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. Newlyweeds
    At times, it’s surprisingly compelling, thanks to King’s surefooted direction of actors and well-honed formal sense; while the movie’s execution never quite makes up for its conception, it does elevate it above, well, just being the sort of movie that would be called Newlyweeds.
  2. The Duchess
    Thoroughly populist and middlebrow, full of all the high wigs, thick powder, perfect diction, and straightforward dialogue that define bodice-ripping prestige pictures about silently suffering souls.
  3. The Source Family
    Watching the movie is like riffling through an author’s index cards: It’s all detail and no big picture.
  4. New Order
    If nothing else, New Order demonstrates that the line that separates festival-lauded arthouse films from crass exploitation fare can be very thin indeed.
  5. Shooting Stars
    Some parts of LeBron’s professional career are told in truncated form with a few figures left out or combined for cinematic purposes, but that’s it. And the film is better for focusing on relationships rather than on the easy highs of watching fast breaks and slam dunks.
  6. Beautiful Boy
    For as much as Van Groeningen may have pulled from both of his mirrored source materials, for as deep as Chalamet digs into his character’s skirmish with own urges, Beautiful Boy holds us outside of his struggle.
  7. Torremolinos 73
    Though never unpleasant, thanks largely to Cámara and Peña's warmly convincing performances, Torremolinos 73 only really takes off when it deals with the filmmaking process.
  8. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is strangely paced and barely comprehensible, plot-wise, but it is aesthetically esoteric in a way that used to be synonymous with Tim Burton’s filmmaking, alive and real.
  9. Big Eyes
    Big Eyes has plenty of surface pleasures, but there was reason to expect more than that from it.
  10. Postmen in the Mountains
    Huo never quite finds the filmic vocabulary to tilt the film toward greatness-and the mawkish synth score does little to help-but Postmen In The Mountains ultimately succeeds.
  11. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
    The film bounces along on cheap but entertaining Mel Brooks-worthy audio and visual gags, like the live-chicken-throwing fight, or the sequence where the camera discreetly pans away from Dujardin and a partner making out on his hotel bed--only to focus on a full-length mirror in which they're still fully visible.
  12. Black Sea
    Macdonald exhibits a rewarding interest in the mechanics of running a sub—the complicated series of manual-labor tasks and coordinated analog processes required to keep one of these mighty boats afloat. It’s a submarine movie that cares how submarines work.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Red White & Royal Blue
    Red, White & Royal Blue, ultimately, isn’t revolutionary. It’s more traditional than not—which means, thankfully, that it’s still a lot of fun.
  14. Curious George
    What makes Curious George such an enduring figure is that he embodies much of what's wonderful about childhood.
  15. Klown
    Whenever Klown hits, it's hysterical.
  16. Careful
    Although longer and more complex than Gimli, thanks to a fine script by Maddin and George Toles, Careful is equally claustrophobic. The director's continued use of minimal lighting, deliberately phony-looking studio sets, and sterile overdubs perpetuates a feeling of blatant manufacture which undercuts any disturbing themes.
  17. Kong: Skull Island
    Skull Island has a lot of globe-trotting fun assembling its team of expendables.
  18. Hush!
    Hush! takes an excessive, saga-like running time to reach its conclusion, but Hashiguchi frequently makes the trudge worthwhile, particularly when he finds the energy to match his three leads' charming performances.
  19. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    Myers returns as his menagerie of repulsive characters, but this time, his frantic mugging feels more like an insipid parlor trick than ever.
  20. Antwone Fisher
    Directed without a shred of imagination by Denzel Washington -- Antwone Fisher masks a behind-the-scenes story that's far more inspiring than the phony uplift that makes it onto the screen.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American History X
    There may be much to like about his movie, but it's all been done before to more challenging degrees of moral ambiguity. That's a pretty fatal flaw.
  22. True Legend
    True Legend's heart is in the right place. It's just the body that's weary.
  23. Veronica Mars
    For the most part, Veronica Mars plays like a very solid episode of the series, the kind unlikely to rank among fan favorites. It could, however, serve as fine fuel for a sequel, one that wouldn’t find Veronica resisting — for half of her time on screen — the urge to do what she does best. Keep your hearts (and wallets) open, marshmallows.
  24. Conversations with Other Women
    Conversations is well-calculated and well-ordered, and it manages an equilibrium that a science lab would envy.
  25. Emelie
    The rest of Emelie doesn’t live up to its peaks, through no fault of star Sarah Bolger, who makes a memorable villain.
  26. The Yellow Handkerchief
    It’s nice to see a film unafraid to be quiet and sensitive, but one good gust of coastal breeze would blow this one away.
  27. Everybody's Talking About Jamie
    Whenever the movie seems prepared to dig a little deeper, it throws another self-actualization party in its own honor.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
    Emmy-nominated screenplay writer Chuck Hayward (Dear White People, Ted Lesso) and director Wade Allain-Marcus (Grown-ish, Insecure) bring some impressive cultural and emotional nuances to the story.
  29. On a Clear Day
    Against all reason, this workingman's journey across the sea winds up seeming every bit as inspirational as the filmmakers intended, entirely because Mullan's grit validates every cornpone emotion. With a lesser actor, the movie would sink like a stone.
  30. Harold and Maude
    In the end, Harold And Maude metes out these life lessons directly and without much ambiguity, yet that does little to diminish its power.
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