The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,443 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: 5,584 out of 10443
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10443
  3. Negative: 1,113 out of 10443
10443 movie reviews
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  1. Day of the Dead
    Day Of The Dead is more like Romero's scorching 1973 satire The Crazies, in which anarchy reigns and the very concept of heroes dissolves. The action at the end is lurid, made giddily disgusting by Tom Savini's amazing gore effects, and made gripping by Romero's gift for the cold logic of systemic breakdown. Still, some audiences may give up early, fed up with the shrill claustrophobia.
  2. The Concert
    It acknowledges grief, horror, and loss, but never lets it get in the way of a big, bright laugh.
  3. Wonder Woman 1984
    Wonder Woman 1984 is lively and bright and entertaining enough that it only occasionally feels like it’s going to go on forever. But it’s hard to get past what seems like a lack of consideration—or perhaps concern— for what motivates Diana Prince, or what fans like about her.
  4. Battle in Heaven
    Battle In Heaven is like a serious of artful photographs, except that Reygadas also moves the camera in astonishing and unusual ways, swooping around the conventional x- and y-axes while teasing the audience with what he's about to show. He's got an astonishing technique. Here's hoping that someday he'll use it to make a movie.
  5. Body of War
    Body Of War purposefully depicts an America in turmoil. But it also depicts an America far more capable of living with contradictions than the "Red State/Blue State"-obsessed cable-news pundits would have us believe.
  6. Ophelia
    They’ve created not a bold revision but a bland empowerment tale, devoid of everything that makes Hamlet great.
  7. The Heat
    Part of the point here is to stake a claim on a genre that’s traditionally been a boys’ club, and in that regard, The Heat delivers: In a bonding moment, this odd couple goes on a bender as epic as anything in "The Hangover." Their enthusiasm with weapons should alarm viewers across all demographics and species.
  8. Bad Times at the El Royale
    Unlike the director’s debut feature The Cabin In The Woods, Bad Times At The El Royale isn’t a deconstruction of the neo-noir genre so much as a structurally ambitious example of same.
  9. Machete
    It's often stylish and exciting, but the pile-up of cool kills, hot bodies, and other unprocessed bits of juvenilia doesn't add up to a good time.
  10. In Her Shoes
    The whole exercise feels hopelessly shallow and artificial. In Her Shoes is basically a double-date romantic comedy, in which not one but two women find themselves and learn to live and love again, etc. etc., and while it's well-acted on most counts, it's also as plodding as it is obvious.
  11. Tomorrowland
    Bird stages the PG mayhem with his usual grasp of dimension and space, his gift for action that’s timed like physical comedy. He keeps the whole thing moving, even when it begins to feel bogged down by preachiness and sci-fi exposition.
  12. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
    It’s often more strikingly funny-looking than laugh-out-loud funny.
  13. What Would Jesus Buy?
    It's neither conceptually bold nor slyly satirical when Billy dresses up as a Southern evangelical and sings made-up hymns about "the shopacalypse."
  14. Tumbledown
    That Tumbledown sort of works in spite of all its clichés is a testament to the gifts of its two lead actors.
  15. Love Is All You Need
    Cast with winning actors (particularly Molly Blixt Egelind as Dyrholm’s daughter) who seem determined not to distract viewers from the coastal backdrops, Love Is All You Need proceeds in all the expected directions short of actually including The Beatles.
  16. L'iceberg
    The film is striking and often charming, and any movie that places three tall, lanky types aboard a miniature boat named "Titanique" can't be slammed too much. But in the end, it's easier to admire than to love.
  17. On My Way
    This isn’t the kind of movie that’s in a hurry to get anywhere in particular. Still, there’s no need for the journey to be quite so blah.
  18. Three Thousand Years of Longing
    Three Thousand Years Of Longing unfortunately undercuts its own effectiveness as a singular piece, presenting less as a unified vision of an auteur director than a scattershot assemblage of motifs, philosophies, and themes in search of a spine to hold them together.
  19. Darling
    Darling is light on plot and long on style, meaning that horror fans who criticized "The Witch" as “boring” may have a similar reaction here as well.
  20. Protocols of Zion
    Muddled, painfully earnest documentary.
  21. Dark Night
    Dark Night isn’t really a polemic. It’s a mysterious elegy for a community on the verge of a nightmarish crucible.
  22. Jumbo
    This is a slight film, one that peaks early and spends the rest of its runtime shuffling its narrative cards, re-combining the same elements in different ways. But Jumbo still stands out, thanks to a concept and aesthetic much stronger than its story.
  23. At Middleton
    Unremarkable, though hardly unpleasant, the middlebrow middle-age romance At Middleton often plays like a forgotten trifle from the Golden Age of Hollywood studio filmmaking, distinguished more by its competence and affable performances than by any formal or thematic potency.
  24. The Last Sentence
    The continual wobbling of on-screen space, combined with some endearingly awkward attempts at humor (dog reaction shots abound), gives this tony biopic a smidgen of charm, though it doesn’t make it any less tedious.
  25. White Wedding
    Jann Turner's shiny, happy crowd-pleaser gleans a tiny shred of substance and social relevance from its exploration of racial and class politics in a post-apartheid South Africa that's still very much split across race lines.
  26. Sea Fever
    It’s well-acted and reasonably intelligent, but also derivative enough to compare unfavorably to plenty of stone-cold classics.
  27. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    Were Mandela solely interested in that early chapter of its subject’s life, when he was reluctantly turning to violent tactics in the war on apartheid, the film might have achieved a uniquely complicated perspective. Alas, the first passage is just a portion of what turns out to be a typically sprawling, bloated biopic.
  28. Brothers at War
    It’s practically a feature-length infomercial for the military.
  29. Saw X
    Fans who tune in mainly for the insane timeline twists won’t get them, but otherwise, this is the most satisfying Saw installment since the first three. Also, be sure to stick around for a mid-credits scene.
  30. RED
    Part of it is cheap thrills, of course; this is a capable, experienced cast with extensive acting chops, and it's trashy fun watching them descend to the level of the material.
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