The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,412 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: 5,570 out of 10412
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10412
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10412
10412 movie reviews
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    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Double Team
    Someone involved in the making of this movie is clearly insane; it should be just a standard buddy/action movie, but aside from lots of kickboxing and shooting and a big fight at the end, it doesn't follow any of the genre's chimp-simple conventions. It may be the worst Van Damme movie ever made.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Devil's Own
    What makes it worth the price of admission is the energetic performance Ford pulls off in the cookie-cutter role of big-city cop.
  3. Cats Don't Dance
    So many feature cartoons of this era operate under formula constraints; the animation of Cats Don’t Dance often feels exuberantly free.
  4. Liar Liar
    For those who like Carrey and are waiting for a film they can honestly say they enjoyed through and through, this ain't it.
  5. Maborosi
    The 33-year-old Koreeda, who began his career in documentary, has a gift for observing life as it's lived, accumulating simple, seemingly banal scenes into an unforgettable reflection on the frustration and helplessness of trying to explain the ineffable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Daytrippers
    Comic-ensemble performance at its darkest.
  7. Hard Eight
    One of the best films of the year.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Smilla's Sense of Snow
    The matter-of-fact way in which the story is presented serves as a constant reminder of how implausible the whole thing is. Add to this the single expression Ormond and Byrne are allowed throughout the film, and you're left with one more weak, confusing, ignorable movie that embarrasses its source.
  9. Lost Highway
    A slow, ponderous, ultimately unsuccessful exercise in cerebral nihilism.
  10. Rosewood
    Deliberately paced at the outset, the film slowly establishes a sense of hatred that makes the violent explosion of the film's second half as plausible and inevitable as the laws of physics.
  11. Fools Rush In
    The best that can be said is that neither Matthew Perry nor Salma Hayek embarrass themselves, but they're both appealing enough that the same could probably be said if they were starring in a commercial for a hair-replacement system.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Absolute Power
    A murky, often confusing story riddled with half-hearted performances, erratic characters, and too many cliched lines and situations.
  13. Touch
    Touch never quite catches the satiric fire its subject seems to warrant. It's pleasant, disarming, and likable, but never quite miraculous.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dante's Peak
    As boring as the special effects are, they far outshine the stultifying plot.
  15. SubUrbia
    This adaptation of Eric Bogosian's 1994 play-- which revolves around several post-high-school drifters hanging around a convenience store while awaiting the return of their rock-star classmate -- doesn't hold up to Linklater's previous work, and the problem is Bogosian's script.
  16. Hotel de Love
    It's glossy, dumb fun that is diverting enough but forgotten 20 minutes after it's over.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fierce Creatures
    Cute lemurs and a couple jabs at corporate a--holery can't save Fierce Creatures from its manic malaise.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Prefontaine
    But at best, the movie has an air of immediacy, freeing it from the ossified myth-making that plagues many true-life biopics.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Metro
    It never aspires to be high art—even the title is meaningless—but Metro is too lazily assembled, and too stingy with the jokes, to even live up to its modest ambitions.
  20. The Relic
    The monster effects, as designed by Stan Winston, are stunners, but after Twister, it should be obvious that it's not the quality of the effects that matter so much as the quality of the film in which they appear.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Evita
    Its political insights are half-hearted at best, and as entertainment it fails to excite. The songs sound mostly like glam-rock relics.
  22. Michael
    John Travolta should realize that people appreciate him, maybe more than ever, but that he should start making movies people won't feel ashamed for having seen if he wants to avoid co-starring with a talking lemur in the future.
  23. Thieves
    At two and a half hours, it's a bit too long, but it's probably the most emotionally authentic film noir since The Grifters.
  24. Scream
    Finely crafted, tense, scary thriller from start to finish.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
    Adds up to another prefab youth-culture event and a mediocre movie.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Fellow Americans
    The execution is decidedly wobbly, with too many telegraphed, poorly paced jokes, too much Grumpy Old Men-style insult humor, and too many schmaltzy scenes. But Garner and Jack Lemmon have enough charisma, and there are enough solid laughs, to mostly overcome My Fellow Americans' embarrassing moments and improbable ending.
  27. Marvin's Room
    Nonetheless, Marvin's Room is not only sharply written and well-acted, but it's also the rare sort of film that takes an honest and uncompromising look at death and dying.
