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. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
    Is A Big Bold Beautiful Journey a piece of wannabe creativity with a yawning hollowness at its center, or an A-list romance with some welcome aesthetic sensitivity? Like the outcome of a first date, it will ultimately be determined by chemistry.
  2. Steal Me
    Steal Me suffers from a distinct charisma vacuum at the center, which makes it easy to linger on its many shortcomings, especially its stilted dialogue and pseudo-poetic, pseudo-philosophical narration.
  3. Wonderland
    Wonderland is to "Boogie Nights" what "Blow" was to "Goodfellas": an accomplished knockoff with all the tricks and none of the soul.
  4. Good Deeds
    As Wesley Deeds - get it? - Perry is stripped of Madea's fat suit and fright wig, but his performance is so muted, he might as well be swaddled in cloth.
  5. In Dubious Battle
    This one even comes with a freebie: It’s got “dubious” right there in the title. But instead of being sloppily miscalculated (the “Franco touch”), this attempt at a Depression-era labor drama in the vein of John Sayles just bores its way through almost two hours of screen time, never rising above anonymity.
  6. Death Race
    It's the perfect end-of-summer film, and a sign that summer needs to end soon.
  7. Not Easily Broken
    For a film shamelessly trumpeting the importance of staying together through the hard times, Broken makes a disconcertingly convincing case for divorce.
  8. Machine Gun Preacher
    Machine Gun Preacher is stirring when it presents Childers as a hero, but it does its most impressive work when it addresses him as a flawed, struggling, but still determined man.
  9. Hey, Happy!
    Like its characters, Hey, Happy! is more comfortable with music, images, and rhythms than words, but unlike raves, narrative films generally need dialogue, and whenever the characters open their mouths, the movie crawls to a halt. Even at 75 minutes, it seems less like a party than an endurance test.
  10. Instinct
    A mushy-headed, unintentionally funny inspirational drama that plays like a clumsy attempt to crossbreed "The Shawshank Redemption" and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest."
  11. The Forgotten
    Though it soon devolves into a laughable mess, The Forgotten at least spends its first 10 minutes or so raising provocative questions.
  12. I Do... Until I Don't
    The outline of a snappy relationship comedy is here, and Bell is talented enough to make one. Maybe next time she’ll commit to it.
  13. Retribution
    Unlike Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, what you’re going to get from this box of travel sweets is usually something you can expect. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be effectively tasty in the moment.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Back to Black
    No film is “too soon” if it can excavate deeper truths or find a fresh angle on a familiar story. But Back To Black does neither.
  15. Eternal
    There's nothing wrong with formulas when they work, but Eternal is neither scary nor particularly sexy.
  16. Like Sunday, Like Rain
    Whaley aims high for this sort of material, but his film, sweet as it is, gets a little too precocious.
  17. Miss Meadows
    What makes Miss Meadows egregiously awful is that it has no perspective whatsoever on vigilante justice. As an ostensible work of satire, it lacks bite, never truly questioning or complicating its heroine’s actions; the film isn’t even outrageous enough to be appalling (which paradoxically makes it appalling).
  18. Trust the Man
    Trust The Man presents itself as a funny, insightful Manhattan relationship comedy in Woody Allen mode, but morphs into the phoniest of Hollywood rom-coms.
  19. Monte Carlo
    Monte Carlo finally resolves itself in a farcical climax that at least shows a little energy, but it isn't enough to overcome the discomfiting tensions and indifferent formula filmmaking that plagues nearly every scene.
  20. I Can Only Imagine 2
    More inarticulate than outright bad, I Can Only Imagine 2 re-packages a heap of barely legible dramatic and comedic shorthand as an uplifting testament to “the goodness of God.” It’s mostly inoffensive, but also doesn’t really have anything to say.
  21. Dark Phoenix
    There’s just little here that the X-Men series hasn’t shown audiences before.
  22. A Dog's Purpose
    So what is a dog’s purpose? To provide gentle, forgettable entertainment for moviegoers who lament that “they” don’t make “nice” movies anymore, apparently. For the rest of us, it’s more like a 100-minute nap.
  23. The New Mutants
    While The New Mutants aspires to some inventive mash-up of high-school soap, haunted-house movie, and comic-book origin story, each of its elements feels half-baked; if Boone studied Buffy for reference, he clearly paid as little attention to it as his horny, preoccupied young heroes do.
  24. Brooklyn's Finest
    To quote Yogi Berra, it’s déjà vu all over again.
  25. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
    Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins doesn’t reach the giddy, earnest heights of something like Aquaman or a Wachowski project. It methodically sets up sequels—to be recast and released around 2030, judging by the Joes’ cinematic track record so far. But the dubiousness of its present-day achievement, the sheer ludicrousness of making the best G.I. Joe movie in 2021, is part of the dumbfounding fun.
  26. The Circle
    It’s hard to make a film that’s critical of digital technology without sounding like a square. It’s this uphill battle that The Circle fights for a little while, then loses about halfway through.
  27. America: Freedom to Fascism
    Gives the Michael Moore muckraking-underdog treatment to the kind of delirious conspiracy theories generally associated with mentally ill homeless people screaming at passersby to stop stealing their brainwaves.
  28. Death Note
    The result is perversely watchable, which puts it a cut above the average inane wannabe franchise-starter. With no likable characters or internal suspense to keep it in check, Wingard’s direction sputters out into a cloud of slickness and pastiche.
  29. Glass
    For better and worse, it’s unmistakably a Shyamalan movie, with all the clunky plotting and robust, idiosyncratic staging that generally implies.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Peacemaker
    Most action movies are so confident of their automatic audience that they're no better than they have to be. The Peacemaker isn't half that good.
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