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. Flannel Pajamas
    Opaque acting, excruciating dialogue, and flat, affectless direction certainly don't help, but even in brilliant hands, Flannel Pajamas would still be a movie about two horrible, unsympathetic people doing dreadful things to each other, and learning nothing in the process. Why should anyone else have to endure it too?
  2. Deck the Halls
    A rancid new Yuletide comedy.
  3. The Holiday
    Even with a wild card like Black desperately retooling his lines, there's nothing authentic or personal about The Holiday--it's as chilling as heart-warmers get.
  4. Black Christmas
    Seems to go out of its way to obliterate all the elements that made the original so special.
  5. Factory Girl
    The film strays so far from verisimilitude that it feels more like a big celebrity dress-up party than history brought to life. The profoundly silly Internet favorite series "Yacht Rock" offered a more convincing take on pop-culture history and that was at least going for laughs.
  6. 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.
  7. Wild Hogs
    Abysmal.
  8. The Hills Have Eyes II
    Assembles the most motley group of incompetents this side of a "Police Academy" movie, yet somehow misses the laughs. But humorlessness is probably the least of the film's problems, lagging behind amateur-night performances from the no-name cast, a homogenous visual palette (and from a music-video director, no less!), and lots of pointless sadism.
  9. Georgia Rule
    Garry Marshall has too much confidence that he can match the weighty issues here with the light comedy. He can't. Or at least he can't with this cast.
  10. Shrek the Third
    Shrek The Third instead goes for less: fewer jokes, less energy, and toned-down characters.
  11. Angel-A
    At heart, it's just the latest from one-man industry Luc Besson, so even though it looks like art, it plays like schlock.
  12. Evan Almighty
    It goes without saying that Evan Almighty, a kid-friendly follow-up to the Jim Carrey vehicle "Bruce Almighty," is more Ronald McDonald than Holy Bible, but it didn't have to be this epically trite.
  13. Evening
    Evening proves that there are such things as mistakes, by featuring two hours of bad choices and half-executed ideas.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    September Dawn
    With its complete lack of empathy for early Mormons and simplistic rendering of historical figures, September Dawn is that rare movie that actually deserves whatever condemnation might come from religious groups.
  15. The 11th Hour
    The 11th Hour is slick and passionate, but neither persuasive nor helpful; it's a headache of a film directed like an Errol Morris project, but with half the substance. It's clearly preaching to the choir, but even they may find it off-key.
  16. Romance & Cigarettes
    Sometimes the actors lip-sync, but more often, they're singing along with the original vocal tracks, trying to out-belt Elvis Presley and Bruce Springsteen, like a cadre of enthusiastic shower singers joining in with the radio. The resulting cacophony is generally harsh and sloppy, and the film follows suit.
  17. Good Luck Chuck
    There's an audience out there for this kind of thing--Cook is obviously a populist, and Norbit made bushels of money--but if this is what passes for funny, what in the world of comedy DOESN'T qualify?
  18. Feel the Noise
    Reggaeton has officially come of age: The burgeoning subgenre now has a terrible, opportunistic exploitation movie to call its own.
  19. Lions for Lambs
    All talk and zero characterization, it doesn't even feel like a real movie.
  20. Revolver
    Ritchie has said that it takes several viewings to fully understand what's going on in Revolver, but once will be enough for most to agree to take his word for it.
  21. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
    Cultists will be happy to discover that In The Name Of The King bears all the so-bad-it's-good hallmarks of a classic Boll production.
  22. College Road Trip
    The almost perversely colorblind College Road Trip represents a strange milestone in black film.
  23. Zombie Strippers!
    Currently stopping by theaters briefly en route to DVD, the film tries to position Jameson as the next Linnea Quigley, the B-movie queen behind such enduring titles as "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers" and "Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama."
  24. War, Inc.
    The overall experience is manic, juvenile, and hit-or-miss, as if the auteurs behind "Epic Movie" were trying to remake "Wag The Dog." It's too soon to laugh about Iraq, and it'll never be time to laugh about it with this kind of maladroit humor.
  25. Das wilde Leben
    If the movie had greater style, it might approach the delirious badness of "The Valley Of The Dolls," but it's too dull to qualify as camp.
  26. Hell Ride
    A witless reprise of '60s and '70s biker movies.
  27. The Spirit
    The Spirit feels like the follow-up to "Batman & Robin" no one wanted.
  28. Fly Me to the Moon 3D
    The film still suffers from cheap plasticky design, a klutzy overall look, dim preschooler humor, and a nearly impact-free story that thinks it's clever when it steals cues from 2001.
  29. Bangkok Dangerous
    Dimly lit, emotionally empty, and devoid of thrills, Bangkok Dangerous should disappoint Cage fans looking for Wicker Man-style camp thrills just as thoroughly as action buffs looking for a passable thriller. It's never close to good, and it can't even get bad right.
  30. Eagle Eye
    It'd probably feel just a little bit timelier and more relevant if it took place in a universe that bore even the faintest resemblance to our own.
  31. Filth and Wisdom
    Madonna presents the three leads as flawed but essentially decent and redeemable, but they're bound up in a story that's meant to affirm a vague set of values. If she needs to justify the "Sex" book by charting her own contrived path from filth to heavenly wisdom, that's fine. But she should do it on her own time.
  32. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    People's title proves prophetic, only this time the people being alienated are the suckers in the paying audience.
  33. Saw V
    Devotes so much time and energy to flashbacks and recycling footage from its predecessors that it threatens to implode.
  34. Pride and Glory
    Norton is infamous for rewriting scripts and acting as a de facto director on his movies yet he seems lost and defeated here.
  35. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    When it comes to time-wasting memory games, crossword puzzles are more fun than this movie.
  36. Punisher: War Zone
    This is junk, a bunch of hard-R action scenes kept together by the thinnest of plots.
  37. 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.
  38. Not Easily Broken
    For a film shamelessly trumpeting the importance of staying together through the hard times, Broken makes a disconcertingly convincing case for divorce.
  39. The Unborn
    What darkness the movie achieves comes solely from the lighting.
  40. Friday the 13th
    It's almost charming in its sheer lack of ambition, but the lack of creativity in its by-the-numbers shocks is harder to excuse.
  41. Obsessed
    Doing his best to class up the joint, "The Wire's" Idris Elba stars as the perfect man.
  42. The Ugly Truth
    The sort of rom-com apparatus that no relationship can overcome.
  43. Gigantic
    Any resemblance the film bears to real people and real situations is purely coincidental.
  44. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
    A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story’s mounting ludicrousness—two words: adamantium bullets—or a conclusion that’s only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown. Maybe.
  45. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
    Tony Scott’s bracingly awful remake/desecration of the classic ‘70s thriller.
  46. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
    It’s a busier and less coherent film, too, with a baffling master plot and a crowded pileup of special effects in search of something to do.
  47. Imagine That
    Though he commits to a lot of embarrassing silliness, Murphy projects so little genuine warmth that his transformation barely registers.
  48. I Love You, Beth Cooper
    There’s hardly an authentic second in the film.
  49. The Final Destination
    The whole movie is just one increasingly dull roll downhill. The same could be said for this once-fresh franchise.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Sorority Row
    Sorority Row might be utterly lacking in suspense, surprises, and wit, but nobody can say it doesn’t have a hero.
  51. Motherhood
    Dieckmann fails to notice that Thurman doesn’t have the comic chops for the material--she comes off more like a self-pitying loser than a witty, put-upon everywoman.
  52. Case 39
    Zellweger has come an awful long way since Matthew McConaughey terrorized her in "Texas Chainsaw Masscare": The Next Generation, but not quite as far as she might like to imagine.
  53. She's Out of My League
    Baruchel and Eve never shed that awkward first-date chemistry, which speaks less to their talents or the possibilities of mismatched romance than to a movie that forces them together like animals being mated in captivity.
  54. The Bounty Hunter
    Tennant and his actors have done the bare minimum to carry their lifeless movie past the finish line, and their apathy reads a lot like contempt.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Sex and the City 2
    Sex And The City 2 panders to that audience to the point of self-destruction, squandering whatever goodwill the franchise had left after the first so-so movie by plopping its beloved characters into a series of garish vignettes that throw their shallowness into sharp relief.
  56. Takers
    Rapper, producer, and mogul Tip "T.I." Harris was recently named "global creative consultant" for Rémy Martin cognac. Coincidentally or not, he's also the star and producer of Takers, a heist thriller that feels suspiciously like a feature-length commercial for expensive liquor.
  57. Killers
    Killers isn’t an entertainment, it’s a high-speed spat.
  58. Marmaduke
    Marmaduke saves its farts for the beginning and end, but the stink carries through the whole movie.
  59. The Losers
    There isn’t a whiff of humility or self-deprecation to Clay, Roque, Jensen, Cougar, and Pooch, a collection of black-ops douchebags and our ostensible heroes.
  60. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    Director Samuel Bayer, a veteran commercial and music video director responsible for Nirvana’s “Smell Like Teen Spirit Video” back when the original Nightmare series was still a going concern, brings a slick visual sense but not a hint of vision.
  61. The Ex
    It never comes close to being funny.
  62. Captivity
    In a genre where killers love to play head games, it's a clever idea (Cohen's?) to have this one remain mute, but that leaves Cuthbert to carry much of the psychological load, and there's no substance to her character, apart from the suggestion that she's being punished for her vanity.
  63. Deal
    To think that a semi-major studio financed a production this low-rent and listless is amazing: Since when did MGM start making student films?
  64. America the Beautiful
    Roberts blunders amiably and cluelessly through his amateurish eyesore of a documentary on society's obsession with beauty, perpetually searching for a thesis that will transform a shambling mess of half-baked thoughts and pointless digressions into a real documentary.
  65. The Last Song
    Offers a taming-of-the-shrew scenario so relentlessly bland and old-fashioned it makes "Dear John," the Sparks adaptation from two months ago, look like "Last Tango In Paris."
  66. Trash Humpers
    With every project, he pops open the same trunkload of shtick and leaves everyone to argue over whether it’s art. It’s a win-win situation for Korine, who’s either a genius or a provocateur who’s succeeded in gaming his stuffy critics.
  67. Finding Bliss
    It's a big-hearted, well-intentioned disaster.
  68. South of the Border
    Stone's film, more an act of boosterism than inquiry, is a tremendous missed opportunity.
  69. La Soga (The Butcher's Son)
    It's disheartening that a story with roots in autobiography, no matter how tentative, should end up as such an impersonal genre rehash.
  70. Vampires Suck
    The boys similarly deserve very minor props for choosing a satirical target that lends itself to satire: the glum, self-important Twilight novels and movies. Sadly, that's where the filmmakers' mild accomplishments end and the groaningly predictable hackwork begins.
  71. Saw 3D
    Saw has shown a ferocious unwillingness to evolve.
  72. I Spit on Your Grave
    Not surprisingly, the remake gussies up the grindhouse roughness of the first film, which makes it relatively more palatable-yet still vapid and repulsive-while also, in a perverse way, selling it out.
  73. Devil
    Perhaps someday, in the greatest twist of all, Shyamalan will be remembered as the Hitchcock of the early 21st century. Until then, movies like Devil will be misunderstood as schlock.
  74. Yogi Bear
    The best that could be said of Yogi Bear is that it doesn't diminish its source material.
  75. Little Fockers
    When the conclusion leaves the door open for still another sequel, it feels like an invitation to a living wake.
