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. 22 July
    With 22 July, Greengrass pushes up against the boundaries of respectful representation, traipsing queasily close to outright exploitation with his reenactment of the 2011 Norway terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of 77 people, many of them children.
  2. Larger Than Life
    While it may sound like pairing Murray with a pachyderm couldn't fail, Larger Than Life suffers from a stifling air of blandness.
  3. 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.
  4. Lookin' to Get Out
    Voight and Young play the kind of old friends who know each other’s many faults well enough for their bond to be characterized more by richly merited resentment than affection. After spending two plodding hours with these jerks, audiences will know that feeling all too well.
  5. The Haunting
    You can buy the special effects, but if that's all you have to offer, it won't amount to much.
  6. The Decline of the American Empire
    With nothing at stake dramatically, much less cinematically, Arcand leans heavily on brow-raising repartee to carry the load, but his naked contempt throws a wet blanket over all the frank sexual anecdotes and observations.
  7. Exorcist II: The Heretic
    It would be a lot easier to buy Exorcist II: The Heretic as a mood piece if it was able to sustain a tone beyond clumsy exposition and hysterical camp for longer than a few minutes.
  8. The King's Man
    The concept of a supervillain hellbent on Scottish independence is, admittedly, kind of funny (not to mention in keeping with the overall politics of the Kingsman films). But The King’s Man can’t figure out what to do with the idea, apart from having the largely unseen bad guy yell a lot in a Scottish accent. Like so much of the film, it’s trying to have it both ways—to be stupid and clever at the same time, and coming across mostly as the former.
  9. The Curse of La Llorona
    More fitfully funny than it is frightening, The Curse Of La Llorona might be the first film in the Conjuring universe to remain a standalone.
  10. Hellbound: Hellraiser II
    Offering memorable imagery and little more, it eventually devolves into distasteful gore for its own sake. It's far less compelling than its no less bloody but far more intelligent inspiration.
  11. Hellraiser: Inferno
    The first of several low points in the series. At this point Kirsty’s out of the picture (at least temporarily), the original rules of Cenobite engagement are discarded, and Pinhead’s ultimate fate is sealed. So what’s left? You guessed it—a Gritty! Contemporary! Reboot!
  12. Hellraiser: Revelations
    Revelations completes Hellraiser’s transformation from an original and refreshingly adult concept into teens indiscriminately screwing and dying, hollowing out the soul of the franchise while functioning as a loose remake of the original.
  13. Rambo: Last Blood
    The sequence is Last Blood’s pièce de résistance, and perhaps the only compelling reason the movie has to exist. But it’s also pure, relentless, grimacing punishment at the end of a joyless film, choreographed like a ritual sacrifice. Rambo has always been a monster, but in his old age, he has become something even worse: no fun.
  14. Aladdin
    Ricthie’s Aladdin feels sluggish in comparison to the fast-paced original. Even the songs suffer; the direction of the musical numbers is surprisingly unimaginative and turgid, to the point that even surefire showstoppers like “Prince Ali” and the mighty “A Whole New World” end up succumbing to lackluster staging and uncomfortable performances.
  15. Brightburn
    Throwing in some gnarly gore—and Brightburn indulges a couple of truly gruesome flinches—doesn’t change the plodding inevitability with which Brandon goes super-evil.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Frighteners
    An overlong, overstuffed mess with only sporadic moments of clarity and purpose.
  17. Superintelligence
    The consistent failure of imagination is all that keeps the film’s scenes from feeling like a random selection.
  18. Radioactive
    The problem with films like Radioactive is that they neither fulfill the biography’s basic duty of elucidating the life and times of the subject nor offer a compelling artistic vision or drama as a substitute for the hard facts.
  19. Brian Banks
    This is a movie that seems utterly convinced that it’s saying something profound, but proves difficult to actually parse.
  20. Strange Days
    A film that's prescient and mind-bogglingly ill-conceived in roughly equal measures...Strange Days is the cinematic equivalent of trip-hop, a shadowy realm of atmosphere, mood and suggestion with a decidedly drugged-up, post-apocalyptic feel. But the many things Strange Days gets right are negated by the things it gets wrong.
  21. After
    The real problem with After is that it’s a lifeless slog of thinly written clichés, one that’s missing the charismatic spark of the actual One Direction boys.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Fire Down Below
    Like most Seagal movies, the violence is poorly choreographed, the clothes are bad, and you weren't going to see it anyway, were you?
  23. Wounds
    Hammer’s character, Will, is an empty vessel, no more than an updated model of the jerkwad boyfriend in every ’80s slasher.
  24. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse
    The movie’s attempts at ruthless pulp manipulation don’t land; cruelly offing a character whose entire personality is “pregnant” is a cheap bid for John Wick stakes.
  25. Shock Treatment
    The film looks great, with vivid colors and sharp, snappy staging, but its 92 minutes drag by interminably. Tim Curry in fishnets might have helped, but a coherent storyline would have been far better.
  26. Coming 2 America
    Coming 2 America—with its endless callbacks and Easter eggs—seems all too ready to rely on nostalgia. It’s clearly meant to function as a celebration of the original film’s enduring legacy. Fans should just watch that movie again instead.
  27. Space Jam: A New Legacy
    Maybe the rabbit and his studio both took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Space Jam: A New Legacy takes almost nothing but wrong turns, all leading to a glittering CGI trash heap of cameos, pat life lessons, and stale internet catchphrases. Its first misstep: keeping Bugs, Daffy, and the rest of the gang on the bench for about as long as it would take the audience to watch three and a half Merrie Melodies.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Airport 1975
    Where to begin with this accidental comic classic, which gives its direct descendant—the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker parody Airplane!, effectively the nail-in-the-coffin of the ’70s disaster movie cycle—some very real competition in the guffaw department?
  29. El Chicano
    The story never even grazes the sublime; it’s dull and banal, coasting on familiarity from beginning to end. Here, the clichés don’t celebrate a reunion. They’re at war.
  30. Matthias & Maxime
    It’s curiously flat and dreary-looking ... There was a time when I used to wish that Dolan would settle down a little—the manic energy of his work could be exhausting. But if this is the alternative, I take it all back.
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