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. Heartbeat Detector
    Amalric gives another in a recent string of riveting performances, and Klotz gets a lot of play out of the ironic distance between musical expression and corporate rigor.
  2. Funny Games (2008)
    A chilly and extraordinarily controlled treatise on film violence, Funny Games punishes the audience for its casual bloodlust by giving it all the sickening torture and mayhem it could possibly desire. Neat trick, that.
  3. Blind Mountain
    Blind Mountain would be better-served by more touches of universality, as in the scene where a neighbor woman comforts Huang by saying, "All women go through this." That scene flirts with metaphor. The rest of the film too often descends into harangue.
  4. 10,000 BC
    "The Day After Tomorrow" was kind of stupidly fun, and 10,000 B.C. might be too, if it weren't so stupidly dull.
  5. The Bank Job
    Donaldson also misses the chance to score some easy laughs from his petty criminals, who are infinitely more audacious than they are competent.
  6. College Road Trip
    The almost perversely colorblind College Road Trip represents a strange milestone in black film.
  7. Married Life
    To a degree, the dynamic between Brosnan and Cooper resembles Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy's relationship from "In The Company Of Men."
  8. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
    In trying to recapture the spirit of classic '30s screwball comedies, the film too often mistakes manic energy for wit, and it ends on a note of gloppy sentimentality that wouldn't have held water in Old Hollywood.
  9. Paranoid Park
    It's a film assembled from moments out of time, destined forever to weigh down the boy at their center.
  10. Snow Angels
    In spite of strong performances and a characteristically vivid sense of place, the film feels disjointed and heavy.
  11. CJ7
    C7J isn't as cutesy as "Batteries Not Included" or "Short Circuit," or as grim as "Gremlins," though it resembles them all in its jerky, semi-comic look at the havoc and helpfulness of weirdo artificial life.
  12. Girls Rock!
    Girls Rock! is cutesy and quick-cut, emphasizing the absurd while trying to keep the audience's interest with animated interludes and footage from corny old industrial films.
  13. City of Men
    City Of Men has its share of problems, but being too entertaining isn't one of them.
  14. Chicago 10
    Chicago 10 is a lot of fun, but it could stand to take its subjects a little more seriously, if only because they themselves are so frequently goofy that mocking them is complete overkill.
  15. The Other Boleyn Girl
    The film looks terrific, all Vermeer-style light/dark interplay and sleek design. And Portman is fantastic as the tempestuous Anne.
  16. Penelope
    First-time director Mark Palansky is trying for a deft, hip, modern fairy-tale feel, but the odd material, sprawling story, and complicated tonal balancing act get away from him, and the film winds up as a poorly paced tug-of-war between sweet quirk and sloppy camp.
  17. Semi-Pro
    Deserves credit for attempting something more emotional and dramatic than the typical Ferrell gagfest, but Harrelson and Benjamin's earnest subplots cost the film comic momentum and big laughs without adding much in return.
  18. The Unforeseen
    Although the parts of The Unforeseen dealing with the anti-development movement are pure go-team agitprop, Dunn lends the movie a lyrical cast by combining aerial shots of the transformed countryside with the voice of Wendell Berry, reading from his poem "Sabbaths."
  19. Jar City
    Eventually, some mysteries become clear, but Kormákur's attempts to be crafty are too often clumsy, and the movie's unmotivated time leaps are close to a cheat.
  20. Chop Shop
    Though Chop Shop is an American film, it feels more like an Iranian movie or the Dardenne Brothers’ "Rosetta"; Bahrani introduces something like a plot point in the late-going, but he mostly focuses, to riveting effect, on how his young hero hustles and claws through everyday life.
  21. Charlie Bartlett
    Watching Charlie Bartlett only makes Wes Anderson's work seem more accomplished by comparison, because it underscores that thin line separating the agreeably fanciful from the overbearingly precious.
  22. The Signal
    The gimmicky yet strangely moving new fright flick The Signal distinguishes itself not through originality, but by smartly integrating just about every popular trend afflicting contemporary horror films.
  23. Be Kind Rewind
    The visual wit, game performances, and overflowing humanity have more than made up for the shortcomings by the time the film finds a final moment that's simultaneously abrupt and magical.
  24. The Counterfeiters
    Markovics largely rescues the film with his mesmerizingly layered, steady performance as a man who solves the problem of compromise by refusing to admit that he's compromising.
  25. Vantage Point
    The loaded cast does what it can with the paper-thin characterizations, but Vantage Point gets hijacked early by its high-concept premise, and it quickly devolves into a by-the-numbers thriller with the numbers out of order.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Witless Protection
    Larry The Cable Guy is a cancerous boil on the ass of comedy, but it's still sort of shocking how little effort he puts into his movies.
  27. The Duchess of Langeais
    Though not exactly a "comedy" of manners, since it's more melancholy than funny, The Duchess Of Langeais is very much concerned with how the rules of social etiquette interfere with raw human need.
  28. Diary of the Dead
    As in the more successful "Land Of The Dead," Romero makes an admirable attempt to update his beloved franchise for contemporary audiences. But this time out, his heavy-handed intellectual concerns get in the way of a perfectly good fright flick.
  29. Definitely, Maybe
    Put simply, the film excels most at not being awful.
  30. Jumper
    No exciting action can cover the film's profound shallowness and repulsive attitude toward everyone but Christensen.
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