The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 34 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Fireflies in the Garden
    An ending that suggests reconciliation and forgiveness isn't just unearned, it's bewildering, given the wretched behavior we've seen; it implies that the entire story was filtered through some unidentified unreliable narrator who wanted to take the higher ground while still harboring a serious grudge.
  2. The Longest Week
    Aggressively derivative though The Longest Week is, however, it’s clearly the work not of a lazy thief, but of a raw talent who’s still struggling to find his own voice. In the meantime, his impressions are pretty darn impressive.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. The Ledge
    The Ledge is a sometimes-fascinating, often-aggravating chamber thriller that works best when it's doubling as an inquiry into faith.
  6. Doom
    If he (The Rock) can keep those wandering eyebrows in check, his future as an action hero appears unlimited--that is, provided he can resist taking roles in movies like this one.
  7. 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.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    The Smurfs 2
    The film undermines its rudimentary plot points at every turn with base humor.
  9. Alice Through the Looking Glass
    It’s briskly paced and sometimes neat to watch in reality-bending 3-D, but none of it is quite as head-spinning as it should be. The movie doesn’t dare alienate its family base with genuine trippiness; instead, it pacifies with tedious familial backstory.
  10. The Man from Toronto
    For a character-driven “mistaken identity” comedy that lives or dies based on the humorous interactions between two A-list leads, its lousy script barely constitutes life support.
  11. Premature
    Watching Bill Murray go through the same scenario over and over is one thing. Experiencing the same feeble dick jokes over and over is another.
  12. Jingle All the Way
    If there is a bottom of the Hollywood barrel, Jingle All The Way has been gleaned from the filth upon which that bottom rests.
  13. The Fourth Kind
    Terminally awkward in the way it meshes fake real footage with faker fake footage. It isn’t required to be convincing as fact, but it doesn’t convince as fiction, either.
  14. Stolen
    Stolen is mildly engaging, inasmuch as it poses a riddle and makes the audience wait for the answer, in the classic mystery mode.
  15. Amityville II: The Possession
    Director Damiano Damiani opts for an approach that's simultaneously more shameless, tasteless, and entertaining than the original.
  16. Baggage Claim
    Without a coherent lead performance, all Baggage Claim has left are its generic rom-com plot — which has flight-attendant Patton jetting around the country to meet the perfect man in time for her younger sister’s wedding — and profoundly shoddy production values.
  17. Testosterone
    It might as well be retitled "Waiting For Antonio," since Sabato's appearances bookend miles of convoluted nonsense. For the prurient, that's probably too much to endure.
  18. Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    In its absolute commitment to inoffensive, fun-for-the-whole-family entertainment, it's as extreme in its own way as hardcore pornography.
  19. The Possession of Michael King
    After an efficient start, The Possession Of Michael King drags, weighing itself down with genre conventions the filmmakers don’t seem to understand or care about.
    • 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.
  21. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
    This time around, Leatherface is just a run-of-the-mill bogeyman, slaughtering a new generation of lambs for the sins of our age. It’s a sequel as pretentious as its chainsaw fodder: an act of genre gentrification.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Bringing Up Bobby
    Bringing Up Bobby centers around a mugging performance by Jovovich, who can't ground the film's attempts to tie together sentiments from "Paper Moon" and "Miss Saigon."
  23. Ninja Assassin
    How is an action movie that aims for kinetic thrills supposed to develop any forward momentum when it spends so much time looking back?
  24. My All American
    Move over, "Rudy." Hit the showers, "Brian’s Song." There’s a new tearjerking true story of gridiron triumph, one that combines those male-weepie favorites in a way no focus group could possibly resist.
  25. Yakuza Princess
    At 112 minutes, this film is way too long for the amount of story contained within—which, again, would be a forgivable offense, had Amorim filled the extra time with something entertaining. Instead, all we get is inertia, as we wait with the main character for her fate to reveal itself.
  26. Devil's Due
    While it’s generally above-average for this sorry genre, it’s so derivative, in both style and narrative, that there’s still an overwhelming sense of plodding inevitability to the whole affair.
  27. Chelsea Walls
    Works equally poorly as a tourist brochure and as a drama.
