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 Foreigner
    The Foreigner is a good, lean cut of meat—in other words, a typical Martin Campbell movie, expeditious and cold-blooded in its cross-cut, cloak-and-dagger plotting and violence.
  2. High Anxiety
    Anxiety is nearly as obsessive in recreating Alfred Hitchcock's visual style as Gus Van Sant's Psycho was, but to much greater effect.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Prefontaine
    But at best, the movie has an air of immediacy, freeing it from the ossified myth-making that plagues many true-life biopics.
  4. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    What keeps Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! from being irredeemably offensive are Almodóvar’s efforts, however vague and tentative, to undermine his own thesis.
  5. I'm So Excited
    After establishing a jaunty tone with its candy-colored, Saul Bass–style opening credits, the film racks up a high strain-to-laugh ratio; there’s a sense Almodóvar can’t quite keep track of all his gags.
  6. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    Portman’s emotional connection to the material couldn’t be more obvious, yet the film itself is still largely inert.
  7. Walt & El Grupo
    Hardcore Disney fans will appreciate how serious-minded and intimate this movie is, but for others, Walt & El Grupo might feel like an expensive vacation slide show, assembled by strangers.
  8. Mad Love
    At heart it's a randy, oversexed soap opera in period garb.
  9. America's Heart and Soul
    Represents apple-pie mythmaking at its most insidiously thoughtless.
  10. The Terminal
    In the latest of a long string of memorable performances, Hanks balances wide-eyed confusion with innate shrewdness, finding a character who's both unfailingly sweet and nobody's fool.
  11. Antiviral
    For all its preoccupation with disease, Antiviral isn’t especially visceral. The movie can be repulsive at times, but Cronenberg is more interested in ideas than in blood and guts.
  12. Olympic Dreams
    This is a more professional-looking production, with a much stronger cast, but it has the same half-assed feel.
  13. Odessa... Odessa!
    Too pretty to dismiss, but too dull to recommend.
  14. Friends with Kids
    Westfeldt has a tendency to go over the top, and Friends With Kids in particular has a shrill, smug edge that kills the comedy and the drama alike.
  15. Extraterrestrial
    There's a solid framework in place here for a fun, original twist on a conventional science-fiction premise, but aside from the occasional quirky touch - Vigalondo fails to fill that frame with a picture worthy of it.
  16. Detour
    Dickerson passes on the occasion for existential drama and goes for the race-against-the-clock urgency of an ordinary guy trying to crawl out of his predicament. It’s effective enough, but there isn’t much to it.
  17. Quid Pro Quo
    Stahl quietly plays the straight man, giving the usually skillful Farmiga plenty of room to overact with abandon; she plays her character as one part Rosanna Arquette in David Cronenberg's "Crash" to two parts Natalie Portman's magical life-saving pixie in "Garden State."
  18. Man of Steel
    Like Snyder’s Sucker Punch, it’s a confused but fascinating mishmash of religious, military, and sexual imagery.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    General Orders No. 9
    General Orders No. 9 is bound to test the patience, but there are rewards to be found in its deliberate rhythms - foremost amongst them, the glorious, haunting visuals.
  20. Escaflowne: The Movie
    The film's life-affirming fable offers a richer metaphorical subtext than Vision's intricate coming-of-age soap opera. Unfortunately, clumsy dialogue, characterization, and exposition interfere with that subtext.
  21. Payback
    Payback attempts something impressively difficult, but it succeeds primarily in its individual moments.
  22. The Fog
    Removed from its context as the highly anticipated follow-up to a horror classic, The Fog lingers as a crafty and loving assemblage of pulp gimmicks, played out in a location that rivals Hitchcock locales for pure eye-vacation appeal.
  23. For a Good Time, Call...
    The notion of a love story that's really about two women becoming friends is gimmicky, I'll grant, but Graynor and Miller are so charming together, and the movie is so focused and funny.
  24. A Christmas Carol
    The holiday spirit feels real, but the film does not.
  25. Exporting Raymond
    At its most compelling when Rosenthal explores why the crassest entertainment is internationally successful, even in the home of theatrical naturalism.
  26. Hunt
    Lee stars in, directs, co-writes, and co-produces this taut, extravagant, and technically proficient effort, which comes off more as an auspicious filmmaking debut than a vanity project, one that stacks up favorably with most American spy thrillers.
  27. Yes
    Like Potter's "Orlando" and "The Tango Lesson," Yes showcases a craft and a hushed, vibrant intensity that prove compelling even when the story loses its focus.
  28. Inheritance
    Burger—a Hollywood journeyman who’s done some hackwork but began his career with the 2002 conspiracy mock-doc Interview With The Assassin—keeps things moving with a vérité point-of-view that sometimes makes it feel like the camera is the one doing the spying.
  29. Wuthering Heights
    Overlong and undersexed, Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights betrays her audience of edgelords and perverts. Even stranger, those who have fostered a distaste for the filmmaker’s sensibility will similarly find themselves disappointed. It’s one thing to make art that can be read as indulgent, ill-conceived, and tasteless—it’s another to turn around and make something that’s just boring in comparison.
  30. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
    There’s no intentionality behind Ungentlemanly Warfare, no perspective or passion to drive what should be a gleefully schadenfreude-filled time at the movies. With the exception of a scene-stealing Danny Sapani, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a forgettable action vehicle ferrying a gaggle of uninspired rascals.
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