The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Burning Bush
    On the whole, though, Burning Bush is an absorbing docudrama that maintains a gratifying equilibrium between hope and cynicism. You can fight City Hall. It just takes a while.
  2. Jealousy
    Jealousy — arguably the slightest film Garrel has produced since the 1980s — may not add up to a whole lot, but its sense of life and the medium is, as always, substantial and accomplished.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Homestretch
    In a moral sense, teen homelessness is very much a crime, and Chicago-based filmmakers Anne De Mare and Kirsten Kelly aim to shed a light on this nationwide epidemic in The Homestretch, using the Windy City as a test case.
  4. Selma
    As cinema, Selma is commendable; as cultural barometer, it’s beyond reproach.
  5. Black Mass
    Without an emotional core, a stronger sociological angle, or many visceral thrills, Black Mass more or less limits itself to procedural status. Within those aims, it’s a pretty good one, absorbing and well-made.
  6. The Green Prince
    Yet even if the individuals and their motives themselves don’t always come into full focus, The Green Prince is an absorbing psychological study of shifting allegiances.
  7. The Tribe
    One reason that The Tribe “works” is that it presents a story so simple and familiar, so cliché even, that one doesn’t need to understand what the actors are saying to follow along.
  8. The Longest Week
    Aggressively derivative though The Longest Week is, however, it’s clearly the work not of a lazy thief, but of a raw talent who’s still struggling to find his own voice. In the meantime, his impressions are pretty darn impressive.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    ABCs of Death 2
    Omnibus features are by their nature uneven, so it’s to the benefit of the ABCs Of Death series that the creative constraints (26 short horror films, each one pegged to a specific letter of the alphabet) encourage brevity.
  10. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her
    It’s little surprise that Her turns out to be the better of the two movies, mostly by virtue of prominently featuring Chastain, who conveys an interior life — shifting emotions, competing desires — the script doesn’t supply her.
  11. American Sniper
    American Sniper is imperfect and at times a little corny, but also ambivalent and complicated in ways that are uniquely Eastwoodian.
  12. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    While The Man From U.N.C.L.E. probably isn’t any less of a caricature of its period than "Sherlock Holmes," it carries its fakeness with more snap in its step. The imaginary intrigue it generates is fleeting, but often beautiful.
  13. Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
    The film is at its best when cutting between delicious stories... It doesn’t make for the strongest film, but it does work like a case of people swapping outrageous war stories over a few beers.
  14. The Nice Guys
    The Nice Guys is funny enough when it sticks to its heroes — whether pinned in a tight spot or bickering with each other — that its less-than-compelling intrigues and digressions come as an acceptable trade-off.
  15. Now You See Me 2
    Now You See Me 2 gets giddy on its own unreality. That sense of freewheeling excess extends from the chip heist — set in a metal-free clean room — to the nonstop contrivances and coincidences to the cast.
  16. The Last Five Years
    For Kendrick in particular, it’s a sign that she could sing her way through something bigger.
  17. Love & Mercy
    Capturing the spirit of that music (while dramatizing the circumstances of its creation) is Love & Mercy’s biggest victory.
  18. Pasolini
    And yet the movie never errs in its sincerity, which extends all the way to the decision to depict Pasolini’s murder in graphic detail.
  19. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
    The uninitiated, meanwhile, can start with Pigeon and work their way backward through Andersson’s trilogy. It only gets better in reverse.
  20. Still Alice
    Though shot in the stolidly inconspicuous style of a low-rated cable drama, Still Alice is rarely anything short of compelling, in part because its sense of progression and scale offers such a distinctively unsentimental take on the terminal-countdown tearjerker.
  21. Kong: Skull Island
    Skull Island has a lot of globe-trotting fun assembling its team of expendables.
  22. Red Army
    If Miracle can be thought of as "Flags Of Our Fathers: On Ice," Red Army is its "Letters From Iwo Jima." Gabe Polsky’s film humanizes the players of the Soviet Union national team, who were humiliated by a ragtag crew of amateur college kids during the most internationally politicized game in the history of American sports.
  23. Hellaware
    Even with a runtime just barely over an hour, the shock comedy of Hellaware grows a bit numbing after a while.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Heart Machine
    The Heart Machine’s denouement is ultimately disappointing, but the film is still one of the more successful cinematic portrayals of online intimacy.
  25. The Night Before
    The Night Before isn’t Rogen’s funniest movie. Minute for minute, it doesn’t have as many laughs as "Superbad," "Neighbors," or "This Is The End," among others. But it does contain one of Rogen’s funniest performances, as Isaac navigates a very long and very bad drug trip, a responsibility-free Christmas gift from his wife.
  26. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    To some degree, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 is a more offbeat film than the original, with better gags, better (and more cartoonish) action, and more visual variety.
  27. Thor: Ragnarok
    Thor: Ragnarok, with its jabs of reportedly improvised banter, isn’t really an action movie. It’s a round-robin buddy comedy, mismatching Hemsworth’s amiable lug to characters old and new.
  28. Zero Motivation
    Melancholy climactic trajectory aside, Zero Motivation is primarily very funny.
  29. Penance
    The overarching theme is the slow, trickling spread of evil; the old familiar story of violence begetting violence, which Kurosawa is able to render in terms that seem mysterious and sub-rational.
  30. Zootopia
    Like Disney’s "Big Hero 6," the movie is busy, but not breathless with invention.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »