The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
For 10,423 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 2.6 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: 5,575 out of 10423
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10423
  3. Negative: 1,109 out of 10423
10423 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    Porumboiu starts off making a mordant slice of life, but he gradually entwines the personal and the historical, then ends on a poignant note. The story and situation are slight, but in the best possible way.
  2. Knocked Up
    No one writes for ensembles better than Apatow, and his players are all skilled at giving his work a loose, improvisational feel.
  3. Gracie
    There's a reason the underdog sports formula is followed over and over: When it's executed as skillfully as it is here, the damned thing works every time.
  4. Mr. Brooks
    Sadly, only Hurt seems to recognize that the only way to make this material work is to play it with lunatic enthusiasm instead of grave seriousness.
  5. Crazy Love
    There's plenty of black comedy in their twisted affair, but a more substantial documentary wouldn't leave you smiling.
  6. Day Watch
    Like the dream it so closely resembles, it's fairly distracting while it's going on, but it fades into forgettable nonsense by the light of day.
  7. Ten Canoes
    Like a lot of folk tales, Ten Canoes peters out into something more prosaic than profound, but it flows like water, and has a deceptively gentle pull that proves hard to escape.
  8. Pierrepoint
    Pierrepoint is handsomely crafted and well-acted, but its sense of scale is as constricted as a noose.
  9. Radiant City
    The faux-documentary aspect of Radiant City is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off. If anything, the movie's observations about the corrupting social influence of cluttered mall spaces get undercut by the fact that Burns and Brown feel the need to INVENT characters to prove their truth.
  10. Bug
    Friedkin's latest rivals his Druid horror flick "The Guardian" for sheer lunacy--Bug remains disconcerting, real, and raw. It poignantly suggests that some lost souls would rather be crazy and doomed than alone.
  11. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    What started out as a fleet one-off swashbuckler with novel supernatural elements has become loaded and graceless, with each new entry barreling across the goal line like William "The Refrigerator" Perry.
  12. Angel-A
    At heart, it's just the latest from one-man industry Luc Besson, so even though it looks like art, it plays like schlock.
  13. Paprika
    A film so joyfully insane that it feels like Kon is overcompensating.
  14. Amu
    The flat, pat talk is symptomatic of Amu's overriding problem: It has no sense of personal style.
  15. Steel City
    For the most part, they live life convincingly, in a refreshingly inward-looking, well-made film that's smart enough to stay small, and leave the car crashes to the big summer action movies.
  16. The Boss of It All
    The Boss Of It All, though clever as a piece of genre deconstruction, isn't terribly funny.
  17. Shrek the Third
    Shrek The Third instead goes for less: fewer jokes, less energy, and toned-down characters.
  18. Flanders
    Once again, Dumont cycles through the pet themes of films like "L'Humanité" and "Twentynine Palms," but their repetition is beginning to seem like shtick.
  19. Severance
    Severance still seems a few rewrites away from living up to its potential, but it's remarkable how much just a modicum of wit can spice up the standard backwoods slice-and-dice. Scaring people with a horror film is easy; entertaining them takes a little skill.
  20. Fay Grim
    Sadly, there's a thin line between goofing irreverently on the maddeningly convoluted nature of spy thrillers and actually being a muddled mess, and Fay Grim crosses it constantly during its deadly second hour.
  21. Private Property
    Like many French films of its kind, Private Property remains content to simply observe a situation without tidying up the narrative, which in this case leaves some big questions unanswered. But Lafosse knows that problems that beg for a resolution sometimes don't get one.
  22. Hollywood Dreams
    It's unclear whether Frederick's an awful actress or a tremendous one pretending to be awful, but either way, it's hard to pity her nasal, pushy, babyish Iowa girl.
  23. Once
    In its own subdued, mellow way, Once is just about perfect.
  24. 28 Weeks Later
    Under Fresnadillo's assured direction, 28 Weeks Later blurs the line between genre entertainment and a photojournalist's shots of the next urban catastrophe.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    Delta Farce
    The worst thing about Delta Farce is its overall feeling of contempt--for the filmmaking process, for common decency, and, most despicably, for the audience.
  26. Georgia Rule
    Garry Marshall has too much confidence that he can match the weighty issues here with the light comedy. He can't. Or at least he can't with this cast.
  27. The Hip Hop Project
    Project provides an unmistakably one-sided view of rap as God's gift to the poor, angry, black, and young, but given the beating rap has taken in the press lately (please Oprah, don't hurt 'em!), the film's pro-rap cheerleading couldn't be more timely or necessary.
  28. The Salon
    So sanctimonious and sincere in its pandering.
  29. Chalk
    Chalk pays homage to the kind of teachers students never forget, which makes it all the more perverse that it's so stubbornly, albeit affably, forgettable.
  30. The Ex
    It never comes close to being funny.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »