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. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    Disturbing The Universe doesn’t mix it up enough.
  2. Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
    Like "Art & Copy," Ten9Eight is blindingly slick, with a glossy visual aesthetic more rooted in music videos and commercials than cinéma vérité.
  3. Uncertainty
    The leads are immensely appealing, but the sum of their experiences equals nothing more profound than two earnest people wrestling with a tough decision.
  4. Women in Trouble
    What does it all mean? Nothing much greater than the sum of its seriocomic vignettes. To that end, Women In Trouble tends to sputter to life whenever the stories get racy.
  5. Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
    Not even Douglas Sirk or Lars von Trier would heap so much abuse on a heroine. And yet, on its own melodramatic, tear-jerking terms, Precious works.
  6. The Men Who Stare at Goats
    This is a movie about a “New Earth Army” full of misfit soldiers yearning for a chance to be non-conformists with a cause, which means it’s already two-thirds of the way to being awesome. Had Heslov eased back a bit, Goats might’ve made it the rest of the way.
  7. The Box
    Whenever The Box threatens to crash, Kelly summons up another haunting image or heartfelt, albeit thin, moral inquiry. It’s an unwieldy, ambitious, one-of-a-kind film waiting for a cult to find it.
  8. The Fourth Kind
    Terminally awkward in the way it meshes fake real footage with faker fake footage. It isn’t required to be convincing as fact, but it doesn’t convince as fiction, either.
  9. A Christmas Carol
    The holiday spirit feels real, but the film does not.
  10. Collapse
    There are many layers to the man and the movie, and it’s hard not to leave the theater shaken.
  11. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    Duffy's inept command of actors, not to mention his utterly juvenile morality and his comically clumsy use of religious iconography, should keep all but the diehards away.
  12. Gentlemen Broncos
    Crammed with so much deliberate tackiness that it borders on exhausting self-parody.
  13. The House of the Devil
    If nothing else, Ti West’s retro “Satan rules!” thriller The House Of The Devil gets the look and tone of early-’80s horror schlock exactly right.
  14. This Is It
    At best, it angrily demands to be rechristened This Is It! Too often, however, an incredulous This Is It? seems more apt.
  15. Antichrist
    Antichrist is a boldly personal film, tossing all von Trier’s ideas about faith, fear, and human nature into an unfettered phantasmagoria, full of repulsive visions and fierce scorn. It’s also the most lush-looking movie von Trier has made in about 20 years.
  16. Amelia
    Considering its focus on a pioneering, rule-breaking icon, the film’s utter lack of personality isn’t just a failure. It’s close to an insult.
  17. Astro Boy
    Older viewers are more likely to see a muddled film full of one-dimensional characters and insultingly strident politics.
  18. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    Actually, by way of a sequel, the filmmakers could just set Cerveris, Dafoe, and Reilly up for a purr-off. That’d be more fun than most of this film.
  19. Saw VI
    Because Saw does nothing to alter the look, tone, and engineered gimmickry from one movie to the next, it keeps going deeper into backstory and character arcs than horror series past, as if this ugly, cheap-looking schlock were somehow "The Lord Of The Rings."
  20. (Untitled)
    The three main characters aren’t cardboard-cutout poseurs, and for that alone, (Untitled) stands apart.
  21. Motherhood
    Dieckmann fails to notice that Thurman doesn’t have the comic chops for the material--she comes off more like a self-pitying loser than a witty, put-upon everywoman.
  22. Ong Bak 2
    What sold the original Ong Bak was the action, not the story, and on an action level, Ong Bak 2 lives up to its title.
  23. The Wedding Song
    It takes more than just the ominous tread of Nazi boots to infuse gravitas into this well-intentioned but dreary look at the female mind and body during wartime.
  24. Where the Wild Things Are
    Spike Jonze has recently said in interviews that his chief goal ...was to try to capture the feeling of being 9. By that measure--by just about any measure, really--he succeeded wildly.
  25. Law Abiding Citizen
    A flagrantly ridiculous thriller that tries to retrofit "Saw" to function as a mainstream, semi-respectable vigilante picture
  26. New York, I Love You
    The segments don’t form anything like a coherent whole, but they aren’t distinctive enough to clash meaningfully with each other, either.
  27. Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
    Jaud isn’t telling a story so much as he’s making a case, and while his case is persuasive, it doesn’t really work as a movie. The information in Food Beware could fit just as easily--and just as effectively--into a pamphlet.
  28. The Stepfather
    Walsh is just a dumb bully who can’t see more than one or two steps ahead. He’s doomed to generic slasher villainy, and the film thoughtlessly obliges.
  29. The Maid
    Even at its most upbeat, The Maid is something of a tragedy.
  30. An Education
    An Education shares with Hornby’s best work trenchant insight into the way smart, hyper-verbal young people let the music, films, books, and art they love define themselves as they figure out who they are and what they want to be.
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