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. South of the Border
    Stone's film, more an act of boosterism than inquiry, is a tremendous missed opportunity.
  2. The Running Man
    Once things get going, The Running Man just turns into a silly chase movie populated by baddies who look like B-level pro-wrestling villains.
  3. Hold Your Breath
    For all of the horror subgenres crammed into Hold Your Breath, it never conjures sufficient scares.
  4. Fanboys
    Fanboys has a lot of talent in its margins, including Jay Baruchel, Kristen Bell, Seth Rogen, and other usual suspects.
  5. The Rhythm Section
    An always welcome presence, Law is the only cast member in The Rhythm Section to give the impression that he had any fun making the movie, playing B as a survivalist sourpuss with impossible reflexes. Nonetheless, he is consistently dressed and lit as though he were posing for a watch ad.
  6. The Burning Plain
    The characters in The Burning Plain are so narrowly defined by tragedy that they reveal no other facets of humanity.
  7. England Is Mine
    It’s a biopic that ends before its subject’s life-changing work even really begins, so those without the knowledge to fill in the gaps will almost certainly leave wondering why they should care.
  8. Goodnight Mommy
    The original Austrian film had shock value and genuine, gruesome horror. This new Americanized version sands the edges off of the narrative every chance it gets.
  9. Hits
    The satire of self-satisfied, opportunistic Brooklynites is cutting, but it lacks the humanity afforded the upstate characters, and quickly repeats itself, seemingly by design.
  10. She-Devil
    I found a great deal to like about She-Devil, especially Streep's performance, but it's easy to figure out why it didn't find an audience. It deals with just about everything American film-goers traditionally don't want to think about: old people, fat people, ugly people, nursing homes, class, money, and the ever-present specter of death. Also, it involves a dog dying.
  11. Snatched
    It stands apart from the majority of R-rated, coprolalic studio comedies simply by being fast-paced and, on occasion, pretty funny.
  12. The Hottest State
    Judging by the far more interesting adults in the film--Braga, a terrific Laura Linney as Webber's mother, and Hawke as his father--the solution for Webber and Moreno is to grow up and not be so full of themselves. In their current state, they make for unpleasant company, and so does the film.
  13. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
    There's "so bad it's good," but there's also "just plain bad," and Skeleton's pre-processed shittiness spoils the fun.
  14. Meet the Browns
    Browns is ultimately a victim of its creator's success: What once felt novel now feels well-worn, following the success of Perry's films and imitators like "First Sunday."
  15. Full Frontal
    The fact that Full Frontal comes together so well removes any doubt that anyone other than a master filmmaker is pulling the strings.
  16. Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius
    Duller than a rain delay on the Golf Channel.
  17. EuroTrip
    The brain trust responsible in part for last year's "The Cat In The Hat," Eurotrip seems like the result of a particularly half-hearted brainstorming session.
  18. Lila & Eve
    Pitched somewhere between indie domestic drama and direct-to-video exploitation, Lila & Eve is the kind of film in which a sturdy, unsensational piece of acting can take the spotlight.
  19. Don't Knock Twice
    The new supernatural horror film Don’t Knock Twice benefits greatly from the direction of Caradog James. He takes a story that almost immediately plunges viewers into an unexplained and messy mythology and, for the better part of an hour, manages to distract from its weaker aspects by implying something far more interesting. Unfortunately, then the third act happens, and the spell is broken.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Paint
    While it’s possible to quibble about the weirdly sci-fi mix of period signifiers (white boy afros exist beside cellphones), and to look askance at Paint’s rather too blithe approach to sex-in-the-workplace power dynamics, few comedies in recent memory come by their laughs more honestly than Paint does because, like all the best comedies, the laughter is based on a genuine unease.
  21. Kicking & Screaming
    A sweet, inoffensive, achingly laughless comedy.
  22. Hesher
    It's all quirk, posturing, attitude, and needless exertion signifying nothing beyond its own sad need to impress.
  23. Madea's Family Reunion
    Madea's Family Reunion represents an advance on Diary, if only because it dials down Madea's shtick (she no longer waves a gun around) and irons out some of those awkward tonal transitions. The chance that Perry's followers will leave disappointed is approximately 0 percent.
  24. Descent
    Though a clearly gifted new filmmaker, Lugacy doesn't get a handle on the combustible material, and she gets scalded in the process.
  25. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
    Afterlife wants desperately to summon the spirit of watching the first movie back in 1984. It winds up ghoulish in the wrong way.
  26. Outside the Wire
    Mackie’s performance, for better and worse, is anything but robotic. He plays more or less the same charismatic wiseacre he usually does, interpreting Leo as a machine that’s every bit as uniquely expressive as is any human being. That injects some welcome levity into what’s generally a flat, dour adventure, directed by Sweden’s Mikael Håfström with little of the old-school verve that he brought to Escape Plan.
  27. A Million Little Pieces
    The movie version plays exactly like every other rehab-facility melodrama ever made. Even the stuff that Frey invented seems overly familiar, borrowed from sources ranging from "28 Days" to (somewhat improbably — people in recovery aren’t necessarily allowed dental anesthetic, it turns out) "Marathon Man."
  28. Smokin' Aces
    The plot tangles until it seems irrelevant, the jokes can't push through the somber tone, and the most interesting moment apart from the action scenes involves one character using the corpse of one of the more famous cast members for a grisly ventriloquist act.
  29. Mean Machine
    While competently staged and punched up by Lock, Stock's changing camera speeds, it doesn't have the wit or intrigue to sustain its half-length.
  30. Secret in Their Eyes
    Yet nothing short of overhauling the material into something genuinely fresh could make Ray’s Secret feel essential. Tweaks aside, it remains, by in large, the same movie — which is to say, fundamentally redundant.
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