The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Last Days in the Desert
    By the end, what seemed like a lovely rumination starts to sound more like poetry refashioned as prose.
  2. Band Aid
    You’ll believe you’re watching two people who love each other but no longer know how to live with each other. You may still wish Band Aid better distinguished their relationship.
  3. The Captain
    The film is consistently beautiful to look at in an “industrial metal album cover” kind of way, pairing dimly lit, black-and-white cinematography and artfully composed mise-en-scéne.
  4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
    Segel has always played more a serial monogamist than a horndog, and his earnest, self-deprecating screen persona graces the film's crudest moments with a kind of innocence.
  5. American Promise
    Ultimately, American Promise seems split between a personal perspective and a broader one. It’s a bold experiment that’s also a textbook case of filmmakers being too close to their material.
  6. V/H/S/Halloween
    It’s the playful entries in V/H/S/Halloween that hit like a sugar rush. This edition is hardly nightmare-inducing, but it’s still as broadly enjoyable as a crisp October night.
  7. Dead Man's Wire
    This is Van Sant’s Dog Day Afternoon moment. Judged solely by Skarsgård’s scenes, Dead Man’s Wire makes for an insightful and tense portrait of its subject. But judged by the limits of its perspective, the film is narrow to the story’s detriment.
  8. Concrete Cowboy
    Derived from the novel Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri, this film iteration bargains in vague platitudes as it unsuccessfully tries to piece together a collage of factors threatening the viability of this one-of-a-kind place.
  9. Avatar: The Way of Water
    Avatar: The Way Of Water not only delivers upon everything its predecessor established, but advances them in ways gleaming and ocean-deep, through the eyes and heart of a cinematic storyteller with a passionate and well-documented love of the sea.
  10. Snow Angels
    In spite of strong performances and a characteristically vivid sense of place, the film feels disjointed and heavy.
  11. Summer of Sam
    Lee at his best, a virtuoso piece of filmmaking that's stylish, substantial, and rich in detail.
  12. Lord of the Flies
    Like Golding's novel, Flies wears its allegorical impulses on its sleeve, but, also like Golding's novel, it rings uncomfortably true.
  13. 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.
  14. Dig Two Graves
    The movie looks superb, especially for its minuscule budget. While Adams is clearly a very promising director, however, his screenwriting chops aren’t so advanced. This is one clunky amalgam of mystery and guilt.
  15. Super Fly
    Superfly is in many ways classic pulp, but O'Neal and Mayfield push it toward a sort of epic grandeur.
  16. Other People
    What keeps Kelly honest is the wealth of authentic detail he sprinkles throughout.
  17. Almost Peaceful
    Too many of these characters behave like they just stepped out of a Noel Coward production.
  18. Interiors
    Much of the first half of Interiors feels like a stage play, though one in which characters walk in and out of frame. That, along with the overly symbolic breaking of a vase, have earned Interiors some criticism for being too on the nose, which isn’t entirely unfair. But the rest of the movie is so starkly bold that it renders those problems insignificant. It’s beautiful, affecting, and exactly as jarring as Allen probably intended it to be.
  19. Kung Fu Panda 2
    The sequel remains visually beautiful and strikingly designed, but otherwise, it's a surprise in all the wrong ways.
  20. Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?
    A fine enough piece of work, but it's a shame Werner Herzog didn't get to Gunther Hauk first.
  21. Robot and Frank
    Schreier elicits warm performances from Langella and Susan Sarandon, and even from his robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard).
  22. Slither
    Though it occasionally dips too deep into a well of redneck humor, Slither cleverly exploits the nervous laughter that fills a theater whenever a horror movie gets too frightening to bear.
  23. Vox Lux
    It’s a more cynical, and arguably more realistic, depiction of the unique malignancies of fame than this year’s other Oscar-baiting pop musical, "A Star Is Born." But ultimately, it’s no more insightful.
  24. Future Weather
    First-time writer-director Jenny Deller has assembled a superb cast, with Madigan in particular making the most of her character’s no-nonsense flintiness.
  25. In Bruges
    When it's funny, it's hilarious; when it's serious, it's powerful; and either way, it's an endless pleasant surprise.
  26. Ned Rifle
    Consequently, anyone coming to Ned Rifle cold will be bewildered. But there are numerous pleasures for the initiated, from Ryan’s continuing dissolute mellifluence as Henry Fool to Simon’s rebirth as a terrible stand-up comic constantly monitoring the comments on his blog.
  27. Brigsby Bear
    The big finale never reaches "Chuck & Buck" levels of therapeutic catharsis, because Mooney hasn’t really let us see James’ pain, only his gushy wide-eyed innocence, his lovability.
  28. Running on Empty
    The film is first and foremost a family drama, where the politics that led to this predicament take a back seat to the people who find themselves in it.
  29. Phantom of the Paradise
    A smorgasbord of camp, Grand Guignol, and bird imagery that thumbed its metal beak at commercial considerations.
  30. Nocturnal Animals
    Like Ford’s debut, Nocturnal Animals treats film as a medium of luxury, where the emotive and the self-indulgent cross paths. He is primarily a sensualist.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »