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. Censor
    Censor’s meticulous, insidious structure sticks to the subconscious; this is an auspicious debut in modern genre cinema.
  2. Palo Alto
    In distancing itself from its disaffected characters, Palo Alto evokes only more emptiness — and emptiness has a habit of being dull.
  3. The Opposite of Sex
    Consistently clever without ever being funny. The film is so in love with its own carefully calibrated outrageousness that it doesn't bother to give its characters any depth beyond sitcom-level stereotypes.
  4. Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
    Listening to Berg's characters talk so naturally, honestly, and colorfully about the small, surmountable problems of their daily life is so engaging that whenever Kempner cuts away to another dry historian or fervent fan, it's doubly aggravating.
  5. Here Comes Mr. Jordan
    Originally released at a time of national anxiety—four months before Pearl Harbor—the comic fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan positively radiates reassurement, in the form of a beatific and perpetually amused Claude Rains.
  6. Time After Time
    It may eventually champion love as the guiding light amidst so much homicidal darkness, but Meyer’s film—happy ending be damned—resonates most deeply when confronting the ugly, inescapable reality that man’s murderous past is likely also his future.
  7. Lion
    In trying to tell the whole of this nearly implausible tale, the film can’t figure out whether it’s more invested in young Saroo’s harrowing journey or older Saroo’s feeling of displacement.
  8. The September Issue
    A fascinating, frustrating documentary.
  9. Fresh Dressed
    It’s about just about everything, so while the subject might seem niche it’s actually so broad and expansive the film strains to cover it properly in a trim 82 minutes.
  10. Beeswax
    Bujalski’s funny, diverting character piece has a lived-in quality that’s no small achievement.
  11. Amour Fou
    The artificiality is funny but also thematically resonant: This is a film about fake feelings, the invented romance for which two strangers forfeited their futures. And to Hausner, such a colossal waste of potential deserves not a melodramatic tribute, but the cinematic equivalent of an eye-roll.
  12. Cinderella Man
    Lacking a more specific sense of time and place, Cinderella Man leans heavily on the technically proficient Crowe to slip into Braddock's skin, but he can only do so much with a character who's ready to be mounted in bronze over Central Park.
  13. 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.
  14. Rocketman
    As tedious as Rocketman is when it’s going through the biographical motions, it’s equally delightful when it launches into something most rock movies pointedly avoid: full-on musical numbers.
  15. The Cooler
    Hokey and convoluted, but as a sticky-hearted fable of redemption, it's surprisingly seductive.
  16. Buffalo '66
    While watching Gazzara, Huston, Kevin Corrigan, Rosanna Arquette, and others take things two steps beyond over-the-top is inherently compelling, it becomes embarrassing before long.
  17. Eating Raoul
    Despite the casual homicide and a premise rich with Reagan-era political undertones, the gleeful satire draws inspiration as much from Bugs Bunny as Luis Buñuel.
  18. Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt
    Brown's respectful film offers the usual music-doc mix of archival footage, song clips, and talking heads, but with a figure as enigmatic and underreported as Van Zandt, the safe course works well.
  19. Giorni e nuvole
    At times, Soldini gets so wrapped up in his characters' suffering that the movie loses perspective; it's a little hard to sympathize when the couple's needs grow so great that they're forced to sell their boat.
  20. Frontrunners
    What makes the movie fascinating is the particulars of the campaigns.
  21. Head Games
    Head Games is particularly devastating when it shifts from the NFL and NHL, where brutality and headshots are a given, to girls' soccer and under-14 football leagues, where still-developing young necks and skulls make kids perhaps more vulnerable to head trauma than their professional counterparts.
  22. Hannah Arendt
    Opting to leave somewhat open the question of whether its subject was a traitor to her Jewish people or a conscientious scholar determined to conduct rational analysis free of public and peer pressure, it remains a mildly intriguing drama of the often unavoidable and contentious intersection of intellectual analysis and personal prejudices.
  23. The Little Hours
    Anachronism, as it turns out, is the guiding force of this frequently funny, agreeably bawdy farce, which imagines what a convent of the grubby, violent, disease-infested Middle Ages might look and sound like if it were populated by characters straight out of a modern NBC sitcom.
  24. Escape from the Planet of the Apes
    Escape From The Planet Of The Apes gets the series back on track, sending three apes back to the 20th century for a story that begins comically and ends in fear and loathing.
  25. Duplicity
    The female lead in Duplicity calls for the kind of atomic, glow-in-the-dark, Rita Hayworth-in-Gilda sexuality that is most assuredly out of Roberts' range. Angelina Jolie effortlessly conjures up that kind of fire-breathing sexiness. Roberts? Not so much.
  26. The Painted Veil
    While the film remains intelligent and transporting, a gorgeous travelogue into another time and place, it nonetheless feels like it's going through the motions, applying period gloss to a story that needs to be more tactile.
  27. Evil Dead Rise
    For fans of the franchise, Evil Dead Rises marks a welcome return to the seamless blend of humor and genuine scares and creepiness that Raimi created 42 years ago.
  28. It
    While Pennywise is legitimately terrifying, overall, It is more intense than it is chilling.
  29. Funny Games
    The audience is indicted for its bloodlust. There's perversity in paying admission to get harshly scolded, and Funny Games is not for the squeamish, but this may be one time to step up and take the licking you deserve.
  30. Peepli Live
    Peepli Live has a lot in common with Billy Wilder's black comedy Ace In The Hole, in that it explores the cynicism of modern life with wit and honesty.
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