The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The Drama
    The resulting film is nonetheless a wonderfully thorny exploration of primordial desires for connection, destruction, and stability. Don’t expect any genuine relationship advice, but also be warned that this is not a glib exercise in aimless edginess.
  2. I Love Boosters
    I Love Boosters paints another winning amusement park ride in the bright colors of its filmmaker’s politics.
  3. Midwinter Break
    Midwinter Break is most interested in the realities of long-term relationships—with unfaced trauma and graceful forgiveness alike—more than concrete absolutes, which is what makes it a valuable meditation on the imperfection of marriage.
  4. Iron Lung
    As a performer, Fischbach’s frantic performance can sometimes be distractingly monotonous, but as a filmmaker, he has an impressive eye not only for compositional details, but also for how his images cut and flow together.
  5. Pressure
    Who knew watching weather balloons flying up around the English coast could be so exhilarating? Under Maras’ direction and his script with David Haig, Pressure is a surprisingly effective war thriller, full of the hallmarks of the genre with a palpable time crunch.
  6. undertone
    As a theatrical experience, it’s lots of fun, making clever use of proven techniques that build tension before releasing it with exploding light bulbs and ghostly figures appearing in the corner of the frame.
  7. Shuffle
    It’s 81 damning minutes of tight filmmaking, great storytelling, and riveting investigation.
  8. Marty, Life Is Short
    Marty: Life Is Short is an overdue appreciation of a performer who’s underestimated as a clown only because he makes being funny look so easy.
  9. Time and Water
    Dosa’s film—which she wrote alongside Magnason, Jocelyne Chaput, and Erin Casper—sometimes strains a bit too visibly to connect this theme, becoming so enraptured with the encapsulating power of ice that the film protests too much about its own profundity.
  10. House of Flying Daggers
    Choreographed to the last beat, the action scenes have a depth that the film's thinly sketched characters never quite develop.
  11. Mindhunters
    Trashy and indefensible in most respects, Mindhunters may be a good-bad movie, but entertainment is entertainment, however it comes.
  12. Ong Bak
    Makes up in action what it lacks in storytelling finesse.
  13. Machuca
    Though Machuca ultimately doesn't shy away from taking sides, it wisely keeps the focus on the human element. The politics take place in the background until they demand the foreground.
  14. Beautiful Boxer
    Uekrongtham films the saga in gorgeous style.
  15. Monsieur N.
    De Caunes and screenwriter René Manzor do well when they dwell on history from a mundane human perspective, but Monsieur N. is too dry and too unsurprising for its two-hour running time.
  16. Lost Embrace
    At its best, Lost Embrace conveys, with real warmth, the hopelessly intertwined pasts and shared futures of a community of outsiders and immigrants. At worst, it's a sitcom without a laugh track.
  17. The Nomi Song
    Without coming out and saying it, The Nomi Song creates the sense that its subject might simply have been a few hundred years ahead of his time.
  18. Hitch
    A slick new meta-romantic comedy selling a transparent yet strangely irresistible fantasy of upscale romance among the beautiful but guarded.
  19. Inside Deep Throat
    Inside Deep Throat starts small and keeps expanding outward until there's seemingly no facet of American life the phenomenon hasn't touched.
  20. My Mother's Smile
    As absurd as the situation gets--and the film occasionally launches into surreal asides that only heighten the absurdity--director and star both keep it grounded in the situation's emotions.
  21. Nabbeun namja
    The film works best as a passionate tale of obsessive love, with two people brought together under harrowing circumstances.
  22. Schultze Gets the Blues
    With dialogue as spare as its harsh landscapes, the film is so tonally dry that it makes Aki Kaurismäki look like the Farrelly brothers--it begins at a snail's pace before speeding up to a turtle's drowsy crawl.
  23. Dear Frankie
    On its own terms, Dear Frankie works much better than it really has any right to. Auerbach tells a small, contrived story, but gives it the weight of life.
  24. Gunner Palace
    For the soldiers, it's about living to see the next day and living with the things they see, and Gunner Palace honors their perspective like no other Iraq documentary has to date.
  25. Whisky
    Mordantly funny deadpan comedy.
  26. Robots
    The amiable but thin comedy Robots does have a little more going on, but not quite enough to make a difference, although it looks good enough to distract viewers from that fact for a while.
  27. Millions
    A little broad comedy keeps things perky, but the kids' excellent, restrained acting and the low-key script by "The Claim" screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce hold the whole sprawling project together, from weepy revelations to silly fantasy-saint sequences.
  28. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    The film's modest charms are ingratiating and sweet, thanks to Colm Meaney's hilariously salty lead performance and a soundtrack that channels the warm spirit of traditional Ceili music.
  29. Off the Map
    Off The Map feels peculiar and remote, strangled by an air of arty disengagement. The most vivid characters are the earth and the sky, and they both give stellar performances.
  30. Mondovino
    For all its pervasive irritations and lack of discipline, succeeds in using below-the-belt tactics to get its message across, especially for those unschooled in the rarified world of oenophilia.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »