The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,427 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 2.6 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: 5,576 out of 10427
  2. Mixed: 3,741 out of 10427
  3. Negative: 1,110 out of 10427
10427 movie reviews
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  1. How to Survive a Plague
    Drawing on a wealth of footage from inside ACT UP meetings and protests, David France's powerful documentary How To Survive A Plague pays tribute to their courage and relentlessness, but it's even better as a record of the tactics of effective activism.
  2. Head Games
    Head Games is particularly devastating when it shifts from the NFL and NHL, where brutality and headshots are a given, to girls' soccer and under-14 football leagues, where still-developing young necks and skulls make kids perhaps more vulnerable to head trauma than their professional counterparts.
  3. Backwards
    Thomas, credited as writer, producer, and executive producer, is the obvious auteur, orchestrating a star vehicle she lacks the screen presence to anchor.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    About Cherry
    Demanding everyone accept you as you are can be a way of refusing to compromise, and the film's failure to explore this aspect of the lifestyle its portraying is almost as disappointing as moralizing would be.
  5. End of Watch
    Gyllenhaal and Peña's relationship, a sort of heterosexual love affair, is depicted with a sense of tenderness and care that does not extend to the cartoonish villains that dominate the film's lackluster final act.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    The film is also an earnest, big-hearted ode to friends as support and salvation, and to the talismanic quality a favorite song, treasured hang-out, or shared tradition can take on for a teenager.
  7. Trouble with the Curve
    In Trouble With The Curve, Eastwood plays a reminder of an older way of doing things, a professional whose likes the world won't see again once he's gone. The role isn't much of a stretch.
  8. Dredd
    Dredd, a second attempt at making Judge Dredd a movie star, overcorrects, veering in the opposite direction with a dark - literally and otherwise - nearly humorless bit of ultraviolence distinguished largely by a fondness for spurting CGI blood.
  9. 17 Girls
    The insights into girlhood in the opening are coming from the viewpoint of adults, while in a story this strange-but-true, it'd be more helpful to see these kids as they see themselves.
  10. Three Stars
    Three Stars works best as straight-up food-porn.
  11. Resident Evil: Retribution
    At this point, the Resident Evil movie franchise has become a personal playground for husband-and-wife team Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich; every few years, they find another excuse to pit Jovovich's videogame-inspired dark superhero, Alice, against zombies and other gruesome monsters.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Snowman's Land
    Tonally, Snowman's Land feels like a German throwback to a '90s indie, but without the energy-the pacing is languid to the point of aimlessness.
  13. Arbitrage
    Between Gere matching wits with a police detective played by Tim Roth, and Gere having to explain himself to the steely Sarandon, Arbitrage is never dull.
  14. Francine
    Francine is so minimalist that it has to rely almost entirely on Leo for solidity, and it would be a far stronger film if it supported and framed her more effectively.
  15. Liberal Arts
    Liberal Arts has the tony look and feel of a vintage Woody Allen movie, but the sophistication is all surface-level. Radnor will never ascend to Allen's rarified realm, but judging by his forgettable first two features, he could give Ed Burns competition.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Step Up To The Plate
    Step Up To The Plate is as much about the passing along of a legacy as it is about cooking.
  17. Stolen
    He seems to have given up on making art long ago; these days, all he wants to do is entertain, and with Stolen, he succeeds, albeit only on the guilty-pleasure level. Like seemingly the sum of late-period Cage, Stolen is unashamedly cheese, but at least it's cheese of a pungent, flavorful vintage.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    10 Years
    10 Years does nothing noteworthy, but it does it well, thanks to its ensemble cast.
  19. The Master
    It's a feisty, contentious, deliberately misshapen film, designed to challenge and frustrate audiences looking for a clean resolution. Just because it's over doesn't mean it's settled.
  20. Rust and Bone
    Both actors are tremendous - especially Schoenaerts.
  21. The Cold Light of Day
    The Cold Light Of Day is the antithesis of a labor of love; it's a cold, mercenary endeavor that, like the thematically similar Taylor Lautner vehicle "Abduction," diligently ignores the potentially intriguing issues of family and identity its plot raises.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Toys in the Attic
    Toys In The Attic is its own dark creation, filled with imagery reminiscent of Tim Burton in his prime as well as the odd Cold War metaphor.
  23. Keep the Lights On
    Keep The Lights On feels less like a memoir than a collage made from diary scraps, evocative but not prescriptive.
  24. Girl Model
    Girl Model shows that even though some models make big bucks, the global economy remains the same as it ever was: Those with nothing are seduced by the prospect of something, such that they hesitate to complain, lest they end up with less than nothing.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    For Ellen
    The kind of film that rises or falls on the strength of its lead performance, given that its protagonist is in every scene, often alone. It's built around a strong turn by Dano, but one that feels studied and sometimes at odds with the naturalism the film aims for with its grubby settings, loose camerawork, and tendency toward inquisitive close-ups.
  26. Detropia
    The movie's attempt to position Detroit as the canary in the coal mine - there but for the grace of God goes any other city - falls flat, but it isn't a fatal flaw. It might not happen in any city, but for it to happen to one is bad enough.
  27. Hello I Must Be Going
    The film plays like a strenuous tug of war between the inhuman machinery of a wildly misguided plot and the low-key humanism of Melanie Lynskey's warm yet unsentimental performance.
  28. [REC] 3: Genesis
    Where the first two films maintained a breathless tone and found new ground in the zombie genre by linking a physical virus to demonic possession, [REC]3: Genesis runs out of ideas early, and becomes a slogging massacre spiked with callbacks and visual gags.
  29. The Inbetweeners Movie
    Anyone who doesn't already know and care a little about these characters might find the movie a bit thin.
  30. Bachelorette
    While Bachelorette is admirably free of the normal formulas governing movies that revolve around women and wedding dresses, it doesn't offer anything more satisfying in their stead.
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