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. A United Kingdom
    The movie falls short of delivering a memorable experience of its own. Outside of confirming its stars’ presence, A United Kingdom is more valuable as history than filmmaking.
  2. Hidden Figures
    For all of its current touchstones, Hidden Figures feels far too late, both in the recognition these women deserve and the filmmakers’ goodhearted but dull approach to their stories.
  3. Girl Asleep
    Never betraying an iota of lived experience, it trots out tropes seen in dozens of movies and sitcom episodes (the embarrassing dad, the big party, the fictional rock star crush, etc.), which can ring true only because they’ve been in circulation for decades.
  4. Chuck
    The movie is more interested in him as a lovable loser, a working-class palooka who stumbled briefly into the spotlight, and Schreiber — bulked up, mustachioed, having a grand time — leans enjoyably into his hangdog mediocrity.
  5. Maudie
    The problem is as old as the biopic: Somewhere in trying to tell a life story, life gets lost.
  6. The Ivory Game
    Unlike a lot of other advocacy docs—films that seek to raise awareness regarding some serious issue, often concluding with a call to action—Netflix’s The Ivory Game offers something spectacularly visual: elephants.
  7. The Monster
    With The Monster, writer-director Bryan Bertino plants a prickly mother-daughter drama at the center of a violent creature feature. It’s an intriguing combination in theory, but the individual elements both feel a little half-baked, and stirring them up into one doesn’t help. They’re two mediocre tastes that taste mediocre together.
  8. Catfight
    In more ways than one, Catfight lives down to its title. This is a spectacularly petty and mean-spirited comedy that pivots around, yes, two women beating the shit out of each other.
  9. Daguerrotype
    Daguerrotype is frustratingly easy to rationalize. It’s also about an hour too long; by the time it reaches the end credits, even the spell cast by his eerie direction and handsome widescreen compositions has worn off.
  10. Tramps
    The film itself is barely bluffing that it has any stakes; the caper is vague enough to be inconsequential. Tramps knows it’s small potatoes, but is it any better for it?
  11. Wakefield
    It’s a tale of what happens when male inadequacy runs rampant, starring a committed Bryan Cranston, but it’s ultimately hamstrung by its overwrought sensibilities.
  12. The Whole Truth
    The Whole Truth is a moderately clever, reasonably entertaining courtroom drama, which is only a problem given the talent involved with bringing something this middle-of-the-road to the screen.
  13. Mulan
    Rather than lean into the more mature elements that make it stand out, the movie does frustratingly little with its noteworthy upgrades on the original, resulting in a version of the story that’s only superficially more sophisticated.
  14. Michael Moore in TrumpLand
    This 73-minute speech isn’t really much of a movie, and as advocacy it’s unlikely to reach Trump-leaning voters. But as a case for Clinton aimed at third-party supporters who are convinced they couldn’t stomach casting a ballot for her, it might turn a few heads.
  15. Detour
    Detour is just film-school-ish synthesis, right down to the cinematography-midterm shot lit through venetian blinds and the anachronistic analog static on the motel room TV—the story of a young man who hates his stepdad so much that he stumbles right into an over-complicated thriller set-up that can only be watched once.
  16. Army of One
    The problem is that Army Of One doesn’t add up to much. It’s not quite a satire nor quite a full character study.
  17. American Assassin
    It’s paper-thin, predictable, and goofy as hell, but if you can get past the whole “pro-military propaganda” thing, it’s pretty fun in the moment.
  18. The Duelist
    The premise of intrigue and revenge in a high-society Tsarist underworld is irresistible and pulpy, but Mizgirev’s script is an indigestible, soap-operatic mess of backstories, clichés, and the kind of ambiguous mystic overtones that have become an unbreakable addiction for Russian film.
  19. Old Stone
    It’s too bad that the movie shifts from having too little juice to having too much, because there are hints of a more compelling middle ground.
  20. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
    They’ve chased a valuable science lesson with something that comes closer, occasionally, to a celebrity profile.
  21. The Sense of an Ending
    The entire movie consists of this same delayed-gratification tactic, as significant events from Tony’s past are first teased and then revealed a bit at a time, via numerous flashbacks. A little of that sort of thing can be invigorating. Push it too far, however, and it starts to feel like a pointless game of narrative Keep Away.
  22. Unforgettable
    Which brings us to the fatal flaw in Unforgettable: With its formulaic story and hackneyed dialogue, all there is to do in between moments of self-aware outrageousness is admire the decor, like an Anthropologie catalog punctuated with the occasional knife wound.
  23. The Ardennes
    First-time director Robin Pront serves up plenty of brooding atmosphere, but the screenplay, adapted from a stage play by Pront and Jeroen Perceval (who also plays the sensible Harvey Keitel role), never succeeds in eluding genre cliché.
  24. The House That Jack Built
    The film lands somewhere between self-flagellation and apologia; however hard von Trier is on himself, he’s not above mounting defenses, and he spares plenty of punishment for us, too.
  25. The Ornithologist
    Perhaps The Ornithologist lends itself so well to scholarly unpacking because it has too little of its own to offer. Maybe it’s healthier to just enjoy the light bouncing from the water to Hamy’s abs.
  26. The Case for Christ
    The Case For Christ is pretty slow going, tedious rather than offensive, with Strobel repeatedly whiteboarding out the evidence as callback voice-overs add up all the pieces until he’s convinced. “All right, God,” he finally says. “You win.”
  27. Girls Trip
    Before the opening credits have finished rolling, voice-over narration is lamenting the distance that can grow between even the tightest of friendships and hyping up the audience for a reunion of characters who have barely been introduced. It may be shameless, but it’s honest.
  28. The Hitman's Bodyguard
    The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which bears the tagline “Get triggered” and is essentially a dumber, tackier "Midnight Run," was destined to be one of those Neanderthalic, faux-merican EuropaCorp action movies, like "The Transporter" or "From Paris With Love" ­­— except fate fumbled, and the film ended up as a coasting-on-star-power Hollywood programmer directed by The Expendables 3’s Patrick Hughes.
  29. Only the Brave
    So squarely old-fashioned that it’s a little jarring to notice that many of the characters have smartphones.
  30. Murder on the Orient Express
    Suspense remains a foreign concept for actor-director Kenneth Branagh. His erratic direction — more interested in cut glass and overhead shots than in suspicions and uncertainties — bungles both the perfect puzzle logic of the crime and its devious solution.
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