  28. Basic
    For twists to work, viewers have to feel like they're being led along, not jerked around, and James Vanderbilt's script eventually devolves into little more than a series of jerks, stopping short only of introducing evil twins and alien interlopers.
  29. ATM
    No, the indie horror movie ATM is not about a psychotic automated teller that charges the steepest of convenience fees - your life! - but it isn't much smarter than that premise, either.
  30. Sexual Chronicles of a French Family
    It's a celebration of libertine sexuality - nothing more, nothing less - and almost remarkably untroubled by any of the dramatic issues it raises. Much of its 79 minutes is spent marveling over how skillfully the actors simulate the real thing.
  31. Kings
    In its highly combustable, confusing, angry environment, where everyone from parents to rioters to cops is just making it up as they go along, the only thing that seems to matter are the underlying drives, whether it’s goodheartedness or resentment.
  32. Uglies
    All of Uglies feels like a rush job where its creators had the instruction manual but lost the proper parts.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Excess Baggage
    Although Excess Baggage is not actually unwatchable, this is mostly due to Del Toro's dazed charisma and an inspired bit of weirdness by Christopher Walken as Silverstone's dangerous uncle.
  34. Dead Silence
    Again coaxing the worst imaginable performances out of his actors (see also: Cary Elwes and Danny Glover in "Saw"), Wan casts charisma-free unknown Ryan Kwanten as a young married man whose small-town past catches up to him.
  35. Hellions
    Plenty of striking, clever, effective movies have been made simply by re-arranging and re-calibrating familiar genre elements. Hellions might have been one of these, if it was predicated on something slightly less shallow than “kids in masks + chanting + blood = scary.”
  36. Big Momma's House 2
    There's something depressing about seeing the low-energy, family-friendly Lawrence sleepwalk through the film's sappy plot points.
  37. 10,000 BC
    "The Day After Tomorrow" was kind of stupidly fun, and 10,000 B.C. might be too, if it weren't so stupidly dull.
  38. Zoolander 2
    It’s a bizarre and pointless spectacle, but not an unamusing one. Characters like Alexanya and Atari feel very much like try-outs for Saturday Night Live characters — not surprising, given that at least four of the cast members have worked on that show.
  39. Valentine's Day
    Explores love in all its myriad forms, from the sickeningly sappy to the cornball to the groaningly precious and obnoxiously cute.
  40. The Year That Trembled
    Movies have the ability to make history come alive, but this dull period soap opera feels more like history that's already been embalmed.
  41. All About the Benjamins
    A witless, bloody, unpleasant mismatched-buddy movie.
  42. 21 and Over
    21 & Over seems particularly redundant, since a film already exists that’s exactly like "The Hangover," only not as good: It was called "The Hangover Part II." 21 & Over is so slavish in imitating its screenwriters’ big claim to fame that it even ends by teasing a sequel, to which the only sane response is a polite but firm, “Thank you, no.”
  43. Safe Haven
    The cutaways to this cop-on-the-edge plot are jarring and lacking in conviction, and when the whole tortured mess comes together in a twist-filled third act, Safe Haven becomes a full-blown calamity.
  44. The Final Conflict
    Director Graham Baker has little gift for atmosphere, and apart from one inspired sequence, I suspect I'll forget every aspect of this movie in a couple of days.
  45. Ice Age: Collision Course
    Yes, yes, this is a kids’ movie, so it hardly matters that none of it makes one lick of sense, even on its own terms.
  46. The Real Cancun
    Save for the diminished allure of drunk, naked hotties, there's nothing of worth in The Real Cancun.
  47. Point Break
    The new Point Break drops the original’s Zen-like balance of macho mysticism and camp in favor of dour humorlessness.
  48. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
    Growing up, Smith relates, he thought Halston - born Ray Halston Fenwick in Des Moines, Iowa - "was the coolest," which sets the tone for the movie's googly-eyed viewpoint.
  49. Erased
    Erased is a snoozy, sputtering Euro chase flick—a sort of poor man’s Liam Neeson revenge movie.
  50. Elektra
    The role needs a steely, inhuman reserve, and Garner's innate likeability works against her.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    Scenic Route
    Digital projection has made it easier than ever to get no-budget movies onto theater screens. That might sound wonderfully egalitarian, but it mostly just leads to more shoulda-gone-straight-to-DVD clunkers like Scenic Route.
