The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,419 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 2.5 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
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  1. Minority Report
    Few directors are capable of marrying ideas and entertainment—one is often sacrificed for the other—but Spielberg peppers one gripping action setpiece after another with trenchant details about a near-future robbed of the most basic freedoms and privacy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    The acting, mostly by a bunch of unknowns, is equally fresh and funny, and Ritchie keeps the movie moving faster than you can say, "bludgeoned to death by a 15-inch black rubber dildo."
  3. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    Verbinski knows when to break out the stunning action sequences and when to let his characters dominate the film, and he handles both modes expertly.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Titanic
    That the familiar story of the Titanic disaster is told with suspense is not as surprising as Cameron's clear-headed balance of truth and fiction, spectacle and tragedy.
  5. Breaking the Waves
    What Von Trier arrives at is a complex, contemporary, and deeply moving exploration of faith.
  6. Rushmore
    Fast, exhilarating new comedy.
  7. Lost in Translation
    Gorgeously shot by Lance Acord, who makes Toyko a gaudy dreamscape that's both seductive and frightening, Lost In Translation washes away memories of "Godfather III," establishing Coppola as a major filmmaker in her own right, and reconfirming Johansson and Murray as actors of startling depth and power.
  8. The Matrix
    The Wachowskis do it so playfully well, keeping The Matrix's potentially confusing plot intelligible, intelligent, and suspenseful, that it doesn't matter.
  9. Spirited Away
    A wonderful encore, marked by the painstaking attention to detail and artful balance between terror and joy that make Miyazak's work unique.
  10. Mystic River
    In his best film since "Unforgiven," Eastwood ultimately lets observations on character, community, and the tidal patterns of tragedy shoulder a burden an ordinary murder mystery never could.
  11. 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.
  12. Jackie Brown
    The most exciting thing about Jackie Brown is the director's seamless transition to a less flashy, revealing style; it's well-suited to the more character-oriented focus of the film... an assured, accomplished, and very good film.
  13. Before Sunset
    In the spirit of the original, Linklater closes with one of the best endings of its kind since George Romero's "Martin."
  14. Bad Santa
    Much like "School Of Rock," Bad Santa salvages a tired, paint-by-numbers formula by resisting it every step of the way, stubbornly refusing to stop its juvenile fun until the last possible moment.
  15. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    A surprisingly bittersweet love story at heart, Eternal Sunshine values the sum of experience, which in this case means a thorns-and-all openness to romantic possibilities.
  16. Sweet Sixteen
    With startling clarity and dreadful logic, Loach and Laverty make sense of every bad choice Compston makes until he runs out of options, locked into a destiny that he can't escape, mainly because his good intentions are clouded by tragic naivete.
  17. 8 Mile
    The film's absolute conviction keeps it from feeling formulaic.
  18. The Manchurian Candidate
    Shockingly, he's (Jonathan Demme) pulled it off, replicating the original's tricky feat of investing a paranoid plot with timeliness, psychological complexity, sociopolitical acumen, and almost frightening conviction.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Spider-Man
    Spider-Man brings the beloved comic-book character to the screen with both angst and action undamaged by the move.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Volcano
    Deft filmmaking that allows the special effects to help, not be, the story combines with an actual script to make Volcano a smart, self-aware, and most of all fun disaster movie.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Breakdown
    Breakdown is just a skillfully constructed, smartly conceived, escapist thriller that does just about everything right.
  22. Cube
    For his first feature, Canadian director Vincenzo Natali has, like the setting of his film, created a complex piece of work around an essentially simple foundation.
  23. Rosewood
    Deliberately paced at the outset, the film slowly establishes a sense of hatred that makes the violent explosion of the film's second half as plausible and inevitable as the laws of physics.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Michael Collins
    Liam Neeson's performance as Collins is at once stirring and blood-curdling, as befits the role of a man who murdered for a cause he believed was just, but was willing to stop when he believed his objective was reached.
  25. Marvin's Room
    Nonetheless, Marvin's Room is not only sharply written and well-acted, but it's also the rare sort of film that takes an honest and uncompromising look at death and dying.
  26. 4 Little Girls
    An important act of historical preservation, a focused and effective film that brings back a dark, important moment in history with startling clarity.
  27. Facing the Music
    Uncompromising in her art, her teaching, and her professional relations, Boyd makes for a classic tough old bird of a character.
  28. Fighter
    Far from the solemn earnestness of most Holocaust documentaries, Fighter addresses the war and its oft-toxic reverberations with refreshing impudence and candor.
  29. Chain Camera
    By turns playful, harrowing, intensely moving, and uproariously funny, Chain Camera cuts away all documentary artifice and goes straight to the source, allowing these kids to reveal themselves with the utmost directness and candor.
  30. Los Angeles Plays Itself
    Dazzling cinema-essay.
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