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. Biutiful
    In spite of fine work from Bardem and Álvarez, Biutiful is an irritating, oppressive 150-minute dirge, not the step forward Iñárritu's dissolved partnership with Arriaga seemed to promise.
  2. Another Year
    The performances are winning, the story is surprising without relying on unlikely twists, and the relationships are the richest and most nuanced since Leigh's "Secrets & Lies."
  3. The Illusionist
    The result is one beautiful movie-and no less so for making a strong case that beauty is a lie.
  4. Gulliver's Travels
    With deadening predictability, the filmmakers have reduced a definitive satire about the flaws and foibles of human nature into family-friendly sub-Disney pabulum about an affable slacker who finally musters up the courage to ask a pretty girl at work for a date.
  5. Nénette
    As with all of Philibert's work, Nénette is impeccably composed and admirably disciplined, but his patient observation can't unlock the mysteries of an animal that's grown more introspective and likely less expressive over time.
  6. Secret Sunshine
    Secret Sunshine is a frequently beautiful film with a cold, dark heart.
  7. Little Fockers
    When the conclusion leaves the door open for still another sequel, it feels like an invitation to a living wake.
  8. Somewhere
    It's all so uneasily compelling and quietly moving, it might be too much to ask her to sustain it through the conclusion.
  9. True Grit
    The Coens direct True Grit with a light touch, but like Portis' stark, funny novel, their adventure tale shaves off none of the rough edges.
  10. Yogi Bear
    The best that could be said of Yogi Bear is that it doesn't diminish its source material.
  11. Casino Jack
    Spacey has made a career out of projecting the smarmy elitism of the powerful, but Casino Jack is so painfully clunky that he gets dragged down along with it.
  12. Rabbit Hole
    Rabbit Hole is a tremendously sad movie, but it's also the furthest thing from a miserablist wallow.
  13. How Do You Know
    That's How Do You Know in a nutshell: preposterous characters lurching through painfully contrived scenarios.
  14. TRON: Legacy
    Disney has once again constructed a digital environment out of cutting-edge special effects, only this time, it isn't merely silly; it's as dry and talky as a PBS panel show.
  15. Megamind
    There's nothing wrong with animation aimed at adults, but this may be the first kids' movie that throws fewer bones to its supposed intended viewers than to their parents.
  16. Due Date
    The situations sometimes feel contrived, but the characters never do, particularly because Galifianakis remains simultaneously charming and unrelentingly irritating.
  17. Cool It
    Here's a man who's doing to environmental science what the Atkins Diet did to weight loss, and Timoner isn't looking for anyone to call his conclusions into question? Nonsense.
  18. Unstoppable
    As long as Unstoppable stays on the train, it's queasily effective.
  19. Saw 3D
    Saw has shown a ferocious unwillingness to evolve.
  20. White Material
    Denis brings it all together for a genuinely shocking finale, unexpected, yet in keeping with the film's consuming madness.
  21. Love and Other Drugs
    When Gyllenhaal stops selling out, the movie starts.
  22. Faster
    Faster starts to lay on a heavy-handed message about the importance of forgiveness. That isn't what anyone showed up to see.
  23. Heartless
    Heartless gets progressively better as it goes along, and benefits from a poignant late cameo from Timothy Spall as Sturgess' beloved father, but it never recovers from a dull first hour.
  24. Tiny Furniture
    Tiny Furniture offers a 21st-century, East Coast spin on "The Graduate," but with comedy-writer-ish dialogue and a mannered style that never fully gels.
  25. The King's Speech
    The King's Speech is admirably free of easy answers and simple, happy endings; it's a skewed, awards-ready version of history, but one polished to a fine, satisfying shine.
  26. And Everything Is Going Fine
    It does justice to a subject who made his life and death works of art.
  27. Tangled
    The story should be a standard mismatched-couple-falls-in-love tale, but the script and the sprightly directing give the story plenty of snap and humor, and the animation is so luminously beautiful that even a falling-in-love sequence cribbed in part from The Little Mermaid is overwhelmingly magical.
  28. Burlesque
    Burlesque is a terrible film that will delight nearly everyone who sees it, whether they're 12-year-old Christina Aguilera fans or bad-movie buffs angling for a guilty pleasure.
  29. Hemingway's Garden of Eden
    The film isn't erotic or profound. It is occasionally comic, though-like reading the finalists for one of those Bad Sex In Fiction awards.
  30. The Tempest
    The best thing about Taymor's Tempest is also the worst: It's not stunning but it is sturdy, a handsome-enough showcase of a film that never really comes to life. It plays like a challenge politely declined.
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