The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,425 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 10425
  2. Mixed: 3,741 out of 10425
  3. Negative: 1,109 out of 10425
10425 movie reviews
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  1. Diminished Capacity
    Broderick, Alda, and Madsen are all fine--and Alda has some poignant moments as he realizes the implications of his forgetfulness--but their presence in a movie like this reaffirms its conventionality.
  2. CSNY/Déjà Vu
    The music isn't much of a relief either, mostly because Young keeps cutting away from the performances.
  3. Forgiveness
    Moshonov's capering, wheedling, and stagey monologuing become deeply taxing, and so does the conclusion, which makes more sense as metaphor than narrative.
  4. Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
    There's little here that's especially cage-rattling or side-splitting. Ultimately, Allah only made these guys mildly likable.
  5. Brothers at War
    It’s practically a feature-length infomercial for the military.
  6. Under Our Skin
    Well-produced and engaging, but it’s also anecdotal and conspiratorial, and damnably non-confrontational.
  7. Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
    Like "Art & Copy," Ten9Eight is blindingly slick, with a glossy visual aesthetic more rooted in music videos and commercials than cinéma vérité.
  8. Mammoth
    While Mammoth is frequently poignant and beautifully acted--especially by Williams, who’s so lost and lonely that she becomes casually cruel--the movie lacks the personal touch that’s distinguished even Moodysson’s “difficult” films.
  9. The Greatest
    It’s when the small moments become large ones that Feste overreaches and the shaky performances don’t bail her out.
  10. The City of Your Final Destination
    It’s a frustratingly oblique film where few events connect, and fewer moments matter.
  11. Oceans
    It comes to American theaters saddled with narration by Pierce Brosnan, who purrs through the gratingly vague script like the world’s plummiest old half-drunken uncle.
  12. Harry Brown
    There's a deceptive gravitas to the British vigilante thriller Harry Brown that some are bound to mistake for class--or even truth--in the way it grapples with one man's violent stand against societal decay. Much of that is owed to Michael Caine, an actor of such rare dignity and stature that audiences are naturally willing to follow him anywhere, including into the heart of truly risible material.
  13. Mercy
    With Glenn offscreen for huge sections of the film, Mercy devolves into yet another navel-gazing drama about a glib cad redeemed by the love of a good woman.
  14. Letters to Juliet
    If well done, a film like Letters To Juliet should need no surprises. But it does need more than the postcard-ready vistas against which director Gary Winick (13 Going On 30) frames much of the action.
  15. Just Wright
    With her (Latifah), Just Wright feels hampered by arbitrary contrivances; without her, it wouldn't be enough movie to exist at all.
  16. Predators
    The Predator series needed a shot of vitality, not another workmanlike go-around. SSDP: Same shit, different planet.
  17. Babies
    If anything, blame the kids: They’re all adorable, roly-poly delights, but the first year of life has its natural limitations.
  18. Looking for Eric
    Loach becomes his own pale imitator with Looking For Eric, a wispy little comedy that uses fantasy to gloss over even the darkest and most intractable problems.
  19. Cyrus
    Once again with the Duplasses, there just isn't enough of anything: not enough funny lines, not enough variation of mood, not enough plot. If these guys were students, Cyrus might merit a "promising." But this is their third movie. It's time for them to stop turning in first drafts.
  20. Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
    The movie's saving grace is its performances.
  21. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    The first time around, Wall Street felt like a warning about the perils of excess just as excess started to exact its toll. This one's little more than a reminder that we all got, and remain, screwed. Noted.
  22. You Again
    Even the best performers can only do so much to elevate mediocre material. In the long run, good or bad, the material always wins.
  23. Stolen
    Stolen is mildly engaging, inasmuch as it poses a riddle and makes the audience wait for the answer, in the classic mystery mode.
  24. The Girl Who Played with Fire
    More disappointingly, the entire cast seems less committed than they were the first time out.
  25. Kisses
    Kisses is dreary to a fault. It looks fantastic, with its shadowy Dublin alleys illuminated by the heroes' light-up Heelys. But the writing doesn't have that same glow.
  26. Charlie St. Cloud
    The film is memorable mainly for attractive people sailing and smooching against an attractive backdrop. There's no urgency behind all the preening.
  27. Middle Men
    Like Ribisi and Macht's miniature porn empire, Gallo's mildly diverting but overstuffed, underdeveloped opus could use the cinematic equivalent of a fix-it man like Wilson's character to transform its frenetic jumble of subplots and sleazy characters into a cohesive, satisfying whole.
  28. The Wildest Dream
    Given the subject matter, the answer to "Why watch this doc?" should be "Because it is fantastic." But Geffen, like Everest, will have to settle for "Because it is there."
  29. Lebanon
    The film's visceral assault extends to the sledgehammer script, an amassment of unsubtle ironies and war-is-hell clichés that often reduce it to an amateurish theatrical stunt.
  30. Mao's Last Dancer
    It's artless, obvious, and at times insultingly exaggerated. And yet the real-life story of Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin, based on his autobiography, is often dramatic enough to win its way past the silly trappings.
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