The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,435 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: 5,578 out of 10435
  2. Mixed: 3,745 out of 10435
  3. Negative: 1,112 out of 10435
10435 movie reviews
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  1. The King
    The King's perception of religion is hardly friendly, but it's only one aspect of a terrific drama, one that ultimately admits that people can be as much of a terrifying mystery as their creator.
  2. Lemming
    The film is much more intriguing in its dread-inducing opening half, when Moll's assured direction keeps suggesting that something horrible will be happening soon, then, when it does, that something even more horrifying may follow.
  3. Twelve and Holding
    The drama feels factory-cut and shrink-wrapped, with each of three kids' stories following predictably twisty paths to ironically hopeful conclusions.
  4. Poseidon
    "Titanic" without the metaphors, the class-consciousness, the love story, or anything resembling a theme, Poseidon invests so little in its screenplay that it might as well be an episode of "The Love Boat" gone horribly awry.
  5. Just My Luck
    Just My Luck, a lazy spitballing session of karmic humor, hinged on the sort of generic rom-com contrivances that keep movies like these from ending at a reasonable time.
  6. Goal! The Dream Begins
    How much viewers care about what happens in Goal! is directly proportionate to how much they care about soccer, because decent execution aside, there's an underdog fantasy movie just like this one for every sport.
  7. Dead Man's Shoes
    For all Dead Man's Shoes' well-paced, well-observed boondocks melodrama, its premise seems simultaneously slender and overheated.
  8. Keeping Up with the Steins
    What begins as a scathing but loving satire of materialism loses its way once it turns into a warmhearted after-school special about a nice young Jewish boy discovering the true meaning of the bar mitzvah.
  9. Wah-Wah
    Wah-Wah can't sustain the mastery of its superior first hour, but it maintains a core of truth that sets it apart from less-convincing depictions of boys becoming men.
  10. Sketches of Frank Gehry
    Gehry is a fascinating subject, a strangely magnetic combination of rumpled, aw-shucks humility and Herculean ambition and hubris, but every time Pollack stumbles onto a fascinating topic like Gehry's battles with anti-Semitism, he pulls away instead of delving deeper.
  11. Russian Dolls
    These characters are still rich, and their potential growth still compelling. Here's hoping we meet them again in another five years.
  12. Mission: Impossible III
    Yes, it's fundamentally business as usual, but it's the best kind of business as usual, and it finds everyone working in top form. Abrams imports and enlarges "Alias'" smooth, stylish, yet remarkably visceral approach to action, and the actors pack a satisfying amount of drama into the moments between action scenes.
  13. Art School Confidential
    Zwigoff has a rich comic gallery of pretentious boobs to lampoon. But his satirical target just seems too easy this time around: It's hard to spoof institutions that already veer so close to self-parody.
  14. An American Haunting
    Never remotely frightening.
  15. Hoot
    The kids Hoot is aimed at weren't around to see all the previous films it echoes, particularly the toothless Disney live-action films of the '70s. They'll probably like Hoot fine. Everyone else in the audience is likely to nod off and have genial, bland, easygoing dreams.
  16. Down in the Valley
    It's mysterious and bold at every turn, and refreshingly removed from the commonplace.
  17. The Proposition
    The sketchily symbolic characters and flat plot just frame an atmosphere of sticky heat and Biblical reckoning.
  18. One Last Thing...
    The real problem with One Last Thing… isn't that it's a teen sex comedy or a sappy melodrama, it's that it can't make up its mind.
  19. United 93
    We all lived through this not so long ago; it's an odd thing to make a film whose most striking effect is its ability to bring the feelings of Sept. 11 flooding back, then close on a profoundly disturbing note. A crasser film would have been easier to digest and dismiss. It's hard to do either with United 93, and that's either its genius or its folly.
  20. Stick It
    So along with being fake punk-rock, Stick It is also a fake protest movie. That leaves the only traces of genuineness to Bridges, who plays the coach with a fatherly patience that earns him a paycheck, but not the better film he deserves.
  21. Akeelah and the Bee
    As the conceptually similar documentary "Spellbound" proved, spelling bees are innately dramatic. But that doesn't keep Atchison from constantly pushing the film toward theatrical moments instead of letting the drama arise organically from the story.
  22. RV
    Apart from a funny turn by "Arrested Development's" Will Arnett as Williams' evil boss, nobody appears to be having a good time. And the feeling is infectious.
  23. The Lost City
    Garcia might have thought he was making a Cuban "Casablanca," but his big, empty spectacle amounts to less than a hill of beans.
  24. Water
    Water is gorgeously composed and beautifully shot, with a dogged emphasis on water imagery and symbolism, and a luscious sense for color. It's often profoundly beautiful. But its distanced, calculated attempts to draw sympathy, from its wide-eyed child protagonist to its sad-eyed, personality-free lovers to its fairy-tale ending, all blunt the meaning behind that beauty.
  25. Lady Vengeance
    It takes patience and industry to make sense of the first half, intestinal fortitude to deal with the second, and a little flexibility to make the transition from one to the other. But the whole process adds up to a fairly impressive two-stage thrill ride, like rafting through choppy waters, then plummeting over a waterfall into a dark and deadly pit.
  26. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    An intoxicating performance piece in which skilled actors pinball off each other with such energy and nuance that the audience almost forgets about the dying man on the edge of the frame. The style alone makes the movie's point.
  27. Three Times
    A sampler of novella-length films set in three different time periods and starring the same two actors, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times resembles one of those delicate trios served at fine restaurants, each a fresh interpretation of a common ingredient.
  28. American Dreamz
    Weitz has a winning way with a one-liner, and he's recruited a stellar cast that gets the most out of his material.
  29. Silent Hill
    Recommended to those who feel "The Crucible" doesn't feature enough bodies ripped in half vertically. Others are duly warned.
  30. Somersault
    Watching the Australian coming-of-age film Somersault is a little like watching a fluffy white bunny hop through a minefield, one tiny spring away from becoming tonight's rabbit stew.
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