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. Dim the Fluorescents
    Fluorescents’ showy camera moves and full-jazz-hands theater-kid dorkiness are a tonic against the excessively muted naturalism that has come to define indie style.
  2. A Brilliant Young Mind
    At times plays like a case study more than a drama.
  3. Oliver Twist
    Kingsley is one of very few lively things about Polanski's plodding, by-the-numbers Oliver Twist. And in this dreary setting, he comes across more as a desperate clown than a saving grace, which makes it all the more awkward that no one else is clowning along with him.
  4. Hostiles
    Like Cooper’s Rust Belt faux-noir "Out Of The Furnace," it’s an exercise in strained seriousness, the potential ironies and dramatic tensions lost in a repetitive, episodic, and politically vapid narrative.
  5. Coherence
    The result is an uncommonly clever genre movie, reliant not on special effects — of which there are basically none — but on heavy doses of paranoia.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Do I Sound Gay?
    It’s a serious topic, but the resulting documentary isn’t an especially severe sit. Do I Sound Gay? is a briskly entertaining 77 minutes, and frequently as mouthy as its title.
  7. Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
    The second recent documentary focused on Roy Cohn, Bully. Coward. Victim.: The Story Of Roy Cohn is as stuffed and jumbled as its title’s punctuation. Despite this, the film manages to inject some genuine personality into its Wiki reckoning of Cohn’s cursed résumé.
  8. The We and the I
    The problem with The We And The I: Gondry is focused more on moments than on the film as a whole.
  9. Sharper
    The film operates like a clockwork mechanism. If there were foul-ups or major implausibilities—as such trick plots often have—they eluded me.
  10. The First Omen
    Forget what you think you know about horror prequels. The First Omen gets it, goes for the throat, and never lets go.
  11. Come Sunday
    Despite committed performances from most of the cast (especially Ejiofor, who imbues Pearson with a gentle yet stubborn spirit), Come Sunday can’t shake its middling script and perfunctory direction.
  12. The Unknown Girl
    The Unknown Girl isn’t just their first bona fide thriller. It’s also the first Dardenne film in more than 20 years that could reasonably be described as less than exceptional, even a little clumsy.
  13. The Phantom of the Open
    Directed by Craig Roberts, this achingly British offering (its opening lines involve the request for a cup of tea—no milk, six sugars) is a pleasant movie of smaller stakes that, for better or worse, sidesteps inspiration in favor of more laidback reflection.
  14. The Overnight
    The pleasure of the movie lies in the way it both rewards and subverts expectations, delivering on the risqué possibilities of its premise while also coming up with something smarter and a little deeper than a log line might suggest.
  15. Hanna
    Superficially exciting and handled with great aplomb. But the film is running to go nowhere.
  16. Pacific Rim
    Yet for all its expensive grandeur, almost too epic even for the vast canvases of IMAX, Pacific Rim is unmistakably a Del Toro creation.
  17. Night Catches Us
    For Washington, the wounds of the past are just beneath the surface, as close as the bullet holes under her kitchen wallpaper.
  18. The Smashing Machine
    Safdie splits the difference, striving to replicate the gritty, in-the-moment documentary feel of the source movie he clearly admires, and coat it in the triple-A Hollywood sheen befitting this kind of serious star vehicle.
  19. Swallow
    Although it’s a reductive statement, calling Swallow a high-class version of "My Strange Addiction" isn’t entirely inaccurate.
  20. The Warrior
    Boasts an action-movie plot and an action-movie title, but precious little action. It's a lovely film about brutal men, but its integrity and visual splendor ultimately can't make up for its overall lack of visceral excitement.
  21. L'Auberge Espagnole
    Not since Lukas Moodysson's "Together" has communal living been depicted with such warmth and feeling for the entire ensemble.
  22. We Were Soldiers
    Leaves all the real risks to the young warriors at Ia Drang and collects easy dividends on their bravery. In the end, it honors them by paying tribute to itself.
  23. Red Flag
    Modest, personal, and nicely proportioned, Red Flag resembles one of Hong Sang-soo’s self-reflexive doodles about relationships and filmmaking — "Oki’s Movie," in particular — and it wisely doesn’t take too big a bite.
  24. The Autopsy of Jane Doe
    Cox and Hirsch are both accomplished actors with an easy, believable chemistry, and Cox in particular has the gravitas to really sell some of the more grotesque plot twists.
  25. Cocoon
    The first half of Cocoon is easier to stomach, as a group of septua- and octogenarians steal away to a private pool that becomes the Fountain Of Youth. The scenes of revitalized St. Petersburg retirees aerobicizing and breakdancing do have a genuine sweetness, especially with the roles filled out by a cast of beloved Hollywood old-timers.
  26. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    Most of the content of this film is wheel-spinning or conscious setup for the final installment, and that feels apparent at every melodramatic moment.
  27. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    For a lot of Marvel fans, it will be more than enough. For the more superhero skeptical, it offers a helpful example of how simply skipping the origin stuff on the fourth try doesn’t automatically confer a sense of dramatic urgency or comic-book wonder.
  28. Asylum
    Asylum was written by Robert Bloch, the author of the original novel Psycho, and produced by the U.K.’s Amicus Productions, which was responsible for a series of horror anthologies during the ’60s and ’70s. Asylum remains, by far, their finest offering, in part because of its pitch-perfect gothic mood, and in part because its stories present varied perspectives on the depths of obsessive madness.
  29. Aristide and the Endless Revolution
    There's enough mystery and agony here for an engaging documentary, but Rossier fails to produce one, largely because he doesn't approach the material in the spirit of true inquiry.
  30. The Lovers and the Despot
    Unfortunately, this bland, incurious oral history focuses exclusively on what’s admittedly the most superficially fascinating chapter of their lives: the eight years they spent making movies together in North Korea, after Kim Jong-il had them kidnapped.
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