The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,436 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: 5,578 out of 10436
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10436
  3. Negative: 1,112 out of 10436
10436 movie reviews
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  1. Hobo with a Shotgun
    It's a hyper-violent, self-conscious throwback, with the sickly plastic aroma of a tape that's been gathering dust in the corner of a video store since 1984.
  2. Jumping the Broom
    While Broom largely isn't a broad comedy, it still rarely goes for restraint in anything but tone.
  3. The Beaver
    While The Beaver starts with Gibson in "What Women Want" slapstick mode, it eventually goes to such exaggerated, extreme places that it becomes as much of a must-watch train-wreck as Gibson's own real-life situation.
  4. Something Borrowed
    Yes, perhaps the audience will like its favored couple more, but all the engineering that goes into making them sympathetic results in a film that feels agonizingly synthetic and alien.
  5. Thor
    It's a film with its own identity, the simple, thrilling story of a handsome god who falls to Earth and reminds everyone what heroes do.
  6. Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
    Peter Stormare has fun engaging in some Walken-level scenery-chewing-almost literally-as the patriarch of a werewolf clan. Good for him. That means at least one person has found something to like about this tedious collection of wisecracks and hand-me-down monsters.
  7. Prom
    It's the sort of film Robert Altman might have made if he cut his teeth working for The Disney Channel.
  8. Fast Five
    Like a proper action sequel, it's bigger, louder, and sillier than its predecessors, but it's more streamlined, too, smartly dumping the tired underground racing angle in favor of a crisp, hugely satisfying "Ocean's Eleven"-style heist movie.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Lebanon, Pa.
    The turns the film takes toward the end do offer a few surprises, particularly in the form of redemption for the waffling hero-not in running after the ones he loves, but in standing by them when they need him.
  10. Sympathy for Delicious
    The character's miraculous gift never plays as more than a melodramatic contrivance-it's a gimmick, not an outgrowth of faith. The movie reaches for the heart, but only comes back with a balloon filled with fake blood and chicken livers.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    That's What I Am
    It's a dogged family entertainment determined to teach lessons about tolerance and how it should be extended to everyone, even redheads, gay people, and kids with cooties.
  12. The Robber
    It might've mattered to the audience too, if we had any inkling from the first hour of The Robber who this guy is, or why we should care what happens to him.
  13. Exporting Raymond
    At its most compelling when Rosenthal explores why the crassest entertainment is internationally successful, even in the home of theatrical naturalism.
  14. Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil
    It raises the question of who the movie is for in the first place: Kids have seen much better animation in other films, and it's hard to imagine too many grown-ups ready to smile and nod at yet more smirking takes on famous moments from "Scarface" and "The Silence Of The Lambs."
  15. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    In spite of some thoughtful-and occasionally just bizarre-rumination on what the marvels of Chaumet really signify, Cave Of Forgotten Dreams often feels as stifling as the place it explores, rather than the sensual odyssey its evocative title suggests.
  16. The Arbor
    It helps that the actors' faces are so mesmerizing, particularly Manjinder Virk as Lorraine.
  17. Madea's Big Happy Family
    Everything is pitched to jarring emotional extremes of good and evil, joy and pain, chitlin'-circuit broad comedy, and melodramatic speeches.
  18. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
    It's just too bad that Legend Of The Fist breaks up that action with long scenes of well-dressed men and women sitting around in nightclubs, talking politics.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Dumbstruck
    The film's tendency to pull away once its character start their performances adds to the sense that director Mark Goffman knows his money shots will showcase the vents' oddities rather than their acts.
  20. Incendies
    While the film will likely stick with viewers, it's ultimately a tossup what they'll remember most: the stunning buildup, or the massive letdown.
  21. Water for Elephants
    It's a tastefully managed, passionless melodrama, full of brooding looks and reasonably sweet moments, but typified by a scantly characterized central couple who bring no sense of engagement to their relationship.
  22. The Bang Bang Club
    Silver means to get across the adrenaline rush of lives lived in dangerous extremes, but winds up trivializing their accomplishments and making them seem like men of hearty appetites, but little intellectual depth.
  23. POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
    The results are scattershot but entertaining, and occasionally eye-opening.
  24. The Elephant in the Living Room
    Gripping, maddening, well-told stories.
  25. Atlas Shrugged: Part I
    The film is curiously sterile and lifeless, hardly the stuff of revolution. It feels more like an ideologically reversed "Tucker: The Man And His Dream," written and performed by robots.
  26. The Conspirator
    The Conspirator should skip theaters altogether and become the first film released straight to middle-school history classes, where the standards for what can generously be deemed entertainment are much lower.
  27. Scream 4
    It's rare for a sequel to extensively acknowledge its own pointlessness, let alone make the unnecessary nature of its existence a recurring theme, the way Scream 4 does. Then again, the Scream franchise has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to deconstructing itself and the rules of the slasher genre.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Imperialists Are Still Alive!
    The film is ultimately more interesting than engaging; Durra doesn't yet have a grasp of the simultaneous warmth and needle-sharp satirical sense that infuse Stillman's films.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Footprints
    To give credit where it's due, Footprints makes a game attempt at creating a love letter to a place that may be inherently unlovable: Hollywood Boulevard, in all its faded glory and present-day Hooters/Hard Rock Cafe tackiness.
  30. The Princess of Montpensier
    Tavernier turns a tale of courtly duty and manners into a tense, twisty drama.
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