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. Smallfoot
    It’s still mostly just a time-passer for younger kids — and, absent a strong point of view, as much of a hedged bet as its narration-and-song opening.
  2. Barbarella
    It’s at once smirky and tedious, and a missed opportunity to boot.
  3. Please Stand By
    It’s hard to be persuasive, though, when your protagonist comes across as a collection of quirky tics rather than a credible human being.
  4. Mortal Engines
    This is a headache-inducing spectacle that raises more questions than it answers, and does little to inspire viewers to go find the answers themselves. But hey, at least it’s too loud to fall asleep to.
  5. Overboard
    The way the script pulls its punches is less offensive than simply toothless, giving Overboard the feel of a film written by a focus group, or maybe a script-writing robot programmed with the latest demographic trends.
  6. Come Sunday
    Despite committed performances from most of the cast (especially Ejiofor, who imbues Pearson with a gentle yet stubborn spirit), Come Sunday can’t shake its middling script and perfunctory direction.
  7. Hotel Mumbai
    If the thought of seeing a lot of people get murdered with automatic weapons at close range makes you queasy right now, Hotel Mumbai is not a film you want to go anywhere near. Few slasher movies have such a high, graphic body count.
  8. Basmati Blues
    The movie starts out heedless in its desire to charm, but it winds up feeling constrained by self-consciousness, and more’s the pity.
  9. Breaking In
    The film’s sense of time lacks precision and urgency, and just having characters periodically point out that the clock is ticking doesn’t cut it.
  10. Show Dogs
    That the comedy is second-rate is a given. But at least it’s brisk, inoffensive, and devoid of human mugging, with Arnett breezing through like a pro.
  11. Looking Glass
    Because Hunter’s movie works best in its early, less crazed stretch, there aren’t any really memorable sequences here coming from the director or his distinctive star.
  12. The Catcher Was a Spy
    Flavorless and unexciting, thanks to an execution as formulaic as a well-worn copy of "The Joy Of Cooking."
  13. I Think We're Alone Now
    Unfortunately, I Think We’re Alone Now stops being interesting right when Grace (Elle Fanning) comes to town, mostly because she brings screenwriter Mike Makowsky’s trite ideas about loneliness and community along with her.
  14. Burden
    Overly simplistic piece of Southern poverty porn, which asks questions it’s not really prepared to answer and proceeds from a set of dubious assumptions that undermine whatever nuance it does possess.
  15. Puzzle
    It’s hard to fault Puzzle for going in a more rigorous, serious-minded direction... until it trudges in that direction with such repetition. Turtletaub and his screenwriters lay the borderline-anachronistic details of their heroine’s oppressive life on so thick that the movie starts to sag.
  16. Uncle Drew
    Look, for a movie based on a soda campaign, Uncle Drew isn’t that bad. It’s got some solid comic alternates.
  17. Paul, Apostle of Christ
    As movies expressly courting the faith-based audience go, Paul, Apostle Of Christ acquits itself reasonably well from moment to moment, avoiding the howlers that plague such Pure Flix titles as "Samson" and "God’s Not Dead."
  18. The Heiresses
    Brun, who had never acted onscreen before (like almost the entire cast), won Berlin’s Best Actress prize, and her guarded yet tremulous performance is the film’s primary virtue. But she can’t singlehandedly bring depth to the superficial scenario that Martinessi has engineered for this intriguing character.
  19. Profile
    No matter where he goes, even when he’s working in a subgenre he helped build, Bekmambetov loses himself in the pixels.
  20. Book Club
    The script is so lazy and outdated in its humor, it condescends to the same audience it purports to empower.
  21. Red Notice
    This is the stuff that reminds us that Hollywood movies are made with charts and committees; we don’t enjoy it, but we put up with it in exchange for a good time. Red Notice only has the time part down. The good, like the bejeweled egg, is frequently missing.
  22. Kin
    It’s a simple idea, to take this working-class family and introduce what amounts to a high-tech ray gun, but the hook is so effective that it buys Kin a fair amount of time before the story turns from scrappy to stupid.
  23. Operation Finale
    Operation Finale means to embody the banality of evil, but it’s mostly mired in plain old banality.
  24. Johnny English Strikes Again
    Johnny English Strikes Again might actually come closer to success than its predecessors, if only by default. At very least, it proceeds unencumbered by excess story machinations.
  25. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
    Though Sandel relies less on exasperating, rubbery digital effects than Rob Letterman, the DreamWorks Animation vet who helmed the original, his direction of the monsters and mayhem is never more than workmanlike, racing joylessly through a shaky plot that barely holds attention.
  26. Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
    Breakin' 2 turned out to be pure, laugh-a-minute cheeseball entertainment. Granted, it's utterly terrible, with stiff, amateurish acting, enough vivid Day-Glo to blind an army of sunglasses-wearing Corey Harts, and the thinnest and hoariest of thin, hoary old plots. But the camp value is through the roof.
  27. The Grudge
    Overall, though, the director and co-writer’s merciless style is muffled by The Grudge’s over-reliance on clichéd jump scares; more damningly, only some of these are effective, even in terms of cheap thrills. This becomes especially true in the film’s second half, when the ghosts become at once more human and less creepy.
  28. The Towering Inferno
    As the bland, star-laden drama gets swallowed by fiery special-effects setpieces, it feels like one type of big-budget mediocrity giving way to the next.
  29. Clash of the Titans
    Titans forces all aspects of the movie except the spectacle into the background, and historical accuracy isn't much of a concern. It does feature a better-than-average cast, however, aside from uncharismatic star Harry Hamlin.
  30. A Kid Like Jake
    If Howard and Pearle’s idea was to show how an extended argument devolves into the worst values of a previous generation — lashing out with implicit homophobia, resentment, and misogyny in the film’s shouty, snotty, excessively busy final third — then it comes too late here, before being patly resolved. A sharper drama would have made it the focus.
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