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. Lemon Tree
    This story--or stories like it--has been told and re-told too often. Lemon Tree works best when Riklis cuts out the predictable melodrama and trusts the fertility of his central metaphor.
  2. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    From Valentino Garavani's imperious carriage and diva fits to his coterie of tiny dogs, the subject of Tyrnauer's doc comes off like a fictional character, scripted by a writer with a weakness for cliché.
  3. Earth
    On the nature-documentary continuum, Earth falls closer to the cuddly anthropomorphism of "March Of The Penguins" than the cold rationality of "Grizzly Man."
  4. Il Divo
    Through Sorrentino's lens, Andreotti's chief lieutenants are made to look like Reservoir Dogs, with Andreotti as a calm, tight-lipped, upper-crust analog to Lawrence Tierney.
  5. Tyson
    Tyson can be brutal with himself, but Toback's fawning documentary lets him off easy.
  6. The Merry Gentleman
    If ever a film needed a double shot of espresso and a swift kick in the caboose, it's this one. At best, the film is hypnotic; at worst, it challenges--no, dares--audiences not to fall asleep.
  7. Dead Snow
    The concept doesn't go much further than the wardrobe department--that is, until a deliriously over-the-top climax finally rouses the film from its "Evil Dead"-mimicking stupor.
  8. Bandslam
    Throughout its first two acts, Bandslam is charming, sweet, and funny enough to merit inclusion in the upper echelon of teen comedies. Then comes a third act weighed down with arbitrary romantic conflicts, leaden melodrama, and a tiresome subplot.
  9. It Might Get Loud
    The resulting jam session ought to be a music geek’s wet dream, but there isn’t enough common ground to produce more than a few flashes of inspiration.
  10. The September Issue
    A fascinating, frustrating documentary.
  11. We Live in Public
    We Live In Public doesn’t show that Harris was a genius so much as that he was a mentally and emotionally unstable egotist, trying to force a revolution in self-broadcasting and connectivity that later happened more naturally.
  12. Paris
    Paris flits from story to story and character to character without doing justice to any of them.
  13. Walt & El Grupo
    Hardcore Disney fans will appreciate how serious-minded and intimate this movie is, but for others, Walt & El Grupo might feel like an expensive vacation slide show, assembled by strangers.
  14. Disgrace
    After a compelling opening act and some shocking late-film developments, the film feels disengaged from the action at hand and the issues raised.
  15. (Untitled)
    The three main characters aren’t cardboard-cutout poseurs, and for that alone, (Untitled) stands apart.
  16. You, the Living
    You, The Living, if only by virtue of a more intimate scale than Songs, benefits from a lightness of touch and even a thin sliver of optimism in some sequences.
  17. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    Disturbing The Universe doesn’t mix it up enough.
  18. Taxidermia
    Frequently funny, for those who can stomach it.
  19. Green Zone
    For the first time in Greengrass' career, the politics too often get ahead of the action, so points that might have been subtly embedded in the story are instead laid out like a left-wing editorial.
  20. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
    For all its ridiculousness, its enthusiastic comic excess, and its fart/booger/gross-out jokes, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid's heart is firmly in the right place.
  21. The Eclipse
    Though The Eclipse travels a sleepy route to a shrug of anticlimax, it’s refreshing to see a film acknowledge that life and love don’t end at 50, even in the outsized shadow of a soulmate’s death.
  22. Bastard Out of Carolina
    Anjelica Huston's directorial debut employs an impressive cast, and at times showcases a promising sense of style. But Bastard Out Of Carolina seems hollow at its center, due largely to the fact that Anne Meredith's screenplay doesn't make very good use of its source material.
  23. Home Alone
    Even though Macaulay Culkin's alternately muggy and inexpressive lead performance hasn't worn well, the supporting turns by Catherine O'Hara and John Candy are especially crackerjack, as is John Williams' buoyantly cartoony score.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Dinner for Schmucks
    Thanks to Rudd and Carell's dependable likeability and a tacked-on warm-and-fuzzy ending, Dinner For Schmucks is leagues ahead of its forebear in terms of mass appeal, but its laughs are more silly than scathing.
  25. The Killer Inside Me
    Affleck is the perfect actor for this role, though he’s a little too mush-mouthed to do the voiceover narration required of a noir.
  26. Date Night
    There’s something genuine and more than a little sad at the core of Levy’s poorly staged, modestly amusing comedy, but it isn’t the part that involves flash drives, blackmail, and glowering, gun-toting bad guys.
  27. House of Sand
    House Of Sand is a gorgeous piece of cinema, but by the end, it just dries up and blows away.
  28. The Dogwalker
    While there are moments throughout when the film looks primed to break out of the indie arthouse ghetto, it never quite pulls it off.
  29. So Much So Fast
    The movie captures the way scientists sometimes make breakthroughs simply by attempting the impossible.
  30. Our Daily Bread
    The non-sensationalized "this is what really happens" approach makes Our Daily Bread extra-creepy at times.
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