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. The Croods: A New Age
    With eleven different characters to serve—not counting several animal sidekicks—A New Age has a lot going on in terms of plot and action, with a litany of new alliances, betrayals, and team-ups. But the sequel is not as visually sophisticated as its predecessor.
  2. CQ
    It looks great -- thanks in large part to production designer Dean Tavoularis and Wes Anderson cinematographer Robert Yeoman -- but just as importantly, it looks like it's interesting. Ultimately, it's not, but that almost doesn't matter.
  3. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    Sharply drawn and well-acted.
  4. Phone Booth
    Schumacher choose to start the movie in outer space? The opening shot epitomizes everything wrong with Phone Booth: Given the chance to stage human drama on an intimate, suffocating scale, Schumacher begins in the endless expanse of the void, tricked out with gratuitous CGI effects.
  5. The Ladykillers
    Already as dark as London soot, the comedy hardly needed work to bring it in line with the Coen brothers' sensibility, but the remake moves to a beat of its own, one unexpectedly in sync with the gospel music dominating its soundtrack.
  6. After Midnight
    As a story, it never develops beyond the routine. Still, the aesthetic philosophizing works as a framework for daring visual experiments.
  7. Troy
    Troy does look good--so good, in fact, that it takes a while to reveal itself as a thundering dud with much action but little personality, human drama, or brains.
  8. Phoebe in Wonderland
    There's too much "problem, solution" to Phoebe, although the movie's anxieties are believable enough to earns the moments of uplift. The film may be too concerned with being a crowd-pleaser, but it least it makes the crowd suffer a little along the way.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Fast X
    The focus inside the avalanche of stunts, asymmetrical plot elements, and mismatched genre tropes is still what Vin, and his alter ego Dom, would call “values.” Faith. Family. Honor. Loyalty. Because Dom is the last of a dying breed.
  10. Maleficent
    More well-intentioned than accomplished.
  11. Touch
    Touch never quite catches the satiric fire its subject seems to warrant. It's pleasant, disarming, and likable, but never quite miraculous.
  12. Bottle Shock
    Trouble is, it's too rambling and digressive to feel focused, yet too calculating to feel as observational and natural as a good Altman flick.
  13. Boss Level
    While Carnahan’s sense of humor has always been juvenile, in Stretch it at least benefitted from a gonzo factor and the crucial quality of having funny parts. Boss Level, however, is clumsy from the jump, with lame gags and a ceaseless, obtrusive voice-over that is always telling us why the next part is funny or what’s happening on screen (in case the viewer is distracted by their phone).
  14. December Boys
    For much of its duration, December is poignantly bittersweet, but the closing sugar rush washes its pleasing ambiguities away.
  15. Then She Found Me
    With Midler missing in action much of the time, the film drowns in a sea of thudding earnestness.
  16. The Pale Blue Eye
    This is a case of one movie with two endings, and neither of them totally satisfy.
  17. Sangre De Mi Sangre
    The film seems even more one-note when compared to the recent indie feature "Chop Shop," which also follows young immigrant hustlers in NYC, yet takes the time to provide a fuller picture of the city and its opportunities. Zalla prefers to wallow in the dead-end, an approach that's initially powerful, then numbing.
  18. Manglehorn
    Pacino has finally started acting again, which is cause for celebration. It’ll be real cause for celebration if/when he also starts picking projects worthier than The Humbling, Danny Collins, and now Manglehorn, all of which see him struggling to find moments of truth within a contrived, borderline ludicrous scenario.
  19. The Man Who Knew Infinity
    This is the very definition of the kind of movie people complain that “they” don’t make anymore: a modestly budgeted, character-driven drama for adults that doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence or lean on shock value.
  20. Alex of Venice
    So doggedly ordinary that it constantly teeters on the edge of tedium.
  21. The Running Man
    [Wright] continues to prove more adept at tightly weaving his thematic concerns into genre-friendly comedy. Making a muscular, fun-enough adaptation of The Running Man is at once beneath him and beyond him.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    My Girl
    It’s an introduction to adolescent viewers of some of life’s most painful events, even if those events aren’t always depicted in the most realistic ways. And therein lies My Girl’s effectiveness.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Dinner for Schmucks
    Thanks to Rudd and Carell's dependable likeability and a tacked-on warm-and-fuzzy ending, Dinner For Schmucks is leagues ahead of its forebear in terms of mass appeal, but its laughs are more silly than scathing.
  24. The Recruit
    Donaldson and his battery of screenwriters aim for nothing more than a coolly efficient thrill machine, but the mechanics break down in the end, foiled by a "whodunit" twist that's telegraphed early in the first reel. Careening forward without any real purpose, the film simply flies off the rails.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Wizard of the Kremlin
    It doesn’t make for a very serious look at decades of history, but The Wizard Of The Kremlin isn’t attempting to nail down a Russian reality any more than it is trying to directly tie its observations to modern America. It’s in its observation of hyperreality in action, its bleak look at constructed chaos, that the film inevitably feels close to home.
  26. Swapped
    Even if it wasn’t hot on the tail of Pixar’s Hoppers, Swapped would still be an overly familiar adventure towards empathy, one light on comedy and insight despite plenty of visual imagination in its world of flora-fauna hybrids.
  27. The Cable Guy
    The Cable Guy works best as a movie about how damn hard it is tell someone that you’re really not interested in getting to know them better.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    2 Days in the Valley
    A stupid movie that expects us to suspend our disbelief until it seems smart. Skip it and see some other movie that features two hired killers having a conversation in a car.
  29. The Yellow Birds
    Directed by Alexandre Moors, who made the D.C. sniper movie Blue Caprice, The Yellow Birds might have used its nonlinear structure to confront us with how war reshapes these young men, putting who they were and who they become into conversation. But the performances don’t capture that psychological change.
  30. Joy
    Rough even by Russell’s standards, this grab bag of dropped plot points, visual metaphors, and theatrical cues looks like the underdrawing of a comic drama, only half covered in bright impasto strokes.
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