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. Pitch Perfect 3
    It’s half-assed in every way but cast retention; almost all the major female characters return.
  2. Head in the Clouds
    The film feels more at home with sex than war, like a romance novel where the swinging lovers find their passions stirred by bombs exploding in the distance. Their three-way dalliances are so frivolous and silly that once the action turns dark, Duigan and his cast leave audiences unprepared for the emotional fallout.
  3. Wild Card
    A largely forgettable lark, notable more for its slight diversions from action-movie norms than anything else.
  4. From the Land of the Moon
    Cotillard tries hard to fashion a credible human being from this collection of shallow adolescent impulses, but the movie infantilizes Gabrielle at every turn.
  5. Battle for the Planet of the Apes
    The bloodiest of the Apes films, and one of the most despairing.
  6. Sandy Wexler
    Maybe it’s a question of drastically lowered expectations finally working to Sandler’s advantage, but Sandy Wexler is disarming in its charms.
  7. Outlaws and Angels
    The main problem with Outlaws And Angels, though, is that it lacks either a sense of authenticity or a streak of playfulness to give shape to its relentlessly ugly worldview.
  8. Toys
    If Levinson weren't so intent on cramming whimsy and joy down the audience's throat for two punishing hours, he might very well have succeeded in his very noble ambitions. Whimsy is a tricky thing: too much can become oppressive.
  9. Jupiter Ascending
    It is, in other words, just a few musical numbers and a whiff of marijuana smoke short of being the Thomas Pynchon book of big-budget, effects-driven movie sci-fi.
  10. Homefront
    The basic ingredients of a throwback action movie are all there; what’s missing is action and style.
  11. The 355
    In a spy thriller, a woman who drinks her whiskey neat—girlbosses never dilute—and kicks men in the face wearing a stacked heel has become as much of a cliché as the womanizing secret agent. And The 355 does nothing to complicate, deconstruct, or refresh that cliché.
  12. Saw II
    Stripped down to the barest genre essentials, Saw is a spring-loaded killing machine, packed with sadistic little deathtraps and ludicrous macabre twists, and its quickie sequel offers more of the same, which should again appease viewers who enjoy being jerked around.
  13. The Benefactor
    That makes the role well tailored to its occupant: Gere stays within his range of moneyed playboys, while still getting to indulge in the kind of unflattering behavior that a more put-together Richard Gere character would never exhibit.
  14. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
    When the CGI snakes finally arrive, they look like they've just returned from a guest spot on "Charmed;" if the film had cut any more corners, it would have had to borrow graphics from an old Intellivision game.
  15. Man on a Ledge
    As the plot unfolds, brick by brick, the structure starts to wobble until it finally collapses into unintentional comedy.
  16. Jack Frost
    Jack Frost's juxtaposition of the absurd and the absurdly predictable results in a film that's frequently entertaining, but for the wrong reasons.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Deep Impact
    If director Mimi Leder is really guilty of anything, it's of wasting three first-rate actors (Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Redgrave, and Robert Duvall) in underdeveloped roles while allowing Leoni's shell-shocked, unconvincing turn to become an embarrassment.
  18. White Men Can't Jump
    The remake of WMCJ, also set in the Black communities of greater Los Angeles, fancies itself as having more on its mind than the original flick, but the ball rarely makes it through the hoop.
  19. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Like the big shiny sphere at its center, the film is fairly pretty, but there's no real sense that there's anything inside it.
  20. Delia's Gone
    James does a decent job with what he’s been given, but it’s never clear exactly what the movie hopes to do with his character. Is this just another crime and punishment retread? Or is it meant to serve as a metaphor for dealing with grief while disabled? It’s too broad to work as the latter, and too unhurried for the former.
  21. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
    It’s not a waste of a concept, exactly, but it’s not the reinvention that the franchise needs, either. Rock’s involvement brings some new blood to Spiral, but after a promising start it ends up becoming a pretty okay Saw movie with some bigger names than usual.
  22. Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
    As absorbingly weird and dark and sad as the film becomes, it still labors against jumpy construction, an irritating variety of visual styles and film stocks, and a crowded story that no one gets much individual screen time, which means that redemption for everyone comes far too quickly and neatly.
  23. Peaceful Warrior
    The "What The Bleep Do We Know?" crowd may well receive the film's wisdom like communion, but the rest of us are free to gag when Salva tries to jam it down our throats.
  24. Butter
    A toothless, insufferably smug satire using competitive butter-carving as a weak-tea stand-in for Midwestern politics, Butter is so contemptuous of its corn-fed rubes, it might as well be a Trojan horse crafted to prove the movie industry's liberal bias.
  25. Beastly
    In every aspect, from story to tone to characterization to visual aesthetic, it's laughably perfunctory, as though everyone involved were too embarrassed to give it more than a half-ironic token effort.
  26. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
    A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story’s mounting ludicrousness—two words: adamantium bullets—or a conclusion that’s only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown. Maybe.
  27. Slumberland
    Playing like an amalgam of Monsters, Inc. and Inception, this family-friendly fantasy thankfully doesn’t put audiences to sleep, but neither does it draw us into its dreamy sensation.
  28. Brick Mansions
    It’s a beat-for-beat remake of a movie whose plot was never meant to do anything except get characters to jump from rooftops, made by a less confident director (Camille Delamarre, one of the studio’s go-to editors) and set in a culture Besson has never been able to grasp. It’s also a silly pile-up of exaggerated action clichés—and much of the time, it’s pretty fun.
  29. Leatherface
    To turn Leatherface into a tragic figure, twisted by traumatic upbringing into a monster, is to forget that he’s scariest as a force of nature, which tend to be tough to diagnose. Remember, no one cares what the shark from Jaws was like as a tortured guppy.
  30. Dracula Untold
    More sad dad and noble martyr than creature of the night, Evans’ dashing Prince Of Darkness inspires less fear than just about any incarnation of the famous character, save perhaps the one played by Leslie Nielsen.
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