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. Frozen II
    Frozen II is just an echo, drawing prospective fans in without finding many new notes to hit.
  2. Mother and Child
    Garcia shoots Mother And Child with minimal flare, an approach that keeps the focus squarely on the cast, whose moving work helps pave over some of the narrative’s lumpier patches.
  3. Thelma the Unicorn
    Somewhere, buried under all that paint and glitter, there’s a lesson to take away from Thelma The Unicorn, but it’s nothing new.
  4. The Beautiful Country
    A gorgeous film, framed with an eye that makes every country seem beautiful in one way or another. It's probably fitting that the human element seems fragile and flat by comparison, but the contrast leaves Beautiful Country fairly bland.
  5. Gretel & Hansel
    If one of the boundaries being tested in this film is viewers’ patience, the reward for—to use a refrain repeated throughout the film—“trusting the darkness” is well worth the commitment.
  6. Goat
    For once, the frat boys are depicted not as lovable dolts or harmless pranksters, but as sadistic bullies. Likewise, their excessive initiation rites are played not for lowbrow comedy, but for something closer to horror. This is basically the anti-"Animal House."
  7. MaXXXine
    For all these films’ paeans to grime and sleaze, they’re controlled imitations rather than the uninhibited real thing.
  8. Frailty
    When the twists arrive, they feel like much of the film: creepy and cliché-free, but still terribly wrong.
  9. 8 Women
    Intoxicates and overwhelms at the same time, giving off so much pleasure in a small space that the effect can be suffocating.
  10. Herod's Law
    The angrier the film gets, the less funny it becomes, squelched by heavy-handed polemics, a maddeningly repetitive musical score, and a running time that drags its overriding joke into the ground.
  11. One Swallow Brought Spring
    Carion and his gifted leads never take the easy way out. Instead, they let the characters get acquainted against the slow change of the seasons, taking their relationship along unexpected turns.
  12. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    After a sentimental opening sequence, he (Kang) scarcely lets the film pause to breathe, which dulls its effectiveness.
  13. Pennies from Heaven
    There's something disconcerting and strained about plastic smiles and speed-fueled peppiness of dancers in old musicals, a forced bonhomie that's borderline creepy. Pennies brilliantly exploits that blatantly artificial pep in queasy, disquieting ways.
  14. Sleeping with Other People
    The small miracle of Leslye Headland’s second film as writer-director is not that it sidesteps its influences or shuns its genre. It’s that it somehow makes the lusty undercurrents of its male/female friendship unironically romantic and, at times, unapologetically sexy.
  15. Dreams with Sharp Teeth
    All told, Ellison is a fascinating person to spend 96 minutes with. But you probably shouldn't risk that 97th.
  16. Wanted
    Wanted is a queasily unapologetic power fantasy about becoming a better person through violence.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Enola Holmes 2
    The true joy of both Enola Holmes films is in the actors’ performances and the humanity they bring to the characters.
  18. Adoration
    At a minimum, his new film, Adoration, marks a welcome return to the Egoyan of old, the one who could spin seductive mysteries out of disassembled parts and show how images can be manipulated into comforting lies.
  19. Gaia
    Even when the story takes on biblical overtones, the melodrama never blossoms. And in terms of suspense, Gaia doesn’t so much tighten the screws as endlessly turn them in the wrong direction.
  20. JCVD
    A canny piece of autobiography that looks at the man behind the legend and the legend behind the man.
  21. Cop Land
    Cop Land emerges as a first-rate morality play in the form of an effective, if occasionally unwieldy, crime drama.
  22. Captain Marvel
    It’s comparatively short and fast-paced by modern standards. Unfortunately, it also has a lackluster plot; bog-standard chase scenes and pew-pewing space ships; a notable shortage of interesting characterizations; and a fight scene set to No Doubt’s “Just A Girl” that is nowhere as awesome or as silly as it should be.
  23. Ghosts of Cité Soleil
    If nothing else, Leth shows how wrung-out and careless everyone gets amid constant bloodshed. "We don't need peace," one says. "We need school for our kids. Food. Sleep."
  24. Dolphin Tale
    Dolphin Tale is as casual as a pleasant afternoon nap and about as substantive.
  25. A Better Life
    A Better Life leans too heavily on sad music, broad symbols, and weighty speeches to tell its story; it's more effective when it lets images speak in place of words.
  26. The Notorious Bettie Page
    Mol nails it, in a performance that should earn her a comeback on a Heath Ledger-like scale.
  27. Rental Family
    Fraser walks through this aggressively sappy drama with the aura of simple goodness that has served him well. But such concentrated radiance starts to feel like a denial of the painful reality Rental Family ignores. The movie wants to give you a hug, but you may be tempted to slap it across the face.
  28. Unstoppable
    It’s commendable to avoid further clichés with regard to the portrayal of physical difference in film, but Unstoppable fails to pin down what exactly should take their place.
  29. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
    Most of the film isn't as willing to reach out to viewers, and most won't be willing to do all the work in order to connect with it.
  30. undertone
    As a theatrical experience, it’s lots of fun, making clever use of proven techniques that build tension before releasing it with exploding light bulbs and ghostly figures appearing in the corner of the frame.
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