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. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    It's all innocuous, forgettable fun, but it's firmly aimed at those who find underwear endlessly funny.
  2. The Ninth Day
    It's important for the film to establish the concentration camp as a hell on earth from the start, but Schlöndorff has more in mind than creating another reminder of the inhumanity of fascism.
  3. The Flower of Evil
    For all its aloof indirectness, The Flower Of Evil wants little more than to sling another arrow at the bourgeoisie, something Chabrol has done with greater flair on many other occasions.
  4. Open Range
    Mostly it's just a good yarn, with attractive picture-postcard vistas and an agreeable strain of light humor.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Homestretch
    In a moral sense, teen homelessness is very much a crime, and Chicago-based filmmakers Anne De Mare and Kirsten Kelly aim to shed a light on this nationwide epidemic in The Homestretch, using the Windy City as a test case.
  6. Better Watch Out
    The film will continue to defy your expectations.
  7. The King of Staten Island
    Apatow appears to have moved on from using airless domestic and urban comforts as backdrops, and that’s probably a good thing. But The King Of Staten Island’s patience-testing failings, however well-intentioned, suggest that for now, he’s only found a new way to lose the plot.
  8. The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf
    It’s fun to see this world, with all of its inhuman monsters and monstrous humans, from a different point of view, even if it isn’t quite as refreshing or engaging as Geralt’s.
  9. Sovereign
    Though Offerman buoys the film with terrifying aplomb, Sovereign is a missed opportunity to examine the cascading fallout from living in a country that fails its people and breeds violence.
  10. The Ides of March
    The Ides Of March goes down easily, with a sophisticated bustle and a strong third act twist to test the hero's mettle. But it all feels a bit inconsequential - perhaps by design.
  11. Tesla
    Far from the flamboyant figure of fantasy and popular myth, this version of the inventor is totally interiorized.
  12. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    The film feels like an earnest retread over old territory, albeit one that intermittently comes to life thanks to an amazing cast, expressive cinematography by French master Eric Gautier (Irma Vep), and Montiel's obviously heartfelt sentiments.
  13. The Great Hack
    There’s no satisfying end point to this movie (which premiered at Sundance as a 135-minute work in progress; over 20 minutes have since been trimmed), which reaches its alarmist conclusion quite early on and then functions more as a frustratingly sporadic video diary.
  14. Watermarks
    Well-intentioned and exceedingly nice, Watermarks aspires to warm the soul, but succeeds only in numbing the mind.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    The acting, mostly by a bunch of unknowns, is equally fresh and funny, and Ritchie keeps the movie moving faster than you can say, "bludgeoned to death by a 15-inch black rubber dildo."
  16. Flow: For Love of Water
    Skips right past depressing on its way to apocalyptic.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    The film is also an earnest, big-hearted ode to friends as support and salvation, and to the talismanic quality a favorite song, treasured hang-out, or shared tradition can take on for a teenager.
  18. Lady Chatterley's Lover
    While witnessing the physical act of love on screen can sometimes transcend into something with great depth, this is, sorry to say, not one of those cases. It’s just a lot of huffing and puffing.
  19. Tom at the Farm
    As interesting as it is to see the filmmaker move out of his wheelhouse, Tom At The Farm is neither dramatically satisfying nor psychologically convincing. Something was clearly lost in its transition from stage to screen.
  20. The Circle
    Its fascinations compromised by its clunkiness, the film is a necessary niche history that serves well enough as a primer, placing it just a cut above coasting on good intentions.
  21. The Last Starfighter
    A sweet, unabashedly corny, matinee-friendly science-fiction adventure starring Lance Guest as a trailer-park videogame prodigy, and Robert Preston as the alien who recruits him to save the day from some space-baddies.
  22. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her
    It’s little surprise that Her turns out to be the better of the two movies, mostly by virtue of prominently featuring Chastain, who conveys an interior life — shifting emotions, competing desires — the script doesn’t supply her.
  23. Buena Vista Social Club: Adios
    Adios serves as a loving tribute to their memory, but has little else to offer that the original film didn’t provide.
  24. A Master Builder
    Demme barely even makes an effort, shooting mostly in bland close-ups with the occasional zoom for completely random emphasis. Nor does A Master Builder have any meta-element—it’s like "Vanya On 42nd Street" without 42nd Street.
  25. Garbo: The Spy
    Even without the fine psychological shading, Garcia's story is a doozy.
  26. The Sapphires
    The emotions of soul music are irresistibly universal. The same is true of soul-music clichés. Based on a true story, The Sapphires tells the tale of four ambitious young Aboriginal girls from Australia who come of age performing before American serviceman in 1968 Vietnam. And yet the film is afflicted by a curious lack of cultural specificity.
  27. Garden State
    Garden State coasts on this considerable charm until it hits a brick wall in its final segments.
  28. The Green Prince
    Yet even if the individuals and their motives themselves don’t always come into full focus, The Green Prince is an absorbing psychological study of shifting allegiances.
  29. The Myth of the American Sleepover
    It's a film where the feelings and experiences of young people are highly specific in detail, yet fundamentally universal and timeless.
  30. Unforgivable
    That seems to be one of the main theses of Unforgivable: that nothing is as dramatic as it appears, and presuming otherwise means risking unnecessary trouble and pain.
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