The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,440 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: 5,581 out of 10440
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10440
  3. Negative: 1,113 out of 10440
10440 movie reviews
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    • 44 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    End of the Road
    Director Millicent Shelton, a veteran of dozens of music videos and television shows (including two episodes of Latifah’s series Star), wisely builds tension while exploring their family dynamic, and then stomps on the gas to bring it all home.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sidney
    In the end, Sidney is informative—it’s exciting to hear from him and from those who loved him, and from some of the people he influenced. But as evidenced by his two memoirs, This Life (1980) and Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000), there’s much more in Poitier’s life and legacy that this documentary fails to explore.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    An Affair to Remember
    The principals are in such fine form, underplaying against their stagy backdrops, and the tragic turn of the plot is so gripping, that the movie succeeds in spite of its white-elephant pedigree.
  4. Lou
    In Janney’s capable hands, our heroine is fully fleshed out, yet lean with more gristle on the bone than meat. She delivers zingy one-liners as well as she does a knock-out punch. Her refreshing spin on this archetype, blending masculine bravado and bluster with feminine wit and wisdom, elevates the spartan material.
  5. A Christmas Story Christmas
    The result is something that, while never reaching the ineffable magic of Clark’s film, ends up in solidly entertaining, if slightly disjointed, holiday territory.
  6. Wendell & Wild
    Selick and Peele operate a bit at cross purposes in Wendell & Wild. The genius visualist wants to haunt our dreams. The socially engaged provocateur wants to haunt our troubled collective realities. Whatever doesn’t quite mesh in their collaboration is easier to forgive when feasting upon such extraordinary sights.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Enola Holmes 2
    The true joy of both Enola Holmes films is in the actors’ performances and the humanity they bring to the characters.
  8. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    How To Blow Up A Pipeline plays like a taut thriller that tells an unusual story. Its strength lies in making a topical issue palatable and highly watchable.
  9. Women Talking
    Women Talking is about as direct as cinema gets in portraying the complexities and nuances of the feminist struggle, and it achieves much with characters who wouldn’t likely consider themselves feminist or revolutionary.
  10. Blank
    When the all-important moment of catharsis that every good scary movie requires comes around, it’s palpable. But writers, and other creative types, just might feel it a little bit extra.
  11. Emily
    Mackey’s Emily is a young woman who lives the life she writes about, daringly, perhaps knowing time is short.
  12. Missing
    Screenlife may never be one of the primary ways we tell cinematic stories, but Missing is a prime example of what the format is capable of, tapping into our increasingly digital humanity to excellent effect.
  13. Knock at the Cabin
    Knock At The Cabin is a harrowing and intense home invasion thriller that feels like a step in the right direction for Shyamalan.
  14. They Cloned Tyrone
    At first glance, They Cloned Tyrone is a silly satire of early ’70s blaxploitation flicks like Super Fly or Willie Dynamite that adds what writer-director Juel Taylor and writer Tony Rettenmaier call a “... dash of Scooby Doo.” Fortunately, the filmmakers here have something more in mind.
  15. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    It’s too agreeable, too dutiful to building a new series, and too reluctant to disrupt this new status quo even as it detonates its many explosive setpieces.
  16. Duel
    A slim Richard Matheson story that Spielberg padded into a 90-minute feature by artfully assembling a string of insert shots.
  17. Challengers
    Challengers remains an entertaining movie thanks to its complicated characters who are played by actors on their way to becoming sparkling screen stars.
  18. Snoopy Come Home
    Rarely has a movie made for kids been so devastatingly honest about how relationships can sour over time.
  19. Madonna: Truth or Dare
    There’s a hagiographic aspect to Truth Or Dare that’s disquieting even now, especially given that an honest movie about this genuinely groundbreaking tour—which became the model for ambitious pop-star concerts—and the high-school-play-like camaraderie of its personnel would’ve had more lasting value.
  20. The Blackening
    The movie is highly entertaining, while being oddly validating and very funny. It cleverly weaves the horror tropes that it rebukes right into the narrative. And it’s done without slipping into parody like the Scary Movie series, where similar notions are skewered more broadly and, with The Blackening now on the table, way less successfully.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Baby Ruby
    Despite some unevenness, Baby Ruby is a fervently uncomfortable and aesthetically compelling depiction of new motherhood, an unsettling horror exploration buoyed by strange imagery and a no-holds-barred lead performance from Noémie Merlant.
  22. Somebody I Used to Know
    The film’s rom-com template feels more like a structure to play with, a solid foundation on which to question the very tenets of romance and comedy.
  23. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
    Still is a solid reminder of why Fox is a magnetic camera presence and why he continues to be beloved, both as an actor and an activist for Parkinson’s research. As rote as many celebrity navel-gazing documentaries have become, it’s refreshing to see a film that can still find the strengths of the format.
  24. Fair Play
    What Fair Play gets most right, though, is its headlong dive into the messy complications and charged ambiguity of navigating romance in a fast-changing world. The result is an enjoyably caustic, character-driven drama that connects on multiple levels.
  25. Theater Camp
    It’s constructed from the inside out, all of its characters and energy flowing from a genuine place.
  26. Rye Lane
    Rye Lane never tips over fully into cartoonish exaggeration, but the playful presentation of ids and egos through the dreamlike perspectives of its leads goes a long way toward making the film stand out as more than just a showcase for freewheeling chemistry.
  27. The Boogeyman
    These are jump scares done right, where the struggle to see what’s there is much more effective than any cheap lurch into frame.
  28. Tetris
    There’s a great deal of fun to be had here, even if the story is never quite as addictive as the game that inspired it. Tetris doesn’t cast the same spell as its namesake, but it will at least make you look at those falling blocks in a new way.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Paint
    While it’s possible to quibble about the weirdly sci-fi mix of period signifiers (white boy afros exist beside cellphones), and to look askance at Paint’s rather too blithe approach to sex-in-the-workplace power dynamics, few comedies in recent memory come by their laughs more honestly than Paint does because, like all the best comedies, the laughter is based on a genuine unease.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Air
    For a few scenes, Air feels like a gently satirical movie about corporate skullduggery. But it’s really a sports picture, where outcomes are determined by dedication, and a purity of purpose no one else can match. Damon’s Sonny is the scrappy and unlikely contender, whose love of the game gives him heart.
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