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. The Hours
    That makes it hard to watch "Billy Elliot" director Stephen Daldry's adaptation without thinking of the one Almodóvar might have made -- which surely would have been warmer, less self-consciously tony, and less relentlessly arid than the one that did get made.
  2. The Pianist
    Through Brody's remarkably controlled, self-effacing performance, Polanski succeeds in making his hero an invisible man, but the sights he conjures are surprisingly artless and ordinary, familiar from a dozen other Holocaust dramas. Among the casualties in The Pianist is a great director's imagination.
  3. Pinocchio
    An unintended gift to midnight-movie programmers and students of the bizarre, Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio could have become a "Howard The Duck" -- or "Battlefield Earth"-like synonym for cinematic miscalculation, were its title not already so familiar.
  4. Catch Me If You Can
    Part of Spielberg's skill as a filmmaker comes in choosing the right collaborators. Janusz Kaminski's gorgeous cinematography, Michael Kahn's graceful editing, Jeff Nathanson's clever script, and John Williams' score all work well in unison, but the film's masterstroke is the casting of Walken as DiCaprio's utterly decent father.
  5. The Wild Thornberrys Movie
    The Wild Thornberrys Movie's heart is clearly in the right place -- but the Thornberry family's grotesquely huge heads, jutting teeth, stick limbs, and mismatched bodies look even more improbable and unpleasant on the big screen than they do on their TV show.
  6. Two Weeks Notice
    Lawrence is fortunate to have appealing pros like Grant and Bullock around to bail him out with romantic chemistry and enough crisply delivered one-liners to survive the barren stretches of script.
  7. Morvern Callar
    Morvern Callar not only attempts to reveal an interior life, usually the province of novels, but also focuses on the interior life of a woman who refuses to open up to anyone.
  8. Spider
    Were he only trying to remark on that world's creepiness, Cronenberg would still succeed brilliantly, if coldly, but his sympathy makes the film.
  9. Narc
    Carnahan alternates gritty neo-realism with bursts of extreme stylization -- most notably in a breathless opening chase filmed with handheld cameras -- but thankfully, his stylistic flourishes are in the service of the film's story, not the other way around.
  10. Gangs of New York
    A grand achievement in history and anthropology, supporting its ambition and scope with a sumptuous re-creation of the period and an immediacy that allows a forgotten past to barrel into the present.
  11. Antwone Fisher
    Directed without a shred of imagination by Denzel Washington -- Antwone Fisher masks a behind-the-scenes story that's far more inspiring than the phony uplift that makes it onto the screen.
  12. 25th Hour
    The film at its simplest serves as a cautionary tale, but it also functions as a meditation on how little it takes to redirect a life by choice or by chance.
  13. Devils on the Doorstep
    Though shorn of 20 minutes for its U.S. debut, the film's wry comic portrait of the Japanese Occupation during WWII hasn't lost any of its incendiary brilliance, both as a political provocation and as a brusquely humane take on the horrors and absurdity of war.
  14. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
    What makes Towers so staggering is the way it brings the full scope of Jackson's adaptation into focus. Without missing a beat in three hours, the film shifts from epic to lyrical and back.
  15. The Guys
    In spite of some affecting moments, the film never quite works. It's too theatrical, perhaps unavoidably.
  16. Evelyn
    From the maudlin musical cues to a senseless romantic subplot that's only barely tacked on, every aspect of Evelyn stabs blindly and insistently at emotional buttons -- Beresford has made the feel-manipulated movie of the year.
  17. Maid in Manhattan
    Wang loses himself in an old-fashioned script that tries to recall the classic screwball ensembles of Golden Age Hollywood, but lacks the cascading wit to pull it off.
  18. Star Trek: Nemesis
    Once it reaches the meat of the story, it seems to lose its confidence.
  19. Drumline
    Essentially "Bring It On" minus the effervescence, star power, energy, and brisk pace -- in other words, everything that made it bearable.
  20. The Hot Chick
    Schneider and director/co-writer/Animal vet Tom Brady continue to subscribe to the notion that any joke worth making is worth beating to death, but there's still something strangely endearing about Schneider's willingness to do anything for a laugh.
  21. About Schmidt
    Payne, the great satirist behind "Citizen Ruth" and "Election," loves to populate his films with throwaway details, which in About Schmidt accumulate into a portrait of Midwestern life that's almost chilling in its exactitude.
  22. Pellet
    When El Bola isn't drawing cheap sentiment from the sight of a bruised and scarred little boy, Mañas raises vexing questions about how and why parents leave lasting impressions on their children, and whether good intentions really matter.
  23. Analyze That
    All the principals -- except, significantly, screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan -- reprised their roles for the sequel, and all seem confused as to why they returned.
  24. Empire
    Empire devolves into a bloody revenge thriller with an ending as primitive as its opening is convoluted.
  25. Blackboards
    Episodic and minimalist to a fault, Blackboards makes its ironic point about education, then makes it again a few times over for good measure, rarely expanding beyond its narrow seriocomic agenda.
  26. Equilibrium
    A terrific cast, stylish direction, and elegantly choreographed mayhem help make it far better than it might have been -- Though ultimately silly, Equilibrium's shopworn but stylish synthesis of ammo and ideas is surprisingly engrossing.
  27. Adaptation.
    Kaufman strikes just the right balance between playfulness and sincerity, leaping freely from one absurd situation to another before pulling back on the reins.
  28. Massoud, the Afghan
    A series of non-answers isn't enough to build a documentary on, especially when they're strung together by insufferably self-congratulatory voiceover narration (de Ponfilly plays up his agony over whether documentary filmmaking helps or hurts its subjects) and corny stylistic effects.
  29. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    Where Noyce could easily have given Branagh a mustache and tilted the film toward old-fashioned melodrama, he leans on tactics that are less obvious and more effective.
  30. Dead or Alive: Final
    In Dead Or Alive: Final, Miike trades his grimly comic, sex-and-blood insignia for a self-consciously wacky conflation of Hong Kong action cinema and Japanese anime, with a little cheap science fiction tossed in for good measure.
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