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. Waging a Living
    Waging A Living's biggest failing is that Weisberg gives his subjects too much of a pass when it comes to their bad past romantic and career choices.
  2. The Changeling
    An underrated entry in the horror subgenre, generating consistent unease through long, ominous pans—up and down staircases, through hallways—that assume the perspective of its searching-for-peace specter.
  3. The King
    Elvis achieved a skyrocketing success previously unseen in pop culture, and then became his own victim by letting it get away from him. As Jarecki proves with this extended, sometimes bumpy, but still worthy metaphor, it’s the same with the U.S. We’ve been coasting along for so many years, taking democracy for granted, that the entire structure of the nation is now in peril.
  4. Together Together
    It’s an ode to the way that even impermanent relationships can be profoundly meaningful.
  5. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
    Banzai is an occasionally incomprehensible rush of subplots, sight gags, mythology, and bizarre fashion choices, truer to the spirit of classic adventure stories than to the letter. Which may be why people who love the film feel the way they do. Buckaroo Banzai assumes an attitude of poise and purpose in an otherwise awkward universe.
  6. Heartbeats
    Far from being a liability, Dolan's youthfulness gives it unmistakable vibrancy: This is a love-crazy, movie-crazy affair, laying bare its emotions just as plainly as its influences.
  7. eXistenZ
    Though Cronenberg makes some creepy insinuations, eXistenZ is more effective as a black comedy than as a visceral shocker.
  8. Sun Don't Shine
    Like "Upstream Color," Sun Don’t Shine owes a sizable debt to the philosophical lyricism of Terrence Malick. Working wonders on a tight budget, Seimetz uses handheld cameras and tight compositions to create an air of claustrophobic intensity interspersed with moments of ragged beauty.
  9. Gunner Palace
    For the soldiers, it's about living to see the next day and living with the things they see, and Gunner Palace honors their perspective like no other Iraq documentary has to date.
  10. The Skin I Live In
    Had Almodóvar embraced the genre more, and changed his style to suit a story in which human beings get hacked up and transformed, he might've naturally found his way into a more potent, satisfying narrative, rather than one that dawdles and dead-ends.
  11. Curse of the Golden Flower
    Few filmmakers could produce so grand a spectacle, but Zhang used to be good for more than just eye candy.
  12. Shall We Kiss?
    The very definition of "breezy." It's a featherweight romantic comedy.
  13. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
    It’s the cathartic, even meditative qualities of metal that are explored in A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness, a new documentary whatsit that frequently resembles nothing so much as an adaptation of some imaginary black-metal record.
  14. The Last Unicorn
    The Last Unicorn will endure as a film for reasons both intellectual and aesthetic. It’s full of rich ideas and revisions of outdated, sexist stereotypes, and thereby feels more modern than many animated classics. Additionally, it’s often gorgeous.
  15. The Italian Job
    As a comic heist film, The Italian Job is diverting, though slight. As a feature-length advertisement for the MINI Cooper, however, it's an unqualified triumph.
  16. Jia Zhangke, A guy from Fenyang
    The problem with art like Jia’s is that a straightforward approach isn’t going to reveal anything that isn’t already there in the work or document anything that the movies don’t already document themselves. And why settle for second-hand when you can just go and watch the real thing?
  17. 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.
  18. Post Tenebras Lux
    The film is never less than fascinating, but it appears to be so intensely personal as to be all but indecipherable to viewers not personally acquainted with the filmmaker, or at least in possession of the press kit.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sunshine Superman
    Strauch’s direction, in contrast, is numbingly uninspired, adhering stringently to the Doc. 101 assembly-line template cultivated by the film’s executive producer Alex Gibney.
  20. How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
    Angio captures the outlandish twists and turns of Van Peebles' life with humor, color, and a welcome lightness of touch.
  21. 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.
  22. Elling
    The natural chemistry between Ellefsen and Nordin keeps the film pleasant and inoffensive, but is there any question about where or when or how it will go?
  23. Elephant
    Has a gentle, hypnotic tone that's insistently sweet and elegiac, in spite of the horrors that overwhelm the frame. In its juxtaposition of the serene and the violent, the beautiful and the brutal, the film achieves a balance that's exquisitely judged, tiptoeing artfully through a cultural minefield.
  24. Love Songs
    Love Songs is definitely daring, but too much of it seems calculated to lead up to a final line about how to guard against grief.
  25. Nenette and Boni
    Despite an alluring set-up and heartfelt performances from the leads, nothing ultimately coheres, and mood trumps logic on every occasion.
  26. Tragic Jungle
    More conceptual than intuitive, Tragic Jungle offers the problem without the passion: a journey into the heart of darkness without the thrill of the unknown.
  27. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
    In the tradition of Britain’s class comedies, what makes Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris comes down to the difference between, say, your average fashion designer and someone like Dior: with a pattern, anyone can make clothes—but in Manville’s hands, she stitches together something magical.
  28. The Syrian Bride
    Ultimately, The Syrian Bride becomes an overtly political movie, but with all its loose threads and random directions, it feels more like the pilot for an unmade miniseries.
  29. Meet the Patels
    Meet The Patels does offer a light, hearty overview of a subculture and a family, with plenty of disarming humor. And it perfectly captures the paradoxes of family relationships—the way affection, respect, resentment, and exasperation can all blur into each other inside a close-knit family.
  30. Twist of Faith
    Perhaps because the trial hits so many delays and roadblocks, Twist Of Faith doesn't gather much dramatic momentum, though there's something to be said for the emotional grind of running in place.
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