The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,447 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: 5,587 out of 10447
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10447
  3. Negative: 1,114 out of 10447
10447 movie reviews
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  1. Kinky Boots
    Kinky Boots doesn't seem to realize that its time came and went long, long ago.
  2. Sushi: The Global Catch
    The documentary Sushi: The Global Catch tries to be two things at once: an international survey of the way sushi is marketed, prepared, and consumed, and an argument for sustainability, particularly with regard to the bluefin tuna population. These threads are related, but one nonetheless takes away from the other.
  3. Our Kind of Traitor
    Director Susanna White, on only her second feature, jazzes up the proceedings to match the skill of actors like McGregor, Harris, and Skarsgård. Most notable is her smart use of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.
  4. How to Live Forever
    Wexler breaks the cardinal rule of first-person documentaries: Don't make yourself the subject unless you're worth paying attention to.
  5. Just One of the Guys
    Entertainingly goofy.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brainstorm
    As provocative as all this is, Trumbull keeps things grounded, interested to an almost baffling degree in the technical and logistical sides of this theoretical technology, as well as the emotional arcs of the humans creating it.
  7. Smart People
    Dennis Quaid could stand in for Jeff Daniels' similarly toxic snob in "The Squid And The Whale," if only he were a little smarter and a little better-dressed.
  8. Candy
    Though it's a well-worn story, Candy does touch on a universal anxiety. For two people basking in the heat of an all-consuming love, what happens when the power gets cut off?
  9. Bad Words
    Even when Bad Words is bad in the wrong way, it tends to be bad in the right way, too.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Natural Selection
    A generous, unguarded performance from Rachael Harris cuts through the cuteness of a quirky premise in Natural Selection.
  11. Uncle Drew
    Look, for a movie based on a soda campaign, Uncle Drew isn’t that bad. It’s got some solid comic alternates.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Katy Perry: Part of Me
    Part Of Me's hybrid format ultimately proves an uneasy marriage, and does a disservice to Perry as both a performer and a human being by never reconciling what happens in the space between those two lives.
  13. The Look of Love
    The movie is a character study in search of a character.
  14. The Newton Boys
    The Newton Boys is Linklater's most conventional film and, despite its numerous flaws, it's not bad.
  15. The Grand
    Typical of bad improv, the inmates take over the asylum, leaving a movie that's little more than a loose, wildly uneven assemblage of individual comedic shtick.
  16. The Forbidden Kingdom
    At best, The Forbidden Kingdom counts as an amiable time-waster for kids, but much more should be expected from the momentous union of two kung-fu titans.
  17. Albert Nobbs
    Say this for Albert Nobbs: It's not some run-of-the-mill "life lived in service" drama.
  18. The Human Stain
    Roth's novel was at heart a howl of rage against a corrupt, hypocritical, judgmental world, but Benton's austere adaptation--stunningly shot by the late Jean-Yves Escoffier--speaks largely in muted tones.
  19. Lights in the Dusk
    Without Kaurismäki to introduce these lonely, forgotten souls to audiences, who's going to be his friend?
  20. The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela
    Queen Raquela's plotty elements don't always work: The acting in the story-driving scenes sometimes comes off as amateurish, and the circumstances that send Rios halfway around the world seem contrived. But de Fleur gets an astonishingly good performance from Stefan C. Schaefer.
  21. Chimpanzee
    It isn't easy to insult the intelligence of preschoolers, but Chimpanzee's insistence on turning the two gangs into the Sharks and the Jets does the job long before Allen lapses into his Home Improvement grunting.
  22. Teen Spirit
    In a film seemingly aimed more at teens than adults, Minghella effectively updates that familiar star-is-born template for an arthouse-minded Instagram generation.
  23. Southpaw
    Physically speaking, the transformation is as impressive as the one Gyllenhaal underwent a year ago to embody the gaunt, wiry sociopath of "Nightcrawler." But was this character, a boxer battling the myriad conventions of his genre, really worth the training regimen that brought him to life?
  24. Instant Family
    Instant Family balances its sitcom tone with some real, unexpected heart.
  25. Extraction 2
    As in Extraction, the action sequences are the whole game here, and they do not disappoint.
  26. Land of Bad
    If you can get through a rough first act, you’ll see both absurd military superheroics and the greatest grocery run ever.
  27. Happy Death Day 2U
    The happy surprise of Happy Death Day 2U is that it does find ways to tweak the formula of its predecessor, to break the cycle of franchise redundancy.
  28. The Secret Life of Bees
    It's pleasant and often touching, and the well-chosen cast sells what little drama they get, but there's no depth and little affect, and every would-be conflict peters out noncommittally.
  29. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    The problem is that everything fun and resonant about the movie (like a boy whose eye works as a movie projector, unspooling his dreams onto the wall) ends up feeling rather ornamental.
  30. Miss Potter
    "Potter" periodically brings Zellweger's charming drawings to life in elegantly animated sequences that are as delightful and lyrical as the rest of the film is stilted and clumsy.
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