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. Rabin, the Last Day
    The movie is almost literally a trial to watch, demonstrating all the passion and excitement of an unedited C-SPAN broadcast.
  2. Mulan
    Rather than lean into the more mature elements that make it stand out, the movie does frustratingly little with its noteworthy upgrades on the original, resulting in a version of the story that’s only superficially more sophisticated.
  3. The Angels' Share
    The cast is immensely appealing, the heist is ingenious, and the collision of hardscrabble working-class kids and Sideways-style alcohol snobs generates steady laughs, though somewhat predictable ones.
  4. The Last Showgirl
    It’s Pamela Anderson’s deceptively fragile performance that shoulders The Last Showgirl, her breathy, girlish rasp the perfect match for Shelly’s fluttery chatterbox personality. She is captivating, fully dissolved in the character, and it’s evident the extent to which Anderson is injecting her performance with her own complicated feelings towards aging, success, and spectatorship.
  5. By Sidney Lumet
    The late Sidney Lumet, a quintessential “actor’s director” who spent his entire life around the profession, is an engaging enough interviewee to qualify the documentary By Sidney Lumet as indifferently watchable.
  6. The Aristocats
    Nothing about The Aristocats is pitched at the level of an unforgettable night at the movies for the whole family. It's a programmer, pure and simple.
  7. Fast Five
    Like a proper action sequel, it's bigger, louder, and sillier than its predecessors, but it's more streamlined, too, smartly dumping the tired underground racing angle in favor of a crisp, hugely satisfying "Ocean's Eleven"-style heist movie.
  8. The Sound of Silence
    There’s no much going on here, either thematically or narratively.
  9. 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.
  10. Seven Psychopaths
    While Seven Psychopaths sometimes hits the philosophical shallows, its pleasures still run deep.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Small Town Murder Songs
    The film is as much music-video collection as crime drama: The interludes in which the songs swell into voluptuous prominence balance out a tale of crime and redemption so spare, it's almost abstract.
  12. Bumblebee
    Thematic muddles would matter less if Bumblebee delivered more as an action movie, but despite some neat car-chase complications, this series remains stubbornly averse to shaping its action barrages into satisfying set pieces.
  13. Tuck Everlasting
    Unfortunately, Russell paces the film as if trying to demonstrate what eternity feels like. When the plot begs to move forward, the film keeps lingering over friendly fawns and long walks through the forest.
  14. Dog Days
    Working with non-professional actors, Seidl emphasizes their ordinariness to the point of cartoonish ridicule, putting them in scenarios either banal, perverse, or both at the same time.
  15. Steamboy
    Steamboy adds a touch of innocent wonder to the formula through Ray's eyes, resulting in Otomo's most human film to date, but humanity rarely seems to be among Otomo's priorities. His films seem far more concerned with the spectacle he manages like no one else in animation.
  16. Phantom Boy
    Even though it doesn’t all come together thrillingly, Phantom Boy garners a lot of goodwill just for looking and feeling original.
  17. Elstree 1976
    Visually, Elstree 1976 is often striking, thanks to some haunting extreme close-ups of these actors’ Star Wars action figures.
  18. The Cold Lands
    Burdened with tangential musings, The Cold Lands is at its most effective when grappling with those who believe themselves so self-reliant that they refuse help from anyone—be it government, charity, or just a well-meaning friend.
  19. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
    Boogie Man doesn't delve too deep into its subject's private life, beyond some cheap psychology positing his brother's horrible early death as the root of his winner-takes-all philosophy. But then, Atwater's work was his life.
  20. Megan Leavey
    When Megan Leavey touches upon the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in both humans and animals, it looks capable of bringing something novel to the human-and-dog formula. Most of the time, it’s a rote biography of someone a dog really liked.
  21. The Bling Ring
    The movie captures a moment when the lines separating anonymity, fame, and notoriety are finer than ever. And as Watson’s social climber prattles on to reporters about what a great “learning lesson” her criminal experience has been, it’s easy to see another star in the making.
  22. Dinosaur 13
    Dinosaur 13 reduces a complicated legal quagmire about paleontological ownership to something of a pity party. But hard luck is not the same as injustice.
  23. The Report
    The actor’s (Driver) performance isn’t just gripping; it’s inspiring. He’s not just portraying Jones; he’s embodying an ideal.
  24. Causeway
    Other than the pair of outstanding lead performances, there really isn’t much cause to watch it.
  25. You Don't Nomi
    It may not be as bizarrely entertaining as the film it obsesses over, but You Don’t Nomi is a captivating document of how a piece of art—especially one this deeply, powerfully weird—can take on a life wholly beyond its original intentions.
  26. Idiocracy
    There's a good chance that Judge's smartly lowbrow Idiocracy will be mistaken for what it's satirizing, but good satire always runs the risk -- of being misunderestimated.
  27. The Informant!
    The Informant! chooses to earn its exclamation point with giggles as well as shock, and the results are thoroughly entertaining.
  28. Crimson Peak
    Unsurprisingly for a Del Toro film, the production design is the real star of Crimson Peak.
  29. Cyrano
    A musical with numbers written by The National was a terrific idea, and so was Dinklage as Cyrano. Just not at the same time.
  30. The Two Faces of January
    January skirts by on its tastefulness and appreciation for the source material, however single-minded. It’s a movie of small pleasures: slow-burn suspense; period flavor, with an emphasis on the textures, clothes, and luggage; an effective score by Pedro Almodovar’s regular composer, Alberto Iglesias.
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