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. Dog Days
    If Dog Days were a little weirder, it would just be a smug anti-comedy takedown of a late-period Garry Marshall picture, like "They Came Together" with its biggest laughs edited out.
  2. The Architect
    The Architect wears its heavy social consciousness like an albatross, and Tauber's plodding, earnest direction does little to wean the material away from its stage roots.
  3. By Hook or by Crook
    The lurching plot goes off the rails about two-thirds of the way through, when Dodge's instability and her mother-quest supersede the mild criminal hijinks, but the film's acting is consistently exciting and unselfconscious.
  4. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    If her adoring public doesn't mind paying for the same movie twice, Legally Blonde 2 stands to leave her star power unquestioned.
  5. Flight of the Phoenix
    With his bleached-blond hair, implacable European accent, and nerdy devotion to cool rationality, Ribisi acts like a cross between a young Reich officer and the Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons," and his unashamed hamminess steals the movie.
  6. Ladder 49
    In a shrill attempt to overcompensate for the film's shortcomings, William Ross' hyperbolic score does the audience's work for it, cheering heroism, guffawing during lighthearted moments, and getting all misty-eyed during the tender and tragic scenes.
  7. Burlesque
    Burlesque is a terrible film that will delight nearly everyone who sees it, whether they're 12-year-old Christina Aguilera fans or bad-movie buffs angling for a guilty pleasure.
  8. A Cure for Wellness
    Equal parts baroque fairy-tale, atmospheric mystery, and hideous body-horror nightmare, the film puts what could have been a cost-effective genre exercise on steroids, giving life to a two-and-half-hour, R-rated Frankenstein monster.
  9. Restless
    Somehow, Van Sant has made a film about life and death in which the stakes never seem higher than whether one insolent kid will stop being such a horrible mope.
  10. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    Even as a star text, it’s shoddy.
  11. Flyboys
    There's something almost perversely old-fashioned about Flyboys.
  12. The Dressmaker
    At its best, The Dressmaker looks like 1950s Vogue does the outback. Director Jocelyn Moorhouse poses Kate Winslet and the rest of her female cast in gorgeous finery against a dingy landscape, their expertly tailored garments contrasting splendidly against the dust. It’s a beautiful, bizarre, and funny juxtaposition. It works. The rest of the movie doesn’t.
  13. Monster Hunter
    There’s a couple badass heroes with humongous swords, a few big scaly monstrosities, and frequently not much else. The minimalism is consistent with Anderson’s career-long devotion to delivering caloric content with an unlikely combo of classical unities and pounding, insta-dated electronic beats. The movie’s called Monster Hunter—what more could it reasonably need?
    • 47 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Young Ones
    Would that there were more beneath the surface of this strange brew, but it’s certainly compelling while it lasts.
  15. The Razor's Edge
    The Razor's Edge never quite reaches its destination but there are all manner of minor pleasures to be gleaned along the way.
  16. Pushing Tin
    A mess, but for the most part it's a fascinating mess. It helps that it boasts great acting all around--not just from Cusack, Thornton, and Jolie, but also from Cate Blanchett
  17. Swing Vote
    This potentially sharp working-class fantasy proves strangely unsatisfying.
  18. Choke
    Cluttered, flavorless Choke, which crams the novel's nervy narration into an irritating voiceover, and leaps around in time and space with all the attention span of an ADD-addled child.
  19. Lisa Frankenstein
    And that’s perhaps the most amazing thing about Lisa Frankenstein: its instant timelessness. Sure, it may be a pastiche, or a love letter to previous eras, or any other euphemism for cinematic recycling, but that doesn’t prevent it from being just as much a singular creation as any of its forebears, sidestepping derivative rehashing in favor of an original take on teen angst that isn’t bound by its homage.
  20. Halloween Ends
    Halloween Ends is almost passable as a nondescript sequel—a little blood pumped into the carcass of an indefatigable slab of intellectual property. But for somebody who has fought and lost and survived for so many years, it’s less vital a finale than Laurie Strode deserves.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Wish
    Wish is a mess, but there are ways it could be called an innovative one.
  22. Salem's Lot
    Salem’s Lot isn’t a disaster (far worse horror films have made plenty of money at the box office), but a bloodless and frail version of the story drained of its vitality.
  23. Where the Truth Lies
    Egoyan's sensibility doesn't quite fit the material. His trademark stone-faced austerity never bends to capture the black comedy in the dissonance between his characters' public and private lives. It almost demands a trashier approach.
  24. The Next Big Thing
    John Waters covered the same territory in his underrated 1998 comedy "Pecker," but without Waters' colorful mix of outrageousness and affection, Posner can't stir up the rancor to score even a few glancing blows at an easy target.
  25. The Last Shot
    Given an irresistible premise, Nathanson doesn't trust his material enough to follow through without excessive mugging, but his sense of the absurd leads to amusing digressions along the way.
  26. I Am David
    While it's not always necessary for filmmakers to relate that closely to their material, Feig's marked distance from the story of a sullen boy who parts the Iron Curtain may account for its generic artlessness.
  27. Luther
    The unimposing Fiennes may not suggest the burly Luther's plain-talking peasant background, but he at least captures the charisma.
  28. Shall We Dance
    Chelsom has transformed a low-key charmer into an overblown shtick-com whose idea of restraint only extends to forgoing wacky sound effects, a laugh track, and amplified rim-shots every time a character delivers a wisecrack.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Halloween (2007)
    This latest unsuccessful stab at Carpenter's masterwork just proves that the original Halloween is as unbeatable as its masked leading man.
  30. Eenie Meanie
    Eenie Meanie largely coasts on clichés, every brief high point deflated by its worldview.
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