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'll Sing for You
    Director Jacques Sarasin lazily relies on a talking-heads/archival-footage approach to tell Traoré's story, doing little to put it in context and assuming a lot more knowledge of Malian history than most viewers possess.
  2. The To Do List
    The film’s as clumsy yet earnest as a nervous first-timer, groping gracelessly in the dark for ecstasy and meaning.
  3. The Bubble
    Real love is often as complicated and painful as Middle Eastern politics, and Fox might have been better off acknowledging that, rather than making his characters such vague, sweet, safe ciphers.
  4. Dust to Glory
    Brown probably captures enough to satisfy hardcore enthusiasts, but everyone else might end up wondering why he ignored the glory for the dust.
  5. The Sense of an Ending
    The entire movie consists of this same delayed-gratification tactic, as significant events from Tony’s past are first teased and then revealed a bit at a time, via numerous flashbacks. A little of that sort of thing can be invigorating. Push it too far, however, and it starts to feel like a pointless game of narrative Keep Away.
  6. Bicycling With Molière
    High culture this decidedly isn’t. Mostly, it’s just a vehicle for two terrific actors to snipe at each other and poke some mild fun at their own profession.
  7. Dog
    As a whole, Dog is credible as a small-scale drama with some moments of light, puppyish comedy, from the man and the mutt. Like Clooney before him, Tatum hasn’t quite made his own Soderbergh movie. He has, however, made a surprisingly good one.
  8. Freeway
    Freeway is full of nice touches—such as making the villain a psychologist— that play off the expectations of a familiar story. While also working as a conventional thriller, its many twists on the fairy tale make it work on an almost subliminal level.
  9. Spoiler Alert
    When the film lets its guard down—namely, whenever Aldridge gets to deploy his charm as Kit or manages to let Field echo a weathered kind of Steel Magnolias screen presence—the film sings. Yet its attempts to distance itself from the very genre of a film it so clearly is (there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time I left my screening) end up shortchanging its impact.
  10. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    Compare any of this to the grinding series of vicious gags from, say, pretty much any Ben Stiller movie post-Flirting With Disaster, and Fast Times starts looking like a tame jokefest even grandma can enjoy. There's no crotch damage, no humorously dead animals, no pie-fucking, and no menstrual-blood-on-the-pants jokes, either. At its most graphic, it's got a little good-natured pot humor...It's just pure, lighthearted, relatively respectful fun. With boobs.
  11. Star Maps
    Star Maps rather transparently equates prostitution with show business; both exploit the impoverished and do no favors to minorities. It's a valid equation, but once the point is made, Star Maps has no place to go.
  12. Iluzija
    Ristovski wants the plight of a bullied moppet to serve as a sweeping metaphor for Macedonian struggle, but his miserablist excesses have the effect of converting realism into a graphic cartoon.
  13. Ladrón que roba a ladrón
    Entertaining, casually satirical crowd-pleaser.
  14. Quitting
    Because Quitting admits its basic falsehood up front, the film is never emotionally affecting, but Jia's participation in this confrontation of his past shows remarkable courage and honesty, especially when his behavior doesn't inspire much sympathy.
  15. Frida
    Save for two spectacularly impressionistic sequences, Taymor brings little of that imagination to Frida, a turgid and conventional biopic that skips through the major incidents in Kahlo's life without giving them any special resonance, or even much visual panache.
  16. Taking Sides
    Taking Sides is really no less simplistic than "Sunshine," but its predecessor succeeded because of its length and scope. Taking Sides stays rooted in one place and one discussion, and never gets anywhere.
  17. Magic Mike XXL
    Magic Mike XXL is a piece of arm candy, as shallow as a mud puddle and just as bright. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to hang out with.
  18. Fear Street Part Two: 1978
    The kills come and go with a perfunctory swiftness that suggests a condescension to the material, not a genuine affection for it. That’s why the gore feels like scant reward: There’s plenty of blood but no heart put into pumping it.
  19. Sorry/Not Sorry
    Sorry/Not Sorry functions more aptly as a recap of a situation most people who would seek out the doc already know about.
  20. Black Phone 2
    A handsome follow-up that both seizes the predecessor’s sense of heartbreak (albeit at a lesser degree) and dials up its chills by transposing them onto an icy, blood-soaked youth camp in the Rocky Mountains.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Anastasia
    You can set your watch to the musical cues, and the songs themselves are forgettable at best, insipid at worst.
  22. In the Pit
    Rulfo's simple strategy of sticking close to his subjects and allowing them to wax philosophical about their lives and labors pays off.
  23. The Wretched
    A potboiler that doesn’t break any molds or reinvent any wheels. Still, there’s something to be said for setting modest goals and achieving them; if this really was some lost relic of the VHS era, it’d pass the blind rental test: There is a witch, and she’s as creepy as the box art would surely promise.
  24. The Soloist
    The result feels cluttered, overcooked, and underfelt.
  25. Ladies in Lavender.
    It's important to go in knowing the central secret of the movie: Nothing exciting is going to happen. Ever. Armed with that knowledge, viewers should be able to settle down and enjoy the extremely low-key, melancholy character study that plays out between a handful of excellent actors.
  26. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    When it comes to time-wasting memory games, crossword puzzles are more fun than this movie.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Urban Cowboy
    Unapologetically trashy, Urban Cowboy is a virtual pageant of high redneck style—there are lots of bootleg trousers, halter tops, shag haircuts, and feather-brimmed Stetsons—and Winger is fun as the unapologetically trashy gal who just wants to bag herself a real cowboy. Unfortunately, Urban Cowboy is dull one time too often to qualify as entertaining kitsch.
  28. John and the Hole
    John And The Hole comes on like a spooky portrait of budding teenage sociopathy, but it resists diagnostic shortcuts.
  29. The White Crow
    Unlike its subject, The White Crow is ultimately forgettable.
  30. Vice
    Apart from one initially funny (but ultimately over-extended) gag involving a fake credits sequence, the material is mostly glib and second-rate—and, when it comes down to it, about as dry, oversimplified, and under-dramatized as a class presentation.
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