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. Beast
    For a singularly outlandish and specific premise, this is a film that lets its audience experience the horror right along with the characters on screen. This is cinema as spectacle distilled down to its rawest form, where basic storytelling leads directly to visceral and emotional catharsis.
  2. The Riot Club
    Boys will be boys and wealthy a--holes will be wealthy a--holes in The Riot Club, an alleged cautionary tale that revels in bad behavior for nearly two hours before finally offering up a stern “tsk, tsk, tsk.” Unlike the great gangster and outlaw movies, however, this unpleasant, moralistic film doesn’t succeed in making transgression look cathartically appealing.
  3. The Conjuring: Last Rites
    The Conjuring: Last Rites solidifies The Conjuring franchise as the Fast & Furious of horror movies: A conservative, Christian, family-oriented, spin-off and sequel-laden series of adventures that lose the plot and reinvest in the audience’s affection for its familiar beats and cornball leads.
  4. Lonesome Jim
    It finds some fine comedic moments when it stops focusing on Affleck's never-ending angst and starts exploring small-town oddness.
  5. The Last Stand
    It's a struggle at times, mostly because the action-movie clichés haven't been weeded out of the script, but the film is cheerfully, irresistibly destructive - an old-fashioned, "Rio Bravo" shoot-'em-up with the hicktown spirit of "Tremors," though it isn't as good as either.
  6. Thanks for Sharing
    Oddly, counterintuitively even, what’s most endearing about the film is how middle-of-the-road it is. While 2011’s "Shame" treated the same subject with too much seriousness, and next week’s "Don Jon" treats it with too little, Thanks For Sharing acknowledges that sex addiction, like most other problems in life, can be a source of both suffering and humor.
  7. To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
    A pleasant distraction without a lot of payoff. It doesn’t tarnish the original, but it never quite rises to its heights either.
  8. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
    Crude, grating.
  9. Spiderhead
    With nimble performances, slick polish, dark-pitched wit, razor sharp sentiments, and a Yacht Rock-infused soundtrack, the film proves a seductive high.
  10. Zack Snyder's Justice League
    The reality is that Justice League’s problems go beyond who was behind the camera. The villain is still generic and silly-looking. The plot is still assemble-the-team boilerplate, hinging on the hunt for glowing MacGuffins with a goofy name.
  11. I Am Not a Serial Killer
    What sets I Am Not A Serial Killer apart from other takes on this “killers hunting killers” concept (Dexter, anyone?) is its naturalistic, character-based approach.
  12. Pandora's Promise
    The most counterintuitive enviro-doc of the year, Pandora’s Promise makes the case that nuclear power may be the closest thing Earth has to a sustainable, realistic supply of energy.
  13. Joe Bell
    Wahlberg, delivering a performance that feels like community service, just isn’t up to driving a drama whose conflict is almost entirely internal; his default setting of sneering irritation is the wrong tool for the job. It leaves you wondering if this should have more fully been Jadin’s story, especially given the sensitivity of Miller’s turn.
  14. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    Without the mythical power or giddy adventurousness of the first two Star Wars movies, the impact is strangely numbing, like watching a two-and-a-half-hour ILM show reel in search of moneyed investors.
  15. Kung Fu Panda 4
    Instead of finding the perfect balance of humor as the other films did, jokes outweigh and occasionally undercut the few resounding sentiments on personal evolution.
  16. Cashback
    In short form, Cashback simply dealt with how a quirky group of supermarket employees whiled away the endless hours of a night shift, but the feature version spoils that economy by tacking on a romantic subplot and indulging its hero's precious ruminations on love and art.
  17. Cracks
    Cracks stumbles down the stretch, when the melodrama finally washes in and the behavior becomes more extreme.
  18. Battle in Seattle
    It's the next best thing to being there, in that it's likely to make shuddering viewers intensely glad that they weren't.
  19. Entrapment
    Entrapment is ostensibly some sort of action film, but perhaps out of deference to its sleepwalking star, it moves slowly and contains very little actual action.
  20. Ya lyublyu tebya
    The filmmakers have a keen eye for striking compositions, but unlike most advertising, movies have to amount to more than just a succession of vivid images.
  21. Jersey Boys
    The unfortunate trade-off of Eastwood’s efficient, real-deal classical direction is his stubborn commitment to the script.
  22. Effie Gray
    On a purely technical level, Effie Gray is fine, if uninspired, with its washed-out color, attention to detail, and lack of heavy-handed moralizing. As an experience, though, it’s a drag without much reward.
  23. Memoirs of a Geisha
    The film comes to life whenever the cartoonishly vindictive Gong throws a tantrum, but she played virtually the same role in Zhang Yimou's "Shanghai Triad," which presented a far more compelling rationale for her star fits. Without her, this expensive piece of backlot pageantry turns vivid history into an ossified tchotchke.
  24. Battle for Terra
    On one level, it's a down-market Star Wars-inspired shoot-'em-up for kiddies; on another, it's a radical alien invasion story where the HUMANS are the aliens.
  25. Shuang long hui
    Twin Dragons is still a Chan film, albeit not a great one. As fans have figured out by now, that goes a long way.
  26. Hidalgo
    Mortensen nicely underplays his role, offhandedly tossing off one-liners and making the script's sometimes purple dialogue sound a little less cheesy, but the rest of the film often lurches into hammy overdrive.
  27. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
    The improvised dialogue takes hairpin turns, some less fruitful than others, holding onto just enough traces of structure to sustain the film's brief length.
  28. Alice in Wonderland
    A striking effort in its own right, though not in the ways that make one generation pass a film lovingly down to the next.
  29. All Is Bright
    Directed by Phil Morrison (Junebug) from a lackluster script by Melissa James Gibson, All Is Bright coasts entirely on the formidable talent of its cast, though Giamatti merely offers another variation on the irascible persona he’s been cultivating since Sideways, while Rudd is ultimately defeated by his character’s shapelessness.
  30. Pontypool
    Primarily though, the film works as a tour de force for McHattie--a veteran character actor making the most of his character’s long, fluid monologues--and as a sly commentary on journalistic responsibility.
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