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. Pinocchio
    Far be it from us to actively reveal what scuttles Zemeckis’ film, but let’s just say that it seems like the people who made its biggest creative choices have more wood for brains than the character they brought to life.
  2. My Policeman
    Instead of a classic tragic romance, it ends up being a turgid, airless concoction. Styles’ fans might find something to admire since they’ll get to gaze at their idol. But the rest of us should avoid looking.
  3. Love & Gelato
    Love & Gelato is basically the professional equivalent of a work-study program, the type of movie which affords young actors the opportunity to cut their teeth on uncomplicated material within the well-manicured confines of an easily prescribed genre.
  4. The Road to Galena
    It is a movie of tropes and clichés that argues, with generic earnestness and a near-total lack of surprise, that the city is a corrupting influence compared to the nurturing, sun-drenched simplicity of the country.
  5. Paradise Highway
    As intriguing as the combination of Binoche and Grillo might sound, it would be much more impactful if they shared the screen for more than a handful of scenes. As such, the movie begins with a bang, but it ends with a whimper.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Teen Wolf: The Movie
    Teen Wolf: The Movie is many things, but despite veteran director Russell Mulcahy’s brisk professionalism, a movie is not one of them.
  7. The Greatest Beer Run Ever
    The arguments presented by the characters on each side are broad and reductive. There’s no nuance and no original thoughts. The information is obvious and presented at its least confrontational. It’s a scene meant to depict the moral dilemma at the center of its story, and it ends up being ridiculous.
  8. Captain America: Brave New World
    Brave New World doesn’t even seem sure about what it’s selling—just that it has to get a movie-shaped something-or-other to market.
  9. The Island of Dr. Moreau
    I was never bored, even if the film ultimately amounts to little more than a very expensive freak show. Just before slurring one of the all-time great terrible last lines ("I want to go to dog heaven"), Kilmer utters, with sublime understatement, a line that doubles as the film's epitaph: "Well, that didn't work out." Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Fiasco.
  10. Goodnight Mommy
    The original Austrian film had shock value and genuine, gruesome horror. This new Americanized version sands the edges off of the narrative every chance it gets.
  11. Gigi & Nate
    For a solid portion of its running time, Gigi & Nate at least delivers what it promises: a young man and his monkey—to be more specific, a young, newly quadriplegic man and his service monkey.
  12. House of Darkness
    Ultimately, House Of Darkness exists in a strange and equally fatal no man’s land of being simultaneously under- and overwritten. As a feature film, it’s entirely insubstantial, with a premise better served in short form as part of an anthology.
  13. 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.
  14. Mr. Harrigan's Phone
    Though its narrative contains some subtleties, and Hancock’s aesthetic polish gives it a nice gloss, the picture’s pacing and character-driven momentum frequently sputters, ultimately leading to diminished results.
  15. Peter Pan & Wendy
    Not unlike other studios’ Peter Pan interpretations, like Steven Spielberg’s Hook, P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan, Joe Wright’s Pan, and Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy, Lowery’s version does just enough to make it his own. However, with no real laughs, no genuine thrills, and no memorable scenes, its legacy will soon be forgotten.
  16. The Retaliators
    The film teases us with hat-tips and in-jokes and then pushes them aside to become an ungainly horror mashup that works in pieces, most notably during its climatic free-for-all, but not as a whole. In The Retaliators, the storylines fly in as many directions as the blood.
  17. What's Love Got to Do with It?
    Though it sets out with noble intentions, What’s Love Got to Do With It is inelegant and reductive. It’s a well-meaning but misguided film that ends up playing into the same prejudices and preconceptions its characters are meant to be challenging.
  18. Dig
    The goal of a movie like Dig ought to be simple: keep ratcheting up the tension to the point that when our main character(s) finally turn the tables, it’s hugely cathartic. Unfortunately, the “ratcheting” part is where Dig fails to hit paydirt.
  19. Jane
    Jaglom doesn’t ratchet up enough tension for Jane to work as a nail-biter and once the catfight in the pool begins, the film forfeits all claims of being any sort of exploration of trauma. So we’re left with a slow burn thriller where complicated YA issues and vengeful social media posts make for a less than potent mix.
  20. The Garfield Movie
    When brand perpetuation is as soulless and milquetoast as this, it seems unlikely that it will create any new fans at all.
  21. Spirit Halloween: The Movie
    It’s just so embarrassingly thin. The few chuckles are all the more depressing when you realize that this could have been a winner with a clever screenwriter and a competent director.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Marlowe
    A small elegance, expressed in decent production values, terse pacing and long lateral camera takes, is the main thing director Neil Jordan has to offer in the mostly misguided Marlowe, the latest of perhaps too many attempts to pour the old wine of Chandler’s fiction into new bottles, and then sell the resulting concoction as vintage.
  23. A Haunting in Venice
    With mystical elements and a foray into gothic storytelling, A Haunting In Venice could have been much more intriguing. Instead, Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green do not vary much from what they delivered in the other two movies.
  24. I'm Totally Fine
    It’s a movie that purports to root itself in grief, but instead wraps itself in such a cloak of wispy, noncommittal vagueness that virtually everything about it dissipates on contact.
  25. The Estate
    The execution is where it’s lacking: the wit, the timing, the headlong comic drive, and the ability to make us laugh at actions and dialogue that, in any other context, would be rude or distasteful.
  26. Better Than Chocolate
    The problems of coming out, intolerance, safe sex, and censorship are ticked off like a checklist in Better Than Chocolate, a well-meaning Canadian slice-of-life comedy that remains firmly planted in the creative rut currently plaguing gay cinema.
  27. You People
    For the first half-hour, Netflix has a high-concept hit on its hands. Pause it there, and imagine the rest—you won’t do any worse than Barris and Hill’s script at conceiving an ending.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Wide Awake
    The interest-generating theme of a boy coping with loss is made top-heavy with cuteness, causing it to collapse a quarter of the way through Wide Awake, never to recover.
  29. Maybe I Do
    Instead of gags, we’re treated to endless observations about love, commitment, romance, parental responsibilities, and other well-trod subjects. None of this is particularly insightful or interesting.
  30. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
    Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant offers marginal entertainment value. It’s a film that seems afraid to offer any ideas about its setting and characters beyond the minimum.
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