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. Free Zone
    Like a lot of Gitaï's films, Free Zone is part history, part allegory, and part art. Both the history and art hold their fascinations.
  2. Hard Candy
    Had they ended 20 minutes in, "Wedding Crashers" would qualify as a gut-busting triumph, and Hard Candy would be a miniature masterpiece.
  3. Look Both Ways
    After the first hour, it's clear the movie isn't going to offer any surprising new insights into messed-up modernity.
  4. Wassup Rockers
    It may be truer to the lives of his amateur cast to watch them engage in mumbly, inarticulate conversations between rounds of failed skate tricks, but it isn't especially cinematic.
  5. The Da Vinci Code
    The Da Vinci Code isn't terrible. Brown's novel presented its concepts seriously, as food for thought; Howard's glossy version is more of a snack, designed to be taken only slightly more seriously than "National Treasure," and with the much the same sense of a puzzle-based thrill ride.
  6. Water
    Water is gorgeously composed and beautifully shot, with a dogged emphasis on water imagery and symbolism, and a luscious sense for color. It's often profoundly beautiful. But its distanced, calculated attempts to draw sympathy, from its wide-eyed child protagonist to its sad-eyed, personality-free lovers to its fairy-tale ending, all blunt the meaning behind that beauty.
  7. Poseidon
    "Titanic" without the metaphors, the class-consciousness, the love story, or anything resembling a theme, Poseidon invests so little in its screenplay that it might as well be an episode of "The Love Boat" gone horribly awry.
  8. X-Men: The Last Stand
    Following two superior entries, Ratner's slick placeholder of a sequel lacks that crucial X-factor called inspiration.
  9. Coastlines
    That love triangle is Coastlines' center. Trouble is, it plays more like canned heat than blazing inferno.
  10. Only Human
    For a film that pads out such broad slapstick with toilet humor, obnoxious-child antics, and even cute-animal business, Only Human is surprisingly enjoyable, thanks to the filmmakers' relatively low-key, Pedro Almodóvar-style approach.
  11. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    The first of two sequels shot in immediate succession, Dead Man's Chest bears the unenviable burden of racking the pins for both movies, which leaves it with precious few opportunities to have a little fun of its own.
  12. Beowulf & Grendel
    Removing many of the mythical elements of the tale is an intriguing idea that would undoubtedly have paid richer dividends if it didn't mean relying on a heavy who looks like a cross between a Neanderthal on steroids and stilts, and an unusually hirsute wrestler.
  13. The Ant Bully
    In spite of its predictability, it's a nifty story in the abstract, and Davis certainly makes the most of the opportunity to examine the world from an ant's-eye view.
  14. Boynton Beach Club
    It's refreshing to see a film that so directly addresses the issues and concerns of a vast, overlooked demographic, but it'd be much more satisfying if Boynton did more than just affably skate along the surface.
  15. Princesas
    It's well-acted and strikingly shot, and its depiction of contemporary Spanish squalor is hard to forget, but it never quite reconciles its high-drama situations with its low-key approach. It whispers when it really wants to shout.
  16. Crank
    Its a stupid thrill for a while, but the high wears off, and the anything-goes approach gets headache-inducing.
  17. Keeping Mum
    Keeping Mum never really gets going, and it inches to the finish line like a narcoleptic turtle.
  18. Flyboys
    There's something almost perversely old-fashioned about Flyboys.
  19. Jesus Camp
    Why do Ewing and Grady feel the need to tip their hand by underscoring it all with creepy ambient music or by using Air America host Mike Papantonio as a Greek Chorus expressing the voice of reason?
  20. The Guardian
    Tries tremendously hard to win audiences over with manly derring-do, exciting action, and impossible-obstacles-overcome uplift. And it's undeniably compelling for minutes at a time
  21. School for Scoundrels
    As usual, Thornton remains fully committed to the performance. Viewers could make a game of scanning his face for even the slightest hint of warmth. By the end of the film, that may be the surest source of entertainment.
  22. Tideland
    It's no "trip through the dark to appreciate the light." It's a nightmare from start to finish.
  23. Deja Vu
    Rarely have Bruckheimer and Scott been so upfront about insulting people's intelligence.
  24. The Nativity Story
    A filmed Sunday-school lesson that favors a dry, by-the-Book approach over even a suggestion of dramatic interpretation. It's more Christmas pageant than movie.
  25. We Are Marshall
    It's uplifting, but shallow.
  26. Unconscious
    While the content is colorful and the actors seem up for the task, a flawed script and Oristrell's unemphatic direction let all the impact dribble away.
  27. Bamako
    The film feels oddly slack and inert, livened only by testimony better suited to another forum.
  28. TMNT
    Only those already predisposed to love a TMNT movie that at least LOOKS edgy are likely to care.
  29. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
    By recounting Abbas' ordeal as an endless inarticulate monologue, The Prisoner reduces it to a dull anecdote--timely and relevant, perhaps, but an anecdote all the same.
  30. The Reaping
    The Reaping is Bible camp, pure and simple. And for bad-movie lovers, it's manna from heaven.
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