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. Chaos Theory
    The big reason Chaos Theory doesn't work is that the gears are visibly grinding away, cranking out neat little ironies and life lessons without any liberating surprises.
  2. Mister Lonely
    Has its moments of wonder and beauty, but the film is obscure by design, and meant to appeal to those who favor the alternative canon of directing greats: the one that includes the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Crispin Glover, John Cassavetes, Claire Denis, Abel Ferrara, and Vincent Gallo.
  3. Noise
    Bean always writes interesting scripts that toy with big ideas, but the films that result aren't always good. (Or even bearable.) Here he sets out to make an aural "Fight Club," but instead he's made a movie about a guy who really needs to buy earplugs.
  4. Get Smart
    There are many stretches when it's easy to forget that Get Smart is a spoof; it's more like a third-rate James Bond with pratfalls.
  5. Postal
    A provocation first, an insult second, a publicity stunt third, and a film a distant fourth.
  6. Meet Dave
    Proven comic talents like Judah Friedlander and Ed Helms make up much of Murphy's crew, but apart from speaking in contraction-free spaceman-ese, the film doesn't give them anything funny to do.
  7. Mother of Tears
    Compared to a recent Argento dud like "The Stendhal Syndrome," Mother Of Tears at least has some of the go-for-broke gothic spirit of his earlier work. He's just lost the ability to shape it into something artful.
  8. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
    By the time it reaches an action-packed finale that's choreographed like an ancient Keystone Kops short, Kit Kittredge has cornered the market on bland.
  9. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    Carter and his underachieving cohorts have seldom given cultists less to believe.
  10. Space Chimps
    Story remains Vanguard's weak point.
  11. August
    Chick's underwhelming exploration of post-millennial angst is as empty and vacant as its protagonist's inexpressive peepers.
  12. Swing Vote
    This potentially sharp working-class fantasy proves strangely unsatisfying.
  13. Righteous Kill
    Trudging through a thriller that would have felt warmed over in 1988, the pair investigate a serial killer.
  14. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
    Most of the film isn't as willing to reach out to viewers, and most won't be willing to do all the work in order to connect with it.
  15. 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.
  16. Forever Strong
    Forever Strong is generic faith-and-redemption fare, devoid of nuance.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Miracle at St. Anna
    Miracle plays like "School Daze" transplanted to the European front, with the token militant, the token uplift-the-race type, and the token buffoon all marching inexorably toward Checkpoint Irony.
  18. Choke
    Cluttered, flavorless Choke, which crams the novel's nervy narration into an irritating voiceover, and leaps around in time and space with all the attention span of an ADD-addled child.
  19. Nights in Rodanthe
    This isn't a movie: it's a feature-length Ralph Lauren commercial.
  20. Max Payne
    In a post-Matrix, post-John Woo world, a handful of slow-motion shootouts shouldn't be all that's on offer.
  21. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    This is not a movie for anyone who's aged past the "Oh! Cute!" phase of moviegoing. It's paced for little minds with short attention spans.
  22. Four Christmases
    The result is two bad movies in one: a gimmicky romantic comedy, and one of those seasonal headaches that submits loud family dysfunction as a vehicle for Christmas cheer.
  23. Cadillac Records
    Martin attempts to present the whole oversized Chess story, but instead winds up reducing the lives and art that give it shape.
  24. Lake City
    All the performers are fine--even the miscast Romijn--but they're still too much like actors playing dress-up.
  25. Dark Streets
    The main pitfall of modern noirs is that filmmakers get so caught up in the chiaroscuro lighting schemes and florid twists of dialogue and voiceover that they forget noir was about expressing more than just attitude and style.
  26. Chandni Chowk to China
    A more accurate way to describe it would be "conceptual nightmare"--crass, schizophrenic, culturally insensitive, horribly paced, and shameless in its pandering to the lowest common denominator.
  27. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
    James has a sweet, appealing presence, but the dreary, joke-light script and generic direction do him no favors.
  28. Echelon Conspiracy
    Unlike, say, "Eagle Eye," Echelon Conspiracy doesn't put enough conviction behind its stupidity. It's mostly just bland.
  29. Skills Like This
    Skills Like This is never great. But for its first half-hour, it's more fitfully amusing than a movie about a bank-robbing playwright ought to be.
  30. Dragonball: Evolution
    The film is crammed with treats for old-school "Dragonball" fans, from the inclusion of all these characters (who don't actually do much) to the moment when spiky-haired Goku dons his orange gi. For everyone else, this amounts to another seen-it-before, probably-willing-to-see-it-again distraction.
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