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. Eternal
    There's nothing wrong with formulas when they work, but Eternal is neither scary nor particularly sexy.
  2. The Memory of a Killer
    Initially, the film comes off as a poor man's "Memento," but it gradually becomes apparent that it's only really interested in its protagonist's Alzheimer's as a cheap plot point to be manipulated or discarded as the filmmakers see fit.
  3. Wall
    While Bitton engages in some penetrating conversations, and shoots some artful video footage, Wall never really tops its first scene.
  4. William Eggleston in the Real World
    The trouble with artists making documentaries about other artists is that art tends to get in the way.
  5. An Unfinished Life
    It's corny, but the film might have worked anyway, had anyone brought a lick of conviction to the business. But Lopez--once such a promising actress--now does little but pose, and everyone else seems to have figured out that the film wasn't going anywhere before the cameras started rolling.
  6. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    Part courtroom drama, part otherworldly shocker, the film basically restages the Scopes Monkey Trial and comes out once more against Mr. Darrow, and it's got the spine-twisting, tongues-speaking, devil-channeling hellion to prove it.
  7. Cote d'Azur
    In the end, all these sexual shenanigans just provide an excuse to play some seductive music and drink in some seaside scenery. Ah, Europe.
  8. Green Street Hooligans
    It loses its superficial charm during a labored third act that gets bogged down in tired, groan-inducing subplots.
  9. Kamikaze Girls
    Nakashima does his best to keep the flimsy enterprise afloat, mostly through whooshing camera movements and headlong dives into the grotesque extremes of Japanese kitsch. By the end, the effect is like eating a bellyache's worth of cotton candy.
  10. Cry_Wolf
    Director Jeff Wadlow and his co-writer/producer Beau Bauman throw in a couple of gripping sequences, especially one set in a library sub-basement with an energy-saving lighting system, but for a film that's essentially one big logic problem, there's an unfortunate absence of logic to the way its characters behave.
  11. Just Like Heaven
    Part of the problem is Mark Ruffalo, whose tortured sensitivity in "You Can Count On Me" and "We Don't Live Here Anymore" made him seem like Marlon Brando's heir apparent, not Will Smith's.
  12. The Thing About My Folks
    Flirts bravely, though gratingly, with messy, complicated emotions before ultimately drowning them in a warm bath of sticky sentimentality.
  13. Stupid Boy
    The real struggle here isn't so much Chatagny's slow emergence into maturity as Lionel Baier's directorial struggle to balance artful and erotic elements.
  14. Flightplan
    But coming on the heels of "Red Eye," which is nothing if not an efficient thrill machine, Flightplan can only look conspicuously flat by comparison.
  15. Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow
    The imagery eventually becomes the only reason to keep watching. This is the first of an announced trilogy, but it already feels as long as the 20th century itself.
  16. Oliver Twist
    Kingsley is one of very few lively things about Polanski's plodding, by-the-numbers Oliver Twist. And in this dreary setting, he comes across more as a desperate clown than a saving grace, which makes it all the more awkward that no one else is clowning along with him.
  17. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Moore's scenes with a miscast-but-game Harrelson offer a study in how spouses learn to handle even their partners' most destructive impulses, but in most other moments, Anderson fails to get beyond the surface of her characters' lives.
  18. An Adolescent
    The problem is that both as a director and as an actor, Okuda never makes a particularly convincing case either for sex or for deeper commitment as a road away from the abyss.
  19. The Fog
    It's virtually indiscernible from any other contemporary horror film except for, well, the fog.
  20. Where the Truth Lies
    Egoyan's sensibility doesn't quite fit the material. His trademark stone-faced austerity never bends to capture the black comedy in the dissonance between his characters' public and private lives. It almost demands a trashier approach.
  21. Loggerheads
    A little less earnestness could have done this movie some good.
  22. Doom
    If he (The Rock) can keep those wandering eyebrows in check, his future as an action hero appears unlimited--that is, provided he can resist taking roles in movies like this one.
  23. Innocence
    The more overtly allegorical Innocence becomes, the duller it gets.
  24. Protocols of Zion
    Muddled, painfully earnest documentary.
  25. The Legend of Zorro
    Feels like a half-hearted shrug of a sequel, an attempt to put a lucrative franchise on life support.
  26. Prime
    Greenberg and Thurman are both engaging, but they can't quite compensate for their characters' shallowness. Streep, on the other hand, just can't stop compensating. Her oy-vey-can-you-believe-the-kid-and-his-shiksa performance is all studied mannerisms with no real heart.
  27. Chicken Little
    Turning brief fairy tales into sweeping mini-epics has long been Disney's hallmark, but even for a fable, Chicken Little is thin stuff; it's a brief cautionary tale against alarmism, essentially "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" without any of the poetic irony.
  28. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Parts of Get Rich Or Die Tryin' crackle with energy, vitality, and texture, like the prison-shower fight that descends into a weird sort of slapstick farce. But 50's leaden turn drags the film down. Scenes celebrating his personal and professional triumph ring hollow, since Rich never really gets under his skin.
  29. Walk the Line
    Ends up being another one of those life-of-an-entertainer films that reduces an artist to his most embarrassing moments.
  30. The Syrian Bride
    Ultimately, The Syrian Bride becomes an overtly political movie, but with all its loose threads and random directions, it feels more like the pilot for an unmade miniseries.
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