The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Frozen II
    Frozen II is just an echo, drawing prospective fans in without finding many new notes to hit.
  2. Glass
    For better and worse, it’s unmistakably a Shyamalan movie, with all the clunky plotting and robust, idiosyncratic staging that generally implies.
  3. Vincent N Roxxy
    Vincent N Roxxy, which suffers from many of the same shortcomings that plagued tough-talking Tarantino homages in the late ’90s but distinguishes itself with a satisfying climax.
  4. Better Off Dead...
    What it has in its favor is affability—some owed to Cusack’s gawky young charisma, some to Holland’s goofy tone and lightly surreal sense of humor, and still more to a cast where even the villains are mostly likeable...To paraphrase the opening narration in The Big Lebowski, Better Off Dead is the movie for its time and place. It fits right in there.
  5. Wonderstruck
    For all of the time-warp elegance, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Haynes has authored more of an exercise than a movie: a lovingly assembled flashback pastiche whose emotional core remains oddly theoretical.
  6. Let the Sunshine In
    Perhaps it’s best to approach Let The Sunshine In as a talky palate-cleanser before Denis’ next big genre experiment, the forthcoming sci-fi movie "High Life." In space, one hopes, nobody can hear you blather.
  7. Apostle
    The film introduces interesting themes as though they’ll build to something, only to let them spill out like so much viscera from an especially nasty wound.
  8. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
    It’s often more strikingly funny-looking than laugh-out-loud funny.
  9. The Villainess
    The Villainess delivers all the overstuffed thrills we’ve come to expect from Korean action cinema. But it also strains under the weight of those expectations.
  10. The Beach Bum
    The Beach Bum, by turn, seems to exist in the hazy headspace of its protagonist, a kindred spirit in less-than-lofty, party-till-you-puke ambition. But there’s a bummer relevance lurking in his fantasy of a rich idiot who does whatever he wants and faces no consequences for his actions.
  11. Dawson City: Frozen Time
    It’s much more involving as a work of pure and hypnotic collage than as a researched narrative of facts, dates, and names.
  12. Killing Ground
    Killing Ground comes down to what you want to experience in a horror movie. Granted, all this elaborately constructed savagery is upsetting, so the film succeeds on that level. But without suspense to propel it forward, and without a compelling backstory to deepen the intrigue, upset is all we’ve got.
  13. Tag
    There’s something mildly depressing about viewing petty gamesmanship as the engine that fuels and sustains male friendship. But funny is funny, and Tag gets by, appropriately enough, on the personalities of its stars.
  14. Gemini Man
    One can smirk at the movie’s fuzzy philosophies and primordial clichés and still appreciate the delivery of Lee’s action scenes.
  15. Joe Kidd
    Not particularly complicated, and sometimes as confused as it is concise, 1972’s Joe Kidd is nonetheless a lean, reasonably satisfying slice of Clint Eastwood outlaw badassery.
  16. Chaos Walking
    As the film begins to reveal its easily guessed secrets, it also doubles as a resonant tale of misogyny in the face of exposure: an allegory about how male rage grows directly out of male insecurity and is fortified by religious zealotry. Miss those themes announced like thoughts put into words, and there’s still the way Liman and his writers play their Philip K. Dick-worthy concept for screwball comedy and suspense.
  17. Air Doll (2009)
    The film is a little too cute and scattershot to achieve real profundity, with the doll-woman too often coming across like a playfully erotic version of Being There’s Chance the Gardener, defined entirely by her absence of guile.
  18. All the Money in the World
    All The Money In The World is uneven prestige pulp: a kidnapping drama that also fancies itself a study of how money corrupts relationships and short-circuits compassion.
  19. Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
    The story is absolutely fascinating, even if the filmmaking isn’t.
  20. Brad's Status
    With Brad’s Status, Mike White (best known for writing School Of Rock and creating Enlightened) has chosen an alternate route: Make the movie you want to, but sheepishly apologize for its existence — not via interviews or post-screening Q&As, but within the context of the film itself.
  21. Den of Thieves
    It’s derivative and drowning in stagnant machismo, but stark enough to work.
  22. Game Night
    This tame but fitfully funny goof on suspense cinema at least assembles an agreeable guest list.... As with any real game night, the company is more important than the game.
  23. 9 to 5
    The movie is surprisingly smart about the politics of the glass ceiling, which keeps Tomlin in a pink-collar supervisor position while every man she trains gets promoted past her. The way Coleman asserts his masculinity with phrases like "cut the balls off the competition," and the way our heroic trio works together to sculpt a worker's paradise—complete with flex-time and day-care facilities—serves as an effective summary of the era's hot-button issues.
  24. The Wraith
    The Wraith’s plot is predictable and its genre nods skimpy (primarily limited to The Mystery Racer’s ability to resurrect himself after crashes), but Marvin directs with real energy and wit.
  25. The Force
    To his credit, director Peter Nicks (The Waiting Room) accepts the dispiriting trajectory that this initially hopeful film ultimately takes—there’s no dissembling here. Trouble is, most of the ugly stuff happens off-camera, necessitating a secondhand second half that amounts to an embarrassed “Oops.”
  26. Rememory
    Heading a troupe of excellent actors bringing their A games to this decidedly B-movie material, Dinklage and his fellow performers are a pleasure to watch selling the hell out of this sci-fi-tinged whodunit.
  27. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
    The film picks up when it gets down to shot-by-shot analysis, allowing editors and other interviewees to break down one of the most famous sequences in movie history.
  28. Everybody Knows
    Everybody Knows never quite makes the leap from engrossing to exciting. Even the story’s one big plot twist is obvious enough that many will guess it well in advance, and it doesn’t reverberate backward the way that long-buried secrets usually do in Farhadi’s work.
  29. Jungle
    The fundamental intensity of Ghinsberg’s story is hard to totally squander. When it doesn’t give in to the desire to be a more traditional crowd-pleaser, Jungle provides a graphic and unvarnished account of a genuinely incredible story.
  30. One of Us
    The film does little to explain the history behind the dynamic between their men and women, which is based, it seems, at least partly on a blinding fear of lust.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »