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. Tumbledown
    That Tumbledown sort of works in spite of all its clichés is a testament to the gifts of its two lead actors.
  2. The Yes Men Are Revolting
    In a way, their continued ability to prank government agencies and the media speaks to how little they’ve achieved over the years, which becomes this third film’s subject.
  3. Alléluia
    Was there a pressing need for yet another rendition of this story? Should it come around again (and it likely will), a unique perspective on the events would be welcome.
  4. Listen to Me Marlon
    Listen To Me Marlon suffers from an atrocious score that frequently sounds like it belongs in a useless Oscar montage, and it doesn’t reveal much about Brando that cinephiles don’t already know. But the man himself is endlessly fascinating, so it’s hard to fault a movie that ditches anything extraneous (especially talking-head testimonials) in order to let him tell his own story in his own words.
  5. Advantageous
    As in a lot of good sci-fi, the movie is set in a particular world, but driven by the characters that inhabit it.
  6. The New Girlfriend
    The real problem is that Ozon can’t quite decide whether he’s making the crowd-pleasing tale of a cross-dresser’s empowerment or the thornier, more compelling tale of a woman who tries to recreate her dead best friend, "Vertigo"-style (and then sleep with her).
  7. Stations of the Cross
    Formally, Stations Of The Cross is a rigorous achievement; there’s a purity, cinematic if not spiritual, to the way Brüggemann carefully composes each static shot, as though they all really were paintings to be arranged in succession along a line of pews. It’s less successful on a dramatic level.
  8. Call Me Lucky
    Goldthwait stays behind the camera, but his long personal history with Crimmins provides him with access that no other filmmaker would likely have been able to get, given how ferociously the man guards his privacy.
  9. A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    Beyond treating this story like a potboiler, Deraspe does her best to make A Gay Girl In Damascus cinematic. She alternates nicely framed and photographed interviews with some fairly expressive dramatic reenactments. Some of these are pretty powerful.
  10. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
    There is visual wit in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and some invention, too.
  11. The Second Mother
    There’s a rah-rah element to The Second Mother that undermines its sociological ambition.
  12. Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One
    Fighting misery means having fun, which is what filmmaking is supposed to be, and, despite its lengths and scope, Arabian Nights always feels handmade.
  13. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    Fast-paced, frequently funny, and consistently entertaining.
  14. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    Bad Boys: Ride Or Die has clearly glommed onto a more Fast & Furious sensibility in its middle age, albeit with hard-R violence and swears. It’s equally calculated and sweet (well, maybe somewhat more calculated) that Smith and Lawrence no longer assume they can get away with Bad Boys II-level nastiness.
  15. Welcome to Leith
    A solid documentary feeling of “you are there” isn’t always a substitute for “…but here’s what happened when you left, and here’s what it all meant.”
  16. A Bigger Splash
    The cast is uniformly strong, and willing to go wherever Guadagnino takes them, in however little clothing he deems necessary; the ensemble-wide equal-opportunity nudity is almost frequent enough to qualify as confrontational.
  17. Eye in the Sky
    Like Brian De Palma’s underrated "Redacted," this is a film that doesn’t want to be easily pegged, either in terms of its politics or generic allegiances. Such ambiguity is a virtue, but for all his technical facility, Hood doesn’t really have the finesse of a great, fearless satirist.
  18. Florence Foster Jenkins
    Hugh Grant’s face is perpetually locked in a concerned grimace as Bayfield, whose mind always seems to be elsewhere when he’s not doting on his wife.
  19. Born to be Blue
    While there isn’t much to distinguish Born To Be Blue’s dramatic stakes from any number of stories about self-destructive, self-centered artists (or “movies about jazz musicians,” as they’re more commonly known), the film is given a spark of life by the inspired casting of Ethan Hawke.
  20. Labyrinth of Lies
    A lot more thought-provoking on issues of collective memory (or lack thereof) than the typical prestige picture, but it does falter dramatically in its later stretches.
  21. The Childhood of a Leader
    If only for a few minutes, The Childhood Of A Leader becomes its own film, a tour of the printing presses, paternoster elevators, and mazes of power that ends with a convulsive blur of bodies crowding in a public square. A viewer can’t help but think, “What took so long?”
  22. Neon Bull
    Writer-director Gabriel Mascaro doesn’t really have a story to tell about these folks, but he does have a wealth of almost documentary-style detail to share, plus style to burn, and that’s nearly enough.
  23. Microbe and Gasoline
    Cutesy title notwithstanding, Microbe And Gasoline stands as one of director Michel Gondry’s most restrained works.
  24. Extraordinary Tales
    Each of the shorts has a markedly different visual approach, and they feel radically distinct in terms of pacing and editing as well. In spite of the common source material and tone of oppressive psychological horror, these shorts feel like they could be the work of five different people.
  25. Miles Ahead
    So give Don Cheadle credit for innovation, at least: His Miles Davis biopic (which he directed, co-wrote, and stars in), Miles Ahead, tackles the problem head-on… by inventing cinematic things for Davis to do when he’s not playing music, including ludicrous car chases and gunfights.
  26. The Armor of Light
    The main reason to see The Armor Of Light is to spend more time with Schenck, and to get a sense of how deeply he’s thought about all of this.
  27. The Dark Horse
    The Dark Horse may not entirely work as a film, but it has an unexpected amount of gritty idiosyncrasy on its side.
  28. The Huntsman: Winter's War
    It’s all pretty silly, but it compensates for a lack of emotional weight with star power.
  29. Ma
    The result is decidedly uneven, but the film’s sheer creative ambition is invigorating.
  30. Viva
    Perugorría is such a terrific, soulful actor that he makes Viva’s predictable dramatic trajectory — disapproving dad slowly grows to accept his child’s differences, while the kid gradually learns to forgive his father’s lifelong absence — seem a bit less moldy.
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