The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Hugo
    It's a complex fusion of film history and personal history, filled with dazzling embellishments and unabashed sentiment about the glories of cinema.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    It may be impossible for anyone but existing fans to take this seriously, but for the unconverted, it's still a legitimately engaging, gape-worthy nutso spectacle.
  3. Tomboy
    It's so much fun that as Tomboy moves toward its conclusion, the inevitable end of Héran's days as Mikael feels like watching someone die.
  4. The Lie
    The Lie's payoff strikes an unexpected, refreshingly open note that makes this slight little indie more resonant than its scale suggests. The line this couple is about to cross is significant, and the film takes it seriously.
  5. Tyrannosaur
    Considine directs with the confidence of a veteran, giving his actors room to work while letting an ominous, overcast mood hang over almost every scene.
  6. Happy Feet Two
    In some ways, it's a more grown-up story than Happy Feet, with more complicated messages delivered in subtler ways.
  7. The Descendants
    The movie suffers from backstory-heavy voiceover narration in its first half, followed by an excess of quirky laugh lines down the stretch, just when it seems to be finding a stronger rhythm. There's a shameless crowd-pleasing element to The Descendants that keeps its harder truths about family relationships at bay.
  8. Garbo: The Spy
    Even without the fine psychological shading, Garcia's story is a doozy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    In Heaven Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery
    Most people wouldn't expect a film that's inherently about death (and, to a lesser extent, the Holocaust) to be uplifting, but the gentle, tender documentary In Heaven, Underground ultimately achieves it.
  10. Another Happy Day
    Levinson stuffs the movie with so many emotional cross-currents and minor revelations that it's hard to keep them all straight, but the movie works the audience's nerves with enough determination to get under the skin and stay there, a sensation that comes awfully close to an earned emotional response.
  11. Immortals
    As mythic spectacles go, it beats "Clash Of The Titans," particularly in the areas of intimidating villainy and actual Titan-clashing. Nonetheless, it isn't any smarter than its inspirations, just prettier.
  12. Jack and Jill
    What makes Jack And Jill worse than the average Sandler vehicle is Jill, who's been conceived as little more than a dude in drag, hold the jokes.
  13. The Love We Make
    Mostly, though, the pleasure of The Love We Make comes from watching one of the most famous musicians in the world looking totally chill, whether he's rehearsing with his band or casually chatting with Bill Clinton.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    London Boulevard
    The directorial debut of William Monahan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "The Departed," London Boulevard collapses under the weight of its own ideas and the amount of talent it has to burn.
  15. Into the Abyss
    His film powerfully suggests that violent death of any kind, whether personal or state-mandated, transforms everyone in its vicinity.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    Padilha's film has a witheringly low opinion of most people - the gangs are no better than animals, the regular police are gleefully corrupt, the liberal intellectuals are sanctimonious fools, and the politicians are only interested in protecting themselves.
  17. The Conquest
    The Conquest offers that familiar thrill of being allowed to peek behind the curtain and see what our leaders are really like, and while it's more rote than revelatory, that may be because the American way of wielding power - and telling stories about it - has gone global.
  18. Melancholia
    The grand concept is really just a vehicle for a more intimate study of depression and its dangerous, shifting polarities.
  19. J. Edgar
    Eastwood's prim, respectful biography presents Hoover in turn as a muddy political metaphor, a lesson in self-mythologizing, and a case history in repression, but never particularly as a man.
  20. Tower Heist
    In the end, Tower Heist isn't a black Ocean's Eleven or a bold leap forward for feature-film distribution, just a passable piece of commercial entertainment that falls closer to product than art.
  21. Young Goethe in Love
    Whatever its basis in fact, there's nothing to Young Goethe In Love's story that dozens of other films haven't done before, and better. But Fehling keeps his Goethe just on the right side of obnoxious, and Stein invests a lot of character and gawky charm into what easily could have been just "the girl."
  22. The Son of No One
    A few individual performances survive - Liotta finds a little of his old edge, and Pacino briefly revisits Serpico territory - but they're smothered in the slow-burning absurdity.
  23. Killing Bono
    There's a difference between "funny" and "comedy," and the movie adaptation of Killing Bono tries way too hard to be nutty, at the expense of just getting across what McCormick knows.
  24. The Last Rites of Joe May
    The Last Rites Of Joe May succeeds in some of the smaller details and the soulful performances.
  25. The Other F Word
    The film's juxtaposition of punk-rock fashion and cozy domesticity proves neither comic nor revelatory. It is, however, adorable, though not adorable enough to compensate for the film's damnable lack of focus.
  26. The Look
    There are very few light, casual moments in The Look; even when Rampling pops into a deli to buy a sandwich, we hear her in voiceover talking about her demons. An hour and a half of this is frankly exhausting.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    5 Star Day
    5 Star Day is a middling indie, but it offers evidence of how far a synthetic setup can get just by allowing characters to react and reflect.
  28. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    The filmmakers throw everything at the audience, literally and metaphorically, and the results are exhilarating rather than exhausting.
  29. Janie Jones
    Contrivances aside, though, Janie Jones is one of the more realistic depictions of what the rock 'n' roll lifestyle is really like.
  30. The Double
    Roughly 99 percent of the time, if a movie that seems like it should be a big deal appears almost out of the blue, it's because it's lousy. The Double doesn't exactly buck that trend.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »