The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Megalopolis
    Megalopolis is a magical, meandering, maddening construction, one that demonstrates that the process of experimentation is in and of itself both deeply entwined with, as well as above, dualistic notions like success and failure.
  2. The Hundred-Foot Journey
    This innocuous crowd-pleaser delivers everything that its pedigree and ad campaign promise, courting the patronage of foodies, Oprah Book Club members, Travel Channel subscribers, and Helen Mirren lovers alike.
  3. Aquaman
    It owns up to its cheese.
  4. Arkansas
    While Arkansas is a promising and often very entertaining first feature, Duke doesn’t combine these borrowed ingredients—excellent though they are—into a fully realized original story, with its own personality.
  5. Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
    As fascinating as Glass often is, it's simultaneously too conventional and not conventional enough.
  6. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
    From the looks of it, a good 90 percent of The D's creative juices were expended on The Pick Of Destiny's brilliant opening sequence.
  7. Violent Night
    It’s a premise that’s just clever enough to work; although too many anachronistically cheery needle drops during gruesome fight sequences abound, there’s plenty to milk from the juxtaposition of family-friendly Christmas spirit and R-rated action and comedy.
  8. Love Actually
    Provides enough happy endings to make the audience forget that romance and Christmas miracles don't always work out.
  9. 3
    All this experimentation is enjoyable enough in the moment, but it's disappointing when Tykwer drops it in favor of a conventional, obvious ending.
  10. Reality
    A viewer can’t help but take it as an artistic statement, even though nothing — not even the nods to Mulholland Dr. — suggests that Dupieux’s motivated by anything more than a hankering to make something weird and funny. He succeeds on the first part, and fitfully accomplishes the second.
  11. NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage
    It’s a thoroughly upbeat paean to the magic (and the hard work) of theater, with not so much of a hint of discord—of mild interest to aficionados and Spacey fans, but almost terminally bland.
  12. The Command
    It doesn’t help that The Command looks phony right from the outset, being an English-language film involving virtually no actual Russians.
  13. The Gambler
    In any case, none of the gambles Jim makes over the course of the movie are as ballsy as the film’s casting strategy. Will audiences really buy Mark Wahlberg as a wordsmith too brilliant for academia? Smart money says no.
  14. Mr. Harrigan's Phone
    Though its narrative contains some subtleties, and Hancock’s aesthetic polish gives it a nice gloss, the picture’s pacing and character-driven momentum frequently sputters, ultimately leading to diminished results.
  15. The Four Seasons
    Astonishingly boring.
  16. The Flash
    It’s sometimes buried under layers and layers of storytelling knots that the film never fully untangles, but the fun is there, and when the film is really working, that turns out to be enough.
  17. The Acid House
    The Acid House comes across as a shadow of "Trainspotting," albeit a vibrant, noisy, frantic shadow.
  18. Casa de los babys
    It's a bit more than the film can handle without leaving loose ends dangling, and though it's never preachy, Sayles' political message-sending sometimes comes across too clearly for its own good. He makes valid points, though, particularly when he lets his storytelling do the work for him.
  19. Starsky & Hutch
    A textbook example of how a remade '70s show can feel like an enjoyable lark rather than cultural recycling run amok.
  20. Freeze Frame
    Compelling as it sounds, the idea behind Freeze Frame doesn't make any sense, especially when realized in practical terms.
  21. Spirited
    While not without some issues, the movie lands as a modern-day fable whose colorfully packaged and exuberantly pitched life lessons carry an undeniable timeliness.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Beloved
    Honoré's combination of contemporary romantic hijinks and the stylization inherent in the musical genre aren't juxtaposed ironically: Beloved is a tenderly sincere musical that celebrates love even as it acknowledges the ways in which it can sometimes lead to tragedy.
  23. Zombieland: Double Tap
    Unfortunately, the decade that passed between the two films was long enough for the approach to grow tiresome.
  24. Promised Land
    No one seems to recognize the irony of making a film about corporate rigging that is itself outrageously rigged.
  25. Agora
    Weisz makes for a vivid, charismatic Hypatia, but the script lets her down.
  26. The Croods
    The film itself doesn’t practice what it preaches: From the typically blocky DreamWorks CGI to the emphasis on bruising slapstick over verbal wit, The Croods takes the low road at every opportunity, giving lip service to enlightenment while following a Flintstonian instinct to keep punching the clock at the quarry.
  27. I Heart Huckabees
    One of the boldest, most audacious American movies of the last 25 years, a freewheeling cerebral carnival of energy and ideas, if not always coherence or cohesion.
  28. The House Bunny
    Faris has mostly logged time in dire vehicles like The House Bunny, which are dumb-dumb to her smart-dumb.
  29. Rendition
    With a cast this stacked, the performances are predictably strong (particularly from Sarsgaard, whose slow-burning role recalls his work in Shattered Glass), but the first impression they make is the same as the last.
  30. Trolls
    Trolls may have a low bar going in, but the movie scales it quickly and admirably by defying conventions, adding both new and familiar musical numbers, and hiding a valuable, Zen-like message in plain sight.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »