The A.V. Club's Scores

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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
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  1. The Weird World of Blowfly
    The Weird World Of Blowfly at times recalls "The Wrestler," only instead of schlepping his aging body from city to city to don outrageous costumes and wrestle, 69-year-old soul-music legend Clarence Reid schleps his hunched-over frame to gigs where he performs X-rated parodies and scatological ditties as incorrigible proto-hip-hopper Blowfly.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Silent Souls
    While the pace and the dour, meditative tone of Silent Souls can sometimes verge on parodically arthouse-esque, the sincerity of the film's thoughts on loss and longing, on the burdens of grief, and on reawakened awareness of existence, is always painfully heartfelt.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Mill and the Cross
    While it's far from easy going, The Mill And The Cross is worth attempting for its stunning visuals alone.
  4. Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure
    Bate invites a disparate bunch of SULM true-believers to explain their obsession, and many of them point to the same spirit of voyeurism that makes YouTube videos go viral today: that sense of getting an unfiltered look into how other people live.
  5. Happy, Happy
    The characters remain governed by what they've been told about themselves for years - that they're ugly, devious, mean, low-class, or silly - until a fresh set of eyes changes what they see in the mirror. Knowing this mutual moment of stark self-awareness is coming doesn't make its arrival any less powerful.
  6. 3
    All this experimentation is enjoyable enough in the moment, but it's disappointing when Tykwer drops it in favor of a conventional, obvious ending.
  7. Restless
    Somehow, Van Sant has made a film about life and death in which the stakes never seem higher than whether one insolent kid will stop being such a horrible mope.
  8. I Don't Know How She Does It
    In theory, the film is another hoary exploration of the pressures of modern womanhood, but in practice, it offers the exact same thing as those NYC ingénue books: cookie-cutter wish-fulfillment and lifestyle porn for easily pleased, lonely romantics.
  9. Drive
    The film is little more than an exercise in style, but it's dazzling and mythic, a testament to the fundamental appeal of fast cars, dangerous men, and tension that squeezes like a hand to the throat.
  10. The Ides of March
    The Ides Of March goes down easily, with a sophisticated bustle and a strong third act twist to test the hero's mettle. But it all feels a bit inconsequential - perhaps by design.
  11. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star
    Apparently no one told Ricci she was acting in a comedy, not a touching drama about a young woman overcoming a formative trauma to achieve her dreams.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tanner Hall
    The result isn't bad, it just lacks momentum and a strong reason for existing.
  13. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
    Illustrates how the rhetoric of civil rights changed after the breakthroughs of Martin Luther King. With the world's media finally paying attention, critical thinkers like Carmichael, Davis, and Malcolm X were able to push back against the fretful questions about violence, and redefine the story of blacks in America over the centuries as one defined by violence.
  14. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu
    Most likely, The Autobiography Of Nicolae Ceausescu will mean the most to actual Romanians, who will recognize the locations and fashions, and may even know what the government's documentarians left out of the picture. But the movie offers plenty to captivate even outsiders.
  15. Burke and Hare
    The new Burke & Hare offers many pleasures, chief among them the return of the Landis of old.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Warrior
    For all its titular bravado, Warrior never lets the audience forget the economic and spiritual desperation driving its two main characters, who bleed for the screaming arena crowd in exchange for their shots at redemption, and offer a rare glimpse of soul in a type of film that usually isn't obliged to provide one.
  17. Contagion
    Soderbergh creates an unnerving mosaic from the smaller pieces, a vision of a world that's simultaneously tightly knit, delicately balanced, and prone to breakdown, whether due to disease, bad ideas, or unenlightened self-interest.
  18. Shark Night 3D
    Shark Night 3D barely bothered to show up, let alone deliver the minimal goods.
  19. Apollo 18
    Unpleasant when it isn't dull, Apollo 18 never sells the lost-footage illusion, and never compensates for it with scares. Jolts, sure. Like so many lazy horror directors, López-Gallego knows how to startle, but not how to frighten.
  20. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy
    A Good Old Fashioned Orgy takes its cues from Sudeikis' character and performance: It's randy, good-natured, moderately amusing, and charming in a glib, facile way.
  21. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
    A historical epic with elements of wu xia, supernatural thrillers, and drawing-room murder mysteries.
  22. Love Crime
    A corporate crime thriller that explores the relationships of women in power, but while Corneau delivers a slick, well-acted piece with a surprising mid-movie twist, Love Crime is too thin and too on-point to deliver the jolt he and co-screenwriter Nathalie Carter most likely intended.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I'm Glad My Mother Is Alive
    Until the film takes an abrupt, annoyingly melodramatic late turn, the Millers handle Rottiers' character with great delicacy, aided by strong lead performances and a refusal to show Rottiers' adopted home as either idealized or seriously lacking.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    It's a ride worth more for its journey than its destination. Resurrect Dead does offer a convincing but anticlimactic "solution" to the Toynbee tiles, but the elements along the way are what make it an engaging film.
  25. Seven Days in Utopia
    Not a second of it is convincing - or compelling - but then the film is about "utopia," a blandly idealized place unblemished by hardship, malice, sin, or errant golf strokes.
  26. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
    What's surprising, and ultimately disappointing, about Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is the degree to which Sfar allows biopic obligations to smother his more whimsical instincts.
  27. The Debt
    Madden's dark, moody, complex exploration of guilt and identity taps into a rich vein of moral ambiguity, but the filmmakers should know that in the face of unspeakable Nazi evil, the romantic problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans.
  28. Colombiana
    It uses a story about family as a vehicle for glorifying gangsterism. In other words, it's empty, amoral, and - in the style of other Besson productions - surprisingly easy to digest.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Caller
    For a while, the two ominous elements play off each other promisingly, and then it all becomes ridiculous, despite an appearance from the excellent Lorna Raver, the malevolent gypsy woman from "Drag Me To Hell."
  30. Iron Crows
    The movie has no story per se, and there are times when it does seem like Park is hovering, vulture-like, over his subjects' shoulders, waiting for a disaster. But Iron Crows isn't devoid of natural human exuberance, nor is it immune to the awesome spectacle of a dangerous job.
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