The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,435 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 10435
  2. Mixed: 3,745 out of 10435
  3. Negative: 1,112 out of 10435
10435 movie reviews
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  1. An Open Secret
    The open secret in Amy Berg’s documentary An Open Secret is that child actors are regularly molested by the adults — managers, publicists, producers — who help them launch their careers. Such an important subject deserves a serious, thoughtful film. Instead, it got Berg (Deliver Us From Evil, West of Memphis), who’s prone to all manner of cheesy manipulation.
  2. The Nightmare
    The human brain, this movie suggests, is the ultimate horror-movie director, and sleep-paralysis hallucinations are just an extreme form of the standard-issue nightmares we all unwillingly create on a regular basis. It’s one thing to be tormented. It’s another thing to face the grim reality that you’re tormenting yourself.
  3. Love & Mercy
    Capturing the spirit of that music (while dramatizing the circumstances of its creation) is Love & Mercy’s biggest victory.
  4. Spy
    Spy, similarly, doesn’t exactly send up James Bond or Jason Bourne espionage thrillers, but it places McCarthy in the middle of the action while subverting the traditionally male domination of that arena.
  5. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
    The uninitiated, meanwhile, can start with Pigeon and work their way backward through Andersson’s trilogy. It only gets better in reverse.
  6. Entourage
    Though Entourage is set just months after the events of the HBO finale, its actors are (noticeably) several years older, and there’s something kind of sad, even desperate about seeing these characters behave like the same horny frat boys they basically were at the start of the series.
  7. Aloha
    Perhaps the energy Crowe could have expended on shaping believable characters went instead to the cultural context.
  8. Unfreedom
    Raj Amit Kumar’s film, which was banned by the country’s national censor board, is an intentional act of cultural and political provocation, and goes about its task as relentlessly as possible.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Survivor
    Fans of Jovovich’s Resident Evil series know the pleasures inherent in watching her sprint hither and yon. That’s about the only thrill provided by Survivor.
  10. I Believe in Unicorns
    It’s a testament to Meyerhoff’s talent as a director that she manages to give the standard coming-of-age material emotional resonance, especially amid classic teen-girl journal imagery like balloons, sparklers, homemade wings, and, of course, unicorns.
  11. When Marnie Was There
    As a children’s movie, it’s uncommonly sensitive and complicated, rooted in relationships rather than dazzling action. But adults may notice its simple poetry turning, after a while, to suds.
  12. Results
    Smulders, Pearce, and Corrigan are loose and eminently likable, and the direction is so in tune with the actors that one is almost inclined to think of Results as a movie carried entirely by performance, overlooking how much its shape depends on style.
  13. Heaven Knows What
    Because there’s no real narrative — just the constant effort to score and survive, plus Harley’s dysfunctional on/off love affair with Ilya — Heaven Knows What doesn’t so much conclude as just stop, which is less than totally satisfying.
  14. Gemma Bovery
    It’s minor, clever, and essential in the specialized field of Gemma Arterton studies.
  15. Tu Dors Nicole
    Shot on gorgeous black-and-white 35 mm that only seems to enhance the melancholic drabness of the events it depicts, Tu Dors Nicole is an especially wispy, French-Canadian addition to an irresistible genre.
  16. San Andreas
    Handsomely shot by Steve Yedlin, Rian Johnson’s regular cinematographer, and boasting a typically likable Dwayne Johnson as its star, San Andreas nonetheless struggles to drum up tension or interest, even as skyscrapers topple like Jenga towers and massive tidal waves sweep through San Francisco Bay.
  17. Poltergeist
    The most retro thing about the remake is its specific, outdated utility: If anyone still patronizes video stores with hard copies, and if those stores don’t happen to have the original Poltergeist (or Insidious) in stock on a Friday night, this version might do the trick.
  18. The Farewell Party
    The Farewell Party leaves no doubt as to where it stands on the right to die with dignity when facing terminal illness, but it’s so clumsily made that it serves only to exasperate.
  19. Love at First Fight
    Even when it’s slowing down, Fight shows beguiling confidence in both its filmmaking and its characters—enough to make its smallest romantic moments feel significant.
  20. Aloft
    What’s really been withheld, in this dreary drag of a movie, is a reason to care.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sunshine Superman
    Strauch’s direction, in contrast, is numbingly uninspired, adhering stringently to the Doc. 101 assembly-line template cultivated by the film’s executive producer Alex Gibney.
  22. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
    The gross-out gore scenes and poop jokes are there, too, as is to be expected. The direction is bad, the acting is worse, and it’s lit to mimic the soap-opera effect on a poorly calibrated HDTV. Basically, The Human Centipede III is an unsexy "Ilsa" movie, and it’s just as impossible to sit through as that sounds.
  23. Tomorrowland
    Bird stages the PG mayhem with his usual grasp of dimension and space, his gift for action that’s timed like physical comedy. He keeps the whole thing moving, even when it begins to feel bogged down by preachiness and sci-fi exposition.
  24. Güeros
    Even if Güeros doesn’t entirely work, it feels worthy: a film made independently and without interference whose reverence for the past thankfully doesn’t result in too much solemnity or seriousness.
  25. L for Leisure
    At certain point, whether all of this is purposefully awkward becomes almost irrelevant: The non sequitur vignettes are often hilarious either way, and the film gains an oddly agreeable rhythm.
  26. Area 51
    Though Peli stages a few fun and creepy effects shots, nothing that happens here couldn’t be surmised from simply reading the film’s title.
  27. Time Lapse
    Time Lapse provokes thought, but mostly in spite of itself.
  28. Good Kill
    The trouble begins when this gaunt, intelligent star is charged with embodying someone lacking in levity, someone burdened with excessive malaise. His deadly seriousness can be deadly dull.
  29. Our Man in Tehran
    The story can’t help but work — even when its directors are beating viewers over the head with the message.
  30. Pound of Flesh
    The action hit being evoked here is "Crank."
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