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. Wildlife
    From moment to moment, the direction is unimpeachably competent, but its surface elegance masks a core hollowness.
  2. The Hurricane Heist
    A workmanlike cross between a disaster movie and a caper-chase flick...the film never rises to the promise of its awesomely literal title.
  3. Assassination Nation
    Assassination Nation tells you right up front what to be appalled by, then simply delivers what it promised. Unlike the best examples of either horror or satire, it ultimately comforts and confirms rather than challenges.
  4. Benji
    Shot in widescreen in New Orleans, this new Benji looks burnished and luxe in comparison with the visibly threadbare original, to which it pays several nods for the fans.
  5. Bad Samaritan
    This comparatively low-budget effort represents a marked improvement from Devlin’s debut theatrical feature, Geostorm, which was among last year’s very worst films. He’s graduated from painful tedium to an acceptable means of killing two hours. One step at a time.
  6. The Nun
    If your heart skips a beat during this movie, it’ll probably be from laughter. But if you adjust your expectations and go in expecting something loud, lurid, and frequently utterly ridiculous, it’s good for a cheap adrenaline rush all the same.
  7. Serenity
    Though Serenity is blessed with a goofily enjoyable high concept, it doesn’t exploit it very effectively. You can make the viewers detectives themselves, allowing us to slowly unravel a mystery, or you can give up the charade early and just run with the premise you’ve opted not to conceal very carefully. There’s little sense in doing neither.
  8. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    The film’s appeal, predicated on its rare close-up look at a working Bishop Of Rome, will be limited primarily to the faithful; those hoping for a candid portrait of the man beneath the cassock will be sorely disappointed.
  9. Kings
    In its highly combustable, confusing, angry environment, where everyone from parents to rioters to cops is just making it up as they go along, the only thing that seems to matter are the underlying drives, whether it’s goodheartedness or resentment.
  10. Dark River
    Barnard, who made The Arbor and The Selfish Giant, has an impeccable sense of grubby pastoral space, and her performers locate some truth in cliché. But this is a kitchen-sink drag.
  11. The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter
    The characters are stubborn as ever, but in lieu of the characteristic spectacular downfall, The Legacy Of A Whitetail Deer Hunter offers only the pokiest and most rote of plots.
  12. Valley Girl
    Despite the occasional one-liner that lands and the commitment of a game cast, this Valley Girl’s charms are blotted out by its noisy neon brightness. By the end, even a fan of the original may feel dread instead of glee at the rise of synth on the soundtrack, announcing yet another interminable musical number.
  13. The Workshop
    Cantet remains a gifted filmmaker — The Workshop’s semi-improvisational aspects are no less impressive than those in "The Class," and he’s at least superficially engaged with the current state of the world — but this isn’t the return to form that his fans have awaited over the past decade.
  14. Conan the Destroyer
    Destroyer makes all the mistakes Barbarian avoided. Dropping the first movie’s grim approach to achieve an audience-friendly rating, the sequel goes for a lighter, more overtly humorous tone, with multiple characters serving as increasingly unnecessary comic relief.
  15. The Guardians
    What starts out as a testament to female fortitude, reminding us that sacrifices were also made on the home front, gradually turns into high-toned soap opera.
  16. Duck Butter
    Duck Butter is clever without being all that hilarious, and personal without being all that revealing.
  17. SuperFly
    When the new SuperFly does show flashes of street-smart wit...its energy is infectious. Mostly, though, it needs to take its hero’s advice and take things up a notch.
  18. Second Act
    Lopez gets a decent scene partner in Hudgens and an even better one in Leah Remini, who steals the movie as Maya’s brassy, no-nonsense best friend.
  19. Terminator: Dark Fate
    Dark Fate serves as a case study for the difficulty of crafting a satisfying follow-up to a pair of certified classics, a process that seems to involve constant toggling between hopelessness and insisting that all is not lost. As such, it’s hard to blame Cameron for keeping his old series at arm’s length. It’s also hard to stay interested in a franchise that looks, with each inessential sequel, more and more like a doomsday prepper rephrasing the same old prophecy.
  20. Vampire Clay
    It’s not a great film by any means, but it is the epitome of a “Fantastic Fest movie,” meaning enjoyed best with friends and a few drinks.
  21. Woman Walks Ahead
    Despite the sensitivity of its storytelling, and Chastain’s career-defining passion for playing headstrong, independent women like Mrs. Weldon, it also never really comes to life.
  22. Diane
    In all this, there remains a purposeful if haphazardly realized design. As Diane’s relatives and friends continue to fall away with the passage of time, Jones intensifies the film’s discombobulating rhythms, taking Diane from hard-edged physicality to a more interiorized, subtly dreamlike haze.
  23. Love, Gilda
    The emotional impact is ultimately surprisingly muted; she dies too soon, and the movie ends. Then again, it’s hard to blame anyone for assuming that consistent access to Radner’s voice, in moments both public and candid, would be enough. She radiates such joy, all these years later, that it nearly is.
  24. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    The Bill & Ted movies derive much of their humor from the blending of extremely low and extremely high stakes. Face The Music kind of blows it on the former: For all the preaching about the importance of togetherness and unity, the film mostly keeps its fiftysomething stars and their kids apart. Which is a shame.
  25. Arctic
    If the bare-minimum characterizations at first feel like a refreshing alternative to the most modern survival film (think everything from 127 Hours to The Shallows), they eventually betray a movie that maybe—just maybe—doesn’t have a lot of ideas about where to go past the first act. Like its protagonist, it trudges toward an unknown destination out of obligation.
  26. Birds of Passage
    Unique background elements provide flavor, but apart from the drug of choice here being marijuana rather than cocaine, what unfolds could hardly be less rote.
  27. Girls of the Sun
    This bombastic bid for respectability mostly left me thinking that their courageous, inspiring inspiration deserved a better movie, one with more nuanced plotting and a less overbearing score.
  28. Capernaum
    Capernaum’s neorealist spirit is smothered by its sentimentality and endless string of indignities; it’s as if the film is operating as Zain’s trial defense, every moment making his case that it probably would have been better if he’d never been born.
  29. The Truth
    It’s good to see Kore-eda try to stretch himself a little, and The Truth demonstrates that his talent can survive on foreign soil. But there’s not as much powerful emotional veracity to it as one might hope.
  30. Rocketman
    As tedious as Rocketman is when it’s going through the biographical motions, it’s equally delightful when it launches into something most rock movies pointedly avoid: full-on musical numbers.
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