The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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  1. Domestic Violence
    A bit too long. Conceptually, it's sensible to keep the camera running while these women bare their souls, but in practical terms, the gist of some of their stories would have sufficed. Nevertheless, Wiseman has scored another considerable achievement in the documentary form.
  2. The Asphalt Jungle
    The Asphalt Jungle would be considered a heist picture if the mood didn't dictate otherwise. The standard "honor among thieves" theme applies, but dishonor gives the film its special noir flavor.
  3. Hero
    Brilliant in flashes, thinned out as a whole, the film seems ideal for the DVD revolution, where the greatest hits can be compiled at the touch of a remote.
  4. Hale County This Morning, This Evening
    If Ross had embraced anything like a narrative line, would it have taken away from the elemental imagery of his brief, unconventional film? One can’t really tackle life and what it means on both a personal and social level without prying into the people who live it. Ross keeps his distance—and in doing so, keeps Hale County’s potential at an arm’s length.
  5. Neil Young: Heart of Gold
    It's hard to film icons like Young as anything BUT icons, but Demme's film gets past the legend, zooming in on Young's aged, heroic face and finding an artist as human as the rest of us.
  6. Mudbound
    If the endgame is tough to bear, the getting there is rarely less than involving, thanks to the sensitivity of Rees’ staging. She’s made an economical epic with an intimate modern soul.
  7. Passing
    As for the story itself, it often moves with a moody, morbid vagueness that makes the film seem like a Gothic ghost story, except that everyone’s alive.
  8. My Life as a Zucchini
    The movie is a pleasure to look at, and often genuinely sweet, but it’s also akin to scaring the crap out of a little kid for 30 seconds and then smothering her with cotton candy for an hour. Skip the first part and you don’t need the second part, either.
  9. Honeyland
    Though Honeyland is also about what it’s about; in addition to underscoring another inconvenient truth with planetary stakes, the film offers tender, patient portraiture to a woman wholly dedicated to her calling. The melding of the political with the personal has seldom involved so many stingers to the face.
  10. Holy Motors
    It's a glorious dream-epitaph.
  11. Kaili Blues
    Bi is a poet as well as a filmmaker, and some of his verse is in the film. He treats almost every shot as an opportunity to further develop the movie’s plainspoken lyrical vocabulary, in which disco balls and side-view mirrors take on metaphorical significance and water stands in for time.
  12. The Wages of Fear (1953)
    Deriving endless anxiety from brawny men moving as gingerly as possible, it’s a riveting anti-action movie, one of the most memorable high-concept pictures ever made in Europe.
  13. The Dark Knight
    The film's capes and cowls suggest one genre, but it's a metropolis-sized tragedy at heart.
  14. Everybody Wants Some!!
    In its funky, aimless, winningly juvenile way, Everybody Wants Some is about as inclusively celebratory as any college comedy in memory: Per its title, it really does want everybody to get some.
  15. Behemoth
    Zhao, who acts as his own cinematographer, has a great eye for scale and contrast, and the less Behemoth points out its symbolism, the more potent it becomes.
  16. The Past
    The result demonstrates that Farhadi, who is cinema’s heir to the likes of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, is so deft at ingenious narrative construction and intricate character development that he can make first-rate dramas in any country and/or language he likes.
  17. Pillion
    Pillion is a film about self-knowledge, and about asserting one’s needs and boundaries without shame.
  18. Black Bag
    For better or worse, the director tucks Black Bag away so cleanly that it’s easy to forget what a good time it is.
  19. One Child Nation
    As wide-ranging in scope as it is horrifying in its particulars, the film does the necessary work of illuminating, for a large audience, a dark chapter of Chinese history.
  20. 24 Hour Party People
    A funny, unexpectedly inspiring story of excess, poor choices, and unwavering high-mindedness, all tied to that quintessential bit of rock wisdom: Icarus did fall, but first he flew.
  21. Vengeance Is Mine
    At times a frustrating experience, Vengeance Is Mine transforms over the course of its running time, Enokizu’s impenetrable nature eventually bottoming out and blossoming into a perverse relatability.
  22. The Three Caballeros
    Where the prequel is weighed down with noble intentions, Caballeros boasts a breezy, exhilarating lightness and a refreshing undercurrent of perversity.
  23. Identifying Features
    Some movies wound us so profoundly that once darkness has consumed their final frame we are incapable of shaking off the heartache. That’s the power of Identifying Features, which is as painfully intimate as it is unsparing in its indictment of a country ravaged by a corrosive, entrenched evil.
  24. The Sacrifice
    Though bookended by extraordinarily powerful scenes that play off a potent religious metaphor, the middle section sinks into a morass of ill-defined relationships and uneven performances, which may be blamed in part on culture clash.
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