The A.V. Club's Scores

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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
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  1. Provoked: A True Story
    There's a noble cause buried under all the clumsy speeches, blatant manipulations, and foreordained conflicts, but the thudding lack of subtlety proves exhausting.
  2. ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
    ShowBusiness is a smart, highly entertaining piece of cinema-reportage, but it never quite rises to the level of penetrating insight or emotional catharsis.
  3. Day Night Day Night
    Loktev's efforts to universalize this story by avoiding specifics ends up making Day Night Day Night broad and blank, reducing the lead character to one more generic nutcase for us to fear and pity.
  4. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
    The film ends so beautifully that it's easy to forgive the dead passages that preceded it and hope it carries over into his next movie.
  5. Brand Upon the Brain!
    Coming after the inspired trifecta of "Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary," "Cowards Bend The Knee," and "The Saddest Music In The World," Brand feels a little like boilerplate Maddin rather than a fresh burst of inspiration.
  6. Away from Her
    Has its heartbreaking moments and its surprise giggles, particularly thanks to Ron Hewat's minor role as a former hockey play-by-play announcer now narrating his nursing-home life.
  7. Spider-Man 3
    So Spider-Man 3's action is superb and its theme fairly weighty. Then why does it feel a letdown from its predecessor? Nearly all the blame rests with director Sam Raimi, who's taken the success of some light slapstick moments in Spider-Man 2 as a cue to get even sillier.
  8. Lucky You
    Curiously lifeless, Lucky You feels like poker without stakes; it goes through the motions with nothing to play for.
  9. Civic Duty
    Shooting in digital video, director Jeff Renfroe needlessly amps up the proceedings with jittery camerawork, jump cuts, and other technical hiccups meant to disorient the audience.
  10. L'iceberg
    The film is striking and often charming, and any movie that places three tall, lanky types aboard a miniature boat named "Titanique" can't be slammed too much. But in the end, it's easier to admire than to love.
  11. Paris, je t'aime
    Because Paris, Je T'Aime's episodes are so short, the duds don't stick around long enough to grate much. But the good ones also don't get to explore their assigned Parisian spaces as much as they could.
  12. Waitress
    It's an imperfect film, but it's the kind of imperfect film of which it would be nice to have seen Shelly make more.
  13. Jindabyne
    In the end, it's all a bit too self-consciously mysterious and Lawrence leans a bit too much on the atmosphere to do the work for him as he builds to a frustrating ending. But his vision of a place haunted by a restlessness it can't define proves unsettlingly infectious.
  14. The Condemned
    The film keeps adding layers of superfluous nonsense to its plot until all that's left is glowering ultra-violence and a whole lot of missed opportunities.
  15. The Invisible
    The film disappoints on its own terms, failing to drum up any sympathy for a self-pitying rich kid who can't pry his eyes from his navel.
  16. Kickin It Old Skool
    For a film that has nothing to offer but lazy '80s nostalgia, Kickin' It Old Skool doesn't even bother to get the details right.
  17. Next
    Next bears some resemblance to another Dick adaptation, "Minority Report," about "pre-cogs" who can anticipate murders before they happen, but it doesn't really bother exploring the moral or emotional implications of Cage's power.
  18. Snow Cake
    If only Snow Cake had hewed closer to this idea of showing what an adult autist's life and experiences are like, rather than getting caught up in Rickman's rote re-awakening, it could've been as powerful as it strains to be.
  19. Les amitiés maléfiques
    Up to the last five minutes, Poison Friends stays true to that heady, idealistic-to-a-fault world of academia.
  20. The Wedding Weekend
    At least when they're singing, they aren't sniping and griping at each other. That original title really would have worked a lot better.
  21. Diggers
    As befits a heartfelt ode to working-class values, Diggers puts in lots of hard, honest work that finally pays off in a wholly predictable yet unexpectedly moving conclusion.
  22. Triad Election
    Like the best crime stories, this one isn't about how the bad guys live, it's about how WE live.
  23. Hot Fuzz
    Everything an action-comedy should be. It achieves through parody what most films in the genre can't accomplish straight.
  24. Vacancy
    Making an assured transition to Hollywood after his Hungarian cult sensation "Kontroll," director Nimród Antal gets his business done with an efficiency that recalls "Red Eye," another thriller that clocks in under 90 minutes. But efficiency isn't everything, and Antal sacrifices too much in order to sustain tension.
  25. Fracture
    Not since Lecter has a role been this well suited to Hopkins, whose intelligence and pristine formality as an actor often make him seem alien--or worse, an incorrigible ham.
  26. In the Land of Women
    "Women" confirms that the only thing less enjoyable than enduring long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships in real life is watching movies about people having long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships.
  27. Syndromes and a Century
    These moments, enjoyable and arcane, may not add up to a masterpiece. But they're uniquely Weerasethakul's.
  28. Red Road
    As long as Arnold can avoid giving any reason for Dickie's strange behavior, Red Road remains creepy and hypnotic, but as soon as Arnold explains what's going on, the movie's structure collapses into the rubble of cliché.
  29. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
    Begins by living up to its fans' rabid expectations, and ends by justifying skeptics' doubts. In between lie roughly equivalent levels of tedium and hilarity.
  30. Pathfinder
    If this uninspired fight-fest had been delayed out of existence, it's unlikely anyone would have missed it.
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