The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,406 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: 5,566 out of 10406
  2. Mixed: 3,734 out of 10406
  3. Negative: 1,106 out of 10406
10406 movie reviews
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  1. Marty, Life Is Short
    Marty: Life Is Short is an overdue appreciation of a performer who’s underestimated as a clown only because he makes being funny look so easy.
  2. Remarkably Bright Creatures
    While Remarkably Bright Creatures may repel those with little patience for stories of fate, those who enjoyed the book—or those who enjoy character pieces as catharsis—will find this a worthwhile adaptation.
  3. Mortal Kombat II
    It’s because Mortal Kombat II is neither campy enough to revel in its violent bad taste, nor earnest enough to pull off its sprawling ambitions that it most resembles a late-stage Marvel entry.
  4. Swapped
    Even if it wasn’t hot on the tail of Pixar’s Hoppers, Swapped would still be an overly familiar adventure towards empathy, one light on comedy and insight despite plenty of visual imagination in its world of flora-fauna hybrids.
  5. Deep Water
    In this case, Eckhart exudes the sort of unselfconscious paternal energy that’s needed to keep things moving in between the familiar, but well-executed disaster movie story beats. He almost single-handedly makes Deep Water a better-than-average genre exercise, though the bloody shark attacks and corny banter don’t hurt either.
  6. Hokum
    Hokum is the latest fruit of McCarthy’s chameleonic gifts, and his best film yet.
  7. The Devil Wears Prada 2
    While there’s no recapturing the delightful surprise of the first, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is still a treat for fans of the original.
  8. The Sheep Detectives
    Jokes may fall flat, and the movie might get a bit treacly, but The Sheep Detectives‘ big heart is never in question.
  9. Apex
    Apex mistakes going bigger for going better when what it really needs is a little more cleverness, either in how Ben operates or how Sasha tries to survive her impossible scenario. For a movie with some pretty ridiculous plot swerves, everything winds up feeling oddly straightforward, which makes the survival genre’s requisite catharsis and comeuppance land anticlimactically.
  10. Desert Warrior
    The movie’s basic appeal––that of rebels rising up against evil empires––still works to some extent, but Desert Warrior does little to make it memorable beyond its historic production.
  11. Fuze
    Fuze doesn’t fly off the rails at its midpoint. It keeps moving forward at a steady clip. By its final stretch, however, the effort to sustain itself becomes more visible, and less quietly confident.
  12. Michael
    Michael is an attempt to remind audiences why so many fans fell in love with him in the first place, but it doubles as a pretty clear bit of hagiography.
  13. Roommates
    The trouble is, Roommates‘ emotional realism is so compelling that by the time it decides to swing around to being a full-on black comedy, it’s hard not to feel disappointed by the ending. To be fair, that is the setup promised by the framing device, so the film doesn’t exactly pull a fast one, and the cast is equally committed to the more heightened comedy when it arrives.
  14. Balls Up
    Farrelly’s film wanders aimlessly without being driven by anything absurd or outrageous enough to conjure a Hangover-like reaction, nor anything with enough humanity to justify the occasional heart-to-heart conversations between Brad and Elijah.
  15. Lee Cronin's The Mummy
    If Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is like any of the director’s previous work, it’s most like Evil Dead Rises, since it’s also programmatically upsetting yet narratively threadbare to the point of distraction. And while this movie’s relentless, reflex-testing shock scares suggest that the filmmaker has a sense of humor, the audience is never really encouraged to laugh along with them.
  16. Lorne
    If, somehow, you’re just now getting into Saturday Night Live and haven’t already ingested endless lore about the most enduring of sketch shows, Lorne might be a meaningful primer. For everyone else, you’ve heard this joke before.
  17. Mother Mary
    Mother Mary is not scary, nor is it particularly violent. But it does conjure an emotional and metaphysical weight that is practically impossible to shake off post-viewing. This is the most successful Lowery has been at evoking a sensory experience.
  18. Blue Heron
    By the time Zimmer helps connect past and present, memory and reality, the ensemble’s lived-in performances already gesture towards the logical outcome. We just hope it isn’t true.
