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. Solomon Kane
    It's taken a while for Kane to make it to the big screen, maybe because fantasy barbarians and long-ago kings have more immediate appeal than pious, slouch-hat-wearing men with poor senses of humor, but Solomon Kane gives it a go anyway. The results suggest a compelling movie could be made from the material, even if it isn't this one.
  2. Paris Can Wait
    As the movie pulls over to look at museum fabrics in vain search of a groove, it turns the audience into its impatient child, threatening to start kicking the back of the car seat any minute now.
  3. The Oh in Ohio
    It's never a promising sign when an attractive young woman's insatiable sexual desire for Danny DeVito represents the most convincing and compelling aspect of a movie, but that's the best this one can do.
  4. Underwater
    Unlike the best programmers, it never transcends its derivative origins and basic thrills. It’s another movie about thin characters and bland monsters—albeit one that’s better than the norm.
  5. Yonkers Joe
    Yonkers Joe is largely concerned with the delicate balance between a crook's business life and his personal life--a balance the movie itself has trouble managing effectively.
  6. Martin & Orloff
    The film too often gets bogged down by a rhythmless pace and an overabundance of the kind of wacky physical business better left to experts in a dumber brand of comedy.
  7. Prey for Rock & Roll
    An actress of magnetizing screen presence whose inability to land choice roles can only be attributed to her post-TRL age, Gershon easily identifies with her character, giving her performance an edge that this lazy, punked-up melodrama otherwise lacks.
  8. Rumble
    There’s liveliness in the conception of Rumble, knocked around and out by the demands of formulas no one has bothered to figure out.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Octagon
    Even if it’s not a good movie, it’s an important one, culturally and within the history of action movies. Along with Eric Van Lustbader’s novel The Ninja and the miniseries Shogun, both of which also came out in 1980, this was the first time the idea of the ninja, the shadowy mystical assassin figure, really permeated Western pop-culture consciousness.
  10. Thrash
    While Thrash resembles a general-audience survival horror drama, its forgettable protagonists also frequently stop to reassure viewers—mostly through profanity-laced dialogue and occasional bursts of gore—that it’s okay to scoff at whatever they’re looking at.
  11. Planes: Fire & Rescue
    It’s nice to look at, easy to watch, and impossible to remember for the length of a car-ride home.
  12. Escape Room
    The escape-room scenes themselves (a.k.a. the good stuff) are imaginatively conceived and deftly executed enough to justify a late-night cable viewing.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Emperor
    Since Hirohito remained in ceremonial power until his death in 1989, there’s no suspense about the outcome. Instead, the film offers a labored treatise on the Japanese national character, with endless speeches about honor, devotion, loyalty, and the people’s reverence for their emperor as a human deity.
  14. Tomb Raider
    When it comes to what should be the reliably dumb fun of tomb raiding, maybe there are worse crimes than insulting viewers’ intelligence or bombarding them with crappy special effects. Boring them? Now that’s a felony offense.
  15. Solo Mio
    While Solo Mio feels familiar, it doesn’t feel generic—and that’s a balancing act as impressive as James’ late-career pivot.
  16. Chicken Little
    Turning brief fairy tales into sweeping mini-epics has long been Disney's hallmark, but even for a fable, Chicken Little is thin stuff; it's a brief cautionary tale against alarmism, essentially "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" without any of the poetic irony.
  17. Child's Play
    As an enchanted talisman housing a depraved mind, Chucky was born one-of-a-kind. As nothing more than a glitching machine, he lacks the sniggling spirit that made him special. He’s been mass-produced.
  18. Noelle
    Noelle has a few of those peppermint hot chocolate moments, but thanks to its bizarre warm-weather detour and wasting of a stellar cast, it just barely makes the nice list.
  19. 21
    Short of counting the cards out loud, these geniuses seem to do everything they can to get caught.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gran Turismo
    Gran Turismo lacks the concentration to feel like it’s really going anywhere. Instead, there’s the nagging feeling it’s just spinning its wheels.
  21. Civic Duty
    Shooting in digital video, director Jeff Renfroe needlessly amps up the proceedings with jittery camerawork, jump cuts, and other technical hiccups meant to disorient the audience.
  22. The Core
    With the exception of Hilary Swank, whose earnestness spoils the fun, a stellar cast seems in on the joke.
  23. The Santa Clause 2
    Despite the obviously mercenary nature of this sequel, there's a thimbleful of clever ideas at work here, most notably in the way Allen's RoboSanta begins to turn his toy factory into a tiny dictatorship.
  24. Orange County
    Ultimately it lacks even the conviction of its own nastiness.
  25. Super Troopers
    With no greater ambition than reworking the Police Academy movies, Broken Lizard comes up with a winning formula: one part laughs to two parts goodwill.
  26. Some Girl(s)
    The title’s parenthetical plural sums up the problem with Some Girl(s): Five slow-cook dialogues that reveal the nice-guy protagonist as a super-tool is four too many.
  27. 300: Rise of an Empire
    Murro doesn’t so much direct as frame and stage, placing the characters against digital desktop-wallpaper skies and constructing each battle scene as a showcase for the characters’ prowess and toughness.
  28. State Like Sleep
    The whole thing aspires to art, but can really only be appreciated as trash.
  29. Lockout
    More than any masculine heroics, Pearce's primary job is maintaining the tone: smug, irreverent, and giddily punch-drunk.
  30. Carnage Park
    Keating keeps the story tight, giving the audience enough twists and turns to keep the ride fun.
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