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. The Proposal
    It's the material that stinks, failing to give even an old pro like White more than a couple of modest laughs.
  2. Jayne Mansfield's Car
    Characters scream, throw glasses, screw, and strip nude for the self-gratifying viewing pleasure of others, but Jayne Mansfield’s Car never musters up even the faintest trace of Tennessee Williams-style hothouse drama.
  3. Lords of Chaos
    Åkerlund’s understanding is more like contempt, in a film that downplays the bigotry of the Norwegian black metal scene and shrugs off the severity of its actions with a “boys will be boys” approach that has no reverence for the scene, but doesn’t provide any insight into it, either.
  4. The Strangers: Prey at Night
    Just as the movie seems to have exhausted its supply of generic guilty pleasures, it ascends to some more operatic and mordant plane of slasher-dom in a wacko sequence that involves the aforementioned “Total Eclipse Of The Heart,” a swimming pool, and a perfectly timed smash zoom.
  5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
    It's a measure of the film's infectious goofiness that Cage seems altogether more interested in clearing the name of a long-dead ancestor than in finding a city of gold.
  6. Blue Like Jazz
    For all its low-key charms, the coming-of-age story risks being too Christian for secular audiences and too secular and colorful for Christian audiences: Like its spiritual seeker of a protagonist, it's caught between worlds.
  7. Mary Magdalene
    Once Mary makes the difficult decision to leave her family (rejecting the arranged marriage they’d planned for her) and follow Jesus (or “the rabbi,” as everyone mostly calls him, in a nicely accurate touch), she’s unfailingly loyal, understanding, compassionate, and wise. In a word, she’s boring. At least Jesus gets to be plagued by fear and doubt.
  8. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
    You can’t just have two hours of kaiju slapping each other around like a gargantuan WWE highlights reel.
  9. xXx
    Diesel clearly has fun playing a character so bullish that his skin seems to be made of leather, and he's self-conscious enough to pull it off even after the film surrenders to formula.
  10. Shark Tale
    Every single joke, character detail, music montage, and pop-culture reference looks extensively market-tested, whether via screenings, focus groups, or other box-office successes.
  11. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    No movie that opens with the line "Time was never a friend to Bobby Long" could possibly be any good, and sure enough, A Love Song For Bobby Long lives down to its squibbed kickoff.
  12. Morgan
    The director, Luke Scott (son of Ridley), doesn’t exactly elevate this material, but he does see it through. The voice of Brian Cox goads the action into Bourne territory to counter its "Ex Machina" overtones, but the movie works best when it riffs away from its antecedents into even more pitiless territory.
  13. Hannah Montana: The Movie
    The only folks Montana is interested in pleasing are prepubescent girls and Disney stockholders.
  14. The Strangers
    It isn't particularly original--for one, it owes an unacknowledged debt to the French film "Them"--but as an exercise in controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier.
  15. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    In Columbus’ hands, it once again all breaks down into a series of rushed, breathless special-effects setpieces, in a thrill ride that isn’t headed anywhere new.
  16. The Catechism Cataclysm
    If The Catechism Cataclysm does have something to say, it's that it's possible to enjoy a trip even when it isn't really going anywhere.
  17. Haunted Mansion
    The movie at times feels like an eternal cycle of the nine-minute ride, which loses its luster after 123 of those minutes. It offers you this chilling challenge—find a way out! Better yet, refrain from being the mortal foolish enough to enter in the first place.
  18. Lee Cronin's The Mummy
    If Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is like any of the director’s previous work, it’s most like Evil Dead Rises, since it’s also programmatically upsetting yet narratively threadbare to the point of distraction. And while this movie’s relentless, reflex-testing shock scares suggest that the filmmaker has a sense of humor, the audience is never really encouraged to laugh along with them.
  19. Being Charlie
    Being Charlie is Rob Reiner’s best film in at least two decades — admittedly a low bar to clear, given the competition (which includes such forgotten piffle as Alex & Emma and Rumor Has It…), but even a modest Meathead comeback is more than welcome.
  20. Pink Flamingos
    Almost anyone could dig up and film someone with the ability to lip-synch using his a**hole, but it takes genius to set the scene to Surfin' Bird.
  21. Fun with Dick and Jane
    So how can a project that began with such promise end up such a slick, pandering misfire? The answer, unsurprisingly, has a lot to do with Jim Carrey.
  22. Bella
    The emotions at play in Bella are no doubt heartfelt--and must have resonated with a few hundred people, anyway--but they're so cut-and-dried that the mawkish script virtually writes itself.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Dumbstruck
    The film's tendency to pull away once its character start their performances adds to the sense that director Mark Goffman knows his money shots will showcase the vents' oddities rather than their acts.
  24. 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.
  25. Accepted
    The ideal viewer of Accepted probably won't have seen any college comedies before. Or any slobs-vs.-snobs movies like "Caddyshack." For those who have, it's kind of a snore.
  26. 3 Generations
    There’s a kind of equality at work here: No one is well-served.
  27. Before the Rains
    The one appealing aspect of Before The Rains is that there are no villains, just three characters who are driven first by shared desires, then by a natural impulse for self-preservation that brings them into conflict.
  28. Borstal Boy
    Shows an unusual degree of generosity toward all its characters, and its tenderness yields some affecting moments, even if they don't ring entirely true.
  29. The Guru
    It's refreshing to see an American movie with an Indian protagonist not played by a white actor in makeup, but it would be a lot more refreshing if that actor (Jimi Mistry) were given a character to play, not just a comic conceit and near-toxic levels of enthusiasm.
  30. La mission
    Bratt’s character is stuck in old ways of thinking, and the movie, for all its well-meaning social intent, is right there with him.
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