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. The Chronicles of Riddick
    As bloated and ponderous as its predecessor was lean and focused, Chronicles ups the stakes along with the budget while jettisoning just about everything that made "Pitch Black" stand out from other thrillers about weary humans battling nefarious space beasties.
  2. Angels Crest
    Angels Crest has weaknesses that are tough to overcome. It relies too much on two particularly played-out indie clichés: a spare, plunky soundtrack, and a narrative structure that teases out characters' backstory far longer than necessary.
  3. Michael
    John Travolta should realize that people appreciate him, maybe more than ever, but that he should start making movies people won't feel ashamed for having seen if he wants to avoid co-starring with a talking lemur in the future.
  4. Submergence
    An objectively bad movie, paradoxically ponderous and pointless.
  5. Entourage
    Though Entourage is set just months after the events of the HBO finale, its actors are (noticeably) several years older, and there’s something kind of sad, even desperate about seeing these characters behave like the same horny frat boys they basically were at the start of the series.
  6. Terminator Genisys
    This new Terminator, the first since the dreadfully dreary and Arnold-less "Salvation," is engineered to feel at once eerily familiar and raise-the-stakes fresh.
  7. Gemini Man
    One can smirk at the movie’s fuzzy philosophies and primordial clichés and still appreciate the delivery of Lee’s action scenes.
  8. Eragon
    If Eragon proves anything, it's that not all dragons produce magic.
  9. Empire
    Empire devolves into a bloody revenge thriller with an ending as primitive as its opening is convoluted.
  10. The Jungle Book 2
    Even the animation is imitative rather than inventive.
  11. Bad Boys II
    Bad Boys II is the rare case in which escapism involves leaving the theater.
  12. The Green Inferno
    Enjoying this rancid slab of red meat depends not just on an appetite for slop, but also a taste for sloppy leftovers.
  13. An American Haunting
    Never remotely frightening.
  14. Dark Streets
    The main pitfall of modern noirs is that filmmakers get so caught up in the chiaroscuro lighting schemes and florid twists of dialogue and voiceover that they forget noir was about expressing more than just attitude and style.
  15. The Pickup
    The Pickup is entertaining on that most basic of slack-jawed levels: It has likable stars doing movie stuff (car chases, elaborate deceptions) that the movie seems to bank on blurring into memories of other, better capers.
  16. Mechanic: Resurrection
    Statham and Gansel don’t recreate the Transporter magic; those were lovingly ridiculous action movies, while Mechanic: Resurrection is more hastily ridiculous. But after a season of sagas, revivals, and franchise hubris, the flatness of a Statham sequel inspires its own kind of trash nostalgia.
  17. Men in Black: International
    Director F. Gary Gray, while experienced in both action and comedy, also struggles to keep the film’s picaresque plot on track.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    All Eyez on Me
    At this most perfunctory level, All Eyez On Me succeeds, but on pretty much every other one imaginable, it is a failure.
  19. Balls of Fury
    Add Balls Of Fury to the list of movies that not even Walken's moon-man delivery and oddball comic energy can save.
  20. The Life Before Her Eyes
    Perelman's follow-up, The Life Before Her Eyes, finds him clumsily trying to outdo M. Night Shyamalan.
  21. Radio
    Anyone who already knows better than to taunt the disabled, or former Oscar winners, should probably give it a pass.
  22. Never Die Alone
    Though steeped in both subgenres, Never Die Alone subverts that vicarious enjoyment by showing violence and abuse so unrelentingly ugly that only a sadist could derive the least bit of pleasure from it.
  23. The Vatican Tapes
    In nearly every way—from how the movie’s being released to the way it approaches the whole satanic possession subgenre — The Vatican Tapes is dispiritingly ordinary. It’s the rote B-movie that Neveldine up to now has tried so hard not to make.
  24. Ouija
    It’s professionally produced but completely uninspired.
  25. No Escape
    Despite its illegible chase scenes, awkward slow-motion shots, and fumbling attempts at political commentary, No Escape manages to be intermittently interesting, thanks to an off-beat supporting turn from Pierce Brosnan.
  26. Gigantic
    Any resemblance the film bears to real people and real situations is purely coincidental.
  27. Confessions of a Shopaholic
    The degree to which Shopaholic actually works is a testament to the looks, charm, and comedic chops of Fisher, who stole "Wedding Crashers" and has a gift for slapstick that places her somewhere between Téa Leoni and Lucille Ball in the pantheon of foxy redheaded physical comediennes.
  28. The November Man
    Too frequently, the movie also treats its female characters as props to be shuffled in and out of danger as the screenplay requires — a nasty tendency that undermines its ongoing (and murkily argued) debate about whether a successful agent can maintain his humanity.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flight Risk
    Over-writing doesn’t delay Flight Risk’s pace or tension; Wahlberg does. The actor ended up apologizing for his boneheaded 9/11 remarks not long after making them. Maybe one day he’ll apologize for Flight Risk, too.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goats
    It's a strange stunt of a role for Duchovny, who even when playing characters indulging in sex, drugs, or conspiracy theories, has the air of a savvy urbanite, a quality he can't submerge while trying to act as a perpetually high mystic.
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