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. 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Clockwatchers
    The film's message, that it's impossible to trust in an environment that does not reward loyalty, is as dark as the message sent by the far more acidic In The Company Of Men. Though Clockwatchers doesn't feature the flashy language of that brutal film, it still reveals a similarly astute assessment of modern inter-office politics and workplace alienation.
  3. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    It's as notable for what it isn't as for what it is, but in a field full of loud, obnoxious fare, its easygoing affability qualifies as a welcome change of pace.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Innkeepers
    The two amateur ghost-hunters hope to document evidence of the spirit of Madeline O'Malley in their last days of employment, though they get far more than they bargained for when she starts actually showing up.
  5. Sister Helen
    An unforgettable tribute to a remarkable life, Sister Helen is inspirational in a way a film about a more conventionally pious religious figure could never be. Travis seems to be the antithesis of a cardboard saint.
  6. Northfork
    With their third film, the Polish brothers find their authorial voice, resulting in a lyrical work whose free-floating Lynchian weirdness coalesces into an unexpectedly touching movie.
  7. One Hour Photo
    Has a clean, antiseptic chilliness reminiscent of a Kubrick film. But too often, the director's stark visuals underline the naked simplicity of his story and make his picture of the suburbs seem hopelessly generic.
  8. Father and Son
    Less a story than a situation, the film contends with a difficult transitional period in the lives of its title characters, who face the growing necessity of getting some distance from each other.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
    Adds up to another prefab youth-culture event and a mediocre movie.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Confess, Fletch
    As a return of a big-screen favorite, it’s perhaps a bit too slipshod for its own good, lacking the fun chase scenes and romantic interludes that helped make the first film such a beloved favorite.
  11. Quartet
    Quartet falls into the common actor-turned-director trap of valuing the performances of fellow actors over all other aesthetic concerns.
  12. Prometheus
    Though Prometheus follows "Alien's" story beats, it's a looser and less satisfying story, more intellectual than visceral, and not fully satisfying on either level. But in part, that's because it's trying to do so much more.
  13. Orgasm Inc.
    Broadly speaking, Canner hails from the Michael Moore school of first-person editorializing, but Orgasm Inc. isn't given to vanity or cheap shots.
  14. Paper Clips
    The story they get may be heartfelt and inspiring, but all that powerful sentiment doesn't make it any more complete.
  15. Fast Color
    While the story may be flimsy in places, the performances are anything but.
  16. Doing Time, Doing Vipassana
    The film is as low-key and internal as the meditation it touts, and nearly as uplifting.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Goon
    Where George Roy Hill's "Slap Shot," the former reigning champ of the narrow hockey-film canon, descends into anticlimactic late-game zaniness, Goon fully commits to its theme of violence for violence's sake. It's "Paper Lion" by way of Sam Peckinpah.
  18. Mimosas
    Perhaps Mimosas is nothing more than a high-minded (but very affectionate) paean to naïveté, an incomplete adventure that eschews both sophistication and interpretation.
  19. Princesas
    It's well-acted and strikingly shot, and its depiction of contemporary Spanish squalor is hard to forget, but it never quite reconciles its high-drama situations with its low-key approach. It whispers when it really wants to shout.
  20. Always Be My Maybe
    Rom-coms have the tricky task of straddling the “rom” and the “com” part, with a lot of star-steered vehicles leaning toward the former. Always Be My Maybe thankfully focuses on the latter; there are a lot of laughs packed into its friendship-becomes-something-more story.
  21. The Lost Bus
    Without that grandeur—that Hollywood-sheen take on storybook resilience—the film’s uneven application of sad-sack strife might extinguish McConaughey’s guiding performance. But Greengrass’ throwback disaster-movie efforts, plus a healthy fury induced by our harmful ecological footprint, keeps feeding this fire.
  22. The Party
    Veteran slapstick fans may get a kick out of the free-form antics, and the party's chaotic ending is suitably memorable, but empathetic viewers are likely to be as uncomfortable with Sellers' improv as the partygoers he leads into havoc.
  23. Teenage
    Like adolescence itself, Teenage is educational, scattered, and over much too quickly.
  24. The Patience Stone
    There’s only so much anyone can do with a conceit that amounts to a movie-length speech delivered to a coma patient.
  25. Renoir
    Ace cinematographer Mark Ping Bing Lee (In The Mood For Love) does a superb job of creating an Impressionist look, especially when shooting exteriors, but the film’s loveliness is skin-deep.
  26. The Other Lamb
    Set in some indeterminate time and place rarely betrayed by modern technology or dress, The Other Lamb mostly operates in the realm of allegory.
  27. Big Bad Wolves
    Believe it or not, some of this mayhem—muscularly orchestrated by directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, who made 2010’s "Rabies" — does provoke laughter.
  28. The Pursuit of Happyness
    The Pursuit Of Happyness represents a belated and calculated attempt to scrape off the glossy movie-star veneer and connect with the everyday struggles of living hand-to-mouth in the big city, but it's too late. Watching his (Smith's) performance here is a little like imagining an American version of "Rosetta" starring Julia Roberts.
  29. In Praise of Love
    Its gloomy speculations on the ephemeral nature of art are paradoxically not easily forgotten, and Godard's daring again pays off, or at least comes close enough to get credit for trying.
  30. Eight Below
    Longtime Steven Spielberg collaborator Frank Marshall is smart enough to know his core audience of kiddies came to see the dogs, who take center stage in many of the film's best sequences, especially a jolting leopard-seal attack that's as terrifying as anything in "Jurassic Park."
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