  28. Bastard Out of Carolina
    Anjelica Huston's directorial debut employs an impressive cast, and at times showcases a promising sense of style. But Bastard Out Of Carolina seems hollow at its center, due largely to the fact that Anne Meredith's screenplay doesn't make very good use of its source material.
  29. Citizen Ruth
    A deft, three-dimensional performance from Dern, playing an almost entirely unlikable character, aids incalculably in exposing what happens when political factions lose touch with the realities of the issues for which they claim to provide answers.
  30. Whisper of the Heart
    Studio Ghibli productions have always been adept at making the fantastic seem real, but with Whisper Of The Heart, Kondo and Miyazaki focus so intensely on the everyday that they make the real seem fantastic.
  31. Daylight
    The assembly line of adrenaline-pumping obstacles makes the two-hour runtime fly by, though director Rob Cohen (DragonHeart, The Fast And The Furious, xXx) still manages to highlight a handful of quieter moments.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    101 Dalmatians
    Not much reason to see this one, because in 1961 Disney made an animated version called 101 Dalmatians, which is better.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Crucible
    It's a good movie about the Salem Witch Trials, featuring a gripping final reel and an impressively broad performance by Daniel Day-Lewis: His fine work throughout the movie's first two thirds is rewarded by several climactic Oscar-clip tirades.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Star Trek: First Contact
    Of course, these movies are supposed to be big, but First Contact is the kind of porky, clumsy thing that would be ignored if it didn't come complete with an enormous guaranteed audience—and if it weren't actually kind of fun in spite of itself.
  35. 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.
  36. Ridicule
    Ridicule convincingly establishes a sense of dread that comes with living in constant fear of public humiliation. And, though it's set in the past, its depiction of wealth-bloated politicians who maintain a wide gulf between actions and rhetoric seems timeless.
  37. Shine
    Memorable, deeply affecting movie.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The English Patient
    Heartbreakingly beautiful film, a brilliant adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's equally beautiful novel, is a sort of Casablanca for our time.
  39. Breaking the Waves
    What Von Trier arrives at is a complex, contemporary, and deeply moving exploration of faith.
  40. Romeo + Juliet
    For all the hubbub, the film succeeds in relating Shakespeare to modern times, thanks mainly to the use of energetic pop music and the gameness of the performers.
  41. Larger Than Life
    While it may sound like pairing Murray with a pachyderm couldn't fail, Larger Than Life suffers from a stifling air of blandness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When We Were Kings
    When We Were Kings is an energetic, passionate documentary of this event, and a revelation for people who only know Ali as an ex-champ with Parkinson's and Foreman as a Care Bear.
  43. Thinner
    Thinner’s problems begin with a grotesquely unconvincing fat suit and makeup that make Burke look less like a big man battling obesity than a melting marshmallow man. The plug really should have been pulled on Thinner after the first makeup and prosthetics tests, since the bad design digs the film into a hole it never begins to shimmy its way out.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Swingers
    Swingers has something genuinely rare: a fine script and realistic characters.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sleepers
    Muddy, confused, and worst of all boring, Sleepers grinds to the preordained halt shared by any over-budgeted epic that lacks the simple necessity of good story.
  46. The Chamber
    Even more sad is an embarrassingly shrill performance by Faye Dunaway, and an ending which insults the ability of the audience to watch a movie without having a conclusion spoon-fed to them.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Michael Collins
    Liam Neeson's performance as Collins is at once stirring and blood-curdling, as befits the role of a man who murdered for a cause he believed was just, but was willing to stop when he believed his objective was reached.
  48. Trees Lounge
    Ubiquitous screen presence Steve Buscemi makes an impressive writing/directing debut in this depiction of small-town alcoholism.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Ghost and the Darkness
    Some might even say the movie's messages and themes are racist attempts to justify colonialism, but they're wrong; this forgettable movie doesn't have any messages, or anything else, at all.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That Thing You Do!
    Hanks nicely lampoons the smug, stagnant, assembly-line attitude of the American pop-music establishment of the time, but it's clear that Hanks intends his Boomer-pleasing nostalgia to be strictly of the declawed variety.
  51. Secrets & Lies
    There's not a weak performance in Secrets And Lies, a fact made more notable by the seeming ease with which the cast performs as an ensemble.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    2 Days in the Valley
    A stupid movie that expects us to suspend our disbelief until it seems smart. Skip it and see some other movie that features two hired killers having a conversation in a car.
