The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,435 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 10435
  2. Mixed: 3,745 out of 10435
  3. Negative: 1,112 out of 10435
10435 movie reviews
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  1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Realized through old-fashioned camera mastery and newfangled special effects, it’s a stunning technical accomplishment, but one seemingly designed only to broadcast banal sentiments, when it says anything at all.
  2. The Spirit
    The Spirit feels like the follow-up to "Batman & Robin" no one wanted.
  3. Bedtime Stories
    Sandler’s laziness, sloppiness, and cynical pandering are all over Bedtime Stories, and it turns what’s intended to be a graceful intersection of fairytale whimsy and real-world slapstick into an ugly, head-on collision.
  4. Last Chance Harvey
    If nothing else, Last Chance Harvey proves that you're never too old to be the subject of a zany trying-on-dresses montage, but considering the prestige of its leads, that's a minor victory at best.
  5. Marley & Me
    Could not be more ordinary.
  6. Valkyrie
    Bryan Singer’s solid direction and some flavorful supporting performances from the dependable likes of Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, and Tom Wilkinson keep Valkyrie within the realm of handsome mediocrity.
  7. The Secret of the Grain
    The Secret Of The Grain stretches out at the relaxed pace of a seven-course meal, but at the end of it, Kechiche has squeezed the most he can out of percolating dramas within the family and he lets the audience get to know its members without needing to throw them all a subplot.
  8. Theater of War
    Though Theater Of War is informative--both about Brecht and about the effort it takes to mount a big New York production--Walter overreaches in trying to connect Brecht’s anti-war sentiment with contemporary protest movements, and doesn't do more than dabble with the themes of truth and representation in documentary filmmaking.
  9. The Tale of Despereaux
    Despereaux at least has too much ambition rather than too little, but its curiously intellectual pleasures suggest a quaint puzzle rather than a passionately loved fairy tale.
  10. The Class
    The beauty of The Class is that it puts the lie to the one-teacher-can-make-a-difference myth propagated by so many other films.
  11. Seven Pounds
    It's a con job that feels like a precisely attenuated work of art, elegantly weaving flashbacks and ellipses into the story in an effort to conceal how shamelessly manipulative it is in the end. And as always, Smith comes out a winner.
  12. Yes Man
    The film contains so many plugs for Warner Bros. movies like the "Harry Potter" series and "300" that it could almost double as an infomercial.
  13. The Wrestler
    Mostly though, the movie feeds off Rourke, who plays a genuinely decent guy who never lets his dawning self-awareness interfere with his responsibility to give the fans a show.
  14. Nothing But the Truth
    Mostly, Nothing But The Truth operates a lot like Billy Ray's "Shattered Glass" and "Breach," offering up the sort of no-nonsense, meat-and-potatoes docudrama that's in short supply these days.
  15. Gran Torino
    Eastwood directs with his usual relaxed pace and bursts of intensity, a style that's pleasing to watch--and which, also as usual, never fully compensates for any shortcomings of the script handed to him.
  16. Che
    In both halves, Soderbergh emphasizes observation over ideology with an eye toward the mundane details of life on the front lines of a revolution.
  17. Timecrimes
    Yet while it isn't that hard to stay a step or two ahead of Timecrimes, the movie is still a nifty little genre piece, an old-fashioned science-fiction mind-game with a healthy dollop of "Oh, the irony."
  18. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Like the big shiny sphere at its center, the film is fairly pretty, but there's no real sense that there's anything inside it.
  19. Doubt
    Doubt is a complex, thematically loaded piece of work, and though it isn't enhanced on film, it deserves the wider exposure.
  20. Nothing Like the Holidays
    Take a cue from Guzmán, who serves as a kind of court jester, bouncing in and out of scenes in a one-man quest to bring levity to the occasion. The movie could stand to have more of his Christmas cheer; instead, it's a recast "Family Stone."
  21. Adam Resurrected
    In a stunning lead performance, Goldblum stars as a brilliant, apolitical jester.
  22. Dark Streets
    The main pitfall of modern noirs is that filmmakers get so caught up in the chiaroscuro lighting schemes and florid twists of dialogue and voiceover that they forget noir was about expressing more than just attitude and style.
  23. What Doesn't Kill You
    Goodman doesn't allow even a hint of postmodernism or self-consciousness to creep into What Doesn't Kill You, and though the movie's various heists and shootouts are gripping, they aren't especially kinetic or stylish.
  24. The Reader
    Kross and Winslet's intense performances and Daldry's deliberately placid control of tone make the material work as a love (and hate) story as well as a metaphor.
  25. Wendy and Lucy
    Having the dog around raises the emotional stakes tenfold, and develops a kinship with Vittorio De Sica's Italian neo-realist classic "Umberto D.," which also revealed societal ills through a poignant dog-owner relationship
  26. Hunger
    Hunger may be criticized for being willfully arty, or for reducing a complex political situation to a broadly allegorical vision of martyrdom, but it's never less than visually stunning.
  27. Cadillac Records
    Martin attempts to present the whole oversized Chess story, but instead winds up reducing the lives and art that give it shape.
  28. Nobel Son
    Nobel Son sadistically resurrects the Tarantino knockoff--an unloved, foul-mouthed little bastard of a subgenre that should now go away forever.
  29. Punisher: War Zone
    This is junk, a bunch of hard-R action scenes kept together by the thinnest of plots.
  30. Frost/Nixon
    In a masterful performance, Langella highlights Nixon's oily charm and guile.
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