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. Maleficent
    More well-intentioned than accomplished.
  2. Last Call at the Oasis
    It's true that Americans contribute disproportionately to the problem, but catering to the idea that we're separate from the rest of the world isn't part of the solution.
  3. Red Hook Summer
    The film's 121-minute running time is similarly cause for concern. Lee can be tight and focused as a gun-for-hire, but he's always viewed personal projects as irresistible invitations to self-indulgence and overreaching. Red Hook Summer is no exception.
  4. 42
    The Jackie Robinson biopic 42 operates in a box inside of a box—and not the batter’s box, either, because that would imply it has some freedom to swing away. It’s thoroughly embalmed in the glossy lacquer of conventional baseball movies, and limited further by trying to deal with the horrors of racism in that context.
  5. Virginia
    Black seems to be aiming for some sort of loopy fantasia, a tragic fable about struggling with difference in the small-town South, but he's got more half-finished ideas than he can handle.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Good Doctor
    Awkward and arrogant, Bloom's character is reminiscent of The Social Network's take on Mark Zuckerberg: someone who was propelled in his nascent career by the idea that it would bring him the respect and acceptance he doesn't seem able to command in a social setting.
  7. Hit and Run
    There really ought to be a lot more movies like Hit & Run, but only if they're just a little bit better.
  8. The Heat
    Part of the point here is to stake a claim on a genre that’s traditionally been a boys’ club, and in that regard, The Heat delivers: In a bonding moment, this odd couple goes on a bender as epic as anything in "The Hangover." Their enthusiasm with weapons should alarm viewers across all demographics and species.
  9. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
    Abandoning its more original elements, the movie opts for a banal carpe diem conceit that turns Mitty into a globetrotting bystander.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    About Cherry
    Demanding everyone accept you as you are can be a way of refusing to compromise, and the film's failure to explore this aspect of the lifestyle its portraying is almost as disappointing as moralizing would be.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Kumaré
    Even at a slim 84 minutes, that arc is padded out with side explorations of acoustic therapy and alien-abduction communes that dilute the film's focus and only make it seem like the filmmaker's aware there just isn't much there there.
  12. Family Portrait in Black and White
    There's no organizing principle in Ivanova's documentary, which unfolds in a ragged, seat-of-the-pants style that mirrors its subject's day-to-day life all too closely. Nenya's flock proves too big for the film to wrangle.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Nuit #1
    Courageous performances from the leads, who have to bear a lot, both emotionally and physically, still can't transform their characters into more than just symbols for contemporary urban loneliness.
  14. Nobody Walks
    Nobody Walks is Mumblecore 2.0: The budget is bigger, the cast is littered with recognizable faces from popular television programs, and the production values are more impressive, but the fixation with the low-key, artsy angst of rudderless twenty- and thirtysomethings remains constant.
  15. 2 Guns
    As in "Contraband," Kormákur offers a hint of a political statement, in this case about the inherent potential for corruption whenever competing government agencies are operating in international territory. But it doesn’t quite make it. On almost every level, 2 Guns is content to be as flavorless and forgettable as its title.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    For Ellen
    The kind of film that rises or falls on the strength of its lead performance, given that its protagonist is in every scene, often alone. It's built around a strong turn by Dano, but one that feels studied and sometimes at odds with the naturalism the film aims for with its grubby settings, loose camerawork, and tendency toward inquisitive close-ups.
  17. Stolen
    He seems to have given up on making art long ago; these days, all he wants to do is entertain, and with Stolen, he succeeds, albeit only on the guilty-pleasure level. Like seemingly the sum of late-period Cage, Stolen is unashamedly cheese, but at least it's cheese of a pungent, flavorful vintage.
  18. The Oranges
    Overall, The Oranges appears to have been forcibly wrested into a conventional indie-dramedy package, rather than finding the length, style, structure, and perhaps medium that would best suit it.
  19. Lay the Favorite
    At best, Lay The Favorite registers as cartoon sociology, but the film's featherweight charms dissipate whenever it moves away from the world of gambling and devotes time to go-nowhere subplots involving Hall's bland romance with Jackson, or Willis' troubled but fundamentally healthy marriage to Zeta-Jones.
  20. Francine
    Francine is so minimalist that it has to rely almost entirely on Leo for solidity, and it would be a far stronger film if it supported and framed her more effectively.
  21. The Other Son
    The Other Son's setup is too contrived, carried along by conversations that are either confrontational or artificially elusive.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Snowman's Land
    Tonally, Snowman's Land feels like a German throwback to a '90s indie, but without the energy-the pacing is languid to the point of aimlessness.
  23. Home
    Though it opens with the studio’s seemingly mandatory voice-over setup, the story itself, adapted from the children’s book "The True Meaning Of Smekday," shows immediate conceptual audacity.
  24. Kung Fu Panda 3
    Kung Fu Panda 3 is Kung Fu Panda minus a dramatic arc, but with way more pandas.
  25. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    As an act of storytelling, it’s curiously perfunctory, never rising to the level of effort and care put into creating its cornucopia of visual pleasures.
  26. In Our Nature
    Brian Savelson's small-scaled domestic drama In Our Nature evokes a specific, fairly common experience: when two young lovers expose a still-blossoming relationship to their relatives' stifling attention.
  27. Dark Skies
    Good horror films are imprinted by the fears and anxieties of the day, converting real-life atrocities into abstracted scares; mediocre ones are imprinted, too, but with trends and commercial formulas. If Dark Skies resurfaced on TV or brain implant 20 or 30 years from now, horror fans would be able to carbon-date the film almost to the month.
  28. Smurfs: The Lost Village
    An inoffensive children’s film with an above-average voice cast, competent animation, and no product placement. This is enough to make it the finest film ever made about the Smurfs.
  29. Pusher (2012)
    Luis Prieto's remake capably mimics the original's breakneck energy without adding a single thing. It seems to exist mostly to stuff more violence into Britain's insatiable maw for crime pictures.
  30. Struck by Lightning
    Lightning is a funny, fast-moving movie, packed with barbed one-liners, goofy hyperbole, and all the oversized exasperation of teen angst. But it's too acid, particularly where Colfer is concerned.
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