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. Predestination
    Predestination, a superficially cerebral new thriller, plays almost exclusively to the diagram-drawing crowd.
  2. Beloved Sisters
    The result is immersive and intelligent, but not what one would call difficult. Graf’s knack for no-nonsense storytelling means that Beloved Sisters seems to fly past.
  3. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
    At times, Porumboiu’s mix of repetition and resignation recalls Samuel Beckett, and if the overall result is more of a clever exercise than a proper movie, it’ll still have some dryly amusing appeal for those who appreciate intellectual absurdism.
  4. The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death
    Redundancy is about all it offers, despite an entirely new set of characters and a story set 40 years after the early 20th-century original.
  5. The Taking of Tiger Mountain
    Boasts a handful of colorful, gonzo set pieces of the kind that made Tsui’s reputation at home and abroad.
  6. [REC] 4: Apocalypse
    [REC] 4 is a tight, controlled film, not the explosive epic promised by the “Apocalypse” in its title.
  7. A Most Violent Year
    There are a couple of exciting set pieces, including a superb chase sequence in which Abel pursues one of the hijackers along some train tracks, but A Most Violent Year is primarily interested in detailing the ways in which moral gray areas inevitably shade into true darkness.
  8. The Interview
    The North Korea scenes are often very funny, with many of the jokes coming at the expense of the fish-out-of-water visitors.
  9. Leviathan
    In his three previous films (The Return, The Banishment, Elena), Zvyagintsev frequently pushed past sober into dour, leaning too heavily on a characteristically Soviet sense of gloom and doom... Leviathan is another downer, but it’s considerably looser and livelier than its predecessors, verging at times on black comedy.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unbroken
    Moral and spiritual triumph lie at the end of this hellish gauntlet, but though Jolie is shooting for Christ-like passion and redemption, she only ends up slathering one man’s very real, very morbid struggles in the usual reductive “greatest generation” sentiment.
  11. Selma
    As cinema, Selma is commendable; as cultural barometer, it’s beyond reproach.
  12. American Sniper
    American Sniper is imperfect and at times a little corny, but also ambivalent and complicated in ways that are uniquely Eastwoodian.
  13. Into the Woods
    Even if this Into The Woods lacks the exhilaration of the best movie musicals, it does capture the show’s emotional intimacy—no small task in a field that favors razzle dazzle.
  14. Big Eyes
    Big Eyes has plenty of surface pleasures, but there was reason to expect more than that from it.
  15. Two Days, One Night
    Two Days, One Night is a small miracle of a movie, a drama so purely humane that it makes most attempts at audience uplift look crass and calculated by comparison.
  16. Winter Sleep
    Epics tend to get extra respect — bonus points for ambition, one might say — and while Ceylan’s film is a decidedly intimate example of the genre, it was clearly perceived, in advance, as an important work just by virtue of its sheer heft.
  17. Annie
    Broadway purists determined to hate Annie need not fear, because there’s plenty worth complaining about.
  18. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    Secret Of The Tomb plays it as a source of corny jokes, pop-culture references, and father-son bonding moments. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of film that shouldn’t be expected to engage with its assorted bizarre subtexts — but what a movie it could be if it did.
  19. Mr. Turner
    Given the material, it’s fitting that Mr. Turner is the director’s most visually ravishing movie. With cinematographer Dick Pope behind the lens, every shot is gorgeous enough to hang in a museum.
  20. The Gambler
    In any case, none of the gambles Jim makes over the course of the movie are as ballsy as the film’s casting strategy. Will audiences really buy Mark Wahlberg as a wordsmith too brilliant for academia? Smart money says no.
  21. If You Don't, I Will
    For the most part, writer-director Sophie Fillières’ If You Don’t, I Will strikes an engaging tone of melancholic humor through its portrait of a French marriage slowly falling to pieces.
  22. Goodbye to All That
    In between missteps, Goodbye To All That carves out some of its brief running time for the kind of quiet, low-key dramedy that complements the recessive charm of its leading man.
  23. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    Bilbo fades into the sidelines of his own movie, and that may be why the mournful finale of Battle feels so canned, like a roiling tide of crocodile tears. Eleven years ago, Jackson earned the fond, seemingly endless farewells of The Return Of The King. His Hobbit series has only one ending, and it comes not a moment too soon.
  24. The Color of Time
    The better moments of Color Of Time make use of the ringer cast Franco was able to assemble, however momentarily.
  25. Tip Top
    Confirms director and co-screenwriter Serge Bozon as one of French cinema’s true oddballs.
  26. Mommy
    If it merits no other superlative, Mommy is unquestionably the most hyperactive movie of the year. It begins at a fever pitch and maintains that degree of in-your-face intensity for well over two hours, to either exhilarating or exhausting effect, depending on one’s tolerance level.
  27. Inherent Vice
    In its graceful superimpositions and its use of water to evoke a more idyllic time (particularly in a rainy flashback set to Neil Young), Inherent Vice is very much a companion piece to "The Master."
  28. The Captive
    The structural gamesmanship is just a smokescreen, a way to obfuscate the pulp nature of what is, ultimately, little more than a glorified, low-aiming potboiler.
  29. Top Five
    A disorganized, dawdling mess of a movie that is rarely anything less than charming.
  30. Exodus: Gods and Kings
    If nothing else, Exodus: Gods And Kings makes it easier to appreciate Darren Aronofsky’s "Noah," which, for all of its flaws, was at least animated by a personal relationship to the Old Testament.
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