The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,442 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: 5,583 out of 10442
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10442
  3. Negative: 1,113 out of 10442
10442 movie reviews
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  1. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    Comparisons to "Taxi Driver" are unavoidable and mostly unflattering to Mueller's film, but Assassination engages more directly with the political fissures of the time, which deeply divided the nation.
  2. King of California
    With Douglas, the film's shambling charms slowly catch hold, thanks mainly to his personal magnetism.
  3. Damsel
    With Damsel, the Zellners have made a kind of artisanal thrift-shop approximation of a Western.
  4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    A well-chosen cast helps make the wild notions convincing, and director Chris Columbus presents it all in an attractive, thoroughly watchable package. But try imagining a universe in which the Harry Potter series existed only in film form.
  5. Master Gardener
    While it doesn’t fare well in comparison, Master Gardener still has enough unique characteristics and performances to stand out as a fine film. It’s just the least successful in this particular trilogy.
  6. 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.
  7. Weekend of a Champion
    All in all, the original 1972 version of Weekend Of A Champion, which ran a fleet 80 minutes,was probably a thorough if minor pleasure. Unfortunately, that’s not the version now being released. Polanski says that he felt the need to re-edit the picture in order to make its rhythm more palatable to a modern audience.
  8. The Ones Below
    The Ones Below is a thriller that exasperates more than it thrills.
  9. Inside Moves
    As an attempt to cash in on the inspirational-underdog-sports-movie model popularized a few years earlier by Rocky, Inside Moves is rather transparent: Morse’s Jerry Maxwell is an even longer shot for stardom than the Italian Stallion. But what’s affecting here is the relationship between Jerry and Roary (John Savage), who is the film’s true protagonist.
  10. Borg vs. McEnroe
    Pity that Metz exhibits so little interest in delineating the play styles of the players, in capturing what made them the best. Borg Vs. McEnroe all but tells us that we’re seeing the greatest tennis match of all time. But it doesn’t show us.
  11. The 11th Hour
    The 11th Hour is slick and passionate, but neither persuasive nor helpful; it's a headache of a film directed like an Errol Morris project, but with half the substance. It's clearly preaching to the choir, but even they may find it off-key.
  12. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
    Offers a concise summary of Burroughs' life and works. Maybe too concise. At a mere 88 minutes, it feels a bit glancing. But as an introduction or refresher course, it gets the job done.
  13. Israel: A Home Movie
    Israel’s most interesting — and revealing — footage tends to be the most candid: beach-goers in the ’30s, scenes from family gatherings and celebrations, a coke-fueled celebrity wedding in the ’70s. The commentary gimmick justifies itself in these stretches.
  14. Unsane
    Most of the thrills here come from watching one of our canniest directors perform rattling wheelchair dollies on a waxed hospital floor while over-punctuating video-noisy close-ups and cheesy music cues.
  15. Bullet Train Explosion
    Despite remaking much of that film (Taisei Iwasaki and Yuma Yamaguchi’s tense score being one of the most successful throwbacks), Bullet Train Explosion abandons the complicating human factors that gave the original its soul. It makes the same mistake as so many modern blockbusters: confusing bigger, louder, and simpler with better.
  16. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
    In trying to recapture the spirit of classic '30s screwball comedies, the film too often mistakes manic energy for wit, and it ends on a note of gloppy sentimentality that wouldn't have held water in Old Hollywood.
  17. Undertow
    Undertow may prove the least immediately satisfying of Green's films, but it remains an achievement, emotionally rich and rife with biblical and mythic undertones.
  18. Spring Breakers
    The overall effect is enervating, like a party that grinds on after most of the attendees have either left or passed out. And much like "Kids," the enfant terrible’s breakthrough screenplay, Korine’s film has an unintended moral hysteria, like a warning to parents of what their good girls are doing when they aren’t looking. The message: Keep them locked up. In their bikinis, if necessary.
  19. Stowaway
    The film is strongest when simply exploring the terrible notion of triage among the healthy, with everyone involved fully aware of which individual will be deemed the most expendable.
  20. The Cat's Meow
    Faithfully recreates a bygone era of larger-than-life filmmakers and stars.
  21. Happy Times
    Happy Times doesn't buck the clichés so much as infuse them with feeling, playing off the pleasant, unforced rhythm of two characters who pine for simple companionship.
  22. Open Water
    Writer-director Chris Kentis has dreamed up an ingenious premise, but he botches its execution. Every once in a while, the film stumbles upon a twist that ratchets up the tension, but then haphazardly discards it.
  23. Persons of Interest
    The absence of style can be numbing, but it serves a purpose, positioning the documentary as a public record, not a work of art. As such, the film is eye-opening.
  24. Luz
    In a cinematic landscape where retro throwbacks are predictably bundled around the same small set of nostalgia-friendly filmmakers (we all love Carpenter, but come on), it’s positively invigorating to see a loving tribute to a director’s influences that’s also aggressively avant-garde.
  25. Rio
    Rio could use fresher ingredients and more spice.
  26. The Great Buck Howard
    Buck Howard has a nice feel for its tacky, second-rate show-business milieu--a rinky-dink world of telethons, small towns starved for entertainment, and entertainers whose careers have been in freefall since Hollywood Squares went off the air.
  27. Triangle of Sadness
    It’s a stellar film that hits a rare sweet spot as both mainstream, accessible entertainment, and also an undeniably incisive piece of cultural commentary. And best of all, it will keep you on your toes until the sensational final moment of its breezy drift.
  28. Let Him Go
    Writer-director Thomas Bezucha, adapting a novel by Larry Watson, shows remarkable patience in developing this low-key rescue mission — or maybe he just assumes that he’s courting an older audience who won’t need much prompting to side with Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, but will enjoy extra time with them all the same.
  29. Who's That Knocking at My Door?
    The film never jells, but it's the Rosetta Stone for Scorsese's later work.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Batkid Begins
    Miles treats this whole experience with an affectingly genuine innocence—something that the filmmakers, and many of the participants, seem to think can be bottled and sold as a soul-cleansing palliative.
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