The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 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: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. Court
    For the most part, Tamhane improbably succeeds in creating a damning courtroom drama that derives much of its power from observing the cogs in the machinery when the machine is switched off.
  2. Locke
    Locke, as fascinating as it is in theory, never evolves into anything more than a glorified acting exercise.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    20,000 Days on Earth
    One thing that ties all his projects together is a grainy, cinematic quality, which is partly the reason why 20,000 Days On Earth works so beautifully.
  4. The Woman Who Left
    The film boasts one of Diaz’s most dramatically conventional, involving, and satisfying narratives.
  5. Neptune Frost
    There’s little about it that is realistic, but it has points to make about the real world.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Apostle
    The numerous, extended revival scenes are amazing, with Duvall a dynamo of divine energy and devout dedication.
  7. Election
    Witherspoon's broad, obsessive comic performance is bound to get the most attention, but Broderick does the best work of his career, finding an affecting spot between the all-purpose defiance of Ferris Bueller and the put-upon foil of his recent work.
  8. Creed
    Creed works far better than it should, and does so twice: as the unexpected payoff to a nearly 40-year-old series, and as the confirmation of a major talent in its director.
  9. Memories of Murder
    It takes enormous skill to pull off such a high-wire act without diminishing the gravity of the situation, but Bong and his first-rate cast are up to the task.
  10. Pride & Prejudice
    Most importantly, the director, script, and cast (rounded out by Judi Dench and well-placed imports Donald Sutherland and Jena Malone) all recognize that Austen is about much more than pretty costumes and knowing looks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Monsieur Lazhar
    More than a class full of convincing child actors and a genuinely affecting performance by Fellag, Falardeau offers a film as believably wrenching, and finally cathartic, as the grieving process itself.
  12. Transit
    Transit doesn’t just freeze its characters in place. They’re stuck in time, too, on a continuum that connects today’s exiled lost souls to yesterday’s. Because when it comes to people without country fleeing for their lives across the globe, there is no old or new, no then or now, no past or future, just an awful present tense. Transit, meanwhile, looks from this present tense like an early contender for the best movie of 2019. Or wait, is it 1939?
  13. Venus
    O'Toole is frail and probably won't make many more movies. So Venus is pitched partly as a fond farewell to a beloved artist, and his whole beautiful generation.
  14. Dear Comrades!
    Critics are often accused of reviewing a filmmaker’s politics over the film. But the truth is that, outside of welcome stretches of humor (in the beginning) and tension (towards the end), there isn’t much more to Dear Comrades!. The script is filled with flat, rhetorical speeches that are done no favors by Konchalovsky’s static direction.
  15. The Love Witch
    If The Love Witch simply raised the profile of its director, Anna Biller — a true auteur who not only wrote, directed, produced, and edited this film but also designed and hand made its sets and costumes — then it would be a success.
  16. Hundreds of Beavers
    Hundreds Of Beavers is one of the most distinctive movies you’ll see all year, and one made for midnight viewings if ever anything was.
  17. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
    Frequently, Morrison punctuates her points and her recollections with a warm chuckle, expressing the same embrace of life’s fullness that informs even her bleakest stories.
  18. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
    The film gives the audience a front-row seat and a pretty good approximation of what it was like to be there in the thick of it.
  19. Peter Hujar's Day
    The little things, the random asides and minor revelations, are just as powerful as the star-studded namedrops during this extensive conversation.
  20. The Killing of Two Lovers
    Ultimately, a movie like this succeeds or fails largely on the strength of its lead actors, and Machoian cast his well.
  21. Night of the Kings
    Lacôte’s got a lot on his mind, and despite a few missteps, his ambition pays off.
  22. Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
    At times, Goldsworthy's philosophy edges into fuzzy New Age-isms, but with an ever-widening gulf separating humans from their environment, his work demonstrates the enlightening pleasures of reconnecting.
  23. The Second Mother
    There’s a rah-rah element to The Second Mother that undermines its sociological ambition.
  24. Three Times
    A sampler of novella-length films set in three different time periods and starring the same two actors, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times resembles one of those delicate trios served at fine restaurants, each a fresh interpretation of a common ingredient.
  25. Hit Man
    While Hit Man satiates as a slick, sexy comedy-noir that will actually get at-home viewers to engage with media outside of the dreaded algorithm, it’s worth hoping that Linklater’s forthcoming big swings are met with similar zeal.
  26. Ghostlight
    While it connects as authentic and heartfelt, there’s also a sneaky profundity to match. Experiencing that in a theater alongside strangers is a very good thing.
  27. Ajami
    Copti and Shani show characters of different backgrounds interacting peacefully as individuals, then show how those characters subtly change when their affiliation with a group becomes an issue. And always the threat of violence looms.
  28. Viola
    It’s a pleasant, negligible wisp of a movie, notable mostly for what it suggests of its director’s potential.
  29. 127 Hours
    Worse still, all that introspection adds up to a disappointingly shallow accumulation of regrets and life lessons, none of them surprising. After the adrenaline rush, 127 Hours turns to vapor.
  30. Relaxer
    For a movie that’s often embarrassingly funny — with its absurdist hangout dialogue, posturing nobodies, and perfectly timed spews — Relaxer is fundamentally sad.
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