The A.V. Club's Scores

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:
10447 movie reviews
  1. It’s an equally fiery, magnetic star turn, but being trapped in a stolid, unimaginative, and simplistic example of the genre — a typical historical biopic, in other words — saps a surprising amount of its strength.
  2. Nobody Walks is Mumblecore 2.0: The budget is bigger, the cast is littered with recognizable faces from popular television programs, and the production values are more impressive, but the fixation with the low-key, artsy angst of rudderless twenty- and thirtysomethings remains constant.
  3. Spacey has made a career out of projecting the smarmy elitism of the powerful, but Casino Jack is so painfully clunky that he gets dragged down along with it.
  4. If anything, this is a more meager, timid iteration of Seuss’ story, starting with the characterization of its famous antihero.
  5. Brian Savelson's small-scaled domestic drama In Our Nature evokes a specific, fairly common experience: when two young lovers expose a still-blossoming relationship to their relatives' stifling attention.
  6. The film almost redeems itself with what may be the longest, most elaborate post-film/pre-credits sequence in film history, but it will still disappoint anyone expecting more than watchable trash.
  7. The gambit doesn’t really work — fans of "The Notebook" and people who own "Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama" will both come away disappointed — but it’s hard not to respect Krzykowski’s attempt to do something different.
  8. It just grows darker and broodier as Stadlober grapples with coming out. That's not an easy thing, but someone should tell the poor guy that being gay doesn't have to mean being this lame.
  9. A paper-thin character study undermined by a convoluted conspiracy thriller.
  10. What it has in its favor is affability—some owed to Cusack’s gawky young charisma, some to Holland’s goofy tone and lightly surreal sense of humor, and still more to a cast where even the villains are mostly likeable...To paraphrase the opening narration in The Big Lebowski, Better Off Dead is the movie for its time and place. It fits right in there.
  11. It's amusing but facile, reasonably clever but hopelessly glib.
  12. Almost paralyzingly dull until its last few minutes.
  13. Farrell’s Kentucky accent here is as merely passable as his Chicago accent in Widows was, and Parker’s precocious interest in physics and chemistry seems similarly phoned-in. Both characters are just there to keep the story moving, to provide awestruck reaction shots as we move from oddly muted spectacle to agreeable callback to the heartwarming happy ending.
  14. To compare Rough Night to another relatively recent female-led comedy, the film incorporates its violence with less tonal whiplash than in the 2013 Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy comedy "The Heat," not only because of the tone set by the hard-R dialogue, but also because the dead body jokes are more "Weekend At Bernie’s" than anything.
  15. Cleaner is a perfectly serviceable time waster for plane rides and afternoon naps. It might even make a good addition to Daisy Ridley’s acting reel, should anyone think of her for a better action movie. But Campbell’s timid direction of a tired script can’t rise to the occasion.
  16. For a Brit-inflected talking-animal picture in the wake of the "Paddington" series, it’s not good enough.
  17. Fails to deliver either shocks or real drama.
  18. West is heavy on Vaughn, at least initially, but woefully short on comedy.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Marshall’s fixation on John Carpenter and early James Cameron is all too apparent, but his own distinctive cinematic style isn’t, making Doomsday a likeably rambling but generic shoot-’em-up.
  19. Roberts' script and direction show sparks of wit, but the plot comes lifted from countless heist films.
  20. Johnny English's international popularity may or may not translate here, but in a sequel-glutted summer, even a mildly amusing time-waster can't help but stand out.
  21. To his credit, it probably would have been easy to turn this particular book into a quasi-satirical parade of withering takedowns. Turning it into a flavorless, center-less journey of self-discovery was likely a lot more work. That doesn’t make it any easier to watch.
  22. For the most part, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a fun time at the movies. There’s laughter, action, and movie stars playing to their strengths. It’s exactly what audiences expect to see from Ritchie and that’s its main selling point. If only the second hour was tighter, maintaining the film’s fast rhythm.
  23. An early contender for the most Weinstein movie of the year, Woman In Gold bends a complicated legal quagmire—heavy on questions of ownership and national responsibility—into a crowd-pleasing David and Goliath story. The title, too generic for Klimt’s masterpiece, suits the movie just fine.
  24. It's a sweet, human movie, if not an entirely successful one.
  25. But save for a giddily gratuitous sequence involving full-frontal nudity, a little person, and a French bulldog, the film is strictly by-the-numbers slasher boilerplate. It won't endure past the weekend.
  26. Savage Grace should have the force of Greek tragedy, but Kalin's chamber drama feels curiously stifling and flat, and Moore's volatile turn isn't enough to quicken its pulse.
  27. What begins as a multilayered tale of scientific discovery and cultural history gets reduced to a single maudlin idea: that even Charles Darwin had to evolve.
  28. Unlike Jack Nicholson or Bill Murray, whose smile can be either charming or sinister, Hanks always lets us know the character is headed towards redemption. A Man Called Otto would have been a more authentic emotional journey if he didn’t.
  29. These are not good performances, exactly. Clarke is endearing, but verges on mugging. Claflin is at his best when Will gives in to his competitive urges, which happens exactly once.

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