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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  1. Mickey 17
    Messy as it is, the filmmaking so energetically delivers its acidic pessimism that it’s rarely unpleasant.
  2. Blitz
    Blitz often feels like a pitched battle between the conventions of big-canvas war recreation and McQueen’s attempt to evoke the stranger, less obviously narrative-driven chaos that happens when the battlefield descends on a major urban center from the sky.
  3. The Brutalist
    The Brutalist is operating in the shadow of a tradition of cinematic epics, there is an expected journey the film has the opportunity to stray from, and it doesn’t nearly enough.
  4. Blink Twice
    Blink Twice is undeniably palate-cleansing when compared with the surplus of sexless legacy sequels, romance novel adaptations, and dull–looking, repetitive franchise installments. Even if it’s simply drawing inspiration from superior films, Blink Twice uses these touchstones to create something appealing and original. At the very least, it marks an exciting first step for a director who’s got the skill to make something better.
  5. Sasquatch Sunset
    Everything works best when it’s coming through the performance, not the edit. Often, the directors’ touch isn’t light enough, and their forced attempts at humor upset the film’s natural balance.
  6. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is strangely paced and barely comprehensible, plot-wise, but it is aesthetically esoteric in a way that used to be synonymous with Tim Burton’s filmmaking, alive and real.
  7. Fitting In
    Though not without its rough edges, McGlynn’s film is emotionally raw and willing to engage with the complexities and nuances of her situation, providing a fascinating look at the intersectionality of burgeoning womanhood, intersex identity, and messy sexuality that doesn’t adhere to rigid or widely acknowledged labels.
  8. Founders Day
    If you’re not a slasher nerd, don’t worry, this entertaining, wicked little movie can still win you over, even if it might take you a little longer to find its particular groove.
  9. Freaky Tales
    That the movie is “only” a silly romp makes it all the more charming to watch Boden and Fleck find a less mechanical, less programmatic way to have fun.
  10. Devo
    The deceptively straightforward package actually benefits a band that enjoys coloring outside the lines. Devo allows Devo the space to be its idiosyncratic self, both in the present-day interviews and the wealth of archival footage. Devo’s reign may have been relatively short, but Smith gives the band the fond memorializing it deserves.
  11. Carry-On
    There’s never a true early-check-out moment of the sort that arrives with such numbing frequency in so many bigger-scale blockbusters; the movie locks in and moves.
  12. The Piano Lesson
    In The Piano Lesson, the ghosts are as tangible as they’ve ever been, and the film barely containing them is as weathered and tense as any family in need of a séance.
  13. Small Things Like These
    Small Things Like These instead functions as a parable about how minor acts of kindness can be the strongest defense against powerlessness in the face of corruption. It’s a moral poignant in its simplicity, if also a bit lacking in how utterly uncomplicated and even expected it is.
  14. Suspended Time
    Though Assayas is best known for his incisive cultural commentary, the subdued regimes and musings in Suspended Time are just as enthralling in their own quiet way.
  15. Solo
    Solo is most intriguing when its romantic rivalry takes center stage.
  16. Dahomey
    Assessing this move from the perspective of the pieces themselves—including an elaborate carved throne, a towering statue of King Ghézo, and metallic markers of death—as well as the recipients of these revenants, Diop takes a brisk yet thoughtful look at whether even antiquities can go home again.
  17. Dead Mail
    Although the film has a certain languidness—shaving the 100-minute runtime down would have amplified the tension—its commitment to dissecting the internal workings of analog keyboards and the USPS prove just as intriguing as the unstable killer who threatens professionals in both of these fields.
  18. Grand Theft Hamlet
    A making-of film fueled, like the Let’s Plays and livestreams it’s in conversation with, by the chaos of a plan gone wrong, Grand Theft Hamlet is equal parts charming and cheesy—both due to its experimental setting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    Emmy-nominated screenplay writer Chuck Hayward (Dear White People, Ted Lesso) and director Wade Allain-Marcus (Grown-ish, Insecure) bring some impressive cultural and emotional nuances to the story.
  20. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
    When Favreau banishes traditional actors in order to send little puppet creatures scuttling through the verdant landscape, suddenly his human-light blockbuster looks, if not quite visionary, at least novel. It also looks much closer to handmade, and deeply charming.
  21. Run Ronnie Run
    With its obligatory plot points, character arcs, and forced resolution, the narrative's demands tax Cross and Odenkirk's sensibility by limiting their freedom of movement. Yet even in its current bastardized form, the film still flickers with moments of great inspiration and vitality, providing isolated hints at the groundbreaking comedy that might have been.
  22. All We Imagine as Light
    Kapadia’s skill lies in her ability to interweave moments of hope into the anxiety. Her leads offer tenderness and pull back into self-protectiveness in equal measure.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Surfer
    The Surfer slowly follows the threads of its hero’s unraveling neuroses, and Cage walks right up to the line of sanity as each strand comes undone. It is a marvelous pushback against expectations that he stays on the other side of that line.
  24. Black Phone 2
    A handsome follow-up that both seizes the predecessor’s sense of heartbreak (albeit at a lesser degree) and dials up its chills by transposing them onto an icy, blood-soaked youth camp in the Rocky Mountains.
  25. Misericordia
    While it lacks the surrealistic and fairy-tale elements that distinguish many of Guiraudie’s films (among them Sunshine For The Poor, Time Has Come, and Staying Vertical), Misericordia is nonetheless pervaded by a casual dreaminess and a disregard for the strictures of realism that leads in some (intentionally) silly directions.
  26. Rumours
    Even in these early scenes, a strangeness pervades the film: ironic, sometimes stagey or soapy, occasionally punctuated by over-the-top musical cues.
  27. How to Rob a Bank
    Where visuals of certain events are unavailable, like Scurlock writing in his journal at night, fully colored and animated storyboards fill in the gaps. It’s an odd semi-glorification, even as How To Rob A Bank throws in a few token mentions of robbery survivors with PTSD at the end, and offers a sense that Scurlock fell into the Butch Cassidy trap of being so hooked on robberies he never knew when to quit.
  28. The Sheep Detectives
    Jokes may fall flat, and the movie might get a bit treacly, but The Sheep Detectives‘ big heart is never in question.
  29. The Monkey
    The Monkey is at its weakest when it tries too hard to explain what’s happening, either on a plot or on a thematic level. (The narration can be especially detrimental in this way.) And it’s strongest when it abandons its search for meaning and does a silly dance in the face of Death itself. A dry, mocking one though it might be, The Monkey is ultimately just a laugh.
  30. A Canterbury Tale
    A Canterbury Tale is a strange little movie, overlong and even shrill at times, but with a point to make that belies its slightness.
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