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. Springtime in a Small Town
    Has the suffocating intensity of great chamber drama.
  2. One Swallow Brought Spring
    Carion and his gifted leads never take the easy way out. Instead, they let the characters get acquainted against the slow change of the seasons, taking their relationship along unexpected turns.
  3. The Barbarian Invasions
    The Barbarian Invasions' flaws are mainly glaring because the movie is occasionally so winning.
  4. Alien: Resurrection
    Perfectly in keeping with a series that began by simply putting a monster on a spaceship, then gave itself the creative freedom to explore what that monster and that spaceship really meant. [Quadrilogy]
  5. Postmen in the Mountains
    Huo never quite finds the filmic vocabulary to tilt the film toward greatness-and the mawkish synth score does little to help-but Postmen In The Mountains ultimately succeeds.
  6. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    In spite of clunky effects and often extraordinarily ugly video footage, Game Over works very well just as a sports doc.
  7. In America
    While In America doesn't convince as an immigrants-in-the-U.S. story, it resonates powerfully as a portrait of grief and reconciliation.
  8. September 11
    Until filmmakers get a little distance, maybe they'd be better off ignoring such projects.
  9. Overnight
    As Overnight progresses and its title grows increasingly ironic, it paints a mesmerizing portrait of a profane, overbearing monster engaged in a drawn-out act of professional suicide.
  10. Secondhand Lions
    Writer-director Tim McCanlies works in broad, kid-friendly strokes, and he's not afraid to lay on the sentiment, but his cast makes sure it's well-earned.
  11. Touching the Void
    At its heart, Touching The Void contends with the physical and spiritual dilemma of facing the unknown and overcoming paralyzing fear in order to emerge reborn on the other side. But the film's appeal is even more fundamental than that: It's just one of those stories that catches the breath, no matter how often it's told.
  12. Around the World in 80 Days
    Finds a winning formula: Chan provides the action, various exotic lands serve up props begging to be employed in Chan-style combat, Coogan brings the dry wit, a minor constellation of surprise guest stars provides razzle-dazzle, and a steady stream of mild chuckles helps the whole fandango fly by painlessly.
  13. Jersey Girl
    Though Smith loses many of his past efforts' familiar trappings--Jay and Silent Bob are now confined to the production-company logo--Jersey Girl plays to Smith's strengths like no film since "Clerks."
  14. The Saddest Music in the World
    Maddin films have a higher rate of invention per frame than the majority of his peers can muster.
  15. Unfaithful
    Trashy enough to envelop its sex scenes in aerobicized glamour (a Lyne trademark), so the fact that it takes itself so seriously almost counts as a daring move.
  16. Freaky Friday
    Freaky Friday mines a lot of laughs from common misapprehensions adults have about adolescent life, with fun bits of observation about schoolwork, dating, and other practices where kids have to bend the rules in order to survive.
  17. Stander
    The always-interesting Jane, a volatile and unpredictable character actor, fits the bill.
  18. The Truman Show
    The film is unfortunately about little more than its potentially mind-boggling plot and structure.
  19. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Favors unforgettable images over in-depth storytelling, and prioritizing electrifying moments over narrative arcs.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
    Gilliam captures the chaotic visions of debauchery with his trademark aplomb, bringing to life the already trippy patterns of hotel carpets and populating the dark bars of Vegas with genuinely reptilian lounge lizards.
  21. Friday Night Lights
    When Friday Night Lights gets to the big games, the time it's spent creates an atmosphere thick with tension, one akin to the real-world experience of watching a favorite team play for its life.
  22. OT: Our Town
    It's the most obvious point that actually rings truest: that Wilder's sketchy vision of life, love, and death is as funny and moving as it ever was.
  23. Signs
    For a big-budget Hollywood feature, the film places an unusually high amount of stock in the audience's imagination; not since "The Others" or "The Blair Witch Project" have so many shocks been indirect or kept teasingly out of view.
  24. Super Troopers
    With no greater ambition than reworking the Police Academy movies, Broken Lizard comes up with a winning formula: one part laughs to two parts goodwill.
  25. The Pianist
    Through Brody's remarkably controlled, self-effacing performance, Polanski succeeds in making his hero an invisible man, but the sights he conjures are surprisingly artless and ordinary, familiar from a dozen other Holocaust dramas. Among the casualties in The Pianist is a great director's imagination.
  26. The Village
    The Village may have finally emptied his usual bag of tricks, but considered on its own merits, its skillful fusion of Grimm fairy-tale horror and pointed social parable find Shyamalan in peak form.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    BASEketball
    BASEketball's effort and energy pay off with surprisingly abundant laughs and a few admirable shocks.
  28. Blade II
    Everything "Blade" should have been but wasn't: stylish, fast-paced, and comfortable with its own ridiculousness.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blade
    Sure, the story is pretty standard, and the dialogue is laughable or worse. But creative cinematography and non-stop, decently choreographed gratuitous violence make watching this comic-book movie—Blade is a minor, almost-forgotten Marvel comic—entertaining.
  30. True Crime
    As disappointing-but-worthwhile films go, you could do a lot worse.
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