  19. Thrash
    While Thrash resembles a general-audience survival horror drama, its forgettable protagonists also frequently stop to reassure viewers—mostly through profanity-laced dialogue and occasional bursts of gore—that it’s okay to scoff at whatever they’re looking at.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    ChaO
    A talented animation team does its best to bail water from this sinking ship, but an overreliance on contrivances and slapstick leaves too many holes to plug.
  21. Outcome
    The life lessons Reef learns aren’t meaningful, and the movie’s message about making amends is patronizing. In the end, it’s the audience that deserves an apology.
  22. Exit 8
    Exit 8 excels at capturing that isolation and disaffection in an elegant environmental ouroboros, though what it does once it establishes its atmosphere never matches that simple artistry.
  23. Faces of Death
    It’s a straightforward slasher with a tech-savvy twist, ironically not outlandish enough to stand out from the formerly forbidden footage filling our feeds every single day.
  24. The Stranger
    Ozon’s The Stranger keeps the spirit of its source material alive as a timeless warning in a modern world of stark polarization, ongoing colonialism, and plenty of Meursaults ignoring the suffering of others.
  25. Pizza Movie
    There is room for vulgarity, horror, absurdity, and a whole lot of heart in Pizza Movie, though just barely, like attempting to host a rager in a 12′ x 14′ dorm room. The resulting stoner comedy is awkward, weird, and doesn’t quite work, but it just might become a core memory for those among the couchlocked who have yet to experience a proper house party.
  26. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
    The Super Mario Galaxy Movie doesn’t really have the patience for character-based conflict, or plotting more complicated (or motivated) than groups of characters showing up to different planets on cue.
  27. The Drama
    The resulting film is nonetheless a wonderfully thorny exploration of primordial desires for connection, destruction, and stability. Don’t expect any genuine relationship advice, but also be warned that this is not a glib exercise in aimless edginess.
  28. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
    Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice practically warns the audience against taking it too seriously, even while talking out the other side of its mouth about its own heartfelt themes.
  29. Yes
    Lapid’s garish maximalism will surely isolate some filmgoers, but the satire of Yes! works best when it’s fearless—unbothered by the genocidal regime it captures.
  30. They Will Kill You
    After so many smirky bloodfests, They Will Kill You scarcely needs believable human relationships to earn some goodwill. All it really needs is Beetz convincingly going through hell.
  31. Pretty Lethal
    Pretty Lethal doesn’t even fully take flight once it finally escapes the realm of good taste, though it does feature a handful of standout moments and images. You might scratch your head a few times, but you also may enjoy yourself if you only want the filmmakers to embrace their unhinged high-concept premise
  32. Over Your Dead Body
    Over Your Dead Body is a gleeful, bloody romp masquerading as a dark marriage comedy, though unsurprisingly the two sides of its genre dynamic have a dysfunctional relationship.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tow
    By making the film about one woman (kind of) helping herself, with only vague connections to the world and the people around her, the filmmakers give up any worthwhile point about poverty, injustice, or community.
  34. Normal
    If you’re not immediately tickled by Normal‘s premise, which cements into the traditions of narrative conflict—man versus nature, man versus man, man versus self—the very literal concept of “man versus entire town,” this is the least of the Odenkickass movies. And if that idea makes you smile, Normal might be even more disappointing for how mechanically it goes through motions that used to be novel.
  35. Late Shift
    Even with all these spinning plates, Volpe struggles with maintaining tension despite Benesch’s knack for immediacy and impeccable dramatic timing.
  36. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
    Happily, the narrative moves ahead quickly, the better to demonstrate new, inventive methods of reducing murder-happy billionaires to sloppy carcasses in between beats where Weaving and Newton get to play off of one another.
  37. Reminders of Him
    While the plot isn’t realistic, it’s deeply felt, which is what these kinds of melodramas are supposed to offer. It’s a leaps and bounds improvement over Regretting You, and though Reminders Of Him has fewer grace notes than It Ends With Us, it’s got a more cohesive, meaningful message.
