The A.V. Club's Scores

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:
10435 movie reviews
  1. There's none of the poetry of "For All Mankind," just visual support for a meat-and-potatoes recap of events that have already been chewed over plenty.
  2. Sometimes the actors lip-sync, but more often, they're singing along with the original vocal tracks, trying to out-belt Elvis Presley and Bruce Springsteen, like a cadre of enthusiastic shower singers joining in with the radio. The resulting cacophony is generally harsh and sloppy, and the film follows suit.
  3. It's all meant as gory good fun, but once the novelty wears off half an hour in, the rest of the film is only meant for people who absolutely agree with Giamatti's character about that violence thing.
  4. A better film would have matched Arnett's seemingly effortless intensity throughout. This okay film does merely okay by it.
  5. Real love is often as complicated and painful as Middle Eastern politics, and Fox might have been better off acknowledging that, rather than making his characters such vague, sweet, safe ciphers.
  6. It's a hilariously half-baked scheme, one that quickly turns them from hunters to hunted, but the strength of The Hunting Party is its shaggy-dog quality.
  7. Unassuming and sweet-natured, and Garlin earns a lot of goodwill with his off-the-cuff wisecracks.
  8. The film has one thing going for it--it's certainly never boring.
  9. Entertaining, casually satirical crowd-pleaser.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This latest unsuccessful stab at Carpenter's masterwork just proves that the original Halloween is as unbeatable as its masked leading man.
  10. Nothing about Exiled is as resonant as To's best work, but it's a clever homage to Sam Peckinpah, right down to the clouds of bloody mist that fill the barroom as To's anti-heroes make their last stand.
  11. It's a personal story that feels like it's been constructed from other movies.
  12. Add Balls Of Fury to the list of movies that not even Walken's moon-man delivery and oddball comic energy can save.
  13. Between their bickering, Grønkjær's offscreen prompting, and the sappy, ubiquitous soundtrack, The Monastery is like the opposite of "Into Great Silence."
  14. Crudup delivers a bracing, uncompromising performance, but it's unmistakably a solo turn in a romantic comedy that's supposed to be about the blurring of egos and the fusing of two idiosyncratic voices into a single harmonious duet.
  15. A compelling, well-researched, beautifully assembled document.
  16. For a film about growing up, Illegal Tender loses itself in a lot of silly juvenilia.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    A very cute movie. Unfortunately, cute is rarely funny.
  17. The film belongs to Linney, whose caustic putdowns and status-seeking veneer barely hides her genuine hurt over her husband's philandering and her distant relationship to her own child. No doubt her diaries would be more compelling than the nanny's.
  18. The cast is generally excellent, but Hartnett in particular comes across as convincingly complicated, alternately reprehensible and sympathetic.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    With its complete lack of empathy for early Mormons and simplistic rendering of historical figures, September Dawn is that rare movie that actually deserves whatever condemnation might come from religious groups.
  19. War
    In spite of a late-game adrenaline surge, the hoped-for fireworks between Li and Statham never quite materialize.
  20. Judging by the far more interesting adults in the film--Braga, a terrific Laura Linney as Webber's mother, and Hawke as his father--the solution for Webber and Moreno is to grow up and not be so full of themselves. In their current state, they make for unpleasant company, and so does the film.
  21. Doesn't rise to the level of Bujalski's breakthrough feature "Mutual Appreciation," mainly because Swanberg doesn't have Bujalski's eye.
  22. A funny, boozy, ramshackle party.
  23. Though it grows silly and sentimental, Funeral scores enough big laughs to make its shortcomings eminently forgivable.
  24. Manda Bala is exciting and stylish, and Kohn knows exactly what he wants the movie to say. But he makes most of his points in the first 10 minutes, with disgusting slow-motion frog footage and sound bites from social scientists pointing out how "corruption is what links all other crimes." The rest is just so much show.
  25. The 11th Hour is slick and passionate, but neither persuasive nor helpful; it's a headache of a film directed like an Errol Morris project, but with half the substance. It's clearly preaching to the choir, but even they may find it off-key.
  26. Opting for car chases instead of the thought-provoking ideas of its predecessors, the film looks like the work of, if not pod people, folks who gave up any kind of passion for the material long before the cameras started to roll.
  27. Gordon's feature directorial debut mostly stops being about video-game obsession and turns into a film about what it takes to make it in America.

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