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. Alice in Wonderland
    The best adaptations have found ways to put a personal stamp on the familiar stories. Others have simply reproduced an Alice facsimile in the image of their own era. Surprisingly, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland belongs to the latter camp. That doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie, just another frustratingly impersonal one from a director who once had trouble compacting his personality down to movie size.
  2. Brooklyn's Finest
    To quote Yogi Berra, it’s déjà vu all over again.
  3. Cop Out
    With Cop Out, Smith works from a script other than his own for the first time--this one penned by siblings Mark and Robb Cullen--but his slack direction siphons the energy out of this tongue-in-cheek throwback to ’80s mismatched-buddy comedies.
  4. A Prophet
    A Prophet has been compared to American TV series like "Oz" for its episodic plot and large cast, but it’s more like a Gallic "Goodfellas": thoroughly absorbing, exciting, even poetic. It’s a full evening’s entertainment.
  5. The Crazies
    The crazies themselves could be a lot more terrifying. Without the rotting ickiness of proper zombies, they just seem like methed-out Iowans looking for a fix. That’s scary, but not scary enough.
  6. The Yellow Handkerchief
    It’s nice to see a film unafraid to be quiet and sensitive, but one good gust of coastal breeze would blow this one away.
  7. Easier with Practice
    Love stories don’t come much squirmier than this one, and Alvarez plays it with honesty, insight, and the awkwardness inherent in this blindest of blind dates.
  8. The Art of the Steal
    A damning example of justice bending toward those who can most afford to buy it.
  9. Prodigal Sons
    Prodigal Sons comes packed with multiple hooks. Aside from the sex-change angle, the movie takes a turn when Marc---whom Reed’s parents adopted before she was born--learns that he’s the biological son of Rebecca Welles, and the grandchild of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.
  10. Shutter Island
    There’s a purpose to all this madness--though to talk about the primary reason the film succeeds would be giving the game away--but it should be appreciated first as a vivid, waking nightmare.
  11. Happy Tears
    Happy Tears is a complete mess of a movie, but Lichtenstein conjures some sweet moments and striking metaphors.
  12. Blood Done Sign My Name
    Draws attention to a little-known chapter in the history of the civil-rights movement, but it doesn’t do much to pull that moment into the present, or to pull the audience into the past.
  13. The Ghost Writer
    The Ghost Writer may not go down as one of Polanski’s masterpieces, but if it does end up being his swan song, it’s the ideal denouement to a life and career of unsettling resonance.
  14. Lourdes
    Lourdes starts from the unexpected position of believing miracles are possible, but it doesn’t paper over the religious and practical problems they raise--for the blessed and bereft alike.
  15. The Wolfman
    A few stray livers and severed heads aside, this is a monster too polite for its own good.
  16. Valentine's Day
    Explores love in all its myriad forms, from the sickeningly sappy to the cornball to the groaningly precious and obnoxiously cute.
  17. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    In Columbus’ hands, it once again all breaks down into a series of rushed, breathless special-effects setpieces, in a thrill ride that isn’t headed anywhere new.
  18. Videocracy
    If a team of clever screenwriters tried to script a cautionary tale about the politics of fame (and the fame of politics), they likely couldn’t come up with anything odder or more apt than Erik Gandini’s documentary Videocracy.
  19. October Country
    In digging deeper into the stories behind the junk--many of which involve the drug problems, legal problems, custody battles, cycles of abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorders of Mosher’s own family--October Country veers awfully close to exploitation.
  20. From Paris with Love
    With his flamboyant ridiculousness, Travolta does, however, give From Paris With Love a pulse, which is more than can be said for the film’s petulant hero, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
  21. Dear John
    Hallström's approach to the material is tasteful and restrained to a fault.
  22. District 13: Ultimatum
    More of the same, only more. Yet here, “more” means a more needlessly convoluted plot, a more cartoonish parade of ethnic stereotypes, and more leaden political metaphor than viewers can digest.
  23. Frozen
    While the actors are game, their characters are awfully generic.
  24. Terribly Happy
    This is a smart, melancholy crime picture, which takes its cues from the title of the perverse old standard Christensen plays on her stereo at night: “You Always Hurt The One You Love.”
  25. Ajami
    Copti and Shani show characters of different backgrounds interacting peacefully as individuals, then show how those characters subtly change when their affiliation with a group becomes an issue. And always the threat of violence looms.
  26. Edge of Darkness
    Quickly devolves into another showcase for Gibson’s snorting-bull act, a routine he could happily have shelved during his time off.
  27. When in Rome
    It’s the kind of wretched embarrassment that may leave viewers trying to suspend the belief that they’re still sitting in the theater watching it.
  28. Saint John of Las Vegas
    Predictably, the best moments belong to Buscemi, whose performance is a model of understatement in a field of grotesques.
  29. North Face
    The historical backdrop is fascinating and an important part of this story, but there’s a pervasive sense that director Philipp Stölzl and his screenwriters soft-pedal it as much as possible in order to exalt their heroes.
  30. Legion
    A cartoonishly grim supernatural thriller that could stand a lot less talk and a lot more thrills.
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