The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 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: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. A Hero
    Part of the movie’s brilliance is in how it questions the very concept of a good deed.
  2. The Man Who Knew Too Much
    The Man Who Knew Too Much finds the director firmly back in his wheelhouse, extracting all the wit and suspense he can from a pulpy exercise in abduction and conspiracy.
  3. Slow Machine
    A general menace permeates the film in the form of paranoid intrigue and clandestine government forces, but it’s always offset with plenty of offhand irony and snarky one-liners.
  4. Red Rocket
    Rex is a revelation here, a star reborn. He shrewdly conceals the depths of Mikey’s bone-deep selfishness under a lot of guileless blather, a hapless fool routine. The movie only works if our dawning awareness of his rottenness collides with what a hoot he can be, in all his calculated boylike scampishness.
  5. Cow
    Its observational shooting style is simple yet rich in quotidian detail. Its storytelling is morally neutral, yet charged with moments that obligate the viewer to question our treatment of farm animals.
  6. The Velvet Underground
    Haynes simply uses the tools at his disposal to get the job done. Ultimately, he captures the inspiring spirit of The Velvet Underground, a band built on the principle that marching to the beat of your own drum is a righteous, rebellious artistic act.
  7. The Power of the Dog
    The Power Of The Dog divulges its secrets in deliberate, measured fashion, growing richer with each new reveal.
  8. Decision to Leave
    The South Korean director, working at the top of his game, drops tantalizing clues that are best analyzed in multiple viewings which, it can be reported from first-hand experience, will be very helpful.
  9. The Boys in the Band
    Whatever a person's opinion of the play's accuracy, William Friedkin's 1970 film adaptation remains gripping, translating a story that takes place in a cramped apartment into a movie that rarely feels stagey.
  10. Her Socialist Smile
    Her Socialist Smile develops, in other words, a kind of ethics of the image. Gianvito is not, of course, suggesting that we should somehow give up our senses—only that, whatever the technology or medium we engage with, it is our responsibility to keep our minds from becoming what Keller called “automatic machines.”
  11. Vortex
    Vortex looks unsparingly at characters at the end of life, and finds their experiences as scary as any traditional horror tale.
  12. Parallel Mothers
    The film is at its most powerful, however, when Almodóvar relies on his muse and intensely fixates on her character as Janis silently absorbs waves of devastation or allows herself to confess, the words rapidly, cathartically tumbling out of her. In those moments, Parallel Mothers becomes a beautiful tribute to their enduring, working relationship and the trust the director regularly puts in Cruz, whose performance he never surrounds with flashy flourishes.
  13. Happening
    The real reason Happening manages to be so persuasive is because it tells such a vivid, intimate and relatable story, whether as a viewer it has happened to you or someone in your life, or your biggest fear is that it will.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Jagged
    The documentary ends up both a delightful ’90s time capsule and a sharp analysis of the social and cultural forces that shaped Morissette’s career—for better and worse.
  15. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
    So much about The Friends Of Eddie Coyle feels locked into 1973—from Dave Grusin’s jazz-fusion score to the shaggy hair and wide collars—but the dialogue is almost David Mamet-like in its specificity and rhythm, and it remains bracing even now.
  16. Attica
    What’s been forgotten is that the prisoners’ dramatic seizure of Attica was intended to give them a platform for their legitimate grievances—to get the tax-paying citizens to understand what exactly their money was buying. If nothing else, Nelson’s Attica gives these men another opportunity to raise their voices.
  17. Murina
    The look (and sound) of Murina are mesmerizing.
  18. Benediction
    There’s nothing about this film that is uplifting, but Davies’ handling of the material is so exquisite that the overbearing melancholy becomes, in the end, a work of poetry.
  19. Procession
    Greene, whose earliest documentaries were rooted in the cinéma vérité tradition and its portraits of ordinary American lives, has crafted a poignant group portrait with something to say about the crossed wires of pain and memory.
  20. Four Hours at the Capitol
    After watching Four Hours At The Capitol, the January 6 attack feels more like a horror film, one that ends with the monster still at large.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Prey
    Trachtenberg strips the Predator franchise back down to its core elements—the ruthlessness of this alien species and the ingenuity of humanity when confronted with nearly impossible odds. In concentrating on character and location, he backs off of the world-changing repercussions of the franchise’s immediate predecessors, creating an involving and tense character-driven experience whose strengths rely on narrative simplicity and a compelling lead in Midthunder.
  22. Everything Everywhere All at Once
    The film, which uses the gimmick of jumping between parallel universes to explore, essentially, how to be your best self, is awash in zany sci fi culs-du-sac, sly movie references, and a deranged high fructose attitude that scoffs at the idea of everything but the kitchen sink. The Daniels want infinite kitchen sinks.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Super Bob Einstein Movie
    A worthy tribute to a singular comedic voice. ... It shows why Bob Einstein could make audiences laugh for almost 50 years—but it also shows why he’ll be making them laugh for a lot longer.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Beanie Mania
    Beanie Mania weaves an entertaining, fast-paced narrative that reveals the depths to which collective fanaticism, greed, and the influence of the internet, even in its earliest days, all combined to create an inflection point that led to an unprecedented and unsustainable investment bubble.
  25. Forbidden Planet
    Here was outer space as only the lavish production values of MGM could imagine it, a journey to an alien landscape painted in bold Eastmancolor and stretched across a CinemaScope frame.
  26. A Love Song
    On the surface, there’s little more simple than a story of two people trying to make a connection. On an emotional level, however, few things are more complicated. Like life, A Love Song offers no easy conclusions—just simple realizations. In expert hands, that’s enough.
  27. Fire of Love
    Positively swollen with vulnerability in addition to an infectious curiosity about the world, it’s the type of film which leaves the trajectory of your day inarguably changed—colors a little brighter, feelings a bit rawer, reflections a bit heavier.
  28. Cha Cha Real Smooth
    Cha Cha Real Smooth has an unforced charm and lack of guile that’s refreshing and stops just short of being precious and ingratiating.
  29. Bros
    Bros is an excellent comedy, both as an expression of classical romance on screen, and one of a queerer, more diverse variety.
  30. God's Country
    A lyrical character study inside a quasi-Western thriller, God’s Country features a never-better Thandiwe Newton embodying that ethical struggle to haunting, unsettling effect.
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