  53. Extreme Measures
    While Extreme Measures is competently directed by Michael Apted, and is never really boring, it's nothing we haven't seen before. And though it attempts to make an important point about the value of life, by the end viewers will only be reminded that they are two fruitless hours closer to the grave.
  54. Feeling Minnesota
    Marginally watchable-in part because of the odd presence of Dan Aykroyd and Courtney Love-it's ultimately pointless, repetitive and more concerned with appearing offbeat than actually doing anything inventive.
  55. Fly Away Home
    While Winged Migration asks the audience to empathize with birds, Fly Away Home asks us to take a closer look at the people who love them, and to understand what gives their lives meaning.
  56. Freeway
    Freeway is full of nice touches—such as making the villain a psychologist— that play off the expectations of a familiar story. While also working as a conventional thriller, its many twists on the fairy tale make it work on an almost subliminal level.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    A Very Brady Sequel
    A Very Brady Sequel is too often content to rely on strained plot machinations that, given the subject, may be suitably uninspired, but come off as flat anyway.
  58. The Island of Dr. Moreau
    As a sci-fi action movie, the latest Moreau is sub-schlock. As a thinly veiled post-colonial allegory, it's dangerously close to racism. Either way, it's one of the most ridiculous movies in a ridiculous summer.
  59. Escape from L.A.
    Escape From L.A. is a mild letdown. It repeats the basic plot of the original, with a lighter tone, cheaper-looking (yet actually more expensive) special effects, and a grunge soundtrack.
  60. Emma
    While most literary adaptations look flat and pretty, the fine performances here set Emma apart.
  61. A Time to Kill
    A Time to Kill embodies all that is wrong with Hollywood attempts to address important issues, raising questions of race and justice but refusing to deal with them on anything but the most simplified, manipulative moral terms.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Frighteners
    An overlong, overstuffed mess with only sporadic moments of clarity and purpose.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Nutty Professor
    The film is otherwise plastic; the supporting players stink and a few too many fart jokes exist where wit belonged.
  64. Striptease
    I don't know that Striptease could ever have been anything more than second-rate Elmore Leonard, but Moore's dour lead performance sabotages the film from the get-go.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lone Star
    A strange and thoughtful story, told in unhurried conversations and artful flashbacks. The things people keep from themselves are just as important to this mystery as the things they keep from each other, and that transforms Lone Star from a mere mystery into something much richer.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    A remarkably faithful adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic 1831 novel about a lovable, golden-voiced hunchback and his trio of zany, wise-cracking gargoyle sidekicks, The Hunchback of Notre Dame should please both Disney fans and 19th century French romanticists alike.
  67. The Cable Guy
    The Cable Guy works best as a movie about how damn hard it is tell someone that you’re really not interested in getting to know them better.
  68. The Phantom
    A second-rate film about a third-rate superhero played by a C-list actor.
    • The A.V. Club
  69. Heavy
    Heavy is the kind of deliberately slow-paced character study that allows carefully realized performances to shine.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Man
    Jarmusch's trademark quiet irony, affinity for the outcast and oddball, and moonscape visuals suit the Western genre well.
  71. Butterfly Kiss
    The final effect is less haunting than was probably intended, but Butterfly Kiss is worth a look.
  72. Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
    I wish the film had made its points a little more artfully and implicitly, rather than simply sticking them in McDonald and McKinney’s mouths, but Brain Candy has an overarching satirical vision that makes it much more than just an assemblage of mostly funny running gags and stand-alone bits.
  73. James and the Giant Peach
    At least there’s plenty to look at among Selick’s beautifully detailed characters, who each have expressive bodies and their own ways of moving.
  74. Dekalog (1988)
    The Decalogue finds Kieslowski and co-scenarist Krzysztof Piesiewicz turning a delicate cycle of intimate, funny, heartbreaking, and compassionate works into a symphony of human fallibility.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Restoration
    Downey seems subdued in the film's central role, as if he's out of his league when it comes to dramatically stretching as an actor. Even when all decked out in foppish finery, looking absolutely ridiculous to the objective eye, he can't find a way to focus your attention on him. Instead, in looking at him, all you can do is wonder: How much did those duds cost?
