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. Saint John of Las Vegas
    Predictably, the best moments belong to Buscemi, whose performance is a model of understatement in a field of grotesques.
  2. Broken Horses
    Very loosely inspired by Chopra’s 1989 feature "Parinda," this wan crime drama plays like the equivalent of a Hindi novel that’s been run through Google Translate. Everything feels rudimentary and slightly awkward, though it’s possible to discern how the material might once have been powerful.
  3. Untraceable
    Not only does Untraceable unmask its initially hidden killer with little ceremony, it's the sort of film that telegraphs every new development.
  4. Farmland
    A little of this debunking is cute (“I got nothing against bib overalls or straw hanging out of your mouth,” one of the subjects clarifies about the myths he wants to dispel); the rest of it feels defensive.
  5. Tyler Perry's Acrimony
    So what was Tyler Perry going for here? Based on the sanctimonious streak that runs throughout his work, one might posit that he was trying to wrap a gleefully outrageous thriller around a lesson on marriage, like a slice of bacon around a particularly bitter pill. Except, at some point, the bacon got hopelessly overcooked.
  6. Showtime
    De Niro and Murphy are visibly uncomfortable with each other. Their improvisation seems chaotic and mismanaged, and the movie follows in kind.
  7. Games People Play: New York
    Sets a new nadir in the reality genre's race to the bottom. The price of sacrificing dignity for the amusement of the general public gets lower every day.
  8. Unfinished Business
    A once-energetic comic talent (and underrated serious actor) slows down to a pace he must feel matches his audience these days.
  9. The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard
    What the set pieces have in common with everything else in this dunderheaded, insultingly mechanical franchise hopeful is the overwhelming feeling that everyone involved said “good enough” at every turn. It’s savvy only in the way it lowers the standards for this kind of thing, assuring that any future sequels that give half an ass instead of barely a quarter of one will prompt more enthusiasm, or at least relief.
  10. Chernobyl Diaries
    It's mostly boilerplate horror, plucking visual ideas from better sources and relying on the sick novelty of referencing an actual catastrophe.
  11. Repo Men
    It’s a time-waster with brains, but ultimately not enough brains, and one that wastes too much time.
  12. Boogeyman
    Mostly Boogeyman remains content to be a film about a boogeyman who hides in closets and under beds and gobbles people up. And for that, it deserves a certain amount of respect. On the other hand, the film could hardly be any sillier.
  13. Fired Up!
    On the off chance that anyone out there would want to spend time with guys like this—and would appreciate a bonus plug for Staples' recycled paper products, too--this movie has been made just for them.
  14. Don't Tempt Me
    This must all make sense to Yanes, somehow, but the film plays like a private joke with no punchline.
  15. Dying of the Light
    Not to say that the movie is a mess. Instead, it plays out as a more or less conventional direct-to-video-style thriller, distinguished by a handful of subtexts and images that might have been developed in a different version, but here register as mere quirks.
  16. Max Payne
    In a post-Matrix, post-John Woo world, a handful of slow-motion shootouts shouldn't be all that's on offer.
  17. Charlie Countryman
    In a film this hapless, it’s hardly a surprise that no one can keep Bucharest and Budapest straight.
  18. Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club
    Partway through the film, a viewer may begin to yearn for Perry’s usual schizoid shtick, the cacophony of screeches and sobs.
  19. No Safe Spaces
    No Safe Spaces caters to its intended viewers’ least savory biases, making sure all student activists shown fit into particular categories—overweight, gay, or simply “angry and black”—that stoke the resentment of the target demographic.
  20. The King's Daughter
    If this is all starting to sound like an ambitiously amusing fiasco, don’t be fooled: Scenes saunter by one after the other, their dialogue waterlogged with talk of “believing in the unbelievable” and other soggy turns of phrase.
  21. Surveillance
    Surveillance suggests "Jennifer Lynchian" should be used for films that aspire to David’s moody, idiosyncratic genius and fall woefully short.
  22. Fifty Shades Freed
    Turns out, what really turns series creator E.L. James on is well-heeled domesticity.
  23. Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire
    While Snyder may do his best to invent a dark, gripping universe to engross viewers, Rebel Moon is a limp, soulless regurgitation of tropes stolen from much more formidable films.
