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. Muppets Most Wanted
    The Muppets are creatures of indulgence, and their sense of humor is one of excess. Muppets Most Wanted is a mess of a movie, but anything tidier would be a poor fit.
  2. Inescapable
    It’s a deeply confused movie, sometimes productively so.
  3. She's All That
    You have to give She's All That points for unironically staying true to its genre in its purest form, one Kevin Williamson-like bit of dialogue aside.
  4. I'm So Excited
    After establishing a jaunty tone with its candy-colored, Saul Bass–style opening credits, the film racks up a high strain-to-laugh ratio; there’s a sense Almodóvar can’t quite keep track of all his gags.
  5. Future Weather
    First-time writer-director Jenny Deller has assembled a superb cast, with Madigan in particular making the most of her character’s no-nonsense flintiness.
  6. Kiss of the Damned
    Like a lot of the retro-horror films that have popped up on the art-house and festival circuits over the past several years, Xan Cassavetes’ Kiss Of The Damned is more about mood and texture than plot.
  7. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    This might be the best week for The Reluctant Fundamentalist to open or the worst, but the timing doesn’t matter when the powder is damp.
  8. No Place on Earth
    This story isn’t untold, just largely unknown. It’s a minor point, perhaps, but a sticky one, a needless elision that blurs the all-important question of how memories, and history, must be recounted to endure. One telling is not enough.
  9. Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey
    It’s hard not to feel that there’s something missing from Don’t Stop Believin’, though. The movie doesn’t necessarily need to be dark, but Diaz barely touches on the downside of the Internet age — such as the nasty messages Pineda received from racist Journey fans — or how it feels to sing someone else’s words in someone else’s voice, night after night.
  10. The Silence
    From moment to moment, The Silence can feel a bit pokey, as it divides its attention among a host of characters and never builds up much urgency about the fate of the second victim, whose body hasn’t been found.
  11. The Sapphires
    The emotions of soul music are irresistibly universal. The same is true of soul-music clichés. Based on a true story, The Sapphires tells the tale of four ambitious young Aboriginal girls from Australia who come of age performing before American serviceman in 1968 Vietnam. And yet the film is afflicted by a curious lack of cultural specificity.
  12. Fruitvale Station
    Putting a human face on a public tragedy that already had a human face, Fruitvale Station plays like an uncomplicated eulogy, with little more to say on its subject than “what a shame this bad thing happened.”
  13. 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.
  14. Unfinished Song
    Unfinished Song is basically two movies inelegantly stuffed into one. Both are about aging — its setbacks and second chances — but only one of them feels like an honest exploration of the topic. The better half of the film is a kinder, gentler cousin to 2012’s "Amour."
  15. Haute Cuisine
    Narrowness of focus keeps the movie from becoming bloated with self-importance, but it also leaves it feeling a little inconsequential.
  16. What Maisie Knew
    If the idea is for the audience to feel similarly yanked around, then What Maisie Knew succeeds wildly, but it fails to bring much insight to what essentially amounts to a massive parental guilt trip.
  17. Philip Roth: Unmasked
    Though it might be unreasonable to expect Karel and Manera to succeed where others have failed, simply punting on the amount of autobiography in Roth’s novels seems like a cheat. Sticking to what’s on the page pays off, especially with regard to Roth’s undervalued late novels, but also means he has them just where he wants them.
  18. Interstellar
    It is an episodic, chunky film of over-explicated ideas and speculative set pieces.
  19. Byzantium
    With her piercing baby blues that never seem to settle on a subject, even when she’s locked in conversation with it, Ronan seems just… off enough to play a vampiric vixen.
  20. Eden
    For as studiously as Griffiths avoids cheap exploitation, the film has an overall structure that isn’t as far removed from a Roger Corman “women in prison” movie as it appears.
  21. Viola
    It’s a pleasant, negligible wisp of a movie, notable mostly for what it suggests of its director’s potential.
  22. My Brother the Devil
    Director Sally El Hosaini, who also wrote the screenplay, proves better at introducing dilemmas for her characters than at resolving them.
  23. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
    One of the better aspects of Search is that with Spock out of the action, the rest of the crew gets a chance to fill up the vacuum of his absence, and we get a much stronger sense of Kirk, Uhura, Chekov, McCoy, Scotty, and Sulu as a family unit, and not just a bunch of people who work together.
  24. Venus and Serena
    What comes across most strongly is the genuine, overpowering love these two women have for each other, even when they’re in direct competition.
  25. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    Gregory’s wife, Cindy Kleine, is a skilled filmmaker, but she’s no Louis Malle, and her documentary Andre Gregory: Before And After Dinner is nowhere near as elegant as "My Dinner With Andre" or "Vanya On 42nd Street." Mainly, the movie lacks focus.
  26. Finding Dory
    There’s something a little canned about the film’s emotional arc; the strings show more than they used to on Planet Pixar, even with DeGeneres providing empathy by the gallon.
  27. One Direction: This Is Us
    Mostly, however, This Is Us counts on the musicians to supply the personality—a strategy that makes it feel more like an anonymous mash note than a warts-and-all glimpse behind the curtain. Then again, what warts?
  28. Paradise: Love
    For better and for worse—often simultaneously—few movies have been as unflinching about the ugly, heartbreaking ways human beings can mutually exploit one another for fun and/or profit.
  29. Pompeii
    Fortunately, Pompeii’s second half is tailor-made for Anderson’s established skill set, unfolding over a matter of hours, with many scenes set in and under a gladiatorial amphitheatre that recalls the arenas, subterranean tunnels, and cavernous vessels of Anderson’s best movies.
  30. Short Term 12
    At its best, the film conveys a wealth of compelling details that only an insider, or at least someone who’s done extensive and thorough research, would think worthy of singling out.
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