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 Ardennes
    First-time director Robin Pront serves up plenty of brooding atmosphere, but the screenplay, adapted from a stage play by Pront and Jeroen Perceval (who also plays the sensible Harvey Keitel role), never succeeds in eluding genre cliché.
  2. Herbie Fully Loaded
    In reviving the beloved Disney property, Robinson attempts to resuscitate the fast-motion shots and sub-Three Stooges physical comedy of classic Herbie, but the new model seems distantly related to the innocent, peppy little car of old.
  3. The Nun II
    At least the jump scares are effective, especially in IMAX theaters where the headrests rumble every time Valak makes a sudden move. That, and a couple of decent makeup tricks are pretty much all The Nun II has. The character deserves better, and so do you really.
  4. The Great Gilly Hopkins
    The whole movie falls between stylization, which it mostly lacks, and realism, which it can’t quite claim with its non-teenage teenager spouting non-swearing swears.
  5. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    It may well be plenty for a fun enough ride at the theaters, but ultimately this is an exhausting trip into this increasingly unwieldy franchise.
  6. Maniac
    If it’s possible to be both impressed and appalled by a movie’s pull-no-punches savagery, Maniac earns that dubious distinction.
  7. The Dry Land
    A painfully earnest drama about post-traumatic stress disorder that sticks so closely to the soldiers-coming-home template, writer-director Ryan Piers Williams seems to be diligently working through a checklist of returning-warrior-movie clichés.
  8. The General's Daughter
    The General's Daughter isn't a poorly made or acted film, but it's so shallow, hypocritical, and sleazy that it's difficult not to find it repulsive.
  9. Open Windows
    Open Windows attempts to disguise a revenge movie by cloaking it in the flash of a voyeuristic techno-thriller, but the combined concepts are so high that the film resolves as Vigalondo reaches his Icarus moment, the corpse so mangled and unpleasant the project’s ambition can only be identified via dental records.
  10. Heaven Is for Real
    Unfortunately, Heaven Is For Real isn’t really a movie about religion so much as an attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audience of conservative evangelicals.
  11. The Giver
    The ironic side effect is that this major influence on today’s new class of dystopian YA smashes now looks like just another greedy knockoff on-screen—a monochromatic "Divergent," or something similar.
  12. Ong Bak 2
    What sold the original Ong Bak was the action, not the story, and on an action level, Ong Bak 2 lives up to its title.
  13. The Alto Knights
    This one’s The Irishman for anyone in dire need of new glasses.
  14. Empire Records
    The film exists for its shots of telegenic youngsters busting loose to a bankable soundtrack, and it's the cheesy dialogue, overstuffed plot, and predictable character arcs that come across as superfluous.
  15. Blair Witch
    Blair Witch will make popcorn fly. But it won’t make anyone believe.
  16. The Skeleton Key
    Wholly devoid of suspense or chills, The Skeleton Key simply bides its time until its big final plot twist, but the filmmakers don't seem to realize that a second-rate twist can't redeem a third-rate fright flick.
  17. Hotel Transylvania
    Hotel Transylvania is occasionally the kind of fast-moving, gag-a-second film that relies on quantity of humor rather than quality.
  18. Rock of Ages
    This glossy musical, from "Hairspray" director Adam Shankman, is a shameless crowd-pleaser where cardboard characters use the most overplayed and ubiquitous hits of the 1980s to express the aching banality of their souls.
  19. A Teacher
    By continually deferring dramatic tension, the filmmaker puts more weight on the movie’s closing scenes — which are abrupt but true to life — than they can handle.
  20. Gunpowder Milkshake
    Gunpowder Milkshake comes alive in its darkly comic action sequences, which prioritize creativity as much as brutality, with an uncommon focus on props, locations, and wide compositions.
  21. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    Carter and his underachieving cohorts have seldom given cultists less to believe.
  22. Like Mike
    Weirdly earnest and earnestly weird.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    U.S. Marshals
    It isn't so much a bad action movie as a symptom of the greater problem with most action movies: Audiences tire of sitting through the same fitful, unfulfilling formula, no matter how much terse language and gunfire is tossed in.
  24. Big Trouble
    It's a tribute to the film's goofy, inconsequential charm that it's still possible to laugh as someone sneaks a bomb past airport security.
  25. The Alamo
    Turns into an edited-for-TV version of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch"--flat, bloodless, and utterly bereft of period grit.
  26. Psycho
    Hitchcock's Psycho had a lot more than watchability going for it. Van Sant's film impresses only on the level of a cinematic parlor trick, and while that makes it an interesting curiosity, the world doesn't need it.
  27. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    The Odd Life Of Timothy Green attempts to stage a modern fairy tale in Middle America. But in spite of an abundance of earnestness, the pixie dust needed to create magic remains out of the film's reach.
  28. Semi-Pro
    Deserves credit for attempting something more emotional and dramatic than the typical Ferrell gagfest, but Harrelson and Benjamin's earnest subplots cost the film comic momentum and big laughs without adding much in return.
  29. The Witches
    Where is the Zemeckis who projected a cartoon-noir Christopher Lloyd into every child’s nightmares? The same director has thrown a softening, coddling filter over Dahl, preserving the shape of his source material while sanding down its edges.
  30. Lakeview Terrace
    Ultimately, Lakeview Terrace isn't about race so much as it's about being a man, which has been LaBute's fallback theme from the start.
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