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 SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run
    There are too many montages and musical numbers that seem to be searching for a punchline.
  2. The Courier
    As Trey Parker and Matt Stone have taught us, you need a montage, and The Courier serves up several expert ones, leaning hard on shots of Penkovsky snapping photos of documents in shadowy storage rooms. Cooke also has a terrific camera sense in general, and can create a mood just by abruptly shifting angles.
  3. Men
    To put it in a way the kids do: Men is vibes.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Horse Whisperer
    With solid, stately acting, and landscapes that could convert atheists, The Horse Whisperer tugs heartstrings without seeming self-conscious.
  5. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    Underneath the expressive voice work, songs, in-jokes, and nonsense cameos, there is some thematic resonance to Lego Movie 2, not fully tapped.
  6. The Disappearance of Alice Creed
    A clever little contraption, even though it runs into the problem that a lot of twist-heavy suspense movies have: Once it's spooned out all its surprises about two-thirds of the way through, it loses a lot of its entertainment value.
  7. The Matador
    The Matador is brilliantly cast right down to the secondary supporting roles, played by the formidable likes of Dylan Baker and Philip Baker Hall, but it's the leads who really deliver.
  8. Maudie
    The problem is as old as the biopic: Somewhere in trying to tell a life story, life gets lost.
  9. Panic Room
    An old-house thriller retrofitted for the 21st century without any touch of unneeded flash, Panic Room is scary enough to do for downtown living what Jaws did for beaches.
  10. Beyond Hatred
    It's so rare these days to see a documentary that aspires to be cinematic that Beyond Hatred may seem at first to be slightly better than it is.
  11. Take Me to the River
    With just a few minor tweaks, Take Me To The River could play as a moody supernatural horror picture, with Logan as the dangerously curious hero being warned away from an evil he shouldn’t confront.
  12. Bad News Bears
    Does nothing to justify its own existence other than be consistently funny from start to finish.
  13. High-Rise
    The intoxicating mix of kitsch and chic barely conceals the psychosis underneath.
  14. Paradise: Love
    For better and for worse—often simultaneously—few movies have been as unflinching about the ugly, heartbreaking ways human beings can mutually exploit one another for fun and/or profit.
  15. The Boys in the Band
    Whatever a person's opinion of the play's accuracy, William Friedkin's 1970 film adaptation remains gripping, translating a story that takes place in a cramped apartment into a movie that rarely feels stagey.
  16. Miss Americana
    Whether this book is really open, and whether it reveals the “real” Taylor Swift or not, Miss Americana is convincing, positive, and entrancing nonetheless.
  17. Air Doll (2009)
    The film is a little too cute and scattershot to achieve real profundity, with the doll-woman too often coming across like a playfully erotic version of Being There’s Chance the Gardener, defined entirely by her absence of guile.
  18. The Robber
    It might've mattered to the audience too, if we had any inkling from the first hour of The Robber who this guy is, or why we should care what happens to him.
  19. Through the Fire
    Through The Fire posits Telfair's good fortune as the belated fulfillment of Jamal's dreams and his family's desire to leave the projects, but it rarely gives a thought to the many thousands of gifted inner-city ballers who devote their lives to a goal that never materializes.
  20. Mortal Thoughts
    As a domestic melodrama, the film sometimes plays like The Honeymooners without the laughs, but the push and pull between the flashbacks and the interrogation scenes gain steadily in strength as the case gets harder to pin down. There’s more to these characters—and this movie—than initially meets the eye.
  21. Wild Grass
    Whatever it is, Wild Grass is so overtly artificial and aggressively trifling that it's bound to put some viewers off, though it's also so bright and funny that it's hard not to be at least a little enchanted. Resnais' music is so sweet, even when his words are nonsense.
  22. Entertainment
    It’s a portrait of the comedy tour as odyssey of madness, a plummet into the abyss.
  23. Twisters
    The plug-and-play plot is predictable, but as in the original, Twisters is a functional thrill ride driven by charismatic, believable performances.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Strange World
    Strange World feels like a new iteration of Disney, one that is more thoughtful and inclusive without sacrificing any of the humor or fun.
  25. Dan in Real Life
    Novelist-turned-writer/director Peter Hedges follows up his "Pieces Of April" debut with a comedy that's at once overstuffed and surprisingly subtle.
  26. Get Him to the Greek
    Hill, dialing back on the pissy vulgarity of his supporting roles in "Knocked Up" and "Funny People," makes the perfect foil, as passive and impressionable as Brand is reckless and impulsive.
  27. Oh, Canada
    Oh, Canada feels less a deep rumination at the last moments of an artist’s life, and more the confused ramblings of an irascible, self-important character surrounded by sycophants unable to stand up to his unreasonable demands.
  28. The Powerpuff Girls
    It's a good movie infused with moments of greatness.
  29. The Art of Self-Defense
    In a movie that often observes male dysfunction with some ironic distance, Eisenberg brings the satire closer to the bone.
  30. Saving Face
    The umpteenth variation on second-generation American immigrants bucking the traditions of their first-generation elders.
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