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. Monster Hunt
    Monster Hunt combines a lot of qualities from the other items on the all-timer’s list: epic action, elaborate special effects, broad comedy, and a style that could best be described as “exhausting.”
  2. Palindromes
    Palindromes becomes a strangely compelling fractured fable, a grim cinematic fairy tale heightened by Nathan Larson's delicate, bittersweet score.
  3. We Have a Ghost
    Closure is inevitably attained, of course, but at a cheapened cost that dramatically lessens the impact of its main characters’ journeys. And that’s truly dispiriting.
  4. Lilo & Stitch
    If repetition is the only goal, Lilo & Stitch paints by the numbers. But the Disney Channel Original aesthetic and a handful of wrongheaded decisions make this film just the latest in a string of soulless, cut-rate copies.
  5. Lost Highway
    A slow, ponderous, ultimately unsuccessful exercise in cerebral nihilism.
  6. Apres Vous (After You)
    It's sweet, but way too silly.
  7. Flag Day
    Thankfully, Flag Day isn’t another disaster, though neither is it anywhere near the vicinity of Penn’s best work.
  8. In the Grey
    It’s Ritchie in fun-workhorse mode, more businesslike than Operation Fortune but fleeter than Fountain Of Youth.
  9. We Are Marshall
    It's uplifting, but shallow.
  10. The Phantom
    A second-rate film about a third-rate superhero played by a C-list actor.
    • The A.V. Club
  11. The Dead Thing
    A well-crafted, slow-burn art-horror offering that falls somewhere between doomed character study and moody ghost story, the movie exudes an unerring confidence in its own skin. It’s not an eager group of individual showcases or a proof-of-concept for another project, but a creatively executed rumination on universally relevant themes.
  12. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    They essentially replace the book's blank spaces with gaping plot holes and laughable clichés.
  13. Bliss
    Bliss approaches its aesthetic with a straight-faced intensity, pummeling the viewer with woozy handheld closeups and violent bursts of montage until you feel like maybe you might have been dosed somehow on your way into the theater. The only irony here is that Begos says it’s his most personal movie to date.
  14. Penguins of Madagascar
    Frenetic and frequently funny, Penguins Of Madagascar represents the DreamWorks Animation franchise style — which boils down to self-aware, but naïve, talking animals who learn kid-friendly life lessons — at its most palatable.
  15. Fatherhood
    There could be something to say here about how comically low society’s expectations for fathers remain. The movie also briefly, incisively captures the new-parent contradiction of desperately needing help while wanting to be left alone, free of unsolicited input. But director and co-writer Paul Weitz (About A Boy) keeps making odd choices for what, in a single father’s life, requires comic or dramatic emphasis.
  16. The Better Angels
    As an impression of a Terrence Malick film, The Better Angels is technically faultless, unimprovable. All that’s missing is the soul.
  17. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Even at a hefty 142 minutes, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hasn’t the time for its surfeit of plot, nor for the sprawling ensemble of supporting characters caught in the sticky web Webb weaves.
  18. Passionada
    Milos and Rossum are like Iberian "Gilmore Girls," only with an ocean view and without the clever dialogue.
  19. New Suit
    The sturdy premise delivers little in the way of actual laughs.
  20. 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.
  21. Knock Knock
    It’s the kind of vanity-free, dignity-be-damned performance that Nicolas Cage regularly delivers, and by the time Keanu is bellowing hysterically about free pizza, the urge to surrender becomes difficult to resist.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Late Bloomers
    As a portrait of aging, Late Bloomers is a little too easy, but its cast makes it worth a look, even so.
  23. On a Magical Night
    Despite its welcome breezy and surreal qualities, On A Magical Night has more psychological shortcuts than insights.
  24. Beyond Outrage
    Of all the great actor/directors, Kitano has probably come the closest to creating a style that parallels his approach to acting.
  25. Rent
    Yes, Rent is the movie about AIDS, heroin addiction, homosexuality, strippers, marijuana, cross-dressing, and bisexuality audiences can take their grandparents to go see safe in the knowledge that any lingering trace of danger or authenticity has been carefully removed by director/co-writer Chris Columbus.
  26. Renfield
    Though Nicholas Hoult is charming as he struggles to find inner strength, Renfield lives or dies by Nic Cage camping it up. And he delivers.
  27. Free State of Jones
    Ross may not be a great director, but he has written some very good screenplays, none of which sprawl out like this one.
  28. Sharp Stick
    Watching Sharp Stick is like encountering that pain box that Paul Atreides faces in Dune, only instead of a hand it’s your entire soul. Every moment is awkward, phony, excruciating, and just so unbelievably bad.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Mr. Popper's Penguins
    Mr. Popper's Penguins reins in its rubber-faced star, leaving most of the rote physical comedy (and overabundance of fart jokes) to his nonhuman counterparts, comprised of a combination of CGI and real penguins.
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