The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,436 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 2.5 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: 5,578 out of 10436
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10436
  3. Negative: 1,112 out of 10436
10436 movie reviews
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  1. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
    Though Parabellum delivers at least a couple of action scenes that rank with the best of the series...there’s a certain fatigue to its two biggest set pieces, both of which pit Wick and his allies against unending waves of faceless henchmen. Wick is unstoppable. Do the movies know where to stop?
  2. The Final Year
    The documentary follows — and frequently lionizes — three Obama officials throughout 2016, and frequently feels like it was intended as a well-deserved victory lap.
  3. Mary and The Witch's Flower
    It’s a movie with no greater ambition than to charm and occasionally delight. Mission accomplished.
  4. Blockers
    The comedy Blockers, which is not written, produced, or directed by Apatow but feels descended from some of his work, sets for itself a more ambitious challenge, daring itself to give each member of its ensemble a coming-of-age arc, and to pull off two different high-concept comedies at once in the process.
  5. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
    There’s something bracing about the difficulty of reconciling this earnest middle-aged hippie with his maniacally impish younger self.
  6. Night on Earth
    Almost unavoidably uneven, it gets off to a rough start in a segment that relies too heavily on Winona Ryder's charms as a pixieish grease monkey. But it improves as it goes, and in segment after segment, Jarmusch's characters strive, almost heroically, to make human connections, even ones that won't last beyond the moment when they pay their fares.
  7. Quest
    By the end of Quest, I felt melancholy about saying goodbye to the Raineys and sad that I wouldn’t know where their lives would go from here.
  8. Creep 2
    For fans of the original who don’t mind the loss of scares, Creep 2 improves on the first film in nearly every way, from tone to dialogue to plot.
  9. Small Town Crime
    An amiable crime dramedy from a more under-the-radar pair of filmmaking brothers, Ian and Eshom Nelms.
  10. The Strangers: Prey at Night
    Just as the movie seems to have exhausted its supply of generic guilty pleasures, it ascends to some more operatic and mordant plane of slasher-dom in a wacko sequence that involves the aforementioned “Total Eclipse Of The Heart,” a swimming pool, and a perfectly timed smash zoom.
  11. Hammett
    At a certain point, Hammett gets unreasonably convoluted, but since its hero seems just as hopelessly confused by what develops, it's easy to just soak in the rich atmosphere, courtesy of Coppola's ace production designer Dean Tavoularis and a terrific John Barry score.
  12. Creed II
    Ultimately, Creed II feels a little muffled by its workmanlike touches, especially when it gets in the ring. Just as Rocky was too low-key and charming to spawn a fully worthy successor for several decades, Creed so elevates its franchise roots that even a pretty good sequel can’t land with the same impact. Then again, a 2018 movie called Creed II expanding on Rocky IV to become one of the better Rocky movies may be another minor miracle on its own.
  13. Dim the Fluorescents
    Fluorescents’ showy camera moves and full-jazz-hands theater-kid dorkiness are a tonic against the excessively muted naturalism that has come to define indie style.
  14. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
    The uplifting nature of this true story naturally triggers Van Sant’s pesky sentimentality, with scenes that recall the hug-it-out, therapeutic catharsis of Good Will Hunting. But this is still the writer-director’s most formally interesting, emotionally involving movie in a decade, however little that may really be saying.
  15. BlacKkKlansman
    Although he’s made his most narratively entertaining movie in years, the filmmaker often still privileges polemical discourse over drama, grinding things to a halt for minutes-long speeches—he’s not so different from Godard in that way—and sometimes getting rather on-the-nose with the already exceptionally apparent contemporary echoes.
  16. Under the Silver Lake
    The pervasive but almost offhand menace is supplied by Mitchell’s impeccable, widescreen mise-en-scène; the ordinary dread he locates in an unglamorous, mundane L.A.; and the way even the film’s comedy seems perched on the edge of unease.
  17. American Animals
    For all its mode-bending gamesmanship, American Animals is ultimately a fairly straightforward heist movie, albeit a stylish and engaging one.
  18. Skate Kitchen
    In fact, all the weed smoking and street-smart sidewalk banter aside, Skate Kitchen’s perspective is, in many ways, downright innocent; as such, it may be a better fit for adolescent viewers than adult ones.
  19. Madeline's Madeline
    Madeline’s Madeline, the third feature from writer-director Josephine Decker, is a self-devouring thing: a movie about artistic process that doubles as a document of—and even a commentary on—its own artistic process.
  20. Monsters and Men
    Green’s graceful direction and keen ear for dialogue certainly make him a new filmmaker to watch, and it’ll be fascinating to see what he does with a more focused narrative.
  21. Sorry to Bother You
    Sorry To Bother You is often wildly funny, and if its broad arc is familiar stuff about a down-on-his-luck everyman experiencing success but at what cost, at least the plot specifics are unpredictable by dint of Riley’s imagination.
  22. Wildlife
    It’s a very accomplished debut, with strong performances (Mulligan, especially, is magnificent, lowering her voice to a smoky purr and letting desperation nip at the edges of her confidence) and an elegantly straightforward style that’s miles removed from the flashiness of most American indie debuts.
  23. Bugsy
    Bugsy is part tormented character study, part old-school Hollywood glitz. Its fabulist protagonist acts like he's stuck in a '30s gangster melodrama, but Levinson's lushly stylized film gives his story the A-list treatment.
  24. Journey's End
    Is there any artistically compelling reason for the existence of the latest adaptation, which is clearly meant to take advantage of the centennial? Not really, but it’s a good play, once again providing juicy roles to fresh and established talent. That’ll suffice.
  25. The Guilty
    It might not be the kind of movie that anyone needs to see twice, but its variations on the classic building blocks of suspense implicate our own guesswork in interesting ways.
  26. Mandy
    The look of the film is a hoot: double lens flares over wood paneling, psychedelic lighting, crude animated sequences, slow-mo and telephoto shots, and enough vintage MTV fog machines to kill a hair metal band.
  27. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
    It’s telling that the filmmaker captures one of Gallagher’s best moments in a long and relatively uneventful take situated at a breakfast table; this movie may wander, but Akhavan’s attention to perfect little moments is unwavering.
  28. Searching
    As a thriller, Searching is both ruthlessly absorbing in the moment and relatively disposable as soon as it ends, sliding itself gracefully into the desktop recycling bin.
  29. Mohawk
    Viewers who are looking for something thought-provoking as well as thrilling have come to the right place.
  30. The Week Of
    Smigel may not want to take up permanent residence in the Happy Madison offices, but he raises his old friend’s game considerably.
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