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. Loggerheads
    A little less earnestness could have done this movie some good.
  2. Nine Lives
    As a film composed entirely of nine continuous long takes, Nine Lives certainly qualifies as unique. But what makes it rarer and more auspicious is that it offers such a rich bounty of great roles for middle-aged women.
  3. Summer Storm
    It just grows darker and broodier as Stadlober grapples with coming out. That's not an easy thing, but someone should tell the poor guy that being gay doesn't have to mean being this lame.
  4. The President's Last Bang
    Though The President's Last Bang is undeniably dense-with more than a dozen significant characters-the particulars aren't too tough to understand.
  5. Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
    Though Phantom Of The Cinematheque is fascinating throughout, Richard squanders a chance to recreate one of those long Parisian nights where Langlois held court for his fellow movie buffs.
  6. Good Night, and Good Luck.
    Where "Quiz Show" elevated its story to the level of Shakespearean tragedy, Clooney's film is too lightweight to reach such tragic heights. In part, it's too short--at 90 minutes, including musical interludes and lengthy monologues taken whole-cloth from the historical record, Good Night breezes by effortlessly when it really needs time and space to build up to appropriately epic dimensions.
  7. The Gospel
    Unsurprisingly, the unimaginatively filmed but high-intensity gospel performances prove a highlight, radiating an energy and urgency that the film's stilted dialogue, awkward romance, and clunky plotting can only aspire to.
  8. In Her Shoes
    The whole exercise feels hopelessly shallow and artificial. In Her Shoes is basically a double-date romantic comedy, in which not one but two women find themselves and learn to live and love again, etc. etc., and while it's well-acted on most counts, it's also as plodding as it is obvious.
  9. Two for the Money
    For all its swaggering bravado, Pacino's turn in Two For The Money is the reverse image of his "Devil's Advocate" character: Instead of the omniscient, all-powerful operator he presents himself as, he's a gambler grasping at a lifestyle that's always just beyond his means.
  10. Waiting...
    There's real potential in the premise of young, unmotivated screw-ups logging time at a dead-end restaurant job--a hash-slinging "Office Space," basically--but first-time writer-director Rob McKittrick makes it look like a homemade sitcom laced with profanity.
  11. Before the Fall
    It's an emotionally chilly movie with a blank, inexpressive protagonist, but it gains cumulative force en route to a viscerally moving climax.
  12. Never Been Thawed
    What's most surprising about Never Been Thawed is that it's not completely awful. It's just a little awful.
  13. The Squid and the Whale
    It's an unflinchingly raw and honest look at a family splitting apart, and it seldom strikes an unconvincing or inauthentic note. Though it surveys rocky adolescent emotional terrain from the safe distance of adulthood, The Squid And The Whale still resonates with the sting of a fresh wound.
  14. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    The humor edges against absurdism, but stays self-aware and witty, with that mild-mannered optimism presiding.
  15. Capote
    Capote begins as a sprawling, vivacious comedy-drama in which Hoffman's Capote is only one of a number of fascinating characters, including Chris Cooper's upstanding, ramrod-straight lawman and Keener's tough, blunt assistant/sidekick/foil/author.
  16. The Greatest Game Ever Played
    As Ouimet, the always-terrific Shia LeBeouf is an oasis of depth in a film that otherwise can't pass up a sports-film cliché.
  17. Into the Blue
    Laughably awful.
  18. Serenity
    Serenity is still taut, immersive, and alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, a well-balanced blend of whooping Wild West action and space opera.
  19. MirrorMask
    Episodic, detached, and lacking in drive, but packed with amazing, hallucinatory dream-imagery that makes real dreams look flat by comparison.
  20. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Moore's scenes with a miscast-but-game Harrelson offer a study in how spouses learn to handle even their partners' most destructive impulses, but in most other moments, Anderson fails to get beyond the surface of her characters' lives.
  21. The War Within
    Sometimes too pat and sometimes ragged with omissions and confusions, but it's still a fascinating look outside of that familiar world and into a harsher one.
  22. An Adolescent
    The problem is that both as a director and as an actor, Okuda never makes a particularly convincing case either for sex or for deeper commitment as a road away from the abyss.
  23. Three Days of Rain
    Beautifully lit, with some inventive but unobtrusive framing, and the moody jazz score unifies the multiple storylines without overwhelming them. Yet while the movie never goes slack, it never really transcends its good intentions either.
  24. Forty Shades of Blue
    Investing a lot of time on each corner of his three-sided character piece, director Ira Sachs (who co-wrote the film with Michael Rohatyn) has created a film as dramatically intense as it is opaque.
  25. A History of Violence
    Ed Harris and William Hurt deliver inspired turns as the villains.
  26. Flightplan
    But coming on the heels of "Red Eye," which is nothing if not an efficient thrill machine, Flightplan can only look conspicuously flat by comparison.
  27. Roll Bounce
    Behind the camera, Lee shows a steady hand and saves his best tricks for the big finale, which generates a lot of excitement out of the collision of disco music and some truly impressive skating.
  28. Dear Wendy
    Its mad rush to offer shallow takes on every Big American Issue would be offensive if it weren't so misguided. It's almost cute the way Dear Wendy thinks it knows what it's talking about and then just keeps going and going long after it's stopped making sense.
  29. Dirty Love
    Dirty Love offers a series of desperate would-be comic moments.
  30. Dorian Blues
    Dorian Blues covers extremely familiar territory, but does so with low-key wit and ingratiating charm.
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