  52. The Mummy
    The Mummy is crippled by a failure of imagination.
  53. Dead & Breakfast
    In a self-conscious moment late in the action, one character says she feels like she's in a bad horror movie. No kidding.
  54. Iron Mask
    Although it isn’t actually a comedy, Iron Mask qualifies, in substantial stretches, as one of the funniest films of the year.
  55. Return to Silent Hill
    Somewhere between a reboot and a remake, Return To Silent Hill is the worst film of the franchise so far, and a reminder that you can’t go home again—even if your home is the haunted hamlet of Silent Hill.
  56. Vacation
    It’s just a middling cover of a pretty good old song, adrift in the present day.
  57. Love Hurts
    Love Hurts proves that honest emotions aren’t everything; sometimes you can just buy yourself enough goodwill to get by with last-minute junk.
  58. The Lifeguard
    Like its lead character, The Lifeguard is stuck in a rut. After establishing Bell’s frustration within the first five minutes, the movie continually reiterates it.
  59. The Bubble
    Even if the characters on screen didn’t become better artists during the pandemic, then Apatow at least should have. With The Bubble, he seems to have mistaken jokes about moviemaking for moviemaking that shouldn’t be taken seriously.
  60. My Best Friend's Girl
    Dane Cook plays a smug jerk in the dismal comedy My Best Friend's Girl. Strike that: He's only ACTING like a smug jerk.
  61. Jonah Hex
    Every once in a while, a film limps into theaters so stitched together, it's a wonder it doesn't rip apart in the projector. Jonah Hex is such a film.
  62. Collateral Damage
    In a way, Collateral Damage is redeemed by its implausibility, because the closer it comes to reality, the more disturbing it gets. For once, viewers have reason to be grateful for having their intelligence insulted.
  63. Raise Your Voice
    Dreadful.
  64. And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
    Had this moronic part been given to almost anybody else — including folks as talented as, say, Robin Williams or Jim Carrey — the result would very likely have been an unmitigated disaster. Greenwood, however, commits to it wholeheartedly, much the way that Naomi Watts’ struggling actress character treated her hackneyed soap-opera dialogue in Mulholland Drive.
  65. Equilibrium
    A terrific cast, stylish direction, and elegantly choreographed mayhem help make it far better than it might have been -- Though ultimately silly, Equilibrium's shopworn but stylish synthesis of ammo and ideas is surprisingly engrossing.
  66. Full of It
    Despite a novel premise and an appealing, energetic cast, Full Of It seldom finds magic in its supernatural whimsy.
  67. 33 Postcards
    This sort of global co-production is becoming more and more common, but it’s rarely quite so calculated; you can practically see the scale being used to ensure that each location receives equal narrative weight, as characters take actions that make sense only according to that metric.
  68. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
    Kids don’t need the Chipmunks movies to take them somewhere cheap. They deserve a comedy or a musical or a cartoon — none of which The Road Chip quite is — that’s more than a high-pitched distraction.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Much like the lager that gives the film its name, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is bland on the palette and best pissed away.
  70. The Chaperone
    The Chaperone is being marketed as a comedy, though no one seems to have told anyone involved.
  71. Grandma's Boy
    Grandma's Boy aspires to nothing more than the frathouse goofiness and juvenile high spirits of early Sandler vehicles, but it possesses the energy of a funeral dirge played at half-speed.
  72. Looking Glass
    Because Hunter’s movie works best in its early, less crazed stretch, there aren’t any really memorable sequences here coming from the director or his distinctive star.
  73. The Grudge 2
    While the film deserves some credit for creating and sustaining a creepy atmosphere, it doesn't matter much when the plot doesn't go anywhere, and here, it winds toward the most arbitrary, nonsensical final scene in recent memory. But, hey, they're ghosts. They can do some pretty crazy shit.
  74. Chasing Papi
    The fun wears thin once it becomes clear that the only trick the film has to offer is footage of the women fighting and bonding over their shared love of the handsome but uncharismatic Verástegui.
  75. The Divergent Series: Allegiant
    Maybe that call will be answered next time with enough incremental improvements to finally notch a good Divergent movie, a possibility Allegiant raises repeatedly and frustratingly. Ultimately, though, this movie isn’t just adhering to a formula; it’s carefully following a recipe designed to offset any good ingredients that get mixed in there by mistake.
  76. The Stepfather
    Walsh is just a dumb bully who can’t see more than one or two steps ahead. He’s doomed to generic slasher villainy, and the film thoughtlessly obliges.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Dreadful
    A too-modern sensibility and a drastic change from the original folktale lead the movie dreadfully astray.
  78. Blood and Chocolate
    A romantic triangle between werewolves and humans doesn't sound dull, but director Katja von Garnier seems to determined to drain the life out of it.
  79. The Only Living Boy in New York
    Marc Webb’s new movie, in contrast, uses the song for its title, the name of an in-movie manuscript, and as a late-breaking song cue that doesn’t drop the needle so much as clunk it down with turgid inevitability.
  80. Detroit Rock City
    Such a stupid, painfully obvious, gratingly unfunny dud that it's unlikely to please even the most gullible and easy-to-please members of the Kiss army.
  81. Bedtime Stories
    Sandler’s laziness, sloppiness, and cynical pandering are all over Bedtime Stories, and it turns what’s intended to be a graceful intersection of fairytale whimsy and real-world slapstick into an ugly, head-on collision.
  82. 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.
  83. Welcome to Mooseport
    Hackman makes a plausible ex-president, but his graceful, lived-in performance is just about the only element of Welcome To Mooseport that rings true.
  84. Virginia
    Black seems to be aiming for some sort of loopy fantasia, a tragic fable about struggling with difference in the small-town South, but he's got more half-finished ideas than he can handle.
  85. 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.
  86. Five Nights at Freddy's
    Yes, there are kills, but they’re often as comical as they are scary, and deliberately so. It’s a fun gateway horror movie for kids—and the easily scared who want to test their limits lightly.
  87. Programming the Nation?
    It's tough to keep track of everything Jeff Warrick's subliminal-advertising documentary Programming The Nation? does wrong.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    In Stereo
    This is a tedious modern romance that thinks it’s spouting universal truths when it’s actually as myopically narcissistic as the two leads.
  89. State Property 2
    Dash directs with a certain visual flare and a sense of humor, but as the film lumbers toward its climax, keeping track of the innumerable allegiances and double-crosses becomes an exercise in futility.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Losing Control
    As onscreen professions go, it'd be a nice change of pace, were Miranda Kent not the least credible scientist since Denise Richards donned short shorts to play Dr. Christmas Jones.
  91. Gulliver's Travels
    With deadening predictability, the filmmakers have reduced a definitive satire about the flaws and foibles of human nature into family-friendly sub-Disney pabulum about an affable slacker who finally musters up the courage to ask a pretty girl at work for a date.
  92. Awake
    Only the so-bad-it's-good crowd need apply.
  93. Air
    The movie cheats whenever it can. At least it’s interesting to look at, if only at first.
  94. Collide
    Like a distracted driver constantly missing his highway exit, Collide keeps passing on opportunities for action in favor of patience-straining exposition.
  95. Sucker Punch
    Browning has wildly expressive eyes and body language, but she turns wooden when delivering Snyder and Steve Shibuya's alternately purple and stilted banter. Like the film, she seems to regard plot and dialogue as necessary evils.
  96. The Wrong Missy
    Tyler Spindel, a Happy Madison veteran, directs The Wrong Missy with all of the worst tendencies of the Sandler shingle style. It’s a series of claustrophobically unfunny scenes that drag on and on, interspersed with establishing shots and music cues that look and sound like they were licensed from a stock library.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    There Be Dragons
    Certainly looks lavish, from the battle scenes to the beautiful period costuming, but it's so stilted and humorless that it's almost campy.
  98. Love Happens
    The film contains almost no rough edges; thanks to decades of previous use, just about every shot and sequence is as polished as a riverbed stone.
  99. Catch That Kid
    The film combines dour heroes with a drab look, and the string of "Don't try this at home"-style stunts should underwhelm even viewers too young for James Bond or XXX.
  100. The Space Between Us
    Chelsom applies the middle-school-dance sentimentality with a ladle, leaning heavily on the tinkle of an overbearing score and a soundtrack of generic, cost-efficient pop cues.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »