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. Feast
    Gulager shows that he truly is PGL's most gifted alumnus.
  2. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    Offers plenty of eye candy, if little else. Ultimately, the film is clearly superior to its predecessor, but that's mostly because the first Tomb Raider left so much room for improvement.
  3. The Final Cut
    Naim directs The Final Cut as if it were the pilot to a TV series: He teases the audience with all sorts of story threads, focuses on a minor self-contained mystery, and leaves the rest for future episodes that will never come.
  4. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Benefits from extremely modest expectations. For it to be anything but painfully arbitrary would count as an accomplishment, so the fact that it's superficially entertaining qualifies as a minor triumph.
  5. Dealin' with Idiots
    Jeff Garlin’s second directorial feature, Dealin’ With Idiots, is a largely improvised ensemble piece about a comedian who decides that his son’s Little League team would make an interesting subject for a movie. It doesn’t.
  6. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
    Uncaged improves on the first film only with its ending: This one boasts a modestly effective twist rather than a truly moronic one. Encouraging, but not nearly enough to justify a third trip down this 47-meter well.
  7. The Art of Racing in the Rain
    The Art Of Racing In The Rain will play well for those who consider their pets to be full-fledged family members, but otherwise this dog’s journey lacks a purpose or any sense of artistry.
  8. Anaconda
    Anaconda may be getting the benefit of the doubt here because of how few studio comedies make it to theaters. In another era, it might easily have gotten lost in a wave of post-modern updates that included The Brady Bunch and Starsky & Hutch. Its plot offers few surprises, but its simple foundations and character motivations give Rudd and Black so much room to play that it’s an amiable time.
  9. Scoob!
    You can’t even get mad at the script for its half-hearted gestures towards self-aware commentary; writers must keep themselves entertained, after all, when churning out one of the many drafts a film like Scoob! goes through before production begins.
  10. Cruising
    In its shameless excavation and exploitation of the killer-queen archetype–the homosexual so riddled with self-loathing and guilt that they feel an insatiable urge to kill and punish others–the film is bad politics and dodgy, flawed filmmaking, but it's weirdly resonant and thoroughly haunting all the same.
  11. Donkey Punch
    The film goes off the rails in the final third, sacrificing subtle character work at the altar of blood-and-guts survival horror. As mood-killers go, it's like a jab to the back of the neck.
  12. D.E.B.S.
    An incorrigible tease. It baits its audience with the promise of fluffy, light-footed cotton-candy fare, but delivers a clumsy, talky, indifferently filmed lesbian romance.
  13. Office Christmas Party
    Assembling a whole comedy festival’s worth of very funny people isn’t a foolproof recipe for hilarity, but it should assure at least a decent number of laughs. Whether Office Christmas Party clears that very low bar depends on how generous you want to be — in this season of generosity — with the definition of “decent number” and “laughs.”
  14. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
    Hooper's abrasive satire on yuppiedom and excess, centering on a brilliantly deranged Dennis Hopper as a Texas ranger looking to avenge the death of his invalid brother, stands out for its unbridled gore and comic mayhem. It just isn't terribly fun to watch.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    This latest film aims for "The Joy Luck Club's" crossover appeal but ends up stilted and emotionally remote.
  16. Unfrosted
    This Pop-Tart material has legs. Unfrosted is by no means a failure. But it’s also about as satisfying as a soggy bowl of cereal. Loaded with his famous friends, Unfrosted is fitfully funny, depending on who’s on screen.
  17. The Lovely Bones
    For all its successes, Bones remains more crafted than sincere, more meant to look achingly pretty on the screen than to resonate in the heart.
  18. G
    For a film about shimmering surfaces and the glittering allure of the superficial, G boasts a depressingly flat, undistinguished visual style, and whenever Bill Conti's score reaches for rarified, elegant romance, it instead suggests the dewy earnestness of a feminine hygiene commercial.
  19. The Big Bounce
    When the general pleasantness of the atmosphere and the cleverness of the screenplay don't carry the movie, Wilson does -- at least until a hurried, confounding finale that reveals its casualness as sloppiness.
  20. The Time Machine
    Machine makes its look-to-the-future-not-the-past message as clear as a Grammy acceptance speech, but as an exploration of regret and the elusive quality of time, it falls well short of "Memento," another film starring a sad-eyed Pearce.
  21. Stuber
    The demands of action and comedy, however, are apparently much too great a weight for this action-comedy to Lyft.
  22. The Divergent Series: Insurgent
    Steeliness comes naturally to, say, Jennifer Lawrence, but when Woodley unleashes the occasional voice-cracking battle cry, it generates tension between her desire for revolution and her utter believability as a teenager with more earnest ideals than ruthless training.
  23. Loving Pablo
    Cruz gets little to do in general apart from wear a succession of gaudy ’80s outfits, while Bardem, who gained weight for the role (reportedly aided by prostheses), acts primarily with his massive, frequently exposed gut. Both actors speak throughout in heavily accented English rather than Spanish, a choice that exemplifies Loving Pablo’s indifference to authenticity.
  24. Sanctum
    While Sanctum is frustratingly familiar, it's easy to get caught up in the action.
  25. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    Unlike a recent franchise reimagination like 28 Years Later or even the pop culture savvy remix of 2022’s Scream (side note: both Wes Craven and Gillespie’s original films were written by Kevin Williamson), I Know What You Did Last Summer doesn’t successfully subvert its storyline nor glean anything remarkable by setting it in our current era.
  26. The Adderall Diaries
    On a purely technical level, the film is fine, if overly reliant on indie-movie clichés. It features some good performances from proven actors, and touches on some interesting philosophical questions.
  27. Home of the Brave
    Whatever its model, the film is assembled from much poorer material, leftover parts of Lifetime movies and well-meaning indie films seen only on opening nights at some forgotten festival in Tampa.
  28. Downrange
    Downrange is trash, but in an almost elemental vein.
  29. 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.
  30. Locked Down
    Maybe this all works, accidentally or not, as a time capsule of very contemporary irritation. Will future audiences look back on Locked Down and feel some of our pain, watching two good actors sputter through a simulacrum of cabin-fever conflict?
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