The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,422 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: 5,575 out of 10422
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10422
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10422
10422 movie reviews
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  1. Things to Come
    If Things To Come doesn’t completely fulfill Hansen-Løve’s career mission of elevating minor incidents to major themes, it still rings with her clarity and personality. She conveys in single sentences what less confident filmmakers might expound on in a monologue, and makes small gestures more poignant by tossing them off casually or making an unexpected cut.
  2. Jackie
    Jackie shows us the facade and the beneath, which is just one way this boldly off-kilter movie puts its biopic brethren to shame.
  3. One More Time with Feeling
    As a documentary, One More Time hesitates to say anything too neatly or directly. In that way, it is a uniquely effective meditation on grief.
  4. Man Down
    The low-wattage, high-concept psychological drama Man Down is too misbegotten to be rescued by Shia LaBeouf’s Method lead performance; in fact, the most interesting thing about it is his masochistic commitment to the film.
  5. Run the Tide
    This isn’t a terrible film, by any means. It’s a completely forgettable film, which is arguably worse—especially for Lautner, who at this point is on the verge of vanishing down the memory hole with it.
  6. The Duelist
    The premise of intrigue and revenge in a high-society Tsarist underworld is irresistible and pulpy, but Mizgirev’s script is an indigestible, soap-operatic mess of backstories, clichés, and the kind of ambiguous mystic overtones that have become an unbreakable addiction for Russian film.
  7. Bobby Sands: 66 Days
    The emotional reserve of 66 Days can make the film feel a little dry at times, given that it’s about something as visceral as a man starving himself to death. But Byrne does a fine job of juggling a lot of information.
  8. Old Stone
    It’s too bad that the movie shifts from having too little juice to having too much, because there are hints of a more compelling middle ground.
  9. Evolution
    Evolution is the sort of film that doesn’t require you to “turn off” your mind, but does ask that you surrender certain expectations. Most of all, this is a vision that no other director would have imbued with such a potent amalgam of tender and twisted. It’s a pleasure to have her back.
  10. Lion
    In trying to tell the whole of this nearly implausible tale, the film can’t figure out whether it’s more invested in young Saroo’s harrowing journey or older Saroo’s feeling of displacement.
  11. Miss Sloane
    The main problem is a dialogue-heavy script by first-time screenwriter Jonathan Perera that mistakes quantity of verbiage for quality.
  12. Always Shine
    Always Shine shines brightest when it lets these women be themselves, and the filmmaking provides the dissonance.
  13. Mifune: The Last Samurai
    Mifune: The Last Samurai is less a comprehensive overview of the actor’s life than it is an analysis of what that life meant.
  14. Bad Santa 2
    The heist-movie plot, the bawdy gags, the ironic repurposing of old holiday-season chestnuts: They’re all here, hastily stuffed into a new package.
  15. Allied
    Zemeckis has fashioned an unfashionable throwback, and if Allied doesn’t land the gut-punch it winds up to deliver, there’s nevertheless plenty to admire in a blockbuster craftsman and two beautiful stars paying tribute to the spirit of an older Hollywood.
  16. Rules Don't Apply
    Aside from Beatty’s performance, the only consistent thing the movie has going for it is ineffable strangeness; it seems to be trapped at the bottom of the chasm that separates its subversive aims from its nostalgic pursuits.
  17. Moana
    Occasionally, the movie’s combination of formula and tweaks makes it play like a one-blockbuster-fits-all reconciliation of a standard Disney checklist with a second list of corrective measures. For the most part, though, the movie feels more heartfelt than calculated.
  18. Nocturnal Animals
    Like Ford’s debut, Nocturnal Animals treats film as a medium of luxury, where the emotive and the self-indulgent cross paths. He is primarily a sensualist.
  19. Divines
    Divines, written and directed by French-Moroccan filmmaker Houda Benyamina, rivals "Girlhood" as a portrait of combustible banlieue femininity, emanating raw energy and scrappy good humor even as it builds to an unexpectedly tragic and horrifying finale.
  20. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    Patchy but occasionally charming, the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them delivers most of what has come to be expected from J.K. Rowling’s book series and its successful film adaptations.
  21. Manchester by the Sea
    Manchester By The Sea sweats the big stuff and the small stuff, and that’s key to its anomalous power: This is a staggering American drama, almost operatic in the heartbreak it chronicles.
  22. Bleed for This
    Bleed For This looks at Vinny Paz and sees only unshakable determination, and though there’s a certain queasy, even darkly comic thrill to seeing the man (courageously? foolishly?) bench press his injuries away, Teller can’t make much of a character out of nothing but raw conviction and a spectacularly crappy mustache.
  23. The Edge of Seventeen
    Despite its upstart distributor and relatively low-key cast, it’s an unabashedly mainstream movie; compared with edgier, more indie versions of onscreen American youth, it might even look a little pat.
  24. Officer Downe
    Officer Downe isn’t overly concerned about viewers exercising many brain cells.
  25. Life on the Line
    The slumming stars actually make the situation worse for everyone; Life On The Line plays like an ego trip without any accompanying fun.
  26. The Red Turtle
    The Red Turtle nevertheless remains throughout a simple, gripping story of survival, deriving its sense of adventure from the most basic plot imaginable: Here’s a human being, stranded in a strange place, using his strength, intelligence, and courage to forge some kind of a life for himself.
  27. I Am Not Madame Bovary
    Fans of both non-action Asian cinema and stifling bureaucratic nightmares, your long wait is finally over.
  28. Uncle Kent 2
    A short running time and an amiable tone kept Uncle Kent from ever becoming a chore, but aside from one hilariously awkward ménage à trois scene and a poignant final shot, the film was so slight that it almost dared the audience to get anything out of watching.
  29. Shut In
    A thriller that takes a long time to get even remotely thrilling.
  30. True Memoirs of an International Assassin
    Cleverer than the average Kevin James comedy, though its better gags are unlikely to inspire more than a snicker.
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