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. Chestnut
    Despite the actors’ best efforts, they can never quite overcome a script that simply doesn’t have anything new to add to the conversation.
  2. Contraband
    Kormákur and his collaborators want to tell a simple story cleanly, efficiently, and with a refreshing dearth of frills. They more or less realize their aspirations because they aim so low.
  3. Breathe
    Breathe seems to want nothing more than to be "The Theory Of Everything" for a slightly newer generation.
  4. Death of a Unicorn
    This boneheaded movie’s got a dull point, but at least a lot of rich jerks get murderized by fanged, stab-happy unicorns.
  5. The Brothers Grimm
    The Brothers Grimm reeks of compromise, of a brilliant fantasist losing his footing and nerve and getting hopelessly gummed up in the cruel machinery of big-budget blockbuster filmmaking.
  6. Satanic Panic
    It’s campy, it’s gory, it’s a little bit titillating, and it features one of those novelty performances from famous actors that tend to bring a lot of press to otherwise under-the-radar productions.
  7. Cesar Chavez
    What Cesar Chavez critically lacks is a unique, complicated, or personal perspective on its world-famous subject. As is often the problem with portraits of influential firebrands, the film never quite sees past the movement to the man leading it.
  8. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    True to its title, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a mildly inferior sequel, diluting the modest charms of its predecessor. Said charms do remain, however.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    3, 2, 1... Frankie Go Boom
    Everyone plays against type in 3, 2, 1… Frankie Go Boom, none more so than Ron Perlman, who has a small role as a post-op transsexual hacker.
  10. Self Medicated
    It's a personal story that feels like it's been constructed from other movies.
  11. The Slumber Party Massacre
    What Slumber Party Massacre lacks in style, originality, and satire, it makes up in entertainment value. It’s blessedly unpretentious.
  12. Feast of Love
    Maybe Benton's serenely dull time-waster should take a cue from one of its main settings, and become the first Hollywood film released directly to coffee shops. Otherwise, it seems destined to find an indulgent second home as an unusually classy slot-plugger over at Lifetime.
  13. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    Like the worst of late-period Allen, the film recycles character types from his previous work without inventing new reasons to summon them into existence. They're left stranded, seven characters in search of an author.
  14. Trust Me
    Like a cocky insider, Trust Me touches success only to throw it away on a gamble.
  15. Due Date
    The situations sometimes feel contrived, but the characters never do, particularly because Galifianakis remains simultaneously charming and unrelentingly irritating.
  16. How to Be Single
    You might say that How To Be Single suffers from the influence of its older, more put-together sister Sex And The City, right down to the sappy montage and voice-over it needs to tie everything together at the end.
  17. 21 Years: Richard Linklater
    Those who already admire the director may not find a stunning level of insight, and the curious but unindoctrinated would be better served by starting with one his actual films rather than a rundown of them. But there’s a certain satisfaction in a rundown of a career as rich and varied as Linklater’s, not unlike the pleasure of watching a well-edited Oscar tribute reel.
  18. For the Plasma
    Three cheers, then, for Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan, whose joint first effort, For The Plasma, ranks among the year’s most singular movies, even as it also ranks among the year’s most painful movies to endure.
  19. Six Days Seven Nights
    Not especially funny, romantic, or exciting.
  20. The Baxter
    That's ultimately the film's fatal flaw: it bumps Showalter's Baxter up to the role of the romantic lead without giving him an equivalent increase in complexity or depth.
  21. Over Your Dead Body
    Over Your Dead Body is a gleeful, bloody romp masquerading as a dark marriage comedy, though unsurprisingly the two sides of its genre dynamic have a dysfunctional relationship.
  22. The Man with the Iron Fists
    The Man With The Iron Fists has the same advantages of many musical debuts. It's the product of a man who has been storing up ideas, setpieces, characters, and gags for a lifetime, in preparation for the magic moment when he'd be able to unleash his full vision on the big screen.
  23. Love
    Love, a movie with very little to say about relationships and even less to say about sex, is somehow one of the most interesting attempts any filmmaker has made in recent years at conveying the experience of memory.
  24. Mighty Joe Young
    It's all a little silly, and silly in a way that's less fun than the original—due in part to an obvious subplot involving a poacher played by a hammy Peter Firth—but its kid-friendly B-movie charm and the peerless Mr. Young make it worthwhile, undemanding entertainment.
  25. Jack the Giant Slayer
    The extra shading is nice, but it doesn’t change the degree to which Jack The Giant Slayer feels like a paint-by-numbers story.
  26. Death at a Funeral
    Rock acquits himself nicely as the responsible brother and resident straight man, but everyone else in the cast has apparently been advised to mug shamelessly and yell their lines as loudly as possible.
  27. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
    The longer action scenes may not always rank with Besson’s early ’90s highlights (Léon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) or the mania of the more recent Lucy, but there isn’t a moment in this ludicrous, lushly self-indulgent movie that doesn’t feel like its creator is having the time of his life.
  28. Desierto
    One could easily imagine Desierto as a lost exploitation film from the 1970s — better made than most, but not an exceptional example.
  29. Live From New York!
    Of course, a single documentary can’t cover everything, but this one’s slim but entertaining 80 minutes suggests that Nguyen erred on the side of brevity.
  30. Asylum
    Mackenzie's film could almost use one or two lurid touches in place of its stately distance. Then again, a more stylized approach might have allowed less room for Richardson, whose unsparing performance makes other elements almost irrelevant.
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