  76. Pom Poko
    For all its goodhearted cheer, Pom Poko is a glum indictment of modern Japan's disjunction from the natural and spiritual world. But it strikes a positive final note by implying that those worlds still exist, just out of sight, waiting and flourishing.
  77. I Am Cuba
    I Am Cuba is still propaganda of the first order, a beautiful and sensually overwhelming tribute to the land and its people.
  78. Home for the Holidays
    The result is a movie that feels both fussed-over and meaninglessly cruel.
  79. Strange Days
    A film that's prescient and mind-bogglingly ill-conceived in roughly equal measures...Strange Days is the cinematic equivalent of trip-hop, a shadowy realm of atmosphere, mood and suggestion with a decidedly drugged-up, post-apocalyptic feel. But the many things Strange Days gets right are negated by the things it gets wrong.
  80. Empire Records
    The film exists for its shots of telegenic youngsters busting loose to a bankable soundtrack, and it's the cheesy dialogue, overstuffed plot, and predictable character arcs that come across as superfluous.
  81. River of Grass
    If one were to watch this jagged, restless movie with no knowledge of who made it, guessing that it sprung from the same mind that created "Old Joy" or "Meek’s Cutoff" would be impossible. Intuiting that this gifted novice filmmaker would go on to bigger and better things, however, would be child’s play.
  82. Village of the Damned
    Village Of The Damned is probably the worst movie John Carpenter ever directed: hokey, miscast, devoid of tension and atmosphere.
  83. 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.
  84. Tank Girl
    Sure Tank Girl has a lot of energy but then so does a Pixie Stix-addled eleven-year-old screaming in your ear about the intricacies of Pokemon for hours at a time during a cross-country road trip. That doesn't mean either ordeal should be experienced by any reasonable human except perhaps as a form of torture.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Heavyweights
    The lovable losers get one over the pretty people, making incremental improvements to their lives without fundamentally changing what makes them unique—a hallmark of Apatow films to come that’s a decent fit for a family movie.
  86. Death and the Maiden
    Weaver's overacting and Dorfman's bold-faced dialogue oversell the scenario. Only Kingsley's sly turn gives Death And The Maiden any real feeling of disquiet.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Professional
    Few action films can claim such complexities without conceding the bang-bang stuff that brings in the big money.
  88. Benny's Video (1992)
    Haneke's schoolmarm tendencies come to the surface in Benny's Video, which implicates the media for desensitizing people to violence.
  89. Love Affair
    Rather than put a new twist on an old tale, Love Affair adds a chapter to a real-life romance.
  90. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
    A slightly above-average slasher film that's only partially redeemed by small but endearingly loopy shreds of black humor.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    What Happened Was...
    A haunting, expressionistic portrait of two lonely souls who have reached out for companionship and instead found themselves on a proving ground, where they are mercilessly denuded of their protective lies and self-deception.
  92. It's Pat: The Movie
    It's simultaneously intriguing and repulsive, a would-be cult curio not even the most indulgent cult could love.
  93. Color of Night
    It’s too much fun to be a failure and too transparently, giddily awful to be an unqualified success, so I’m going to split the difference.
  94. The Lion King
    A technically groundbreaking collaborative work with humor, heart, and talent showing through in every carefully chosen line.
  95. 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.
  96. Red Rock West
    Notwithstanding its cop-out upbeat ending, Red Rock West solidified the expert neo-noir credentials of John Dahl (The Last Seduction). A taut, nasty bit of crime-genre business, Dahl’s tale (co-written with brother Rick) is in most respects archetypal.
  97. Bitter Moon
    Widely reviled a decade ago, Bitter Moon now plays as a visionary bridging of Brian De Palma's cinematic perversity and Takashi Miike's literal perversity, in addition to being another uncompromising Polanski study of the ways people torture each other.
  98. Reality Bites
    Reality Bites embodied seemingly every odious post-Nirvana media trend. The title alone was laughably faux-hip, and the movie's portrait of slackerdom—limply enacted by Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Steve Zahn, and Janeane Garofalo—was both broad and shallow...No one acknowledges the obvious—that a heinous idea got even worse when Stiller signed on to direct.
  99. Body Snatchers
    Ferrara, a visual expressionist at heart, creates some really unsettling moments, though maybe the most impressive thing about the movie is that it manages to make what’s basically a happy ending seem soul-crushingly bleak.
  100. The War Room
    It’s a fascinating time capsule, catching a new, empowered Democratic machine in its infancy.
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