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. Lars and the Real Girl
    In spite of the title, there's nothing particularly "real" about Lars And The Real Girl, just a couple layers of quirk several stops removed from the world as we know it.
  2. Boy
    In its third act, this funny, bittersweet, tonally assured coming-of-age story grows unexpectedly poignant as Rolleston comes to realize he doesn't need a super-cool buddy or co-conspirator in his misadventures. He needs a father, and Waititi's stunted man-child is fatally unsuited and unqualified for that role.
  3. Handling the Undead
    There’s a genuine sense of lived-in sadness here, but it isn’t enough to elevate the proceedings into something special or compelling.
  4. Tears of the Black Tiger
    The movie is never going to have broad appeal. Though Sasanatieng makes a few swings at real poignancy--which don't really connect--mostly this is the kind of relentlessly postmodern "fun" best served in small portions, and preferably on dessert plates.
  5. Thumbsucker
    It's a familiar story, but Mills and Pucci treat it as if it were the first time anyone had thought to tell it.
  6. 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.
  7. Inglourious Basterds
    its moments of greatness--and there are more than a couple--feel weirdly disconnected, stuck in a movie that doesn’t know how to put them together, or find a good way to move from one to the next.
  8. The Mermaid
    A relatively straightforward comic love story/environmental parable, it’s a sharper bit of whimsy than CJ7 and less weighed down with mythology than Journey To The West.
  9. Never Let Me Go
    Best approached with little to no advance information or expectations, which is the same way the film's characters experience their lives.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    In Another Country
    It almost seems as if Hong is poking fun at his own single-minded oeuvre, creating a fractal representation of how his other films obliquely interrelate.
  11. Why Don't You Just Die!
    At its best when breathlessly racing from one set piece to the next, Sokolov’s comedy really only has a single central joke to its name—gouts of blood firing in high-pressure streams at moments when the audience least expects them—and yet delivers that simple dose of brutal humor with mindful precision.
  12. Babel
    When the best part of the movie is when no one's talking and the anguish relents, it says something. It says that Iñárritu is a great director in need of a screenwriter who has more than one card to play.
  13. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
    It’s not always easy to sort out the legitimately inspired touches from the merely campy ones, but the film has a deranged, go-for-broke spirit that makes such distinctions irrelevant.
  14. Unstoppable
    As long as Unstoppable stays on the train, it's queasily effective.
  15. Brave
    At its best, Brave accesses all the complicated feelings involved between a parent and a rebellious adolescent: the mutual frustration, the lack of communication, the way conflicting desires can mask love without weakening it.
  16. The Last Time I Saw Macao
    As a ruminative travelogue-cum-dissertation, Rodrigues and Guerra Da Mata’s film is often haunting, and its portentous and mournful atmospherics ultimately help compensate for the nagging impression that it’s a work almost too personal for an outside viewer to fully penetrate.
  17. Viva
    Perugorría is such a terrific, soulful actor that he makes Viva’s predictable dramatic trajectory — disapproving dad slowly grows to accept his child’s differences, while the kid gradually learns to forgive his father’s lifelong absence — seem a bit less moldy.
  18. God's Creatures
    Two powerful moments punctuate this film’s conclusion: one abrupt and unambiguous, one mournful and contemplative. Crowley’s story ultimately shifts to a perspective Hollywood stories don’t often empathize with, hinting at a breaking of cycles, a kind of triumph in the face of both man and nature’s adversity.
  19. Girlhood
    Garbus knows how to catch people at their most open, as they define their own types and simultaneously transcend them.
  20. Undercover Brother
    The rare popcorn movie that delivers. High-spirited and kinetic, it's the most endearingly goofy low comedy since "How High."
  21. Redoubt
    It seems as though the artist, all too aware of his reputation for both pageantry and shock value, has decided to offer nothing of the kind.
  22. Dung che sai duk
    Yet for all Ashes' frustrations, it's still a gorgeous piece of filmmaking.
  23. Enter the Void
    Enter The Void is a trance-like experience, feeding the shimmering neon of Tokyo at night into a spectacular hallucinogenic head-trip.
  24. Revolutionary Road
    Both director and cast keep the familiar journey intense, but after capturing the death of love in those opening moments, the rest of the film too often feels like a study in dissection.
  25. Live Free or Die Hard
    Willis does everything short of donning a cape and reversing time by orbiting the Earth at light speed, and the air of cheerful ridiculousness recalls Luc Besson-produced action films like "Transporter 2" or "District B13."
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