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. Fugitive Pieces
    In many ways, Fugitive Pieces is a beautiful film. But it's a bit TOO beautiful.
  2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    The biggest problem with Crystal Skull is one that's lately plagued Spielberg in otherwise excellent films like "Munich" and "War Of The Worlds": He fails to stick the landing. And for an entertainment with nothing much on its mind, that hurts.
  3. The Children of Huang Shi
    It's a polished, beautifully shot story, and it acknowledges the messiness of real life. But like real life, it's often baffling and frustrating.
  4. Savage Grace
    Savage Grace should have the force of Greek tragedy, but Kalin's chamber drama feels curiously stifling and flat, and Moore's volatile turn isn't enough to quicken its pulse.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Sex and the City
    Ultimately, Sex And The City serves as a glitter-laced love letter to its fans, which is really all it needs to be.
  6. The Incredible Hulk
    The Hulk himself looks more steroidal than superheroic, as if the expressive beast from the first film had been replaced by a WWE star.
  7. Wanted
    Wanted is a queasily unapologetic power fantasy about becoming a better person through violence.
  8. The Promotion
    It's a sweet, human movie, if not an entirely successful one.
  9. Gunnin' for That #1 Spot
    Comes from a pure place. Or rather, it comes from a DESIRE for a pure place in a game poisoned by mercenary compromise.
  10. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
    Dragon Emperor succeeds largely through sheer excess: It's doubtful that any idea was thrown out for being too implausible.
  11. Sukiyaki Western Django
    Loses some of its appeal once the novelty of Miike's conceptual shenanigans wears off.
  12. Appaloosa
    As with many other mediocre actor-directors, Harris' attention to the performances, including his own fine turn, has cost him in other areas.
  13. The Lucky Ones
    Like its lead characters, Lucky is wounded, lost, and impractical, but it has a messy, winning humanity and an agreeably leisurely pace that almost redeems it.
  14. The Secret Life of Bees
    It's pleasant and often touching, and the well-chosen cast sells what little drama they get, but there's no depth and little affect, and every would-be conflict peters out noncommittally.
  15. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    It's the journey that matters, however, and sometimes the film doesn't seem to know where it's going.
  16. RocknRolla
    As is the norm for Ritchie, Rocknrolla is also too long, too coolly violent, and too populated by characters who all talk like they've been reading the same pulp novelist.
  17. JCVD
    A canny piece of autobiography that looks at the man behind the legend and the legend behind the man.
  18. Milk
    It's a little disappointing to see Van Sant dial back into mainstream respectability. Had he evoked Harvey Milk's life with the poetry that he did Kurt Cobain's, Milk might have been something special.
  19. Transporter 3
    In a series elevated by high-flying ridiculousness, Transporter 3 falls a couple of sequences short of the standard, but it does show off Statham's considerable dirt-biking skills. For that, at least, it's kinda rad.
  20. Crossing Over
    Tied together with endless, flattening shots of L.A.’s cloverleaf freeways, Crossing Over is often simplistic and occasionally lugubrious, but it's rarely boring.
  21. The Tale of Despereaux
    Despereaux at least has too much ambition rather than too little, but its curiously intellectual pleasures suggest a quaint puzzle rather than a passionately loved fairy tale.
  22. Yonkers Joe
    Yonkers Joe is largely concerned with the delicate balance between a crook's business life and his personal life--a balance the movie itself has trouble managing effectively.
  23. Just Another Love Story
    Enjoyably moody in the early going, and it develops into a decent Hitchcockian thriller at times.
  24. Cherry Blossoms
    There's something a little shallow about contrasting ungrateful German kids with their respectful Japanese counterparts and presuming the cultural differences are so cut-and-dried.
  25. Outlander
    Surprise number one: It's smarter than it looks. Surprise number two: That doesn't entirely ruin it as an action film.
  26. Eleven Minutes
    What's most striking about Eleven Minutes is the sheer amount of effort that goes into a show of that magnitude, quite apart from work involved in designing and executing a coherent, commercially viable line.
  27. 12
    Rarely has the voyeuristic appeal of sitting on a jury been so cleverly expressed.
  28. Monsters vs Aliens
    On some level, the latest DreamWorks CGI project isn't a movie so much as a gag-delivery system wrapped in special effects. The story is crammed with incident, yet completely trifling; there are a ton of personalities, but no real characters.
  29. Observe and Report
    Something of a cross between the formalist whimsy of Wes Anderson and the God's-lonely-man psychosis of "Taxi Driver," the film breaks all the rules, but the tonal schizophrenia that results isn't an accident.
  30. Every Little Step
    It's a huge improvement over the Attenborough film; given the film’s non-fiction roots, it seems poetically apt that a documentary take is much more satisfying and engaging than the Hollywood treatment.
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