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. The Spiderwick Chronicles
    Anyone looking for handsomely presented, kid-friendly thrills need look no further.
  2. Step Up 2: The Streets
    The central romance is terminally bland, while Evigan's woozy family melodrama seems borrowed from countless superior dance movies.
  3. The Band's Visit
    Tonally, The Band's Visit steps gingerly on the line between “sweetly humane” and “cloyingly quirky.”
  4. Fool's Gold
    Tennant keeps his extravagantly stupid new comedy breezing along affably on the strength of photogenic locales, obscenely beautiful stars, a laid-back soundtrack, and a wholesale unwillingness to take itself the least bit seriously.
  5. The Hottie & the Nottie
    How is Paris Hilton in her first starring role to receive a national release? Pretty bad, actually. She's limited to a single, all-too-familiar expression of smug self-satisfaction, and she delivers her lines in a tone somewhere between "seductive" and "dish-soap commercial."
  6. In Bruges
    When it's funny, it's hilarious; when it's serious, it's powerful; and either way, it's an endless pleasant surprise.
  7. Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
    West is heavy on Vaughn, at least initially, but woefully short on comedy.
  8. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins
    The film has a warmth and raucousness that's surprisingly disarming.
  9. Caramel
    At its best, Caramel boasts a quietly engaging slice-of-slice casualness.
  10. The Eye
    The major problem is the death of a horror film: It's startling, but not particularly scary.
  11. Over Her Dead Body
    It's said that opposites attract, but for the brief period they're onscreen together in the dire comedy Over Her Dead Body, Eva Longoria Parker and Paul Rudd are one of the more bizarrely mismatched couples in recent memory.
  12. Praying with Lior
    Intimate, moving documentary.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Strange Wilderness
    Strange Wilderness has three bad comic ideas for every good joke, and it botches many of those, too, thanks to slack comic timing and a nonexistent grasp of storytelling basics. But just when the flop-sweat stench is about to become unbearable, Strange Wilderness stumbles upon an uproarious, laugh-out moment, and suddenly it's tolerable again for another few minutes.
  14. Rambo
    Rambo works best as a pure action movie devoted to delivering the cheapest kicks imaginable--and to a much lesser extent, to bringing attention to human-rights violations and genocide in Asia.
  15. How She Move
    The film's good intentions gradually get lost in a sea of overwrought contrivances, stock characters, awkward cameos from B- and C-listers (R&B singer Keyshia Cole and not-so-funnyman DeRay Davis) and warmed-over family issues.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Meet the Spartans
    Meet The Spartans gamely alternates between unfunny gay jokes and violent pratfalls for a good 80 minutes, finding time for not one, but two musical dance numbers set to "I Will Survive."
  17. Untraceable
    Not only does Untraceable unmask its initially hidden killer with little ceremony, it's the sort of film that telegraphs every new development.
  18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
    4 Months unfolds like one of those street-level Dardenne brothers movies (Rosetta, L'Enfant).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    U2 3D
    The problem with U2 3D is that the U2 part is rarely as thrilling as the 3D part.
  20. Teeth
    It's a brilliant concept for a horror movie, not least because the genre is usually so dedicated to male gratification, but the material requires a consistent tone, and first-time director Lichtenstein (son of pop artist Roy) can't quite get a handle on it.
  21. Cassandra's Dream
    Like so many late-period Allens, it leaves behind the feeling that he's made this movie before, but better.
  22. Cloverfield
    It puts human faces on the victims of mass destruction, faces that might easily have been yours or mine, staring down the maw of something we don't understand.
  23. Mad Money
    As a comedy, it relies on Keaton and Latifah playing the same characters they always play, and Holmes overcompensating by switching into bug-eyed manic-comedienne mode. Her performance is part Lucille Ball, part overcaffeinated chicken, and it deserves some credit for daring, but none for execution.
  24. 27 Dresses
    It's a tangle unknotted in the most predictable fashion by Aline McKenna's script, and with little flair from choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher.
  25. First Sunday
    A corny yet unexpectedly moving scene in which Morgan is moved to tears by Loretta Devine's simple kindness helps make the film's shift into inspirational drama far more palatable than it really has any right to be.
  26. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
    Cultists will be happy to discover that In The Name Of The King bears all the so-bad-it's-good hallmarks of a classic Boll production.
  27. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
    It's all good-natured enough. It just isn't actually good.
  28. The Business of Being Born
    More propaganda than cinema, and at an hour and a half, its exhaustiveness diminishes its impact. But Epstein anchors the film nicely with her own pregnancy, which occurs while the documentary is in production and comes to an unexpected conclusion before shooting ends.
  29. Woman on the Beach
    Woman On The Beach is a stripped-down, witty explication of how we all get stymied by the impulses and options inherent in the simple act of living.
  30. One Missed Call
    On the shortlist for least essential movie of the decade, a copy of a copy of a copy that's so worn down, it's about as fresh and vital as a fifth-generation dub of "The Star Wars Holiday Special."
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