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. The Disappointments Room
    Disappointments has the strange confidence of a much slicker, more decisive movie, and all of its sort-ofs don’t add up to much.
  2. When the Bough Breaks
    When The Bough Breaks resembles nothing more than a cheap fast-food burger served on fine china: Tasty, sure, and quite enjoyable in the moment. But once the credits roll and the primal centers of the brain stimulated by guilty pleasures like this one return to normal, all you’ll remember is that it looked prettier than usual.
  3. Demon
    It’s the kind of film that, rather like its mournful title apparition, clings to your sleeve and follows you home.
  4. Other People
    What keeps Kelly honest is the wealth of authentic detail he sprinkles throughout.
  5. Kicks
    Here is a film that manages to be observant without being especially insightful—without deepening thematically beyond the observation that inner city life can still be really, really lousy for everyone involved.
  6. The Wild Life
    The sort of uninspired international pre-sales item that usually goes straight from a basement booth at the Cannes film market to a Netflix parent’s peripheral vision. The sole interesting thing about NWave’s animation is its use of the camera, which plays to 3-D’s pop-out factor.
  7. The 9th Life of Louis Drax
    This movie can’t decide how it wants to look or what it wants to say. You could even call the jumble of styles and tones “quirky,” were you so inclined.
  8. London Road
    As pop sociology, London Road doesn’t delve terribly deep, repeating the same simple observations (principally: people are self-interested) over and over. As a nearly avant-garde musical, however, it’s a constant grin-conjuring marvel.
  9. Cameraperson
    As an autobiography told in pictures rather than words (including occasional glimpses of Johnson’s parents and her children), Cameraperson makes a strong case for the merits of the observational life. As a bonus, it also demonstrates what it looks like when the person who’s holding the camera sneezes.
  10. For the Love of Spock
    The scenes that most linger in the mind are more like the one where the director confesses his complicated feelings about his father to another Spock, Zachary Quinto. It’s moving to know that even Nimoy’s son is as in thrall to an icon as the rest of us.
  11. Sully
    Clint Eastwood’s Sully is not a perfect film, but it comes close to being a great one as it turns the real-life emergency landing of a passenger plane in the Hudson River into a meditation on duty and crisis that’s more Bertolt Brecht than “based on a true story.”
  12. Kickboxer: Vengeance
    Almost as schlocky as the original, but not nearly as fun.
  13. Antibirth
    Thankfully, what it does have is Natasha Lyonne, who almost singlehandedly keeps this misconceived endeavor afloat, or at least not actively unwatchable.
  14. Yoga Hosers
    Trouble is, Yoga Hosers isn’t really a movie. It’s a quarter-to-1:00 a.m. SNL sketch, nightmarishly distended into oblivion. It’s a corny Canuck joke, told for 88 surreally unfunny minutes. It has a target demographic of one: He wears hockey jerseys and, again, loves his daughter.
  15. The Light Between Oceans
    If the drama is purely abstract, Vikander didn’t get the memo. Even as her storyline takes on the baggage of metaphor, she plays the emotions real and raw and close — her Isabel visibly brightening as she reads her first love letter from Tom or crumbling as a terrible loss dawns upon her. Nothing symbolic there.
  16. Max Rose
    In old age, Lewis’ vanity has become touching. But Max Rose — shelved for more than three years before finally making its way to theaters — is as trite as a film can be while piggybacking off the reality of age.
  17. Klown Forever
    On Curb, it’s Larry David’s neuroses that drive his frequent public humiliation. In Klown, the problem is more that Casper and Frank can’t keep it in their pants.
  18. Morgan
    The director, Luke Scott (son of Ridley), doesn’t exactly elevate this material, but he does see it through. The voice of Brian Cox goads the action into Bourne territory to counter its "Ex Machina" overtones, but the movie works best when it riffs away from its antecedents into even more pitiless territory.
  19. White Girl
    Ultimately, Wood doesn’t have much time to treat the romance between Leah and Blue with any more depth than the characters. It’s a shame. Her final shot would have real power in a richer, more perceptive film.
  20. Skiptrace
    Knoxville isn’t as starry a Hollywood foil to his co-star’s iconic stoicism as either Chris Tucker or Owen Wilson, but playing a jackass is right in his wheelhouse and in one action set piece, he’s very funny as a kind of tightly bound human prop.
  21. Mechanic: Resurrection
    Statham and Gansel don’t recreate the Transporter magic; those were lovingly ridiculous action movies, while Mechanic: Resurrection is more hastily ridiculous. But after a season of sagas, revivals, and franchise hubris, the flatness of a Statham sequel inspires its own kind of trash nostalgia.
  22. I Am Not a Serial Killer
    What sets I Am Not A Serial Killer apart from other takes on this “killers hunting killers” concept (Dexter, anyone?) is its naturalistic, character-based approach.
  23. Ace the Case
    The film is too violent and dark for kids but too juvenile and bland for grown-ups.
  24. The Intervention
    Clea DuVall makes her debut here as writer-director, and after two decades in front of the camera, she knows actors — but the movie’s stifling familiarity prevents it from making much of an impact.
  25. Complete Unknown
    It’s as if a first-rate Roman Polanski movie suddenly metamorphosed (ohhh, frogs, duh) into a third-rate Michael Crichton adaptation.
  26. The Hollars
    John Krasinski’s second feature has such a milquetoast, melancholy-indie sound that its most arresting and dynamic musical moment comes when three characters unexpectedly break into “Closer To Fine” by the Indigo Girls.
  27. Mia Madre
    A minor effort in which the movie-within-the-movie never seems like a real project — can’t help but be riveted by the fake production it’s mounted within itself.
  28. Southside with You
    The first feature from writer-director Richard Tanne is sweetly speculative historical fiction — a date movie with some very recognizable lovebirds.
  29. Hands of Stone
    Somehow, Hands Of Stone even manages to make Don King (Reg E. Cathey) seem bloodless.
  30. The Sea of Trees
    As it turns out, there is something worse than Nicholas Sparks, the king of morbid romantic kitsch, and that’s a Nicholas Sparks pretender with highfalutin pretensions.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »