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. Extraordinary Measures
    The film closely follows the pattern of 1992’s "Lorenzo’s Oil," but with fewer filmmaking risks, visceral emotions, and colorful, outsized characters.
  2. The Girl on the Train
    Given several years’ distance from the media blitz, Téchiné brings clarity, maturity, and perspective to the case while still subtly addressing all the thorny social issues the affair touched off.
  3. Creation
    What begins as a multilayered tale of scientific discovery and cultural history gets reduced to a single maudlin idea: that even Charles Darwin had to evolve.
  4. Tooth Fairy
    For a bad, broad comedy, Tooth Fairy boasts a surprising number of positives. Which isn’t to say that it’s good, but it could be much, much worse.
  5. The Paranoids
    The Paranoids summons a scuzzy, winning nocturnal ambience, particularly when Hendler breaks out of his funk, hits the dance floor, and does his best impression of Michael Stipe in the “Losing My Religion” video. For a few brief moments, he and the movie transcend their four-walled ennui.
  6. Room and a Half
    For those who can’t abide conventional biopics, here’s a viable alternative: A Room And A Half, a fantastical, imaginative depiction of the life of Nobel-winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.
  7. Pop Star on Ice
    Perhaps television will prove a better medium to explore Weir’s idiosyncrasies than this engaging yet superficial documentary.
  8. The Book of Eli
    Its hero may be on a mission from above, but in a refreshing twist, the fate of mankind rests with the literate.
  9. Fish Tank
    In that way, Jarvis is a lot like Arnold: an artist who knows the steps, but doesn't yet have all the moves.
  10. The Spy Next Door
    Chan’s anything-goes affability keeps the film from scraping bottom.
  11. Daybreakers
    After a while, Daybreakers settles into the lulling rhythms of too many horror movies, as the characters ponder what to do in darkened rooms instead of doing much of anything.
  12. Youth in Revolt
    Arteta’s well-intentioned film version feels simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked.
  13. Leap Year
    There isn’t a spontaneous or unpredictable moment in this loving, perversely reverent homage to rom-com, road-movie, and mismatched-romance conventions.
  14. Waiting for Armageddon
    Davis and company do get at the odd mix of middle-class lifestyle and cheerful doom-saying that defines the mainstream apocalypticons.
  15. Wonderful World
    Broderick’s tendency to hang all his problems on corporate greed and heartless bureaucracy leads to some strange missteps.
  16. The White Ribbon
    Haneke’s latest is essentially an inquiry into the roots of a certain kind of evil.
  17. Sherlock Holmes
    This is very much a Sherlock Holmes movie for the blockbuster era.
  18. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
    In a real sort of way, Gilliam IS Parnassus, carrying his tatterdemalion show forward from year to year and trying to get people to pay attention, and the mingled sense of bitterness and hope in his story makes this whole crazed fantasy into something far more real.
  19. It's Complicated
    It’s Complicated is the sort of “mature” character piece the French do regularly and better (and without the need for quotation marks around “mature”), but the cast at least helps relieve some of the tidiness that belies the title.
  20. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
    Sure enough, director Betty Thomas delivers pretty much the bare minimum: peppy, brightly colored, tune-filled nonsense sure to meet the low, low standards of its pre-kindergarten core audience.
  21. Police, Adjective
    A clever, exceedingly wonky procedural about a undercover cop (Dragos Bucur) who quietly refuses to do what he's told.
  22. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    When the material gets really bad, as it does in the dismal Did You Hear About The Morgans?, Grant's pinched facial expressions become an inadvertent commentary on the movie he's making, as if he plainly realizes that his one-liners are tanking.
  23. Avatar
    Avatar is a weak patchwork of his other films: the leaden voiceover from "Terminator 2" here, the military/civilian conflict from "Aliens" there, even a Jack-and-Rose-style forbidden love story cued to adult-contempo soundtrack.
  24. Nine
    A joyless trudge, particularly when compared to Fellini’s vibrant original?
  25. The Young Victoria
    The film lays on its politics-as-chess-game metaphor a little thick, however, and its refusal to leave the corridors of power to see the impact of its developments on the country at large makes it feel stuffy after a while.
  26. Crazy Heart
    Crazy Heart could use more rough edges, but while it’s a little too sentimental and tidy, Bridges’ humane, deeply empathetic lead performance makes it easy to root for one man’s redemption.
  27. A Town Called Panic
    It's more clever than funny, but it's very clever.
  28. Ricky
    The frisson between the two halves is intriguing for a while, but it leaves the film feeling adrift.
  29. Invictus
    It’s a simplistic, superficial approach to a real-life story that marginalizes most historical details not involving scrums and tackles. It’s also pretty effective, in spite of the gloss.
  30. The Lovely Bones
    For all its successes, Bones remains more crafted than sincere, more meant to look achingly pretty on the screen than to resonate in the heart.
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