  38. Project Hail Mary
    Over two-and-a-half hours, the duo’s film gazes in wonder at alien engineering, opens its heart to human vulnerability through karaoke, and makes the case that inspiring the next generation (or at least perpetuating its existence) is alluring enough to shake the smarmiest manchildren from their self-imposed exile. Most effectively, though, Project Hail Mary sees a personal sense of humor shine through the bludgeoning grandeur of a AAA sci-fi.
  39. Protector
    It’s both more and less than “Taken: Mom Edition,” another boneheaded poking of conservative’s self-inflicted wounds around human trafficking with a title just as deluded as its content.
  40. undertone
    As a theatrical experience, it’s lots of fun, making clever use of proven techniques that build tension before releasing it with exploding light bulbs and ghostly figures appearing in the corner of the frame.
  41. War Machine
    Forget the gritty realism and quippy one-liners that so often define the modern action genre, War Machine is proudly, almost guilelessly old-fashioned.
  42. Paul McCartney: Man on the Run
    On the whole, Man on the Run is a visually and technically creative documentary that successfully contextualizes McCartney’s decade of metamorphosis as a person and musician via his second band, Wings.
  43. Heel
    Heel wants to have its cake and eat it too, to present this darkly comic absurdity while dipping back into reality only when it suits the film.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
    The Immortal Man is not a good entry point into Peaky Blinders for the same reason it is not rewarding for existing fans: It traffics only in the late stages of Shelby’s arc, but offers nothing new to those who have already been there, done that.
  45. The Bride!
    Gyllenhaal never tones down the brutality, ripping us through bloody tongues, heads, and bodies—in cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s fit of gorgeously captured violence—until the frenzied finish
  46. Hoppers
    While there’s plenty of familiarity in Pixar’s small-scale animated romp Hoppers, there’s also a smart, unruly variation at its center.
  47. Scream 7
    The resulting film is empty fan service, content with simply evoking appreciation for the characters that Williamson created 30 years ago instead of doing anything exciting with them.
  48. Dreams
    The abusive push-pull between America and Mexico, the conflict between the exotic fantasy of a Latin lover and its xenophobic underbelly, crashes into two people too ill-defined to function as anything more than symbols.
  49. I Can Only Imagine 2
    More inarticulate than outright bad, I Can Only Imagine 2 re-packages a heap of barely legible dramatic and comedic shorthand as an uplifting testament to “the goodness of God.” It’s mostly inoffensive, but also doesn’t really have anything to say.
  50. The Bluff
    Indeed, The Bluff is a rollicking good time despite the fact (or maybe because of the fact) that the line between thrilling and ridiculous has never felt more razor thin than it does here.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Dreadful
    A too-modern sensibility and a drastic change from the original folktale lead the movie dreadfully astray.
  52. Midwinter Break
    Midwinter Break is most interested in the realities of long-term relationships—with unfaced trauma and graceful forgiveness alike—more than concrete absolutes, which is what makes it a valuable meditation on the imperfection of marriage.
  53. How to Make a Killing
    At the center of it all is Powell, making the same face for an hour and 45 minutes, too unflappable to root for, too smug to magnetize as an inhuman American Psycho. And How To Make A Killing needed to pick a side, either of clownish class comedy or of bitter sociopathic satire.
  54. Redux Redux
    By keeping their movie grounded in street-level pursuits and raucous shootouts, the McManus brothers situate the multiverse concept in a believable reality that doesn’t require a subreddit to detangle. Redux Redux jumps swiftly and elegantly, finding timelines worth visiting again and again.
  55. My Father's Shadow
    As the memory fades into history, My Father’s Shadow blurs into documentary footage, which then blurs with wishful thinking. It’s formally ambitious for such a contained film, but grants this small-scale story the well-considered gravity of something held close to the heart.
  56. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
    This silly, simplistic sci-fi journey means to be thought-provoking, but the irony of its banality is more recoiling than provocative.
  57. Cold Storage
    That Cold Storage hews closer to comedy doesn’t lessen the unnerving sensation of watching its horror unfold. Funny as the film is, the speed with which a biological agent can spread—when the powers that be find the very notion laughable—still makes one squirm in their seat.
  58. Wuthering Heights
    Overlong and undersexed, Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights betrays her audience of edgelords and perverts. Even stranger, those who have fostered a distaste for the filmmaker’s sensibility will similarly find themselves disappointed. It’s one thing to make art that can be read as indulgent, ill-conceived, and tasteless—it’s another to turn around and make something that’s just boring in comparison.
  59. GOAT
    The actual sports stuff feels a little sweatier, with too much clamor for each animal teammate to really pop. But Goat still leaps over the worst pitfalls of big-studio kid-centric animation. Where it counts, the movie knows just enough ball.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Best Summer
    There’s an undeniable warmth and nostalgia here, but unless you were on those tour buses—or attended one of those shows—you can’t quite connect with The Best Summer like you want to. It’s like looking at someone else’s scrapbook or home movies. This very well could’ve been “the best summer.” It just wasn’t yours or mine, and that’s okay. We appreciate Davis giving us a peek at this cool moment in her life.
  61. Relationship Goals
    As a bit of forgettable, low-stakes Valentine’s Day viewing for the religious set, one could do worse. But those who only date their rom-coms “intentionally” could definitely do better.
  62. Solo Mio
    While Solo Mio feels familiar, it doesn’t feel generic—and that’s a balancing act as impressive as James’ late-career pivot.
  63. Iron Lung
    As a performer, Fischbach’s frantic performance can sometimes be distractingly monotonous, but as a filmmaker, he has an impressive eye not only for compositional details, but also for how his images cut and flow together.
  64. Pillion
    Pillion is a film about self-knowledge, and about asserting one’s needs and boundaries without shame.
  65. The Moment
    The Moment doesn’t meet the gold standard of self-pitying emptiness set by The Weeknd’s Hurry Up Tomorrow, but it does share with that movie the sense that the gorgeous surface is performing a kind of vamping at the behest of a music-video-thin story.
  66. The Love That Remains
    The resulting drama might have been exasperating for its surface passivity if Pálmason’s faith in his actors and other regular collaborators, as well as his knack for composition (he’s also the movie’s cinematographer), didn’t pay off so regularly and so viscerally.
  67. Shelter
    The pulp and action are sold by Statham with the resigned competence of a factory worker clocking in for a shift, and Breathnach’s over-eager performance is balanced out by her expressive face. They’re a decent team to watch go through the motions, running through underworld contacts and old pals who owe one last favor.
  68. Send Help
    As much as some of the imagery feels like Raimi playing the hits, Send Help also suggests a later-career shift for the filmmaker, one where his comic-book throwbacks run into (or over?) contemporary obstacles without losing their go-for-broke loopiness. It can get messy. Good for him.
  69. The Wrecking Crew
    The Wrecking Crew casts about between genres like driftwood caught by the tide; for two hours, the script cycles between family trauma drama, goofy Hawaiian noir, meathead romp, and wham-bang slugfest. The indecision at least showcases some consistency, though, in that each approach is equally dissatisfying.
  70. 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.
  71. Mother of Flies
    The result is occult horror as potent as the snake venom in one of Selveig’s dreadful “cures.”
    • tbd Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
    Cosmic Princess Kaguya! is blessed with talent—manifesting as impressive animation and a lovely rapport between its leads—but its rocky landing denies it a chance at true stardom.
  73. 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.
  74. A Private Life
    A Private Life offers plenty of fizzy pleasures alongside somber reflections on the passage of time and the regrets you have to live with.
  75. The Rip
    Despite the story bloat, Carnahan spins a tight web for the first two-thirds of his movie.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    All You Need Is Kill
    Judged both in a vacuum and against its source material, All You Need Is Kill is a rare retelling that finds its own tenor.
  77. Shuffle
    It’s 81 damning minutes of tight filmmaking, great storytelling, and riveting investigation.
  78. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    It’s a neat surprise that DaCosta extracts more dark humor from the series than Boyle himself.
  79. People We Meet on Vacation
    As low-stakes viewing about two blandly likable people, People We Meet On Vacation at least looks better than the cheapest level of streaming rom-coms, and fans of the book will probably find something to like. Ironically, however, its place on Netflix means it’ll miss out on its truest calling as a film you half-watch on a plane.
  80. Young Mothers
    Even in the more shallow form of Young Mothers, the Dardennes’ work emphasizes that there is little that’s more cinematic than complicated people surviving difficult circumstances.
  81. Magellan
    Diaz makes a mockery of Magellan in his depiction of the revered globetrotter, his take on the Age Of Discovery damning to say the least.
  82. Dead Man's Wire
    This is Van Sant’s Dog Day Afternoon moment. Judged solely by Skarsgård’s scenes, Dead Man’s Wire makes for an insightful and tense portrait of its subject. But judged by the limits of its perspective, the film is narrow to the story’s detriment.
  83. Primate
    Primate makes a characteristically concise case for Roberts as a genre stylist to keep watching.
  84. The Plague
    Aside from these shallow moments of over-explanation and a kinetic ending that lifts whole cloth from the aforementioned Beau Travail, this exciting debut boasts some honest and cutting commentary around these angry, confused little boys.
  85. The Testament of Ann Lee
    The frenzied, lustful energy of the film’s first half makes it one of the most thrilling cinematic experiences of the year and, though the slower, more mannered second half struggles to recapture that same sense of propulsion, there’s a purpose to that too.
  86. We Bury the Dead
    For those looking to delve into more philosophical horror, We Bury The Dead is a thoughtful trek into the unknown.
  87. Song Sung Blue
    Like a Diamond song, Song Sung Blue is a little corny and a touch overly familiar. But when it finds its wavelength, the good times never seemed so good.
  88. Anaconda
    Anaconda may be getting the benefit of the doubt here because of how few studio comedies make it to theaters. In another era, it might easily have gotten lost in a wave of post-modern updates that included The Brady Bunch and Starsky & Hutch. Its plot offers few surprises, but its simple foundations and character motivations give Rudd and Black so much room to play that it’s an amiable time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cover-Up
    At a time like this, Cover-Up is a vital reminder that demanding a better world is possible, straight from the people who have done the critical work required to confront America’s darkest forces.
  90. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants
    The fourth theatrical feature film in the SpongeBob SquarePants oeuvre—The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants—doesn’t give audiences a memorable outing, much less a best day ever. It’s a big downgrade, and a huge disappointment for long-time fans of the subversive and unapologetically silly character.
  91. The Housemaid
    Paul Feig has always seemed a little uncomfortable with exploitation, but he makes some progress with this thriller.
  92. Avatar: Fire and Ash
    Fire And Ash is terrific entertainment that occasionally gives the impression of well-appointed vamping; it’s almost enough to wonder if all the meticulous writer’s-room blueprinting of two-to-four Avatar sequels might have done as much harm as good. Viewers who just long for more time in Pandora are in luck: Cameron may not see a way out himself.
  93. Resurrection
    Divided yet compounding as the totality of Resurrection unfolds, our sharpened senses catch onto the details of Bi’s work, our awareness heightened around how many ways we can engage with the film in front of us, and movies in general.
  94. Atropia
    Without a tangible connection to the material—most notably to Iraq and its people—Gates’ viewpoint feels unguided, doomed to be influenced by the same pervasive prejudices that Atropia ostensibly attempts to combat.
  95. Ella McCay
    It all adds up to a movie that isn’t screwy enough to be a screwball comedy nor deep enough to be a dramedy.
  96. Dust Bunny
    Toning down the blood-drenched viscera of Hannibal while channeling the morbid yet whimsical stylings of Pushing Daisies, Fuller’s inaugural film effort is completely in tune with his previous narrative interests, though this time filtered through the gaze of a precocious child.
  97. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    The film is even less than the sum of its genre trappings.
  98. 100 Nights of Hero
    If 100 Nights Of Hero is a critique of the misogynistic societies that cultivated these fairy tales, it is also an intentional embrace of the mythologies—however misguided they may seem—that have prompted women of all walks of life to test the limits of what they can get away with.
  99. The Chronology of Water
    Stewart applies an admirably experimental vision to her adaptation, but she can’t translate whatever power she may have found in Yuknavitch’s text to the screen.
  100. Five Nights at Freddy's 2
    Its entire third act is just expectation for a third movie that hopefully never comes. It is a bare minimum branding experiment, a dumb thing designed to be recognized with the hope that enjoyment will simply follow.
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