The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,422 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 10422
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10422
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10422
10422 movie reviews
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  1. Venom
    Gillespie showed a real knack for '80s-style retro horror with "I Know What You Did," and while a few sequences here have the familiar-but-enjoyable framing and stylization of an old EC horror comic, his material defeats him.
  2. Separate Lies
    This material could easily have devolved into soap opera or romantic melodrama, but Wilkinson and Watson's superb, subtle performances lend it tremendous depth and gravity.
  3. Hard Goodbyes: My Father
    Panayotopoulou's background in photography shows in the way she lets her chiaroscuro lighting mirror her characters' emotions. It also shows in the still-life quality that Hard Goodbyes never quite gets beyond.
  4. Finding Eleazar
    But compared to great documentaries about the process behind performance-"Last Dance" and "Original Cast Album: Company" spring to mind-Finding Eléazar is too choppy and fussy.
  5. I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth
    Though it doesn't rise above the cut-and-paste aesthetic of other making-of documentaries, The Siberian Mammoth assembles many members of the disparate Cuban cast and crew, and unearths some rare production photos and footage.
  6. Piggie
    Reilly's appearance in Piggie amounts to little more than a cameo, but he's lively and real in ways that the rest of Bagnall's cast is not. It's the material's fault.
  7. The Future of Food
    Garcia's far-more-info-than-tainment style seems a little staid, but Future Of Food's clear, intelligent journalism and rich cinematography help take the edges off the immense brick of data Garcia lobs through the window of America's biotech industry.
  8. Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow
    The imagery eventually becomes the only reason to keep watching. This is the first of an announced trilogy, but it already feels as long as the 20th century itself.
  9. The Man
    It's the kind of featherweight slot-filler people turn off after 15 minutes on a plane or have on in the background on cable while they vacuum the floor.
  10. An Unfinished Life
    It's corny, but the film might have worked anyway, had anyone brought a lick of conviction to the business. But Lopez--once such a promising actress--now does little but pose, and everyone else seems to have figured out that the film wasn't going anywhere before the cameras started rolling.
  11. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    Part courtroom drama, part otherworldly shocker, the film basically restages the Scopes Monkey Trial and comes out once more against Mr. Darrow, and it's got the spine-twisting, tongues-speaking, devil-channeling hellion to prove it.
  12. Cote d'Azur
    In the end, all these sexual shenanigans just provide an excuse to play some seductive music and drink in some seaside scenery. Ah, Europe.
  13. Keane
    Throughout Keane, there's an unnerving feeling that Lewis is capable of anything, from harming himself to assaulting anyone around him.
  14. Steal Me
    Steal Me suffers from a distinct charisma vacuum at the center, which makes it easy to linger on its many shortcomings, especially its stilted dialogue and pseudo-poetic, pseudo-philosophical narration.
  15. Green Street Hooligans
    It loses its superficial charm during a labored third act that gets bogged down in tired, groan-inducing subplots.
  16. Kamikaze Girls
    Nakashima does his best to keep the flimsy enterprise afloat, mostly through whooshing camera movements and headlong dives into the grotesque extremes of Japanese kitsch. By the end, the effect is like eating a bellyache's worth of cotton candy.
  17. Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie
    May be too heady to take in one sitting. Even given relatively calm passages-like a hushed tour through the courtyard of a Scottish castle or a mediation on ripples in a pond-there's just too much to absorb.
  18. Hellraiser: Hellworld
    As far as the Hellraiser elements go, this is the laziest yet.
  19. Transporter 2
    Chucks the laws of logic and physics out the passenger's-side window, and it's all the better for it.
  20. A Sound of Thunder
    A plodding, bloated, long-shelved adaptation/expansion of Ray Bradbury's classic short story about the dangers of time travel.
  21. Underclassman
    Almost comically unambitious, Underclassman seldom tries to be funny, and never even attempts to be original.
  22. The Constant Gardener
    Fiennes is the perfect John Le Carré hero: reserved and sophisticated, possessing the driest of wits, yet deceptively passionate in a way that people never really anticipate from him.
  23. William Eggleston in the Real World
    The trouble with artists making documentaries about other artists is that art tends to get in the way.
  24. The Brothers Grimm
    The Brothers Grimm reeks of compromise, of a brilliant fantasist losing his footing and nerve and getting hopelessly gummed up in the cruel machinery of big-budget blockbuster filmmaking.
  25. The Cave
    It's an undistinguished effort in which none of the actors distinguish themselves.
  26. Undiscovered
    The vapid teen talent show Undiscovered turns on a plot point so moronic that even the most dedicated bad-movie buffs have cause to stay away.
  27. The Baxter
    That's ultimately the film's fatal flaw: it bumps Showalter's Baxter up to the role of the romantic lead without giving him an equivalent increase in complexity or depth.
  28. Eternal
    There's nothing wrong with formulas when they work, but Eternal is neither scary nor particularly sexy.
  29. The Memory of a Killer
    Initially, the film comes off as a poor man's "Memento," but it gradually becomes apparent that it's only really interested in its protagonist's Alzheimer's as a cheap plot point to be manipulated or discarded as the filmmakers see fit.
  30. Wall
    While Bitton engages in some penetrating conversations, and shoots some artful video footage, Wall never really tops its first scene.
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