  76. Inhale
    It's neither remotely convincing as true-to-life drama or lurid and propulsive enough to work as exploitation. It's just bad.
  77. The Roommate
    A deplorable unofficial reworking of "Single White Female."
  78. Season of the Witch
    The film looks dispiritingly cheap and, as if in response, most of his cast seems half-committed at best, as if they're counting the moments until they can move on to a bigger picture.
  79. Just Go with It
    Aniston and Sandler, however, play characters too awful to deserve anyone better than each other. But what did we do to deserve them?
  80. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
    Star Martin Lawrence, now the sole remaining element from the original "Big Momma's House" 11 years ago, looks pretty tired both in and out of makeup here.
  81. Conan the Barbarian
    It shouldn't, in other words, be that hard to make a good Conan movie. John Milius did a half-decent job with "Conan The Barbarian" in 1982, but this new film of the same name feels like a half-hearted revamp of virtually any of the Conan rip-offs that clogged up video-store shelves in the '80s.
  82. The Apparition
    It's a potentially creepy setting that would give an innovative director a chance to do a lot with a little. Unfortunately, Lincoln isn't one of those.
  83. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
    The first Human Centipede had audacity on its side. Human Centipede II has only excess.
  84. Straw Dogs
    The original was repulsive but impossible to shake. This remake is pure applause bait, which makes it barbaric in ways Peckinpah would never have dreamed.
  85. The Possession
    The Possession attempts to breathe new life into a creaky old subgenre by taking its exorcist and demon from Jewish mythology, but even this backfires: The casting of Jewish reggae star Matisyahu would be distracting even if he weren't introduced singing softly to himself.
  86. 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.
  87. Wrath of the Titans
    Wrath Of The Titans is shopworn and derivative even by the degraded standards of contemporary blockbuster filmmaking.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Footprints
    To give credit where it's due, Footprints makes a game attempt at creating a love letter to a place that may be inherently unlovable: Hollywood Boulevard, in all its faded glory and present-day Hooters/Hard Rock Cafe tackiness.
  89. Hesher
    It's all quirk, posturing, attitude, and needless exertion signifying nothing beyond its own sad need to impress.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Love, Wedding, Marriage
    The "romantic" half of Love, Wedding, Marriage's romantic comedy doesn't work, but that isn't nearly as problematic as the film's profound unfunniness.
  91. A Thousand Words
    While the ending is wretchedly fakey and predictable, Murphy in subdued mode gives it a little authentic sweetness.
  92. Seven Days in Utopia
    Not a second of it is convincing - or compelling - but then the film is about "utopia," a blandly idealized place unblemished by hardship, malice, sin, or errant golf strokes.
  93. Think Like a Man
    An insanely overlong infomercial for the book.
  94. The Cold Light of Day
    The Cold Light Of Day is the antithesis of a labor of love; it's a cold, mercenary endeavor that, like the thematically similar Taylor Lautner vehicle "Abduction," diligently ignores the potentially intriguing issues of family and identity its plot raises.
  95. Act of Valor
    It's thin material, to say the least, and manipulative to boot, putting women, children, and a SEAL father-to-be in jeopardy in ways more about servicing cheap thrills than any larger point about the perilous state of the world in 2012.
  96. Scary Movie 5
    Scary Movie 5 aspires to timeliness, but its comic sensibility is so groaningly retro that the film features a series of tributes to The Benny Hill Show and its signature ditty, “Yakety Sax.”
  97. W.E.
    For the scandal-prone icon behind the camera - who glibly writes off all that talk about her subjects' Nazi sympathies as slanderous nonsense from a jealous, hateful press and gossipy busybodies - the film might as well be called ME.
  98. 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.
  99. Girl in Progress
    Girl In Progress is ultimately less interested in subverting the clichés of the genre than in recycling them. It wants audiences to know it's in on the joke though it's not always apparent that there even is a joke in the first place.
  100. 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.
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