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. Idiocracy
    There's a good chance that Judge's smartly lowbrow Idiocracy will be mistaken for what it's satirizing, but good satire always runs the risk -- of being misunderestimated.
  2. The Black Dahlia
    Hartnett and co-star Scarlett Johansson--that most fatale of current filmic femmes--are naturals for this kind of noir-hued material, but the pairing of Ellroy and De Palma proves a marriage made in hardboiled heaven.
  3. Old Joy
    Old Joy doesn't try for too much, but its subtle victories leave plenty to savor.
  4. The Science of Sleep
    An indie version of Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," albeit with none of the star power, a quarter of the budget, half the angst, and twice the charm.
  5. Volver
    Almodóvar is still one of the few directors worth watching just for how he uses color on the screen. But the pleasures have always run much deeper, and now they run deeper still.
  6. Iraq in Fragments
    The first third of Iraq In Fragments is so intense--a masterpiece in miniature, really--that audiences may not have much emotion left for the rest.
  7. Happy Feet
    It's a gorgeously rendered marvel that pulls out all the stops to wow its viewers, but in spite of its crowd-pleasing ploys, it holds onto its integrity with a smart and surprisingly deep story.
  8. The History Boys
    History Boys boasts a dazzling verbal cleverness--the gleeful rat-a-tat of snappy banter expertly executed--that doesn't keep it from also being deeply, exquisitely sad.
  9. An Unreasonable Man
    The film begins like a Frank Capra movie--pure-hearted idealist takes on corporate fat cats against impossible odds and triumphs--but ends like a Shakespearean tragedy.
  10. Offside
    It's a sports film unlike any other, and a political film that makes the personal profound.
  11. Black Book
    In the end, Black Book may be one of the most fun movies ever made about how people basically suck.
  12. Year of the Dog
    White's gently perceptive film is a funny, poignant, emotionally honest minor-key character study.
  13. Hot Fuzz
    Everything an action-comedy should be. It achieves through parody what most films in the genre can't accomplish straight.
  14. Triad Election
    Like the best crime stories, this one isn't about how the bad guys live, it's about how WE live.
  15. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    Porumboiu starts off making a mordant slice of life, but he gradually entwines the personal and the historical, then ends on a poignant note. The story and situation are slight, but in the best possible way.
  16. This Is England
    Taut, tense, and self-consciously stylish.
  17. Deep Water
    A compelling, well-researched, beautifully assembled document.
  18. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
    Gordon's feature directorial debut mostly stops being about video-game obsession and turns into a film about what it takes to make it in America.
  19. My Kid Could Paint That
    When others can't see what parents see, there's an inescapable ache. As much as anything, My Kid Could Paint That is about that ache.
  20. Gone Baby Gone
    Though its procedural goes a little soft in the middle, Gone Baby Gone quietly accumulates in power, leading to one of the more subtly devastating final shots in recent memory.
  21. Cloverfield
    It puts human faces on the victims of mass destruction, faces that might easily have been yours or mine, staring down the maw of something we don't understand.
  22. In Bruges
    When it's funny, it's hilarious; when it's serious, it's powerful; and either way, it's an endless pleasant surprise.
  23. Paranoid Park
    It's a film assembled from moments out of time, destined forever to weigh down the boy at their center.
  24. Stop-Loss
    Stop-Loss is a human story first and foremost, and Peirce and her stellar young cast ensure that the message never gets in the way of the storytelling.
  25. Redbelt
    The film unravels a bit in the last few moments, amid unanswered story questions and a simplistic climax, but until that moment, Redbelt is Mamet's richest film of the decade.
  26. The Fall
    It's the most glorious, wonderful mess put onscreen since Terry Gilliam's "Brazil."
  27. Surfwise
    How can a freethinking father mandate his ideals without violating them? Pray covers it all, and movingly so.
  28. The Strangers
    It isn't particularly original--for one, it owes an unacknowledged debt to the French film "Them"--but as an exercise in controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier.
  29. Kung Fu Panda
    Yet another celebrity-voiced animal adventure, but it stands out from the crowd of similar films with its lightning wit and whirlwind brio.
  30. Stuck
    It's a righteously nasty piece of work, and a rare example of a movie that traffics in B-movie grime without a trace of "Grindhouse"-style self-consciousness.
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