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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    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Airport 1975
    Where to begin with this accidental comic classic, which gives its direct descendant—the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker parody Airplane!, effectively the nail-in-the-coffin of the ’70s disaster movie cycle—some very real competition in the guffaw department?
  2. Dreamland
    In the end, Dreamland never bothers to decide whether it’s trying to be an elegiac, philosophical head trip or an over-the-top action thriller.
  3. The Other Boleyn Girl
    The film looks terrific, all Vermeer-style light/dark interplay and sleek design. And Portman is fantastic as the tempestuous Anne.
  4. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    Spinning a handsome Disney adventure out of a videogame is a testament to Bruckheimer’s commercial savvy. The fact that it still isn’t particularly good seems beside the point.
  5. Dark Skies
    Good horror films are imprinted by the fears and anxieties of the day, converting real-life atrocities into abstracted scares; mediocre ones are imprinted, too, but with trends and commercial formulas. If Dark Skies resurfaced on TV or brain implant 20 or 30 years from now, horror fans would be able to carbon-date the film almost to the month.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The American Society of Magical Negroes
    A fatal lack of consequence for the film’s world or characters prevents it from ever deepening its initial premise, or unifying the sum of its disparate parts.
  7. 28 Hotel Rooms
    In its own small way, by documenting the petty panic of two people who want to be together but are otherwise entangled, 28 Hotel Rooms is often masterful.
  8. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
    Once the action shifts to the dead-eyed denizens of Santa Mira, the remote town that Silver Shamrock calls home, the film becomes a sly and creepy indictment of corporate engineering. It’s not what Halloween fans wanted—and Wallace rubs it in by showing a couple of clips from the original film on TV—but take the Halloween part away and Season Of The Witch is a standalone oddity worth considering on its own terms.
  9. A Dog's Way Home
    This year’s entry into the winter animal-movie canon, A Dog’s Way Home, comes this close to just being a simple, cute animal movie, until the humans complicate things.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Elles
    Elles is racy and often sexy, but underneath that simmers an old-school feminist anger.
  11. Cowboys & Aliens
    You want cowboys and aliens in the same movie? This one's for you. If you want anything beyond what the title promises, look elsewhere. And that means even anything resembling a clever mash-up of established genres.
    • The A.V. Club
      • Posted Jul 28, 2011
  12. The Purge: Anarchy
    Retains the original’s premise and politics, but actually puts them to use.
  13. Blonde
    What Ana de Armas does in Blonde is nothing short of transformative, but unfortunately, the film will likely do little to change the way people see Marilyn Monroe—once again, a victim of people doing what they think is best for her, perhaps with consent but certainly not enough consideration.
  14. The Four Feathers
    Ledger is a charismatic, conflicted hero who internalizes his character's shame and anguish to powerful effect. Wes Bentley is similarly strong as Ledger's best friend turned romantic rival, and Kapur makes the most of Africa's breathtaking desert, crafting a gorgeous spectacle that's at once stately and hyper-real.
  15. Alfie
    Caine played Alfie as an incorrigible S.O.B. who at least made for good company. Law makes him a delicate boy with self-control problems who can't stop talking, and his charm runs out long before the film ends.
  16. Things Heard & Seen
    Like many Netflix originals, Things Heard And Seen is the cinematic equivalent of a mass-market paperback, neither good enough to haunt the viewer nor bad enough to haunt the résumés of its cast and crew.
  17. The Mighty Macs
    There must have been a reason why the real-life Rush could do so much with seemingly so little, but The Mighty Macs never captures it. It lets canned inspiration provide the uplift, instead of something more tangible.
  18. Black Christmas
    The latest Black Christmas reboot understands the frustrations and lived horrors of modern sexual politics, but stumbles over its scares and the finer points of its feminist messaging.
  19. Cassandra's Dream
    Like so many late-period Allens, it leaves behind the feeling that he's made this movie before, but better.
  20. Chloe
    It all goes awry in the end, but for a good stretch, Chloe neatly fixes Egoyan’s career-long obsessions with identity and communication to the familiar framework of the erotic thriller.
  21. Wilson
    It’s a gamble, building a comedy around a character this boorish.
  22. Don't Let Go
    What keeps Don’t Let Go watchable is, ironically, its predictability: the cop-movie clichés, the shootouts, the mishandled evidence, the bargain-bin twists.
  23. Escape Plan
    Though this movie can’t match the formal qualities that made the pair’s most iconic films work, it goes a long way toward recapturing their sense of cheesy fun.
  24. Paradise Hills
    This accessibility actually hurts the film, exposing the flimsy balsa-wood architecture under all those frills.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sleepers
    Muddy, confused, and worst of all boring, Sleepers grinds to the preordained halt shared by any over-budgeted epic that lacks the simple necessity of good story.
  26. Kidnapped
    What's missing from Kidnapped is a grander context - or richer subtext - to all the terror.
  27. The Life List
    The trouble is that The Life List too often struggles to reconfigure its well-known tropes into something that feels alive and human, which is what one comes to romantic melodramas for.
  28. Nabbeun namja
    The film works best as a passionate tale of obsessive love, with two people brought together under harrowing circumstances.
  29. The Devils
    Russell’s penchant for aesthetic excess is thoroughly indulged, as the director stages grotesque human tableaus straight out of Hieronymus Bosch over Derek Jarman’s intricately detailed sets. The result gives the story a sort of wanton, overripe feel, with such ostensibly austere environments as a cloistered convent about to explode with repressed sensuality.
  30. The Good Neighbor
    The only benefit the soul is likely to get from watching this is the comforting knowledge that you, the viewer, are not any of the people onscreen. Which doesn’t mean you can’t have fun watching them be bad, of course. But it’s a detached kind of fun.
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