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. The Last Full Measure
    Hagiography doesn’t magically becomes less tedious simply because its subject made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, however, and this stolid, mournful drama does little more than solicit the viewer’s respect and admiration for Pitsenbarger, whose entire life gets reduced to a single act of uncomplicated nobility.
  2. 6 Underground
    Between the movie’s subtext and its new-digital-world distributor, Bay seems to be communicating the frustration of constraint, but why? What has he been barred from doing?
  3. Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
    The second recent documentary focused on Roy Cohn, Bully. Coward. Victim.: The Story Of Roy Cohn is as stuffed and jumbled as its title’s punctuation. Despite this, the film manages to inject some genuine personality into its Wiki reckoning of Cohn’s cursed résumé.
  4. The Turning
    In a movie as utterly lost as The Turning, everything from the performances to the production design to the music cues amount to one big pile of dirty mirrors and doll parts.
  5. Bombshell
    The film is a snappy, glib tour of recent history in the Adam McKay mold, hydroplaning through the stormy real-life events that led to Ailes’ departure from Fox News with windshield wipers on high and blinders strapped to each side of its head.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rookie of the Year
    Rookie isn’t a bad movie. It’s also not good.
  7. The Call of the Wild
    It is neither disaster nor dream, landing firmly somewhere in the disappointing middle.
  8. Slay the Dragon
    Slaying The Dragon is meant as an urgent call to action ahead of this year’s elections, and it is here that it really falters.
  9. John Lewis: Good Trouble
    The result is an uneven paean to a man who deserves a more complicated portrait.
  10. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
    The problem here isn’t the dramatic liberties, though. It’s that they’re much less, well, dramatic than the real events the film leaves curiously off screen: the sensational trial of one Arne Johnson, who made history (and headlines) by insisting in court that he was under demonic influence when he stabbed his landlord to death.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Eight Seven
    Jackson's performance is impressive: He effectively conveys every nervous and belligerent nuance, but his character eventually disappears beneath a morass of gimmicks, clichés, and political cynicism.
  12. Respect
    Franklin’s real life was obviously rife with drama worthy of the big screen, but Wilson and TV-trained director Liesl Tommy take a comprehensive, arrhythmic approach that treats major life events like soapy episodes or grist for the pop-psych mill.
  13. Bloodshot
    The real issue, though, isn’t that Bloodshot would fail an IQ test. It’s that its dumb fun isn’t executed with panache, smart or otherwise.
  14. Irresistible
    When the wisdom being imparted is this conventional, you better find a dramatically or comedically satisfying way to package it. Stewart hasn’t.
  15. The Many Saints of Newark
    Chase, who co-wrote the script with an alum of his writers’ room, Lawrence Konner, flattens the world of The Sopranos into a generic, vaguely Scorsesian crime epic. At times, the film suggests the shapelessness of a biopic, as though it were beholden to some historical record of facts and figures.
  16. Uncle Frank
    Uncle Frank anchors itself to the war within Frank, but it’s the conflict within the film itself that’s most potent. That’s a fight no one wins, least of all the audience.
  17. The Glorias
    The result is a choppy mix of timelines, color schemes, and differing levels of realism that’s too unfocused to really inspire.
  18. Extraction
    Add a script that would have seemed derivative even in the early ’90s, and you begin to get a sense of the kind of undigested pastiche that director Sam Hargrave and writer-producer Joe Russo are going for.
  19. Banana Split
    The problem with Banana Split isn’t the surface phoniness or lazy comedy but the fact that the movie doesn’t offer any insight into its ostensible subjects—among them break-ups, female friendship, and teenage jealousy
  20. Fatale
    What keeps Fatale from really working as a noir pastiche (or, dare to dream, a Coens-esque ghoulish comedy of violently incompetent malfeasance) is its gentle, kid-gloved deference to the idea that Derrick is a good guy, rather than a weak-willed dope or even an affable bumbler in over his head.
  21. Rumble
    There’s liveliness in the conception of Rumble, knocked around and out by the demands of formulas no one has bothered to figure out.
  22. The High Note
    The characters’ overall niceness makes the movie pleasant in the moment—and easy to shrug off as a fantasy.
  23. The Quarry
    This muddled slow-burn tragedy — adapted from the Damon Galgut novel of the same name — is unfocused and overly familiar. It also fumbles its political commentary.
  24. Midnight Madness
    Midnight Madness' comedic tone can accurately be described as a sort of cross between Eight Is Enough and early-period Troma, a blend best epitomized by a scene involving conflicting interpretations of the phrase, "between a large pair of melons." And, in case you're wondering, yes, at one point fat snobs do get thrown in the pool. What is not to love?
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Octagon
    Even if it’s not a good movie, it’s an important one, culturally and within the history of action movies. Along with Eric Van Lustbader’s novel The Ninja and the miniseries Shogun, both of which also came out in 1980, this was the first time the idea of the ninja, the shadowy mystical assassin figure, really permeated Western pop-culture consciousness.
  26. Love Wedding Repeat
    The film’s desire to lampoon its rom-com cake and eat it too leaves it on an uncomfortable middle ground; a third act shift toward emotional earnestness doesn’t land, because the main players possess no depth.
  27. Fatherhood
    There could be something to say here about how comically low society’s expectations for fathers remain. The movie also briefly, incisively captures the new-parent contradiction of desperately needing help while wanting to be left alone, free of unsolicited input. But director and co-writer Paul Weitz (About A Boy) keeps making odd choices for what, in a single father’s life, requires comic or dramatic emphasis.
  28. To the Stars
    As writer Shannon Bradley-Colleary and director Martha Stephens embark on a love story so subtle, it isn’t really a love story at all. In some hands, that would be intriguing. Here, however, it’s just lukewarm.
  29. Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
    While the first Train To Busan was an affecting, character-driven tale of grief and redemption, Peninsula flounders in generic spectacle. Even fans may wonder if there are any bones left to pick on this franchise.
  30. Nona: If They Soak Me, I'll Burn Them
    Donoso does put an effort into maintaining visual interest throughout this micro-budgeted character study, alternating between professionally shot, full-frame tableaux and intimate, grainy camcorder footage, accentuated with light touches of Brakhage-style experimental montage. However, it remains an undeniable—and inconvenient—fact that the most interesting aspects of If They Soak Me are all offscreen.
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