The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,441 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: 5,582 out of 10441
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10441
  3. Negative: 1,113 out of 10441
10441 movie reviews
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  1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
    Awash in a depressive shade of perpetual blue, Mockingjay—Part 2 out-Nolans Christopher Nolan in the race to see just how dark a PG-13 tentpole can get before the audience itself revolts.
  2. I Love You Phillip Morris
    Ficarra and Requa are more comfortable being bad: The nastier the film gets, the better it is.
  3. Venus and Serena
    What comes across most strongly is the genuine, overpowering love these two women have for each other, even when they’re in direct competition.
  4. Pecker
    It's a winning comedy, though some of Pecker's jokes inspire silence and some scenes are awkwardly staged.
  5. To All the Boys: Always and Forever
    Though it doesn’t entirely recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of the original, To All The Boys: Always And Forever is a worthy sendoff for this well-loved series.
  6. Twister
    In the wrong hands, or with a different cast, such quirky material could easily have devolved into a grotesque parade of cartoon freaks. But Almereyda finds exactly the right tone: a loopy, understated deadpan that invites empathy rather than ridicule. Twister has the outline of a broad comedy, but the inspired cast–particularly Amis–brings such conviction to its performances that the drama registers as strongly as the comedy.
  7. Tucker & Dale vs Evil
    Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil is too slick and too cute; Tudyk and Labine are terrific comic actors, but the movie might've been better served by less-recognizable faces.
  8. Everything Must Go
    Writer-director Dan Rush could've approached this material in dozens of ways, but the way he chooses-turning it into an occasionally wry, ever-earnest dramedy-is precisely the wrong one.
  9. Exit: The Right to Die
    In the wrenching final scene, the concept of "dying with dignity" becomes much more than just a catchphrase used to justify a controversial practice.
  10. Amazing Grace
    Unlike its subject, Amazing Grace won't change the world, but its quasi-religious sense of conviction proves rousing. Apted's unexpected crowd-pleaser is inspirational, but also surprisingly entertaining.
  11. One Last Kiss
    Through it all, Muccino piles on one shrill confrontation after another. At times, he seems headed for the melodramatic turf owned and operated by Pedro Almodóvar, but where the young Almodóvar would have deployed a prankish wit and the older Almodóvar scraped toward the humanity beneath.
  12. Francine
    Francine is so minimalist that it has to rely almost entirely on Leo for solidity, and it would be a far stronger film if it supported and framed her more effectively.
  13. Saving Mr. Banks
    The irony of Saving Mr. Banks is that it takes this true story of Hollywood conflict, of artistic integrity pitted against studio moxie, and gives it the same warm-and-fuzzy treatment the company gave Poppins. One woman’s failed battle to stop her work from being Disneyfied has itself been Disneyfied.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Warriors
    The Warriors is a deeply silly movie. Its gangs are ridiculous comic-book figures. Still, director Walter Hill treats its world with total seriousness. Bleak synthesizer drones thrum and throb. The streets glow with slickly inky-black greasiness. Nobody smiles. It’s so awesome.
  15. Made in Dagenham
    Make no mistake. In spite of its worthy subject matter and good intentions, Made In Dagenham remains mediocre to the core.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Gingerbread Man
    All accusatory fingers should be pointed at director Robert Altman, who further drains his reputation surplus with this unoriginal and uninteresting piece of exploitation.
  17. Beauty and the Beast
    Shiny but not exactly new, Bill Condon’s live-action Beauty And The Beast is a curious nostalgia object, synthetically engineered to reproduce all the same sensations as a 26-year-old movie.
  18. Ivory Tower
    Rossi’s scathing (yet seemingly fair) documentary doesn’t just illustrate the institutional ironies of modern education. It also strives to understand why tuition is at an all-time high when knowledge is practically free.
  19. X-Men: First Class
    Another crowd-pleasing comic-book film designed to bring in new fans while gratifying the old ones.
  20. The Confirmation
    The Confirmation isn’t much to look at, and its rhythms are wobbly (the quest narrative starts to feel strained early on), but Nelson is a dogged enough dramatist that even the story’s resolutions—even the really pat and obvious ones—are satisfyingly earned.
  21. The Polka King
    Above all else, this movie is so well-cast that the laugh line makes perfect sense coming from Black.
  22. Oscar and Lucinda
    It accumulates weight as it goes along, ultimately becoming as thoughtful and emotionally involving as it is beautiful to behold.
  23. Deathgasm
    First-time writer-director Jason Lei Howden (who has a day job working for Peter Jackson’s special effects house Weta Digital) has delivered something amiably silly, liberally splattered with human viscera, and scored to the punishing grind of electric guitars.
  24. Alien: Covenant
    This is Alien gone gothic.
  25. Sunset
    Sunset, Nemes’ second feature, not only confirms his talent but demonstrates that his style works beautifully even when transferred to perhaps the least horrifying milieu imaginable.
  26. Metro Manila
    The movie is a catalogue of Nolanisms translated into Tagalog and executed on a tight budget.
  27. Bull
    The movie has the style down pat: nonprofessional actors, un-enticing handheld camerawork, and a bevy of deteriorating exurban backdrops. But Silverstein’s sympathetic patience for her self-sabotaging characters is enough to keep one interested in what might happen to these people well past the point where it becomes clear that nothing will.
  28. Monsters University
    True to its name, Monsters University brims with cleverly designed creatures, a student body worthy of the recently deceased Ray Harryhausen. What the movie lacks is its precursor’s human ace-in-the-hole—that pint-sized, inadvertent agent of chaos, Boo.
  29. Deadpool
    The eccentric touches—a Wham! musical cue, a dash of screwball body horror—are just accents on a stealth franchise extension. At a certain point, you have to do more than just recognize and point out the mold. You have to actually shatter it.
  30. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    Maxed Out sacrifices depth for breadth and like a lot of low-budget documentaries, it's done no favors by its grimy, no-fi aesthetic. But the film's scattered ruminations on credit card mania add up to a powerful indictment of a culture of mindless consumption spinning out of control.
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