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. Four Christmases
    The result is two bad movies in one: a gimmicky romantic comedy, and one of those seasonal headaches that submits loud family dysfunction as a vehicle for Christmas cheer.
  2. Milk
    It's a little disappointing to see Van Sant dial back into mainstream respectability. Had he evoked Harvey Milk's life with the poetry that he did Kurt Cobain's, Milk might have been something special.
  3. Transporter 3
    In a series elevated by high-flying ridiculousness, Transporter 3 falls a couple of sequences short of the standard, but it does show off Statham's considerable dirt-biking skills. For that, at least, it's kinda rad.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Twilight
    While the movie attempts to find an compelling middle ground between gothic supernaturalism and teenage romance, it usually winds up stumbling into the inane territory implied by both descriptions.
  5. Special
    Special recalls a minor-key "Donnie Darko," but its vision is much more limited, and it sinks into Indiewood cliché whenever it reaches for profundity.
  6. Bolt
    For the first time in years, it feels like Disney has done its namesake proud.
  7. Lake City
    All the performers are fine--even the miscast Romijn--but they're still too much like actors playing dress-up.
  8. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
    Much like the recent "remember when" documentary "Man On Wire," Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 builds strong momentum in its home stretch, and sends the audience out on a high.
  9. Australia
    It almost goes without saying that the film looks gorgeous, but the filmmaking behind it feels unsure how to work on this grand a scale. Australia is big. But it never fills the screen.
  10. Quantum of Solace
    It's dark and exciting, but with little breathing room.
  11. A Christmas Tale
    It's the definition of a film meant to be admired more than loved, but Desplechin's fierce intelligence and uncompromising sense of character come through, as does some of the sharp wit and stylistic flourishes left over from his last film, 2004's "Kings And Queen."
  12. The Dukes
    The Dukes could use more music and less sap, but it's refreshing to see a film about the problems of working-class men on the far side of middle age, struggling just to get by.
  13. How About You ...
    Nothing in How About You is the least bit surprising; the film hits its marks with dreary precision.
  14. Slumdog Millionaire
    Slumdog Millionaire features the simplest story Boyle has ever told, which may explain why its many pleasures are so pure.
  15. Role Models
    In its loose, ramshackle, gleefully profane first half, Role Models suggests "School Of Rock" with Tourette's, or the original "Bad News Bears" without the baseball.
  16. JCVD
    A canny piece of autobiography that looks at the man behind the legend and the legend behind the man.
  17. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    The film has any number of chances to exploit the setting and Butterfield's wide-eyed innocence, but instead, it mines a vast, eerie tension by keeping both boys in the dark.
  18. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    When it comes to time-wasting memory games, crossword puzzles are more fun than this movie.
  19. Pray the Devil Back to Hell
    Overly conventional as a documentary, but it's inspiring as a rebuttal to the declining state of the world at large. It's encouraging to know that the endurance of institutions like marriage and family could hold the key to keeping civilization intact.
  20. Repo! The Genetic Opera
    Piles on the glam-rock spectacle and coal-black comedy at such a brusque pace that it often seems in danger of rattling off the rails entirely.
  21. Soul Men
    For all its crudeness and desperation, Soul Men can't scare up a single laugh.
  22. The Haunting of Molly Hartley
    It's a horror film better suited for skittish cats than humans.
  23. Splinter
    There's potential for a lot more excitement in Splinter, but Wilkins seems content just to bring it across the finish line.
  24. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    The film is clumsily unfunny at times--particularly when Smith makes tone-deaf efforts at gay-and black-themed comedy--and it's occasionally gross just for the sake of being gross.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Let the Right One In
    It's a sweetly queasy film that suggests the spirit that sustains us, the demons we hide from the world, and the monsters that prey upon us in the dark might all be variations on the same beast.
  26. Synecdoche, New York
    For this master of mindfuckery, Synecdoche, New York probably qualifies as a magnum opus, since it essentially multiplies "Adaptation" by an exponential factor and thus grows into a snarling, ungainly beast of self-reflexive absurdities.
  27. Changeling
    Eastwood creates a tone that's at once stately and unsettling, allowing a lot of breathing room for Jolie's sad, unyielding performance. She anchors a film that needs an anchor the further it goes along.
  28. I've Loved You So Long
    The film deftly sketches a sibling relationship complicated by obligation, guilt, mistrust, and, not least, an abiding love.
  29. Saw V
    Devotes so much time and energy to flashbacks and recycling footage from its predecessors that it threatens to implode.
  30. Pride and Glory
    Norton is infamous for rewriting scripts and acting as a de facto director on his movies yet he seems lost and defeated here.
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