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. I Sell the Dead
    The movie goes out on a high, but until then, it plays almost like the pilot for a TV series. But it would be a GOOD TV series.
  2. Micmacs
    At its best, Micmacs is a robust, enjoyably lunatic game. It's social commentary by way of a good Looney Tune.
  3. Yomeddine
    The film still feels more like a game of cards with a stacked deck than a story that demanded to be told.
  4. Una
    Una demonstrates that when it comes to the staginess of stage adaptations, the cure can be worse than the disease.
  5. Match
    Drama is driven by conflict, but in this particular case it’s the calm between the storms that captivates.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Supporting Characters
    Supporting Characters tends to meander pleasantly from scene to scene, relying on the testy rapport between its two lead actors.
  7. Plane
    If you buy a ticket for this one, just know there’s no First Class option. But with moderate expectations, you’ll still get to your destination.
  8. Incident at Loch Ness
    Incident is too reverent for its own good. It could use a big blast of Herzog-like madness, but it sticks to the conventional show-business satire's arsenal of clichés.
  9. 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.
  10. Centurion
    Centurion offers little beyond viscera for its own sake, without anything like the bold abstraction of "Valhalla Rising."
  11. The Help
    The whole thing is rigged for crowd-pleasing payoffs - a bit about chocolate pie gets more mileage than a Prius - and those payoffs are about honoring white viewers for not being horrible racists. Kudos to them.
  12. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    Disturbing The Universe doesn’t mix it up enough.
  13. Girls Rock!
    Girls Rock! is cutesy and quick-cut, emphasizing the absurd while trying to keep the audience's interest with animated interludes and footage from corny old industrial films.
  14. Charm City Kings
    Charm City Kings distinguishes itself from similar fare not just through its location and eye-popping bikes but also with the believably imperfect people that populate it.
  15. Loggerheads
    A little less earnestness could have done this movie some good.
  16. Annabelle: Creation
    Like the "Conjuring" films, Annabelle: Creation is a symphony of cheap tricks; its scares are strictly of the funhouse variety, not the keep-you-up-for-days kind, but they’re executed with precision and panache.
  17. Ira & Abby
    It's still a mixed bag with a lot of cutesy awfulness to wade through, but the acerbic ending is enough of a punchline to suggest that Westfeldt understands what a joke this kind of film can be.
  18. Black Box
    Black Box is no Memento. It’s more like a solid episode of Black Mirror, with some ideas and imagery pilfered from one of Blumhouse’s biggest hits, Get Out.
  19. Stuck on You
    Though it's still too reliant on a sloppy, gag-a-second style, Stuck On You gets through the arid stretches by leaning on some winning performances, most notably from a hilarious Seymour Cassel.
  20. Daddio
    There’s candor and insight here. But, much like Girlie and Clark, Daddio remains stuck despite the appearance of movement.
  21. Rolling Family
    Still, after an hour and a half of exquisite photography and mushy action, audiences may well ask the unspoken question that plays across the faces of the Rolling Family clan right before the closing credits. Was it worth it?
  22. The Names of Love
    The American romantic comedy has grown distressingly moribund lately, but anyone looking to freshen up the genre a bit need look no further than Michel Leclerc's The Names Of Love.
  23. Dark Star: HR Giger's World
    What’s perhaps most telling about the artist himself is a later-in-life project he builds in his cluttered backyard, a sort of funhouse ride through his own psyche.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fierce Creatures
    Cute lemurs and a couple jabs at corporate a--holery can't save Fierce Creatures from its manic malaise.
  25. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    Leitman gets some wonderful tall tales from her subjects, who open up like they've been waiting for years for someone to come along and ask, and she complements it with punishing footage of their exploits.
  26. Bug
    Friedkin's latest rivals his Druid horror flick "The Guardian" for sheer lunacy--Bug remains disconcerting, real, and raw. It poignantly suggests that some lost souls would rather be crazy and doomed than alone.
  27. Oswald's Ghost
    Late in the film, Stone interviews Norman Mailer, a one-time conspiracy-believer who eventually wrote a book that tried to get inside Oswald's head, explaining how Oswald's story is America's story. In less than a minute, Mailer describes the documentary Stone should've made.
  28. The Cursed
    Even when Ellis ramps up the suspense with crosscutting and monster mayhem in the final half-hour, The Cursed has trouble maintaining nail-biting intensity for very long
  29. Joshy
    While it is something of a comedy, Joshy is also serious, and its comic actors follow suit.
  30. Lan Yu
    The connection between Hu and Liu seems more scripted than real, founded on musty allegorical clichés about innocent country folk and corrupt city slickers.
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