  24. In the Mix
    All Usher fans really seem to want out of a movie like this is an opportunity to ogle their idol for an hour and a half. And that's all this movie affords them.
  25. Silent Hill
    Recommended to those who feel "The Crucible" doesn't feature enough bodies ripped in half vertically. Others are duly warned.
  26. The Lazarus Effect
    Like too many horror films, this one seems targeted at a hypothetical audience using only 10 percent of its brainpower.
  27. The Honeymooners
    Lunchbox-toting time-waster.
  28. Cursed
    Though Craven shows flashes of the old magic, Cursed eventually settles into rote, uninspired horror fare, hog-tied to the Williamson formula all the way to arbitrary finish. The film may be one of the best ever not screened in advance for critics, but that still doesn't put it in the finest company.
  29. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    What the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lacks is not fidelity, but a spirit of genuine boyish fun.
  30. Perfect Stranger
    When the left-field ending finally arrives, it explains a lot, including why she's so off-putting and histrionic, but it never really explains why audiences should bother sitting through such a tangled mess.
  31. Your Highness
    If Your Highness often feels like an inside joke, the principals neglected to let the audience in on the fun.
  32. House of 1000 Corpses
    The setup almost needs footnotes, which makes it all the more puzzling that Zombie's obvious love for horror's past would translate into such a joyless, grisly rehashing.
  33. ma ma
    Ma Ma’s corny simplicity makes its many flourishes look excessive, and even desperate.
  34. Countdown
    In Countdown, it’s the audience that really gets cheated.
  35. Show Dogs
    That the comedy is second-rate is a given. But at least it’s brisk, inoffensive, and devoid of human mugging, with Arnett breezing through like a pro.
  36. They
    Craven's name doesn't appear anywhere in the credits of the film otherwise known as They. That's fitting, too, since even the worst Craven-directed movies have a lot more going for them than this painfully familiar bit of oogum-boogum.
  37. God Is a Bullet
    Cut God Is A Bullet down to a tight 90 minutes, and it might at least consistently deliver the cheap thrills and nihilistic kick it only occasionally achieves.
  38. 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.
  39. The Garfield Movie
    When brand perpetuation is as soulless and milquetoast as this, it seems unlikely that it will create any new fans at all.
  40. This Means War
    Given the creepiest rom-com premise this side of "Addicted To Love" - which at least had the wisdom to reflect on its camera-obscura voyeurism - director McG tries to turn This Means War into a cool pop confection along the lines of his Charlie's Angels movies. But pouring on the douchey hipness and charm only makes things worse.
  41. That's My Boy
    The film is such a barren comic wasteland of scatology and misogyny that Vanilla Ice steals the film with a good-natured, self-deprecating portrayal of himself as Sandler's sleazy party buddy.
  42. Gray Matters
    Far from a watershed moment for lesbian coming-out films, Gray Matters has a queer sensibility that's several miles south of "Will & Grace."
  43. The Big Hit
    The Big Hit goes beyond the call of duty in terms of hateful, crass exploitation.
  44. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    In nearly every way, Silent Night, Deadly Night is as run-of-the-mill a slasher film as the ’80s produced, enjoyable today primarily for its kitsch value.
  45. Death Wish
    Whether uncritically brought over in remake translation or genuinely reaffirmed, the movie’s fucked-up politics poison the fun. By the end, which creates an unmistakably symmetrical arc for Paul, Death Wish has all but devolved into a scare-tactics advertisement for locked-and-loaded home protection.
  46. High School
    Adrien Brody delivers a colorful turn as a braided-and-tatted drug kingpin who thinks his pet toad talks to him (funny animal, check!), but High School is otherwise a tedious sludge through the same gray corridors where the same old gags wait around every turn.
  47. Garden Party
    Taken together, these stories are a symphony of inconsequentiality, drained of tension and purpose until all that remains is a vague sense of collective ennui.
  48. Jacob's Ladder
    This Jacob’s Ladder isn’t likely to build much of a fanbase over the next 30 years. It’ll be lucky if anyone remembers it for 30 minutes.
  49. Hellboy
    Less a thrilling adventure tale than a trip to a teenager’s messy, sock-strewn bedroom.
