
  17. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
    The most consistently funny studio sequel in some time, and the rare blockbuster that actually delivers on what it promises.
  18. Instinct
    A mushy-headed, unintentionally funny inspirational drama that plays like a clumsy attempt to crossbreed "The Shawshank Redemption" and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest."
  19. Limbo
    The weaknesses in Sayles' story and his occasional bouts with didacticism are far outweighed by the film's exceptional intimacy and humanity.
  20. The Thirteenth Floor
    A solid, interesting B-movie, in another season it would seem a good deal fresher.
  21. Notting Hill
    It may boil down to little more than a minor variation on Four Weddings' formula, but it's an interesting and entertaining one.
  22. Eternity and a Day
    Eternity And A Day occasionally lapses into navel-gazing ennui, and Ganz's reluctant kinship with the adorable moppet courts cliché, but Angelopoulos strings together so many haunting, exquisitely choreographed sequences that even his worst ideas are emotionally resonant.
  23. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
    Despite a shaky start and the presence of questionable elements throughout, by the time it arrives at its finale -- which copies Return Of The Jedi's triple-climax structure -- The Phantom Menace has won its place alongside the original Star Wars trilogy.
  24. A Midsummer Night's Dream
    Hoffman (Soapdish, One Fine Day) leads a first-rate cast in an intelligent, fully realized adaptation of Shakespeare's most popular comedy that's at once highly cinematic and true to its source.
  25. Tea with Mussolini
    While Zeffirelli couldn't have assembled a more capable cast, none of them, except Cher, are given characters colorful enough to make the film worthwhile; almost everyone gets lost amidst the Tuscan scenery.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    After Life
    The film, and the films within the film, are like a dream with a message about savoring existence: Learn to love in life, or risk leaving it without leaving an impression.
  27. The Mummy
    Tries for that series' breezy matinee atmosphere but the results turn out far too forced.
  28. Pusher
    As Refn counts down the days and ratchets up the tension, Pusher shifts from a subdued lowlife sketch, with lots of raunchy conversation between Buric and his horndog ex-con buddy Mads Mikkelsen, to a nail-biting look at a man running out of options.
  29. Idle Hands
    Loaded with smart sight gags and endearing secondary characters, it effectively mixes slapstick splatter and deadpan satire...Pretty damned irresistible.
  30. The Winslow Boy
    If The Winslow Boy has a flaw, it's that Mamet's style is impeccable to a fault, too cool and remote to have much of an emotional payoff. But since few directors can even approach his level of precision, that's a very minor complaint.
  31. Entrapment
    Entrapment is ostensibly some sort of action film, but perhaps out of deference to its sleepwalking star, it moves slowly and contains very little actual action.
  32. Pushing Tin
    A mess, but for the most part it's a fascinating mess. It helps that it boasts great acting all around--not just from Cusack, Thornton, and Jolie, but also from Cate Blanchett
  33. Lost & Found
    Spade proves that he's entirely capable of making unwatchable dreck all by himself.
  34. eXistenZ
    Though Cronenberg makes some creepy insinuations, eXistenZ is more effective as a black comedy than as a visceral shocker.
  35. Election
    Witherspoon's broad, obsessive comic performance is bound to get the most attention, but Broderick does the best work of his career, finding an affecting spot between the all-purpose defiance of Ferris Bueller and the put-upon foil of his recent work.
  36. Life
    Sluggish, laugh-free comedy (or is it an ineffectual drama?).
  37. Shuang long hui
    Twin Dragons is still a Chan film, albeit not a great one. As fans have figured out by now, that goes a long way.
  38. Go
    Escapism of the worst sort, a manipulative exercise in style that preys on the passivity of its characters and its audience. In the end, Go offers little more than the sour, impermanent rush of a pixie stick.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cookie's Fortune
    Cookie's Fortune, for all its faults, is a welcome respite. In the uneven hands of Altman, you're better off with a flawed bit of fluff than an outright atrocity.
  40. The Out-of-Towners
    Director Sam Weisman's pushy, subtlety-free direction certainly doesn't help. Martin is still capable of making a decent film, but The Out-Of-Towners isn't it.
  41. 10 Things I Hate About You
    Immensely likable.
  42. The Matrix
    The Wachowskis do it so playfully well, keeping The Matrix's potentially confusing plot intelligible, intelligent, and suspenseful, that it doesn't matter.
  43. The Mod Squad
    Bound to wind up as one of 1999's worst films.
  44. Forces of Nature
    Only succeeds sporadically, even if it's never quite the unwatchable monstrosity it so clearly could have been.
  45. The King and I
    It's hard to imagine a more ill-advised choice of source material.
