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. Fresh
    Despite its bolder choices, however, Fresh doesn’t push the body horror as far as it could, and works better as an empowerment fable than as an actual thriller.
  2. Watcher
    Without spoiling, this is one movie where it’d be extremely interesting to know what happens five minutes after the final scene. But while the subsequent events may be up for vigorous debate, the film’s message is crystal clear: Screw you if you ever doubted a woman afraid for her safety.
  3. Vengeance
    Among some of the movie’s heady notions the movie attempts to assay are the idea and consequences of people living in their own highly individualized spaces; the question of whether any truth can be embedded in pure intuition; and the empty distractions of collapsing civilization, in which culture is relegated to increasingly meaningless fragmentary morsels.
  4. All the Old Knives
    All The Old Knives is compelling moment by moment, but afterward viewers may have some lingering questions about what characters hoped to accomplish, or why they were involved at all.
  5. Renfield
    Though Nicholas Hoult is charming as he struggles to find inner strength, Renfield lives or dies by Nic Cage camping it up. And he delivers.
  6. Anaïs in Love
    While this is hardly Exhibit A in any catalogue of feminist films, it is very much told through the young woman exploring romantic possibility, rather than spotlighting her.
  7. Gold
    Tension does build and there is a satisfying conclusion, but there is a significant stretch where, undeniably, a sizable amount of air comes out of the balloon.
  8. Amsterdam
    Amsterdam is not a great movie by any shakes, although it looks terrific and all of the performances . . . are energetic, entertaining, and enjoyable.
  9. Father Stu
    Distilled, it is a fairly well-sketched portrait of self-care — spiritual, yes, but also psychological and physical — and the outwardly rippling effects of healing that can flow from that single choice.
  10. Broker
    Though Kore-eda began his career as a documentarian, his positions on social issues are far from neutral. He reveres the resilience of those who have been dealt a bad hand in life, a sentiment that certainly shines through in Broker.
  11. Crimes of the Future
    Nothing about it makes a lick of sense, but there’s a surreal flow to it all that, in the moment, carries you from scene to scene.
  12. The Equalizer 3
    There is nothing new here narratively, save the setting (shot with picturesque beauty by Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson), the names of the characters, and the details of the offense for which the evil doers will have to pay.
  13. Brian and Charles
    Frequently hilarious and never lacking in heart, there’s plenty to love about this story of an offbeat, cabbage-loving weirdo and his three-meter-tall mechanical son. Even if it’s a bit thematically slight and doesn’t quite stick the landing in congealing what themes it does have into a cohesive whole, sometimes all that’s necessary is an offbeat sense of humor and a weird enough premise to make a lasting impression.
  14. Jerry and Marge Go Large
    These veteran performers make these two characters likable and, more importantly, fully knowable, and through them Jerry & Marge Go Large fully breathes.
  15. Spiderhead
    With nimble performances, slick polish, dark-pitched wit, razor sharp sentiments, and a Yacht Rock-infused soundtrack, the film proves a seductive high.
  16. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
    Dense and laborious, Bardo sometimes feels like an endurance test. Its moments of visual brilliance carry it far. Just not far enough to become essential viewing
  17. The Righteous
    It’s steeped in a grave sense of portentousness that burrows under your skin. The issue is the weighty script, bleak and heavy with apocalyptic consequence, which contains undeniably intriguing notions that are often not satisfactorily explored or don’t quite cohere.
  18. Press Play
    Press Play is a smart melding of high-concept and relatable romance—not the least of which is because this type of young love has a high replay value, just like the music we often associate with and attach to these formative years.
  19. The Invitation
    Emmanuel makes for an empathetic audience stand-in and charming heroine; it’s easy to see how she’s pivoted from thankless Game Of Thrones and Fast And Furious roles to leading lady status. If The Invitation proves nothing else, it’s that she belongs at the top of the call sheet.
  20. Mr. Malcolm's List
    It’s a pleasant enough diversion, that will likely be best remembered for colorblind casting done right.
  21. The Silent Twins
    In The Silent Twins, the Gibbons sisters are let down by a script that undercuts the unique circumstances of their lives with familiar and ultimately less compelling storytelling tropes.
  22. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
    Boasts a high enough hit-to-miss ratio in its gags to succeed as a comic biopic but can’t help milking the gags that hit until their freshness evaporates.
  23. The Munsters
    As a love letter to the sitcom that so inspired Zombie as a child, The Munsters might be the most authentic-feeling television revival ever put on film, warts and all.
  24. 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.
  25. This Is GWAR
    For all the documentary reveals about the band, it leaves you asking further questions, and wanting much more—an apt metaphor for a band that created an impressive legacy, and yet whose members rarely came to a consensus.
  26. See How They Run
    Ultimately, See How They Run is too reverent to its forebears and too toothless in its satire to elevate beyond an overly self-aware genre exercise—competent enough, but all too eager to shoot any attempted subtlety dead where it stands.
  27. Les Misérables
    August's Les Misérables is the sort of film for which such faint-praise terms as "handsome" and "not bad" were invented. It's all of the above, and at times a bit better, but ultimately an experience akin to flipping through Cliffs Notes and a book of French paintings at the same time.
  28. On the Come Up
    A committed group of dazzling actors keeps viewers consistently engaged until On The Come Up arrives at its predictable life lessons.
  29. Asteroid City
    Because of the structure of the film—the story within the story—none of them feel urgent or especially resonant. There are moments of brilliance both from the performers and from the writing. But they never cohere together into a complete story.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    Quantumania’s tone is sure to be polarizing, but if you can surrender yourself to its bonkers A Bug’s Life-meets-Return of the Jedi antics, the two hours (already short for a Marvel film) will fly by.
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