  50. The Curse of Downers Grove
    Post-"The Canyons," this appears to be Ellis’ new, second-rate normal.
  51. Oxygono
    At the center of the movie, Tsimitselis makes for a disappointing blank, a pretty poster boy who leaves a long trail of emotional wreckage in his wake.
  52. Hounddog
    Pretty but overwrought, Hounddog doesn't deserve its infamy, nor does it merit being seen or remembered.
  53. Envy
    In short, every element suggests Envy ought to be amusing, but the only comparably disastrous movie in recent memory involves Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and a rapping retarded man.
  54. Monster-in-Law
    It's not hard to imagine the militant Jane Fonda of 1972 angrily denouncing Monster-In-Law as insulting Hollywood claptrap trafficking in regressive, reactionary, blatantly sexist gender codes. And she'd be right.
  55. Fathers and Daughters
    Objectively speaking, it’s garbage, a suffocating mix of dad redemption, not-ready-for-Mr.-Right romance, and a bogus lit-world success story, with mental illness, slobs-vs.-snobs legal drama, and an Electra complex thrown in for flavor. On that level, it’s as shameless as porn.
  56. Life or Something Like It
    A banal message movie.
  57. The Starling
    The saddest thing about all of this is that McCarthy and O’Dowd make a convincing onscreen couple, and both of them are strong enough actors to find the real, defeated people in this phony script.
  58. Red Dawn
    Red Dawn without the jingoism is like a pie without the filling - it collapses into splintered mush.
  59. First Daughter
    It sends a bad message to the film's young audience that the daughter of a world leader needn't be more than a vapid bikini-stuffer.
  60. Deception
    The dynamic between Jackman and McGregor bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy from "In The Company Of Men": the cool, suave, experienced philosopher of excess and his weaker, more earnest pupil.
  61. Blended
    The movie feels like a throwback; it brings to mind the blandly crappy movies Sandler made 10 years ago, rather than the brazenly crappy movies he makes today. In that sense, it’s a double disappointment, neither consistently funny nor endurance-testing.
  62. National Security
    Lawrence clamors for the spotlight. If he ever found a way to make desperation look like charisma, he'd be the funniest man in America.
  63. Love the Coopers
    A movie that should be punctuated like a Christmas card sign-off but instead, losing a comma, becomes an off-putting directive. How Robert De Niro didn’t make it to this set is a mystery for the ages.
  64. Texas Chainsaw 3D
    The mere presence of a second layer to the story gives Texas Chainsaw 3D an intriguing kick, and it adds a couple moments of visual wit that show a willingness to fiddle around with the genre. Not being irredeemable garbage counts as a modest achievement, but it's a small step in the right direction.
  65. Hot Pursuit
    Witherspoon and Vergara are both experienced comedic actors with charisma to spare, and watching them pal around is a perfectly pleasant way to pass some time. But with material this uninspired, 87 minutes of riding shotgun is long enough.
  66. Cop Out
    With Cop Out, Smith works from a script other than his own for the first time--this one penned by siblings Mark and Robb Cullen--but his slack direction siphons the energy out of this tongue-in-cheek throwback to ’80s mismatched-buddy comedies.
  67. House at the End of the Street
    Working from a solid template is only half the battle; the other half is filling in the details, and it's here that The House At The End Of The Street goes flat and generic, substituting jump-scares and visual twitchiness for the psychological complexity that might have sold the horror.
  68. The Book of Henry
    Director Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World, Safety Not Guaranteed) lacks any of the eccentricities that might make this quirky and contrived material work, even at face value.
  69. Crazy Eyes
    Sherman's feature turns out to be enamored of the kind of reality that gets left out of movies not because it's provocative or controversial, but because it isn't particularly interesting.
  70. The Disappointments Room
    Disappointments has the strange confidence of a much slicker, more decisive movie, and all of its sort-ofs don’t add up to much.
  71. Panic 5 Bravo
    The only thing worse than useless trash is useless trash with delusions of grandeur.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Vampire Academy
    Vampire Academy is toothless in both substance and style.
  73. Get a Job
    With a cast this talented...Get A Job is never painful to endure, but neither does it ever rise above lazy mediocrity.
  74. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
    Dragon Emperor succeeds largely through sheer excess: It's doubtful that any idea was thrown out for being too implausible.
  75. Idle Hands
    Loaded with smart sight gags and endearing secondary characters, it effectively mixes slapstick splatter and deadpan satire...Pretty damned irresistible.
  76. The Life of David Gale
    Brazenly ridiculous.
  77. Corporate Animals
    Corporate Animals, a dark comedy with horrific undertones that should draw upon many of their previous experiences, never feels especially relatable.
  78. Winter's Tale
    Though viewers may have trouble watching any of this with a straight face, the movie’s goofy corniness becomes marginally endearing, in a hobbling-puppy sort of way.
  79. A Fantastic Fear of Everything
    The film’s whimsical specificity, random though it frequently seems, is the main thing it has going for it.
  80. I'm Not Ashamed
    Inelegantly compressing the year up to the shooting, I’m Not Ashamed has more than its fair share of clunkiness.
  81. Friend Request
    There’s nothing remotely clever about this web-based fright flick, visually or conceptually. It’s flimsy genre junk of the most generic variety, just with a really groan-worthy Facebook spin.
  82. Artemis Fowl
    Artemis Fowl, the first Disney movie to have its theatrical release completely scrapped because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is bland and incoherent, with paper-thin character development, unimaginative world building, and a lot of daddy issues.
  83. Harry + Max
    One of the film's oddest missteps is in making the boy-band gig just another occupation, instead of using it as a central way to illuminate the brothers' unusual bond.
  84. Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
    Peter Stormare has fun engaging in some Walken-level scenery-chewing-almost literally-as the patriarch of a werewolf clan. Good for him. That means at least one person has found something to like about this tedious collection of wisecracks and hand-me-down monsters.
  85. The Crow
    Rupert Sanders’ The Crow emerges from its 15-year development hell not as the version of this reboot that finally clicked, but as a film that seems to have once been nine films, all hastily cobbled into something resembling a story, all of its edges smoothed off until it’s flat, flimsy, and dull.
  86. Seventh Son
    Seventh Son is brisk and unpretentious, though the fact that these two qualities can be considered remarkable probably says more about the state of modern genre filmmaking than it does about the movie itself.
  87. The Cave
    It's an undistinguished effort in which none of the actors distinguish themselves.
  88. Alex Cross
    Perry shifts into full-on badass mode... well, the best that can be said is that he's sincere. For all that, he's still less embarrassing than Lost's Matthew Fox, likewise cast against type as the film's sadistic villain.
  89. The Final Destination
    The whole movie is just one increasingly dull roll downhill. The same could be said for this once-fresh franchise.
  90. Punisher: War Zone
    This is junk, a bunch of hard-R action scenes kept together by the thinnest of plots.
  91. CBGB
    Punk may not be dead, but this picture is D.O.A.
  92. The Spirit
    The Spirit feels like the follow-up to "Batman & Robin" no one wanted.
  93. The Outsider
    Asano and the rest of the Japanese cast provide baseline credibility, but they can’t generate excitement from this morass of clichés.
  94. 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.
  95. Saw VI
    Because Saw does nothing to alter the look, tone, and engineered gimmickry from one movie to the next, it keeps going deeper into backstory and character arcs than horror series past, as if this ugly, cheap-looking schlock were somehow "The Lord Of The Rings."
  96. Over Her Dead Body
    It's said that opposites attract, but for the brief period they're onscreen together in the dire comedy Over Her Dead Body, Eva Longoria Parker and Paul Rudd are one of the more bizarrely mismatched couples in recent memory.
  97. The Babymakers
    It's raunchy/sweet in the "American Pie"/"40-Year-Old Virgin" tradition, and as dynamic as a glob of lazy sperm.
  98. The Hangover Part III
    The best that can be said for the third, supposedly final chapter is that it jettisons the retracing-our-steps scenario of the 2009 original and its 2011 carbon-copy sequel. There is, in other words, no hangover in The Hangover Part III.
  99. The Pacifier
    Revealing hitherto unseen depths of stiffness, Diesel stumbles badly in the role.
  100. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    League begins as a smart variation on the summer blockbuster, then loses its nerve in a second half sure to satisfy neither cheap-thrill-seekers nor fans of neglected literary oddities.
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