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. La Vie en Rose
    For all its florid pretensions and epic length, the film's overwrought take on its subject's not-so-rosy life leaves behind no lasting insight.
  2. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
    This Hobbit is, in other words, a much more eventful affair than its year-old predecessor. And yet for all the fine spectacle Jackson crams into his lengthy sequel-within-a-prequel, it’s still hard not to mourn the single, self-contained movie that could have been.
  3. Another Earth
    It's an ambitious premise and a risky approach, but Cahill and his cast execute it beautifully.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Let the Bullets Fly
    That dedicated wryness makes the endless twists and betrayals easier to process-these are awful people, but it's sure a lot of fun to watch them fight it out.
  5. Mid90s
    What Hill hasn’t yet mastered, despite considerable skill as a first-time filmmaker, is how to impose a narrative more quietly, especially in finding the right ending. He also doesn’t seem to fully trust his sense of humor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow
    There's something admirable to this austerity and the way it insists viewers start by engaging with Kiefer's large-scale constructions, wordless explorations of which bookend the film.
  7. The Amazing Spider-Man
    The Amazing Spider-Man, helmed by "(500) Days Of Summer" director Marc Webb, doesn't put its own stamp on the material, which feels warmed-over in ways that don't help.
  8. Premium Rush
    He's Premium Rush's villain, but Shannon doesn't attempt anything like the austere derangement of a Hans Gruber type, even though he specializes in playing terrifying nutjobs. Instead, he's a buffoon of the first order, and his hapless tomfoolery sets the tone for a light, fast, frequently hilarious 90 minutes.
  9. Catfight
    In more ways than one, Catfight lives down to its title. This is a spectacularly petty and mean-spirited comedy that pivots around, yes, two women beating the shit out of each other.
  10. All of You
    As with so many great onscreen romances, it’s not that All Of You is doing something that’s never been done before, just that it’s doing it really well, with a great pair of actors at its center.
  11. Tommaso
    Like so much in this deceptively earnest film, the Roman backdrop creates ambiguous terms. One is left to wonder whether Tommaso’s internal chaos is that of an eternal figure in an ancient city, or just another guy trying to keep it together as he makes the turn to the Piazza Dante.
  12. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
    Though Hall's stunning vistas and gorgeous exploration of wide-open spaces hearken back to John Ford, Butch Cassidy otherwise radiates the youthful energy, manic pop playfulness, and antic clowning of the French New Wave.
  13. Marshall
    This breezy approach has its limits; Marshall isn’t so different from a well-made TV movie. But it plays well on the big screen anyway, and there’s some relevance in the way it depicts competing forms of bigotry—racism alongside anti-Semitism and expectations about female sexuality.
  14. Splice
    Played with black humor that never gets in the way of the horror, Natali’s film cleverly exploits Dren’s uncanny semi-humanity.
  15. Thirteen Lives
    Howard’s film winds up as a rote retread, transitioning from headline news to big-screen snooze.
  16. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    The rare sequel that magnifies the scope of the original without diminishing the fun.
  17. Barbershop
    Ice Cube serves as the film's solid moral center, with a dizzying variety of supporting characters in his orbit. A refreshingly class-conscious comedy-drama that refuses to talk down to its audience, Barbershop tackles serious issues.
  18. Moebius
    A viewer familiar with the filmmaker’s latter-day schtick can’t help but wonder: How can an artist be so persistent in his use of symbols, and yet never manage to develop them beyond a rudimentary metaphorical framework?
  19. Elf
    The cast wrings laughs out of David Berenbaum's script as if it were a damp washcloth.
    • The A.V. Club
  20. The Way Back
    Well-acted and artfully (though conventionally) made, The Way Back tells a compelling story, regardless of whether it's based on truth or a fabrication.
  21. Shadow in the Cloud
    Pure popcorn entertainment, superimposing the dynamic synths and narrative efficiency of a John Carpenter movie onto the burnished metal and green fatigues of a World War II adventure.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
    Though wondrous in stretches, it barely scratches the surface of its subject, the ecological smorgasbord of Madagascar.
  23. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    Narrows as it goes, and Browne doesn't do enough with the idea of a corporate takeover of a grassroots recreational activity, but Weber's antics and his colleagues' reactions make for fine drama all on their own.
  24. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    By the film's halfway point, the subplots have all started to head in the most obvious directions imaginable, which is too bad, since they all have real potential. Ferrera's story of spending the summer as an out-of-place ethnic element in the milk-white suburbs stays interesting the longest, in large part thanks to her performance.
  25. The One I Love
    The ending is intended to be ambiguous, but it’s not too hard to guess what happened in advance, as it’s the only dramatically satisfying option. What’s no longer at all certain is what it means.
  26. Young Ahmed
    Young Ahmed isn’t a folly, exactly. It’s reasonably gripping on a scene-by-scene level, and about as starkly unsentimental as any of the Dardennes’ lean, urgent moral thrillers. But its inability to shine a light on Ahmed’s soul leaves it feeling more like an exercise than anything the brothers have made, especially by its hasty, unearned ending.
  27. Husbands
    John Cassavetes’ films ostensibly explore what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real, but his conception of stark, unvarnished reality sometimes feels awfully artificial.
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