  46. True Crime
    As disappointing-but-worthwhile films go, you could do a lot worse.
  47. Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    Either a thoroughly incomprehensible movie or a daring exercise in the cinema of disorientation, and a painful viewing experience either way.
  48. The Deep End of the Ocean
    It's not the implausibility of its plot, the shallowness of its characters, its funereal pace, its tenuous understanding of teenage behavior, its commercial-ready TV-movie-style direction, or the fact that Pfeiffer and Williams may be the most implausible Italian-Americans since James Caan -- the film is most undone by its near-complete lack of genuine drama.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trekkies
    It's always nice to see real people, however eccentric, enjoying their lives; if Star Trek has anything to do with that, more power to them.
  50. The Rage: Carrie 2
    Better than an opportunistic sequel has any right to be, but still pretty flawed.
  51. Baby Geniuses
    A horrible, horrible film that wears out its welcome before its opening credits.
  52. With Friends Like These...
    Not even amusing cameos from Bill Murray as a freeloading producer and Michael McKean as a proctologist can keep With Friends Like These... from being as minor as the film careers of its two-bit protagonists.
  53. Analyze This
    A funny, tightly plotted, well-conceived comedy that transcends both Crystal's '90s curse and its horrible title.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    The acting, mostly by a bunch of unknowns, is equally fresh and funny, and Ritchie keeps the movie moving faster than you can say, "bludgeoned to death by a 15-inch black rubber dildo."
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The School of Flesh
    Unfortunately, contrary to the provocative title, the results are not terribly interesting. While the acting is excellent and the filmmaking exquisite, The School Of Flesh itself is yet another dry example of l'amour fou.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    20 Dates
    Fact or fiction, it's still fun, if never really compelling.
  57. 200 Cigarettes
    More of a throwback to a period in the '70s when big-screen comedies like "FM" and "Thank God It's Friday" seemed to take all their cues from bad sitcoms, putting rice-paper-flat characters into vibrant settings and giving them nothing to do but exchange faux witty dialogue without the much-needed cues of a laugh track.
  58. The Other Sister
    Contrived, clueless, reprehensible.
  59. 8MM
    That 8MM fails miserably as a psychological thriller is forgivable. The fact that it is nearly as creepy, sleazy, and manipulative as the pornographic films it so cluelessly and hypocritically condemns is not.
  60. October Sky
    Offers a strange mix of sentimentality and social criticism, sometimes mixing the two to awkward effect.
  61. Jawbreaker
    A nasty black comedy whose relentlessly glossy exterior recalls both Araki and John Waters without the wit or smarts of either...As a black comedy, Jawbreaker has one major flaw: It's not funny.
  62. Blast from the Past
    The first 20 minutes of Blast From The Past, in which the film actually does something with its central concept, aren't that bad.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Message in a Bottle
    The depressing results will likely make viewers feel jerked around when it's all over.
  64. My Favorite Martian
    With its mixture of whimsy and special-effects-driven humor, My Favorite Martian aims to blend E.T. and Men In Black, but in its sad, mercenary shamelessness, it ends up recalling Mac And Me instead.
  65. Simply Irresistible
    Somehow both formulaic and bat-shit insane. It's sort of a given that films in this genre won't be rigorous cerebral exercises, but Simply Irresistible is almost hypnotic in its unyielding stupidity.
  66. Payback
    Consider that in “Point Blank,” Lee Marvin walks through the film with the look of a man who's lost his soul. You can see it in his eyes. Look in Gibson's eyes in this one and you'll see soullessness, but it doesn't seem to come from anywhere within his character.
  67. She's All That
    You have to give She's All That points for unironically staying true to its genre in its purest form, one Kevin Williamson-like bit of dialogue aside.
  68. Gloria
    An inexplicable and disastrous mismatch of sensibilities.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Children of Heaven
    Majidi masterfully balances the serious subtext with entertaining vignettes.
  70. Playing by Heart
    Playing By Heart covers a broad, multi-generational spectrum of romantic and familial relationships, but Carroll can't resist tying everything together in a shiny red bow. The result is daytime television at its most ambitious, an entire season's worth of flavorless melodrama and placating warmth.
  71. Virus
    This suspense-free, originality-deprived mess will likely be a major contender for the title of 1999's worst film.
  72. At First Sight
    It's drainingly mediocre.
  73. The Thin Red Line
    Malick's powerful intermingling of brutality and beauty, his signature cutaways to indigenous flora and fauna, and the gentle lyricism of his disjunctive narration and painterly images are too rich to fully register in a single viewing.
  74. Forever Mine
    Forever Mine explores many of Schrader's pet themes—obsession, revenge, jealousy, betrayal, guilt—but they've seldom felt as empty, shallow, or ridiculous.
  75. Affliction
    Schrader has always been better as a writer and a critic than as a dramatist, which is why his most successful work has either been published in film journals or directed by Martin Scorsese. His flat, awkward staging diminishes some good performances -- particularly those of Nolte and a welcome Sissy Spacek.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hilary and Jackie
    An astoundingly moving and elegiac meditation on life, love, music, and the bonds of blood.
  77. The Faculty
    Fine lowbrow entertainment, a fast, funny pastiche of science-fiction, horror, and teen-movie archetypes that is, aside from the original Scream, perhaps the most entertaining, fully realized film of the current postmodern horror/sci-fi cycle.
  78. Patch Adams
    The film begins to resemble the dramatic equivalent of a porno movie, with emotional orgasms spewing forth at a rapid clip. By the time Patch Adams reaches its narrative climax, it has long since shot its dramatic load.
  79. Mighty Joe Young
    It's all a little silly, and silly in a way that's less fun than the original—due in part to an obvious subplot involving a poacher played by a hammy Peter Firth—but its kid-friendly B-movie charm and the peerless Mr. Young make it worthwhile, undemanding entertainment.
  80. You've Got Mail
    Takes almost two self-infatuated, smarmy, condescending, cringe-inducingly sentimental hours to reach its pre-ordained conclusion.
  81. The Prince of Egypt
    Rendering in high drama the story of Moses one moment and then underscoring that drama with songs filled with banal "you-can-make-it-if-you-really-try" cliches moves from the sublime to the ridiculous so quickly, you could get the bends.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The General
    Credit director John Boorman with bringing a life like Cahill's to the screen with such acuity that it's easy to overlook the many familiar elements of his mobster movie.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Simple Plan
    Both simplifies and brings into focus the already simple and effective thriller.
  84. Star Trek: Insurrection
    In just about every way, Insurrection seems as if everyone involved is still stuck in the weekly grind of turning out the series, but the results don't disappoint too terribly.
  85. Shakespeare in Love
    Delivers the goods, if the goods you're in the market for happen to be a clever romance concerning William Shakespeare that's unlikely to cause anyone to reassess their notions of Shakespeare, romance, or enjoyment.
  86. Rushmore
    Fast, exhilarating new comedy.
  87. 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Little Voice
    Though it's got some funny one-liners, sight gags, and Blethyn's over-the-top histrionics, Little Voice is often painfully dramatic, right down to its final mother-daughter confrontation.
  89. Psycho
    Hitchcock's Psycho had a lot more than watchability going for it. Van Sant's film impresses only on the level of a cinematic parlor trick, and while that makes it an interesting curiosity, the world doesn't need it.
  90. Home Fries
    Veering wildly from macabre Southern Gothic to quirky small-town romance, Home Fries is too busy cross-pollinating genres to bother with consistent behavior and tone.
  91. Very Bad Things
    It's a worthless bit of low-grade satire that's as sophisticated and entertaining as a pile of twigs.
  92. A Bug's Life
    Smashing family entertainment: The whole thing is quick-witted, fast-paced, and loaded with clever sight gags and colorful, engaging supporting characters.
  93. Babe: Pig in the City
    Maybe it could have worked had the movie found a story worth telling, but it simply drifts from depressing incident to depressing incident, resembling the nightmare of an adorable but deeply emotionally scarred pig. Anyone with fond memories of Babe ought to avoid this mirthless, dispiriting sequel.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waking Ned Devine
    This slight movie gets by on its grungy charm, if not its class.
  95. Celebrity
    Celebrity is a waste, a tedious and depressingly routine film by a filmmaker on a steep, possibly permanent artistic decline.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Central Station
    While the cinematography is gorgeous and the script extremely sharp, Central Station owes much of its strength to its two mismatched leads.
  97. The Rugrats Movie
    Rugrats: The Movie gets off to a good start, with some amusing, albeit tame, satire revolving around the status-conscious, materialistic lives of the toddlers' parents. But after the Rugrats get lost, the filmmakers focus almost exclusively on the irritating little brats, and the film devolves into an interminable episode of the show, albeit one in which things periodically slow down for forgettable songs.
  98. Meet Joe Black
    It's probably not the year's worst film, but it would be difficult to imagine three more interminable, snooze-inducing hours of film than you'll find watching this narcoleptic dinosaur.
  99. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
    There's gore aplenty here, but precious little suspense or terror.
  100. Velvet Goldmine
    There are moments when Velvet Goldmine threatens to collapse under the weight of writer/director Todd Haynes' (Poison, Safe) ambition. But, sometimes amazingly, it doesn't, becoming in the process one of the year's freshest, most exciting films.
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