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. Guess Who
    An implausible, wildly protracted setup that drags on forever before reaching a payoff that barely registers.
  2. Sex Drive
    Sex Drive offers a limp variation on a hoary old teen-film trope.
  3. Daddy's Little Girls
    While its look at interclass romance among African-Americans and the struggles of a working-class single father is fresh and vital, the heavy-handed execution isn't.
  4. S1m0ne
    The best scenes play like "Frankenstein" revisited, with a comically bedraggled Pacino cast as the mad scientist trying to protect his runaway creation from a rabid public.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Special Treatment
    French drama Special Treatment draws a brazenly provocative parallel between the professions of psychiatry and prostitution.
  6. Starbuck
    By showing up and not embarrassing itself too much, the film far exceeds the standards established by the likes of the Shelley Long/Corbin Bernsen team-up "Frozen Assets" and 2012’s dire sperm-heist comedy "The Babymakers."
  7. The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter
    The characters are stubborn as ever, but in lieu of the characteristic spectacular downfall, The Legacy Of A Whitetail Deer Hunter offers only the pokiest and most rote of plots.
  8. Bloody Birthday
    Timeless message: Kids: They’re the worst.
  9. Death of a President
    Many of its fiercest detractors may be surprised to find that it's a far more sobering piece of speculative fiction than they might have imagined.
  10. Lucky You
    Curiously lifeless, Lucky You feels like poker without stakes; it goes through the motions with nothing to play for.
  11. Enemies Closer
    Enemies Closer finds Hyams senior and his screenwriters, Eric and James Bromberg, channeling Lynch and Mark Frost’s TV series "Twin Peaks," mixing bizarro characterizations and woodland intrigue with wholesome national imagery.
  12. The Good German
    With a few self-conscious exceptions, Soderbergh makes an earnest attempt to return to that place and time in both history and American filmmaking, and his risk-taking pays fascinating dividends.
  13. Henry's Crime
    A grating muddle.
  14. Demolition
    Despite a few electric moments, the movie never makes anything of its stylized displays of frustration, ending in a whiff of narrative and emotional cop-outs. Say what you will about "American Beauty," but at least it had a climax.
  15. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
    It's just too bad that Legend Of The Fist breaks up that action with long scenes of well-dressed men and women sitting around in nightclubs, talking politics.
  16. 2012
    2012 is ultimately only about finding new ways to topple monoliths. Only they don’t feel that new.
  17. A Man's Story
    Trouble is, even a finely tailored suit needs a body to fill it, and A Man's Story never gets its man.
  18. Sing 2
    In between the many high-gloss production numbers and a couple commendable bits of physical comedy putting the previous installment to shame, there’s a lot of treacle delivered with minimal conviction.
  19. The Reckoning
    Maddeningly dull. It works on the cerebrum while the rest of the body drifts off to sleep, and the dullness only intensifies as the film goes on.
  20. Please Stand By
    It’s hard to be persuasive, though, when your protagonist comes across as a collection of quirky tics rather than a credible human being.
  21. Shadows
    A respectable enough little ghost story, but it loses a lot of sparkle by being similar to such other guy-talks-to-the-dead thrillers as "The Sixth Sense" and "Ghost Town."
  22. Out to Sea
    A manipulative attempt to swindle money out of the generation that came of age during the Harding Administration, Out To Sea has the wit and sophistication of your average Fox TV pilot.
  23. The Sacrament
    Because the film is meant to resemble documentary footage, West is forced to effectively “play dumb,” disguising his craftsmanship behind a lot of intentionally cruddy handheld camerawork. Still, that’d be less of a problem if the material he was gracelessly filming weren’t such run-of-the-mill claptrap.
  24. Don't Look Up
    Don’t Look Up is both types of blunt: It makes no bones about exactly what the filmmakers think of climate-change deniers and social-media distractions, and it repeatedly blunts the impact of its satire by calling its shots early, often, and loudly.
  25. Body
    The film is well-acted, slickly made on a shoestring budget, and blessedly efficient, with a runtime that inches just past the one-hour mark, credits included. It’s also nearly devoid of surprises, sending its characters through some Hitchcockian paces en route to an ending that’s more depressing for its predictability than its bleakness.
  26. Al Franken: God Spoke
    The film ends with Franken contemplating a run for U.S. Senate, but it's clear that his political campaign began long ago.
  27. Valley of the Dolls
    It's more in the so bad it's almost good mode.
  28. Just Like Us
    The key mistake was Ahmed's choice to direct it himself; it's promotional when it might be revealing of impasses (and commonalities) between cultures and the complex tactics comedians use to address it.
  29. Raymond & Ray
    While Raymond And Ray registers nicely as a relaxed, compassionate character study, there’s no denying that one of the two central characters being studied hugely outshines the other.
  30. One Direction: This Is Us
    Mostly, however, This Is Us counts on the musicians to supply the personality—a strategy that makes it feel more like an anonymous mash note than a warts-and-all glimpse behind the curtain. Then again, what warts?
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