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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. It
    While Pennywise is legitimately terrifying, overall, It is more intense than it is chilling.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Digging for Fire
    With so much talent involved, there are inevitably some amusing moments, which keep tedium at least partly at bay.
  8. Black Gold
    There's been a proliferation of "globalization sucks" documentaries over the past couple of years, but few have been as blunt as Black Gold.
  9. Cold Souls
    The premise seems profound, but the claustrophobically inert execution lacks reach or imagination.
  10. How to Build a Girl
    Feldstein is as contagiously ebullient as always in the role, and her English accent is mostly passable, although it breaks down at times during the voiceovers that bookend the film. But her character’s actions keep chipping away at the actor’s natural charisma.
  11. Tuesday
    Tuesday is a tonal mess, flitting between horror, humor, absurdity, and at least one candidate for this year’s most gag-inducing visual as quickly as a parrot traversing the oceans to deliver death to all the world.
  12. The Sleeping Beauty
    It's clear what Breillat is trying to do here in the abstract - and The Sleeping Beauty is never less than gorgeous to look at - but the movie doesn't hang together as a story, and "stories" are what these fairy tales are meant to deliver.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Bitter Christmas
    Bitter Christmas uncomfortably straddles its twin goals of complexity and amusement, too pithy to take seriously and too flat to be riotously entertained.
  14. Just Another Love Story
    Enjoyably moody in the early going, and it develops into a decent Hitchcockian thriller at times.
  15. Life During Wartime
    "Happiness" was, in its own dry, muted way, a howl of fatalistic despair discernible to anyone who's ever felt life had run out of cruel tricks to play. Life During Wartime is less a reprise of that howl than its echo.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tahrir: Liberation Square
    It's an exhilarating, though unfocused, look at how the country reached its tipping point, one that feels unfiltered in ways both good and bad. It's a collection of striking images rather than a considered whole.
  17. General Magic
    If one is not already paranoid about the relationship of politics, money, and the tech sector or about the industry’s general lack of perspective on itself, then this sort of uncritical puff piece should do the trick.
  18. The Unknown Known
    Tackling another secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, in The Unknown Known, Morris has finally met his match. The film is illuminating only in its utter lack of illumination — for looking deep into the eyes of someone incapable of letting his guard down and finding, predictably, nothing whatsoever.
  19. I Am Greta
    Still, there’s something instructive in how little progress Thunberg seems to make even with sympathetic politicians—which means that she has to keep raising her pitch. And there’s definitely something infuriating about all the clips of world leaders and snarky TV pundits mocking Greta, calling her stridently angry, dangerously naive, and even “mentally ill.”
  20. The Ignorant Fairies
    His Secret Life's languid pace and general aimlessness keep getting in the way.
  21. Melody Time
    Though not the masterpiece Disney's marketing would indicate, it is a charming, imaginative anthology of cartoon shorts set to music by the likes of such '40s favorites as Roy Rogers and The Andrews Sisters.
  22. Operation Avalanche
    Alas, while modern technology allows for impressive, convincing effects work on a comparatively tiny budget, the basic concept itself hasn’t improved with age. Clever ideas are still in short supply.
  23. What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy
    There’s a rigidity of purpose here that keeps A Nazi Legacy from ever becoming startling or revelatory.
  24. 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.
  25. La Grazia
    La Grazia salutes simple, humble decency, and writer-director Paolo Sorrentino follows the example of his protagonist, largely avoiding the usual array of visual flourishes that have marked his previous collaborations with Servillo. The result is a decidedly reflective film that’s among the director’s most affecting.
  26. Green Book
    No wonder Green Book, which is like an inverted "Driving Miss Daisy" by way of "Rain Man’s" mismatched-buddy road trip, is already earning ovations: Intentionally or not, it flatters the delusion that racism, in its ugliest form, is more of a past-tense problem.
  27. White Reindeer
    If nothing else, this is the least festive Christmas movie since "Bad Santa," dissecting the absurd belief that the holiday season can somehow magically cure all ills.
  28. Late Shift
    Even with all these spinning plates, Volpe struggles with maintaining tension despite Benesch’s knack for immediacy and impeccable dramatic timing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Alps
    Lanthimos' skill at orchestrating these tense, creepy, shockingly funny setpieces is just as evident here as it was in "Dogtooth," but too much of Alps is left vague.
  30. The Competition
    Though The Competition lacks critical distance, what it offers, in spades, is the engrossing experience of watching other people endure pressure and humiliation — a thrill not unlike that of addictive reality TV, though one presumes that everyone involved would retch at the comparison.
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